In late 2015 I picked up streaming on Twitch as a new hobby. My reason for doing it was simple: to share a game I was already playing with others who also enjoy it. That game, of course, is Clicker Heroes. For two years we watched the numbers go up, both in the game and on the follow count. Over three thousand Twitch viewers hit my follow button because of this game.
Eventually I needed a break from playing the same game every day, so I tried going the “typical” stream route doing mic commentary for many of my favorite games. After a few months of dead chat and no growth with any of those games, I decided the mic commentary route just wasn’t for me. I didn’t enjoy it, and it made streaming feel like a job with terrible pay. Thankfully, our most popular game would end up being one that doesn’t require any commentary or discussion to understand what’s going on.
While only a handful stuck around to be core members of our community when we switched to Marbles, that’s a phenomenon that will happen with any game. Not everyone’s going into be interested in the game on the screen, whether it’s Marbles, Clicker Heroes, Cities: Skylines, Hearthstone, Slay the Spire, Minecraft, or anything else. We all have different interests and it’s impossible to please everyone.
However, numbers don’t lie. Marbles brings in more viewers than any other game, and keeps them around for longer than any other game. It’s our number one activity on stream and it’s not going anywhere. I enjoy it, as do lots of people who frequent the stream. Maybe it’s not your thing, and that’s okay. Hopefully you will like one or more of the other games I stream. And if you don’t, well, there’s a lot of streams on Twitch. Maybe our community’s just not the best fit for you, and that’s okay too.
While many of my favorite games may not be conducive to community growth, I still plan to stream them out of my own personal enjoyment. But, for our community to grow, we will need to focus on what has worked in the past, and that is undeniably Clicker Heroes.
Since Clicker Heroes is the only game besides Marbles that’s helped to grow our community, we will be adding it back to the program along with other content too. We won’t be playing ONLY Clicker Heroes, and it won’t be 24/7, but it will be a regular part of our stream if all goes well. It’s my hope that this will bring in new community members, perhaps bring back a few old ones, and introduce new people to Marbles On Stream.
To everyone who’s stuck around since the “ClickerHeroesBot” days, I thank you sincerely. I hope we’ll find more games for the stream that several people in our community can enjoy.