Show HN: Twitch Roulette – Find live streamers who need views the most

Show HN: Twitch Roulette – Find live streamers who need views the most(twitchroulette.net)

180 points by ellg 51 days ago | 94 comments

Hey HN, I re-launched an old site I remembered back in the day that someone made called twitchroulette.net with a lot of new features and stats and I would love for people to check it out. The idea is you can easily browse the less browsed parts of twitch and find cool and new streamers to say hi to, and maybe make some new friends.

I also added some real time stats and breakdowns per channel and I think some of the things they show are pretty interesting. Check it out!

flowgrammer 51 days ago |

Great idea. One of my saddest projects was making a site to help Twitch streamers get sponsorship for playing games. You automatically got picked if your view count was high enough. I saw thousands of people streaming on Twitch by themselves for weeks with no viewers whatsoever. Surely many of them had families and partners, but I'm also sure many did not.

vector_spaces 51 days ago | |

Maybe I'm naive, but my sense is not everyone streaming on Twitch is trying to make a career out of it. Even for those that are -- everyone starts somewhere. Hopefully those that aren't successful on first brush notice and realize that it takes more than simply starting a stream to build a sticky audience.

Also, there are many people out there who lead fulfilling lives without families and partners. Either way, I don't think you should pity people so readily. At best it's somewhat condescending and missing much of the complexity and nuance of what it is to be a human person

mmarvin 51 days ago | | |

why would you stream on Twitch then? just because it‘s „fun“? come on

sanswork 51 days ago | |

I used to live code on Twitch regularly with zero viewers and it didn't really bother me. It forced me to actively talk through my decision making processes just by streaming which slowed me down but was often useful. I'm not sure what the family/partners part is about, I certainly had both while streaming.

hombre_fatal 51 days ago | | |

Last year I would larp as a Spanish-speaking gaming streamer on Youtube to practice Spanish, talking out loud while trying some new game to force myself to speak it.

If I were trying to do that in private, I would stop after two minutes.

But the mere threat of someone watching me forced me to take it seriously even though I knew nobody would.

It was so effective that I would default to Spanish for the rest of the day, or I'd listen to Spanish and then realize how I could have communicated certain things better instead of just passively ingest it.

Though the same reason it was so effective also created a mental toll that I started avoiding by not doing it at all. Need to start it back up.

That said, I reckon the vast majority of streamers are gamers who do want viewership and aren't using it as some productivity hack.

prox 51 days ago | | |

Yeah, the snark by some commenters is unwarranted.

There is this programmer and he is just chilling, programming and listening to music. Just 2-3 viewers. On occasion I say hi, make a chitchat. It’s harmless and a bit of fun/socializing.

I think most streamers know what they are doing.

afferi300rina 51 days ago | | |

Does knowing that someone could be watching change your performance? I wonder if the "Live" status acts as a mental catalyst that you can't get by just talking to yourself offline.

neonroku 51 days ago | | |

I’ve thought about doing this at work. Schedule an hour of programming once a day or once a week where others are free to join and watch, and comment or otherwise engage, or not.

meehai 51 days ago | | |

Actively doing this. It indeed forces me to think things through, organize thoughts and speak them out. I open paint/miro to draw. It's good practice.

vasco 51 days ago | |

What does having a family have to do with anything? I see many people with different hobbies that aren't "successful", do you also think if they have families or not?

I don't even get the implications, presumably it'd be worse to stream all day if you have a family you're neglecting, but even that is making wild assumptions.

bobsmooth 51 days ago | | |

>What does having a family have to do with anything?

Presumably that at least one of their family members would be pity watching.

carlosjobim 51 days ago | | |

If you have a family, why would you be screaming into the void while playing video games? Go spend time with your family, where there's endless company and good to be done.

monssooon 51 days ago | |

It can also be a way yo practise or find like minded

chundicus 51 days ago |

What about https://nobody.live/?

ucarion 51 days ago | |

Leads me to discover: https://www.twitch.tv/chat_loadtest_01 ... neat!

nubinetwork 51 days ago | | |

Theres a lot of weird channels on twitch, I run into ones with "ingest" in their name quite often.

ellg 51 days ago | |

also neat! never heard of it, seems like we have a bit different ways about browsing similar data. very cool site

Lorean1 51 days ago |

I'm not sure about the framing from the title, it's like "find businesses which need your money the most" - not a great advertisement

realharo 51 days ago | |

Yeah, it makes it sound like your attention is given as an act of charity. A lot of online discourse tends to be very "creator-first" framed, rather than "audience-first".

drunkan 51 days ago |

Am I crazy or is this just social/financial charity roulette for streamers. Also is there not inherently an issue building the foundations of a friendship on the predicate of one person being watched and the other having to watch and potentially pay the other? If one side doesn’t like or subscribe are they friends.

The idea that people turn to streaming to either support themselves or make friends and people feel the need to help them do so is everything right and wrong with society. It’s nice people are willing to support someone else and wrong that the most supported are often the worst and really we should just support people socially and financially outside of the streaming charity system we have created. I find it all a bit mind boggling.

lovehashbrowns 51 days ago |

really fun! already found an MLB stream, someone streaming Age of Empires 1 no talking and chat in emote mode, someone going absolutely crazy on a racing game I think multi-streaming with their audience primarily on YT. and now I'm on a BG3 playthrough I'm pretty sure.

Gracana 51 days ago | |

Was it Wirtual? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C98AjMOklB4

lovehashbrowns 51 days ago | | |

No it was someone playing a street car drifting game idk which. They were doing car reviews of people’s designs

JohannesCortez 51 days ago |

Great concept! Brought me to a girl playing COD. She only has me as a viewer.

She thanked me so I stayed for a while lol

jmpavlec 51 days ago |

Very nice. Currently on mobile where it mostly works in landscape. (Unusable in portrait). Will check it out on desktop later.

Love the idea of making someone's day.

mister_mort 51 days ago |

Perhaps you can add a check to see if the stream is behind a login/agegate? I pushed the random button and got a stream that I was locked out of.

ellg 51 days ago | |

ill check, I honestly didnt even know that was a thing, thanks for letting me know

john_strinlai 51 days ago |

these types of projects are always fun, whether it is the old youtube videos with no views, or the few other twitch ones like this i have seen. thanks for sharing it.

it would be great to be able to filter by language, but i have no idea if twitch exposes that information or if it would have to be some hack with the title/game/etc data.

and, probably not your fault, but, probably 1/2 of the spins give me a 10-second pre-roll. weirdly, it isnt an advert, but some twitch-related thing i have never seen that says stuff like "preparing the stream" and "an intern stepped on a wire while your stream was setting up". i am signed in, so not sure what is going on there.

anyways, spun the wheel for awhile and had fun talking with a few people. crazy amount of people still playing call of duty, i had no idea.

QuantumNomad_ 51 days ago | |

> it isnt an advert, but some twitch-related thing i have never seen that says stuff like "preparing the stream" and "an intern stepped on a wire while your stream was setting up"

Twitch pre-roll played an ad for me on mobile in the web browser. Maybe you have an ad blocker in the browser you are using so it’s not loading the ads themselves and instead falling back to some twitch-related message?

Also I only got preroll on the first one not on the second or third. Maybe if you have an ad blocker it keeps trying prerolls more often?

john_strinlai 50 days ago | | |

i do have an adblocker, but i use the same browser to regularly watch twitch and have never seen those specific pre-rolls before. only when using the roulette. which is why i thought it was a bit weird. might have something to do with it being embedded instead of directly watching twitch or something.

Akronymus 51 days ago | |

those preroll "ads" are the alternative to mid stream ads.

jpcrs 51 days ago |

Appreciate it. I don’t use Twitch or watch popular streamers, but sometimes when I’m bored I look up small streamers with 1–3 viewers and chat with them. It’s usually pretty wholesome.

mememememememo 51 days ago |

Old discussion has lots of comments too https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23114103

password4321 51 days ago |

Similar in spirit to IMG_0001⁰, IMG_0416¹, and astronaut.io² for YouTube but live on Twitch!

⁰https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47308547

¹https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42314547

²https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20432772

tyjen 51 days ago |

Egalitarianism for Twitch, nice project.

A friend of mine who has streamed for years, maybe garners 3 viewers at the most, but he's absolutely terrible at viewer engagement. Despite having a dual monitor setup, it often takes him 5 minutes to recognize a single line in his chat and respond.

Growing a base followership on Twitch seems like it'd be an interesting challenge considering how saturated the market is.

djmips 50 days ago |

I ended up with someone as their only viewer and we bonded quickly, he was happy to have someone there because he was in a really tense situation in Arma - he said he'd never been more frightened. I can vouch - it was a sticky situation - was riveting to watch but he managed to beat all odds and come out on top. He was stoked! Friend for life. ;-)

logicallee 51 days ago |

This was an interesting site and was the first time I tried Twitch. It seems like video-based social interaction is an interesting field in general, since it's easier and cheaper than going someplace for an event (which is naturally limited by space, as well). How does Twitch work in general? Can you tell me a little bit more about it?

ellg 51 days ago |

Check out a cool real time feed of people discovering new streamers here: https://twitchroulette.net/discover

And some neat global stats around twitch streams here: https://twitchroulette.net/stats

recursivecaveat 51 days ago | |

For anyone who is curious btw: twitch will count you as your own viewer. So anyone with their own chat open in a browser (almost everyone so they can read it) will have that 1 viewer. Which is why the bottom of the distribution is so weird looking.

tmtvl 51 days ago | | |

You could just open your twitch chat via an IRC client, then you (might?) not count as your own viewer.

ellg 51 days ago | | |

ya it's why I have the default set to 0-5, theres weirdness in what twitch counts as a viewer

RugnirViking 51 days ago | |

whats the other end of some of these? you showed which categories tend to have 0-1 viewers, what categories have the least? what categories have lowest average age of accounts with 10+ viewers etc. What should you do to stand out?

tasuki 51 days ago |

Mhm, I clicked the thing and got shown World of Warcraft. I'm not sure the streamer needs the views the most. Perhaps it's a single mother desperately trying to raise money through streaming to feed her ten children?

nosmokewhereiam 51 days ago |

There are some soundcloud and mixcloud versions that might need inventing ...cool concept!

tosti 51 days ago |

These are really just chatboxes?

Edit: it's a bit different now. Instead of loading one from the homepage, it always loads a stream. And it has a play button on every one of them. Nothing happens when I press it. Anyone else has this?

2OEH8eoCRo0 51 days ago |

I once scrolled all the way to the bottom of the streamers and it was a little kid trying to stream Fortnite using a phone camera and it kept falling down and he was happy to have one viewer. It was adorable

kimchelgi03 51 days ago |

Cool concept! Discovery is the hardest part for small streamers — most viewers only see the top channels and never scroll down. The real-time stats breakdown sounds interesting.

munro 51 days ago |

Awesome haha, they look so shocked when you send a message, and then I get embarrassed and spin again

twentyfiveoh1 51 days ago |

my first one was junk essentially. I don't even think the host was there. They said they were streaming music videos, which is already questionable. Instead they were streaming an interview with a music artist.

QuiDortDine 51 days ago |

Kind reminder that Twitch is owned by Amazon, which is a monster of a company. Check out Owncast and Peertube for alternatives.

sudo_cowsay 51 days ago | |

monster yes, but also very powerful

monssooon 51 days ago |

Is there something like this for YouTube?

jaequery 51 days ago |

i am actually even more impressed that you got this to front page

ellg 51 days ago | |

did I do something wrong or something

password4321 51 days ago | | |

Not that I can see. I think most on HN root for the underdog.

jaequery 51 days ago | | |

what? no, i love projects like these. but re-reading my comment, it does sound a little messed =p. what i meant was it gave me old HN vibes, back when weird, fun projects popped off instead of everything being AI-wrapped.

dzonga 51 days ago |

this is pretty dope !!

was the only viewer to some guy playing far cry

xyrox1 51 days ago |

Good job

hombre_fatal 51 days ago |

On the other hand, this might be like buying someone's overpriced mediocre product at the artisanal weekend market: probably better not to encourage them so they drop the delusion and do something else.

Like that time I spent $9 on some guy's 8oz "turmeric milk" and he said I was the first sale all day, so thanks for the support. Felt bad for making him think this thing has a shot.

saadn92 51 days ago |

Can we make a version for YouTube as well? I'd love to be discovered haha

muppetman 51 days ago |

Oh my god I love this. I tell every one I load up how terrible they are and to give up now.

I think I’ve discouraged about 250 so far!!

What a wonderful project.

torlok 51 days ago | |

No, stop, you're misusing it. The purpose of this site is to build parasocial relationships with strangers online.

bombcar 51 days ago | | |

The danger with small streamers is you might accidentally develop a social relationship since they have nobody else to talk to!

schaefer 51 days ago | |

FYI: muppetman’s profile says “don’t take me seriously”, so I think this is a joke?

KMnO4 51 days ago | | |

While tone often portrays poorly over text, I think this is an example where the sarcasm is very overt. I don’t think anyone would think the comment is serious.