What to Stream and When on Twitch
- 7 Minute Read
What to Stream and When on Twitch
In this article, we’ll help you decide what game to stream, and how to find the best days and times to schedule your stream for the best chance of growth on your channel.
Are you an aspiring Twitch streamer, wondering how to build a dedicated audience and grow your average number of viewers? It’s more than just playing your favorite game; there’s strategies that can improve your chances of being discovered on Twitch. In this guide, we’ll dive into choosing the right game and the optimal times to stream them, helping you maximize visibility and attract viewers to your channel.
What Games to Stream on Twitch: Niche vs. Numbers
The eternal question for many new Twitch streamers is ‘What should I stream?’ and frequently we see new streamers make the mistake of jumping on the bandwagon and playing the hottest game or newest game release. While playing games like Valorant, Fortnite or Minecraft might seem appealing because of their massive viewer counts, the reality is you’ll be a tiny fish in a colossal ocean, struggling to stand out among hundreds of already established content creators. Even if you’re completely cracked at one of these games or rolled a nat 20 on your charisma IRL, it’s not going to help you be successful, if your channel is never actually seen.
The Sweet Spot: Trending Games with Less Competition
For growing a Twitch channel, you should focus on identifying games that are trending, but are not oversaturated with streamers. To find these hidden gems, start by going to the “Browse” section on Twitch and sorting categories by “Viewers (High to Low).” Don’t pick the games at the very top; instead, scroll down and look for games consistently ranked between 20 and 50 by viewer count. Games within this range often indicates a healthy viewer base without overwhelming competition. Most importantly, choose a game you genuinely enjoy playing within this range. After all, if you’re having fun while streaming, your audience is more likely to have fun too. Your genuine enthusiasm will shine through and keep viewers engaged.
For additional help in finding games with a good balance of high average viewers and a lower average channel count, consider utilizing resources like TwitchTracker’s “Games to Stream” section. But when using tools like this, make sure you do your own due diligence and not just blindly pick whatever game it suggests.
Once you’ve identified a potential game, it’s time for some crucial reconnaissance. Click into the game category on Twitch and review these three key metrics: the current number of viewers, the total category followers, and most importantly, how far you have to scroll down the list of live streamers when sorted by “Viewers (High to Low)”.
If the viewer count and category followers are significantly high, that’s a promising sign. But the real test is determining your potential visibility. When you’re just starting out, you’ll likely only have a handful of viewers – perhaps 0 to 2, unless you’re bringing a pre-existing audience from another platform. So ask yourself: how many times did you need to scroll to reach streams with a similar viewer count to your stream? If it’s more than a couple of middle-mouse wheel turns, it’s unlikely viewers will ever even see your stream in their results, nevermind potentially clicking on your channel.
This doesn’t mean you cannot stream in this game category, though. You may just need to stream during off-peak hours, such as early mornings or late nights, when there’s less competition.
This leads us directly to our next crucial point: when to go live.
When to Stream: Making a Twitch Schedule for Maximum Impact
To truly pinpoint the sweet spot for your stream, a data-driven approach is essential. Beyond glancing over the viewer and follower counts for a game category, you’ll want to leverage third-party Twitch analytic sites to compare games side-by-side. We recommend using sites like Sully Gnome, which shows graphs for viewership and broadcasters by time of day and day of the week; incredibly useful for strategic scheduling. You can even filter the data by language, enabling you to precisely target the audience you aim to reach. By analyzing this data, you can strategically select a game and an ideal time slot where your channel has the highest chance of gaining visibility and attracting new viewers.
Beat the Rush: Why Streaming Before Peak Hours Matters
One of the most effective strategies to boost your discoverability is to begin your stream before your game category’s peak hours. By starting your broadcast an hour or two earlier than the usual rush, you position yourself to capture early viewers and build an audience. As more people gradually trickle into Twitch and peak viewership approaches, you’ve already accumulated a viewer count, giving your channel a higher ranking, making it more appealing to new viewers just coming into the category.
To illustrate this, let’s look at a real-world example. Let’s say you wanted to start streaming the game Rust, because it’s currently trending and you enjoy playing the game. It’s the 20th game category on Twitch’s Browse tab, has 25k viewers, and 7.7m followers. So far, this could be a potential contender, but let’s take a deeper dive into the data:
If you search for Rust on SullyGnome, filter the language to English (or your preferred language), and analyze the last 14 days, you’d observe a significant surge in Rust viewership and channels leading into a recent weekend. Specifically, the largest spike in viewers began on Thursday after 4pm UTC, peaking at 9pm. When we compare this to the number of active channels, the lowest count prior to the peak was 72 channels at 11am on that same Thursday.
If we identified this as a recurring pattern, then Thursdays at 11am would be an ideal time to start stream and gain traction. For this particular Rust example, a quick check of previous weeks reveals this isn’t a sustained pattern. A subsequent Google search confirmed the reason for the sudden spike in interest in the game: the “Global Warfare 3” event commenced that Thursday, accompanied by Twitch drops. Such events, updates, or expansions to games can cause temporary inflations like this and skew the data. Always cross-reference data with recent game news to understand any sudden shift in viewership.
Thus, we need to ignore the data from the recent weekend and look at older historical data that might reveal more consistent, favorable windows for a long-term schedule. In our review, individual days of the week didn’t really stand out, but daily the viewership tended to grow starting between 2-4pm with mid-70’s as a typical low for concurrent streams.
For new streamers, this is still higher than we’d recommend; aim for categories with 50 or fewer concurrent streams. Furthermore, delve deeper into those low-streamer categories and notate how many channels have only a few viewers (1-2). If, for instance, half of those 50 channels are broadcasting to only a couple of viewers, maintaining 3+ viewers would immediately place your stream among the top 25 channels in that category, giving your channel more visibility.
Your Twitch Schedule: Build a Twitch Community with Consistent Streaming
Once you’ve come up with an ideal schedule, it’s so important for you to stick to it! If you only stream on a whim, then your followers will have no idea when to tune into your show. Sure, you have notifications on Twitch and Discord for when you’re going live, but in general, people tend to have a routine schedule themselves. It’s easier to get returning viewers, if you stick to the same days and times, as it’s more likely that your viewers will continue to be available and able to watch your streams. The more returning viewers you secure, the higher your average viewer count will climb. This, in turn, boosts your visibility in game category search results, making your channel even more discoverable to new audiences.
Equally important is avoiding frequent reschedules or cancellations. Constantly shifting your stream times or abruptly canceling can quickly lead to viewer disinterest and frustration. Your audience invests their time watching you, and a reliable schedule shows you respect that investment. While unforeseen circumstances can happen, making last-minute changes a regular occurrence signals unreliability, making it harder to build a consistent viewership essential for growth.
However, if you plan to be a variety streamer, embrace flexibility. Trends shift rapidly; a game that’s popular today might not be next month. Make it a habit to regularly check your analytics and external resources to adapt both your streaming schedule and game choices. Get in the habit of deciding what your schedule will be for the following week or month and post it in advance. Then do not deviate from that schedule. As your community grows, more of your followers will attend streams for you, and less for the game, so you may rank higher in general and can switch into more competitive game categories as you grow. It’s all about where you get your average viewers land you in the search results.
Eliminate Time Zone Confusion
Discord offers a powerful built-in markdown feature that allows you to post specific dates and times that automatically adjusts to the viewer’s local time. This completely eliminates the need for your audience to perform mental math or use external time converters. Use unix timestamp converters to generate the markdown format, and simply paste it into your Discord messages.
We recommend using this anytime you’re posting about your regular schedule or special events, so viewers always know when to tune into your stream.
How to Make your Twitch Stream Thumbnail Stand Out
A well-designed stream overlay is a critical component for standing out on a crowded platform like Twitch. In categories with a high number of concurrent streamers, your stream’s thumbnail is often the only thing differentiating you from the competition. Take a look at the screenshot below – which thumbnail stands out most?
While a thumbnail showing raw gameplay footage is standard, a professionally designed overlay makes your thumbnail instantly more appealing, directly influencing a potential viewer’s decision to click on your stream over others, and can become recognizable as your stream grows. By creating a distinct visual presence, you not only improve your channel’s aesthetic, but also enhance its discoverability.
