The Internet makes it possible to watch people play and talk about games, and now Twitch is expanding that to watching people make them as well.
The livestreaming video company introduced its new “Game Development” channel this week. Normally, when you broadcast on Twitch, you select the game you’re playing from the website’s dashboard. Now, studios can select Game Development and livestream video of them building their software. As more companies get into showing their work as a way to promote their products, Twitch is positioning itself as an indispensable tool.
Twitch has grown into one of the biggest destination for gaming-related content on the web. It has more than a million people broadcasting video, and it has more than 60 million monthly viewers. In August, Amazon purchased Twitch for $970 million.
Already, developers at the MIT Gamelab, Epic Games, and several indies are using Twitch to show off their creative process. MIT Gamelab hosted a session on working with the simple development tools. Epic hosts weekly updates to show fans what it is doing with its Unreal Engine 4 software kit and the new free Unreal shooter game that it is making with it.
At any time, you can click on over to the Game Development channel on Twitch and pick from a long list of developers working on their latest projects.
Twitch told GamesBeat that it implemented the new directory thanks to prompting from its community. The video site recently started hosting regular “town-hall meetings” where broadcasters and viewers could bring up ideas and concerns.
If you’re curious what it’s like to watch a person coding live for an Internet audience, check out the team responsible for the strategy role-playing game Dungeonmans below: