SSMB Twitch Channel Integration Testing - Feedback

[Dreadknux]

Hi guys. This past week, we have been testing ways to integrate our Twitch channel on SSMB during Sonic Hacking Contest week. This has been removed now. There may be more tests like this in the future as we try to figure out ways to integrate things without irritating the user experience too much.

I've heard that there were some complaints about the Twitch embed appearing; can I please politely ask that you do not keep things like this to the Status Updates area, as these are not always read by staff and it's not an appropriate place to post feedback of this kind. If you have a question, issue or want to express feedback, please do so in the Feedback / Bug Report forum.

Moving into the future, I'm aware that there is a desire for some SSMB users to connect with one another beyond the SSMB, via livestreams and various community events and interactions. We have a Discord server now that is open to all users that has been running for some time (we recently re-established the widget on the SSMB front page with a useful 'Connect' button to take you straight there), but for stream events we want to lean on the Sonic Stadium Twitch channel a lot more.

So, while we're all here, I'd like to open the floor to you guys and ask you what kind of community events you'd like to see that involve streaming, via our Twitch channel and/or Discord server. If the placement of the Twitch embed this past week was not convenient enough for you, where would you like to see this embed take place? Or would you prefer notifications whenever we were live on the Twitch channel instead? Let me know your thoughts, and we will keep iterating on this to make sure we get this right!

[Blue Blood]

Thanks for making a thread about this. With the amount of statuses that were being made and moderators commenting too, I just assumed that word would have reached the admins pretty quickly. Sorry that just seemed as though we were complaining behind your back.

Personally speaking, I'm not really one to engage in things like large Discord charts and Twitch streams, so I'm not the best person to provide feedback on what I want to see. I just like the basic message board experience. The Discord widget on the main forum page is fine and dandy. The problem with the Twitch embed this week was that it was autoplaying, automatically reloaded and started playing again every time that you navigated to a different page and it broke the formatting. I've only logged in to SSMB through Chrome on Android this week, if that's relevant information. If there was any way for users to manually turn it off, it wasn't clear. Having it at the top of the page is fine, as long as it can be turned off and it's resized accordingly so as not to break/interfere with formatting. 

[Dreadknux]

Ah, I understand. Thanks for the context there. Our goal was to have it simply embedded on the front page of SSMB, but it seems like we accidentally modified the global template so it sounded like it was appearing at the top of every single page... that wasn't the intention, sorry.

If it was just limited to the front page, would that be acceptable?

To give some extra detail on how it works, it's just a standard Twitch embed code that's set to only appear whenever we're broadcasting on our Twitch channel (so it doesn't appear all the time, just whenever we have a scheduled stream going on). We're looking to actually use the Calendar app on this website to outline the streaming schedule, so the community here can know in advance when we're planning to stream. It's basic hide/unhide code outside of the Twitch embed, so it's not really possible to add an unhide option per user preference... but it could be something we'd be eager to look into.

[Blue Blood]

From my point of view, the moment that it starts autoplaying is the moment it gets unreasonably intrusive. Whether I'm in a room with other people, am already watching something else or if I'm somewhere without WiFi and the stream starts chewing through my mobile data, it just makes me want to navigate away from the board. Although I'd rather it wasn't there at all, having it on the front page and subsequent pages isn't an issue as long as it doesn't autoplay. That was really the big problem. Come to browse some SSMB and possibly switch between tabs and suddenly there's this noise coming from somewhere.

[NegaMix]

Apologies for initially only speaking about this in the status updates. I had intended to make a topic about it here, but I chickened out ultimately. I really shouldn't have done that...

Personally speaking, I think it would be a little more beneficial if there was a banner displayed at the top of the site (akin to the ones used to announce new themes) with a link to the Twitch stream whenever it's live. It may, at the very least be a temporary way to get around issues with embedding the stream and potentially eating up users' data if they're on mobile.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

Personally speaking, I have to say I really dislike how the integration has been handled. Even when streams aren’t ongoing, the screen still appears at the top, simply displaying an offline banner. Furthermore, the placement and size not only makes the site itself look clunky, but it breaks the site’s appearance and makes it more of a hassle to navigate on certain devices as well. 

Having it auto play and eat into people’s data as well definitely isn’t good either. It also in general just adds extra work for normal users who have to either pause or mute the video.

I think also at the end of the day, most people here are here for the forum and it’s content. Where the Twitch Stream is placed also eats up screen real estate and forces users to do more actions and move past it to access the content they’re probably coming to the forum to do. It may seem minor, but it’s just another minor inconvenience that forces users to do something more for the content they came to the site for in the first place. It just hurts the general user experience in a variety of ways.

I understand wanting to advertise the Twitch streams, and let people know they’re happening, but the way it’s currently done is just frustrating to deal with. It creates further inconvenience for members who just want to come to the forum to do the stuff they normally do, and it drives them away because it can break the site formatting on certain devices, or eats into their data, or can just make a loud disturbance when they’re doing something else and wanted to quickly check the forum. It comes off less like advertising the Twitch streams and instead trying to force everyone on the site to tune in. Not to mention the fact that it still remains even when streams are offline, for no discernible reason. 

I think @NegaMix hit the nail on the head in saying that just doing an announcement banner, making status updates beforehand, or even having a dedicated pinned topic for the official TSS streams would probably feel less intrusive and a better compromise than what is present now. At the end of the day, I imagine the way it’s currently handled would probably steer more people away from the streams than entice them to join in, out of annoyance more than anything. 

[Harkofthewaa]

How about instead of having the immediate on the main page, give it it's own page reachable through the SSMB tab (so it would look like SSMB Forums, Status Updates, Our Picks, Online Users, Guidelines, Twitch Channel). Like @NegaMix said, give it a announcement banner whenever a stream is live, with said banner directing people to the page with the embed instead of taking them off site. This way, anyone who wants to use the feature can and it stays out of the way of those who don't.

[Danj86]

2 hours ago, Ryannumber1Scarer said:

I think @NegaMix hit the nail on the head in saying that just doing an announcement banner, making status updates beforehand, or even having a dedicated pinned topic for the official TSS streams would probably feel less intrusive and a better compromise than what is present now. At the end of the day, I imagine the way it’s currently handled would probably steer more people away from the streams than entice them to join in, out of annoyance more than anything. 

We did discover that some themes don't show the Twitch streams. If having a dedicated topic for them isn't feasible or desirable, I was gonna suggest creating a specific theme for broadcasting the streams, allowing those that want to see them, to see them, while not bothering those that don't.

[dbzfan7]

I'll list here what I said in the status. Half of them don't have the twitch problem while the other half do.

Default, Sonical, and Mighty are clear.

Tails, Knuckles, and Ray still have the issue.