What should you stream? Picking a game and a niche

This is the highest-leverage decision a new streamer makes, and most get it wrong in the same way: they stream the most popular game, and become invisible.

The maths of being discovered

Twitch's browse pages sort by viewer count. If you go live in a category with 100,000 viewers and 8,000 live channels, you're somewhere around page 40 with your zero viewers. Nobody reaches page 40.

Now take a category with 4,000 viewers and 40 channels. Same effort, same you — but now you're on page one or two, and people browsing that category will actually see your thumbnail. That's the entire trick, and it's available to anyone willing to look it up.

How to find the gaps

1. Open SullyGnome or TwitchTracker — both free.
2. Look at categories sorted by viewers and by channels, and calculate the ratio: viewers ÷ channels. Higher is better for you.
3. Check it at the hour you actually stream. A category can be saturated at 8pm and wide open at 7am. If you stream at unusual hours, that's an advantage, not a problem.
4. Look for categories with a healthy ratio and at least a few thousand viewers — too small and there's nobody to find you at all.

• Newly released games usually have a good ratio for a short window before everyone piles in. Being early is a real edge.
• Older games with devoted communities often have a permanently good ratio and much more loyal viewers.
• Non-gaming categories — Just Chatting is enormous and crowded, but niches like art, music production, coding, or body doubling have far less competition.

The constraint that overrides all of it

You have to actually want to play it for three hours, repeatedly, while talking. A perfect viewer-to-channel ratio in a game you find tedious produces a stream nobody wants to watch — including you, which is how channels die.

The realistic version: make a list of games you genuinely enjoy, then check the ratios and pick the best one from that list. Optimise within your interests, not against them.

Variety vs one game

• One game builds an audience faster. People searching that game find you, your regulars know what they're getting, and you become "the [game] person."
• Variety is more sustainable and more fun, but growth is slower — every stream you start from scratch with discovery, and viewers can't predict what they'll get.
• The common compromise: be a one-game channel while you grow, then earn variety later. Once people watch for *you*, the game matters much less. That's a real threshold, and you'll feel when you cross it.

Your actual niche isn't the game

Games are how people find you. They're not why people stay. What keeps someone is a reason to pick you over the thousand other channels playing the same thing:

• A format — a challenge run, a weekly tournament, an ongoing campaign, a learn-with-me series.
• An angle — the streamer who's terrible at horror, who explains the lore, who plays only obscure titles.
• A vibe — chill and chatty, or high-energy, or a study-with-me space. Vibe is underrated and highly defensible.

Once you've picked, how to get your first 10 viewers covers what to do with the visibility you've just bought yourself.