XSplit Blog

Figuring out what to stream can be one of the hardest parts of planning your content as a creator. It’s not always easy to determine what the best games to stream are. Once you start thinking about what you like, what’s coming out soon, what’s popular right now, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by choice. So let’s take a look at some of the top games on Twitch right now and consider if they’re right for you and your audience!

The golden rule of content creation

Perhaps it’s not officially the golden rule of live-streaming, but we must stress that the best game for you to stream is one you love to play. It doesn’t matter if you’re streaming one of the top games on Twitch if you don’t actually enjoy it. Audiences respond to authenticity and will notice if it’s not there. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try new games or formats as you develop your channel, but you’re going to be spending a lot of time on your games as a live-streamer so make sure they’re ones you like. And of course, if you’re not into video games, check out our fantastic guide to streaming things that aren’t games!

The heavyweights in the best games to stream category

It’s hard to ignore what Grand Theft Auto V has achieved on Twitch. This is a relatively old game that has grabbed interest from streamers over the last year thanks to the explosive popularity of its role-playing (RP) servers. Though the game is still very popular, it is important to note that its viewership is now on a downward trend (at the time of writing) according to places like sullygnome. That said, GTA V remains one of the biggest games on the platform in terms of viewership by a wide margin, so it’s not too late to try and get into the world yourself, especially if you have a passion for online role-playing. We also saw a similar trend at the beginning of the year with Among Us, a game that completely blew up, and has now fallen off the charts. 

If you are looking to jump in and stream some of the most popular games, here’s a list of just a few to try.

The Top Games to stream on Twitch Currently (by Viewership):

Updated 10/29/2021

• League of Legends
• Grand Theft Auto 5
• New World
• DOTA 2
• Minecraft
• CS:GO

Don’t overlook the draw of alphas and betas

You love new games, right? Then it will not come as a surprise to you that other gamers really like new games as well. A quick ticket to getting views on Twitch is streaming a game that’s in alpha or beta, as it’s one of the first places for people to see the game in action. There is also the added bonus that the game’s community is in its infancy at this point, so it can be easier to connect with others who are interested and make a name for yourself while the pool of creators is still relatively small. So if you grab an alpha or beta key, get online and don’t keep it to yourself.

One title that’s in exactly this phase is New World, a brand new Massively Multiplayer Online game (MMO) published by Amazon Game Studios. Currently, in beta, it racked up nearly 5.2 million hours viewed in its first few days on Twitch. Another one to watch out for is Back 4 Blood with the chance to earn a beta key actually available by watching other streamers play the game.

Once you’ve picked your game, remember that you’re not locked into it for life. Tyler ‘Ninja’ Blevins started as a Halo player but became famous for Fortnite. Balancing meeting your audience’s needs while still playing games you love is ultimately the key to success.

When you think of streaming games, your mind turns immediately to video games, but streaming services like Twitch have a healthy Tabletop RPG community that will let you stream Dungeons & Dragons as well as other classic tabletop titles. This quick guide covers how you can organize a tabletop stream, which software you might want to use, and some great examples from the genre for you to watch on Twitch.

Organizing a tabletop stream

Unlike traditional game streaming where you’re streaming your own gameplay in a single or multiplayer game, tabletop streaming involves a certain amount of pre-planning to organize multiple guests and participants. If you’re looking for a quick and easy way to stream a video game version of D&D to Twitch, check out D&D Online, an MMO based on the original tabletop game.

However, for that traditional tabletop experience, you’ll need other people either gathered physically together or, perhaps more practically, in a video chat. If you want to organize a game and need more people, why not advertise your event on social media, or check out conversations on Reddit and Discord?

Which software should you use to stream Dungeons & Dragons?

Assuming your game is organized as an online video call, you need a way to arrange those different calls and stream them too. One of the easiest solutions is to use XSplit Broadcaster and Skype along with NewTek’s Network Device Interface (NDI). This allows you to bring each person in the Skype call into XSplit Broadcaster as an individual source which you can then easily place and resize. This saves having to capture parts of a call window as you would with something like Zoom.

With XSplit Broadcaster, you can easily organize and customize your layout and theme to give it an epic D&D makeover. You can even add your own overlays for further customization, helping to bring your game to life and capture your audience’s attention. If you browse through some channels on Twitch, for instance, you’ll see it’s common for the Dungeon Master to appear in a larger window than the players as an easy visual reference for someone joining the stream.

Put yourself in the action as you stream Dungeons and Dragons

Another tool that can improve the look of your tabletop stream is XSplit VCam. It allows you to remove and replace your background, or simply blur it so the focus is on the person – and it’s all possible without a green screen. This can provide an extra layer of fun to D&D gameplay, by changing backgrounds to suit the action of the game as you go along streaming Dungeons and Dragons.

For example, if players were to find themselves wandering through the Forgotten Realms or trapped in Castle Darkhold, their background could change to represent that location. Check out royalty-free image sites such as Pixabay for inspiration.

How to visually represent the game

People watching the stream will be focused on the players and their choices. However, they’ll also want to keep up with where the players are, so you want to visualize it somehow as you stream dungeons and dragons.

Perhaps the simplest way to represent a tabletop game is to film it. You can set up an additional camera as a source over the board and move the pieces yourselves. However, this approach can be slow and not very clear on a stream. One alternative is to create custom maps to help your audience visualize your gameplay. If you’re not an artist, there are many map tools listed on D&D Compendium to explore.

Some tabletop streams to watch

Before creating your own stream, you may find it helpful to watch some others to get a good idea of how game masters have perfected their multi-cam tabletop streams to stream dungeons and dragons. Helpfully, Twitch has its own dedicated Dungeons & Dragons area, and, with over 450,000 followers, there are usually lots of games to view. One of the more popular D&D streams is High Rollers DND, showcasing a smart and engaging layout for D&D games. There’s also Rivals of Waterdeep, a D&D actual play stream brought to you by the official D&D Twitch channel.

Beyond D&D, there are a few other areas of Twitch you might like to explore to get more ideas and inspiration. These include Tabletop RPGs and Board Games.

For a more in-depth look at how XSplit Broadcaster can help your stream, check out this interview with tabletop gaming aficionado and member of Rivals of Waterdeep, Tanya De Pass.

Automation makes life easier, so why not make your streaming life easier as well with macros! Live stream automation with macros means you can do all sorts of things! From your camera zooming in when you scream playing a horror game to triggering a timed scene change. So let’s discuss how macros and automation can make your streams easier and more powerful!

What are Macros?

Macros are an extension built into XSplit Broadcaster, if you don’t have macros installed, you can go into the plugins store (which can be found by going to the Tools menu and selecting Plugin Store), search for macros, and install it easily. The first time running macros you will need to give permissions so be sure to click OK. This is the first step to full live streaming automation!

Macros are basically scripts or a series of commands that are run when a basic condition is met. So the condition is when something happens, it can be on pressing a key when the audio is at a certain level, when a video stops playing at a specific time, there are really tons of possible event types and you can write your own custom scripts.

So when you set an event type, you can then select an action to happen. This could be switching to a scene, starting a stream, opening a projector, or event running another macro. You can have multiple actions happen after an event. You can even have multiple macros running simultaneously, which really means if you timed everything right you could add automation to almost all of your stream!

You can test your macros and they will only be active when the event listener is enabled. Now the possibilities are endless with macros, but I’d like to talk through some cool examples of how you can use them. For all the samples I show here, I’ll leave a link below each section to download the macros so you can import them into your own presentation and try them out.

Automate Live Stream Commercial Breaks

So if you’re producing a live show, timing is everything, and live stream automation can help! You don’t want to miss a cue and cut back to talent too early or too late, so why not set a macro to automate your ad break? As Forbes said, streaming is presenting more opportunities for brands so getting this right could be important! If your ad break is running a series of videos in a playlist, it’s simple to automate this.

First set up your ad break scene. If you have a series of video and image ads, I recommend using your video editing software to stitch these together into a single file. Then in macros set up a macro for on key down. Then just set the key. Then set the action to switch to a scene, and select the scene with the ad break video. Enable the event listener and then set up another macro. This time the event is when a media source stops. Select your ad break video file then set the action to switch the scene to whichever scene you go to after an ad break.

You can add more macros to make this more complex like cutting to the ads intro video after a break or implementing custom stinger transitions.

Download this macro here

Starting a stream on time

If you need to start a stream at an exact time, regardless if you’re ready or not for a client, then this is a useful macro!

For the event, set the scheduled time and select the time your stream needs to start. Then set the switch to the scene and select a scene with a standby graphic that’s safe to start the stream with. Then set an action to start the stream. Make sure the event listener is on and you’re ready to go!

Download this macro here.

Always stream and record

So one of the mistakes I always make when doing an event is not starting the recording when I start the stream. Depending on the format of your show, this can be an absolutely devastating error if you promised your client a high-quality archive or if your internet goes out and you want to keep capturing a live event for later upload.

So, you use macros to set a hotkey that will activate your stream and recording. This is especially useful if you’re planning to stream to many different platforms or record multiple scenes.

Download this macro here.

IRL Live Streaming Automation

A lot of IRL streamers actually relay the stream from their IRL backpack to a cloud PC running broadcasting software. This is to keep their stream live when they go into an area where their cell reception is cut off. This can also be managed by macros.

Set an event for when a stream source is online, this is the RTMP feed source you’ve added to your IRL backpack. Set the action to switch to the scene with the RTMP feed. Then set up a macro for when an RTMP source goes offline. Have it switch to a standby screen for whenever your stream feed re-connects.

This solution can also be used as a backup system for always keeping a stream online if you’re doing a project for a client, you would just need to set up an RTMP server to output an RTMP to this relay system.

Download these macros here.

There are really endless ways you can use macros for live stream automation, this is only a small sample of use cases. The possibilities are endless so play around with the extension and see what you come up with! What’s the most inventive use you’ve found for our macro system? Or if you’ve never used it before, what do you think this might be helpful for? Let us know in the comments below!