What it’s like to develop a game LIVE on Twitch in front of players

Hi Imgur!

For the last three years I’ve been working on my first game full time, and a lot of it has been made live on Twitch in front of the players (it’s in Steam Early Access at the moment and doing well, which is nice!).

I stream about 2-5 hours daily and people sometimes ask if it’s hard to concentrate on development while streaming, but I find it’s a great way to not get distracted. You can't do anything but work while people are watching! (no time to browse imgur haha)

I try show as many aspects of making Clone Drone in the Danger Zone live as I can so next to programming, level designing etc. you can also watch me picking music for the game or do some motion capture on Stream (you can see some incredible behind the scenes footage of that below, yes this is a real job :D)

Streaming development is an energy draining task, and indie development can be kinda lonely since team sizes are small, so connecting to fans every day over Twitch is a nice way to stave off the madness of isolation.

I’m sure it’s not for everyone but for me live streaming development gives my day structure and the daily interaction with the players really motivates me, so I couldn’t imagine working without it anymore :) I also think the direct feedback from the community (thanks so much to them!) helped shape the game and keep up the good Steam user reviews (currently 96% positive)

To end this post, here is a shot of what my head feels like after a 3 hour marathon programming stream (jokes aside, I really love doing it, honestly!)

Thanks for taking the time to read my post! If you want to come and hang out you can find me on most days under “Doborog” on Twitch.