Do you find yourself wishing there’s an easier way of checking your Twitter account while streaming the games of your favorite players? Or are you looking for a way to keep up your Reddit conversation without tabbing out from Twitch or Youtube?
Well look no further as Overcharge is here!
Overcharge.tv is Twitch, Reddit, Youtube and Twitter rolled into one interface, the perfect application to make your viewing experience not only pleasing and entertaining but also engaging and interactive.
We talked to Stew Houston, the creator of this must-have app for streamers, and got tidbits of how and why he created this piece of innovation that will surely impact the ever-growing esports!
- What is Overcharge in 140 characters?
Overcharge is a standalone Twitch.tv application that combines Twitch, Reddit, YouTube & Twitter into one polished interface.
- How does Overcharge enhance esports fans’ Twitch experience?
Overcharge was built on the premise that truly passionate esports fans are equipped with a modern gaming rig, and seek complete immersion when watching their favorite players play. Working on this assumption, Overcharge condenses a tremendous amount of content into one view without compromising one’s viewing experience.
Unlike the vanilla Twitch website, streams that are displayed in the Overcharge interface have been organized and curated by our team, with at least one professional player managing overseeing each game to ensure content integrity. Most notably, non-English streams have been filtered from the default view and moved to a tab dedicated to international streams. This will be configurable in the future but for the time being our focus is on the English-speaking gaming community.
The Reddit front page for each game has been seamlessly integrated into the left hand sidebar, with post content updating in real time every 60 seconds. Media, content and comments can be displayed inline or in a dual-monitor supported pop-out. This eliminates viewers’ need to juggle multiple tabs while watching events or player streams.
The right hand sidebar offers the expected Twitch Chat by default but has been heavily augmented by allowing users to quickly swap views, displaying players’ Twitter feeds or YouTube videos. This content is loaded on-demand to conserve memory and CPU so users can watch their favorite stream while in-game if they have a multi-monitor setup. In fact, the site can be configured to run in a ‘Performance Mode’ that actually uses less resources than the native Twitch website.
There are at least a dozen other features and micro-enhancements that are either in the works or have already been implemented. The site has been described by fans as ‘Twitch on steroids’, though we prefer the classier ‘Twitch Enhancement Suite.’
- What spurred the idea to create Overcharge?
My first experience with Twitch nearly 4 years ago was through the Team Liquid website. While a great community and in many ways a pioneer in esports, the website is heavily outdated and feature-limited. As an experienced web developer, I overlooked the site’s shortcomings and in some ways found them endearing.
At a certain point however, I started craving something more modern and robust. This spurred me to put together a proof of concept that eventually grew into what Overcharge.tv is today.
- Who did you work with to create the Overcharge application?
The construction process has largely been a personal endeavor, but I have been soliciting community feedback since day one to determine which features are useful and which are unnecessary or ill conceived. In many ways it’s been like cultivating a garden. I get to choose which flowers and fauna go where, then have to grow them from bud to blossom. Some I have to trim or remove entirely, but am proud of the ones that have been cultivated to full bloom. Pardon the metaphor if it sounds cheesy, but a tremendous amount of thought and effort has gone into building each component of the application.
- Hardest aspect of developing Overcharge?
Overcharge as it exists today is actually the second iteration of the application. About 3 months in, I realized that what I was building would require a staff of 30 or more people to maintain. After a short break, I decided to clean the slate and start fresh. This is when I embraced Google’s web technology, which has allowed me to soar in terms of productivity. That transition, however, was probably the most difficult part of the development process. For about two weeks I felt totally lost, and started to feel like the project was a lost cause. 6 months later, I couldn’t even imagine building such a polished application using my initial approach.
If there are any ambitious builders or creative folks who are reading this, the next time you are feeling discouraged, take a deep breath and try again. Perseverance pays off.
- Best bit of developing Overcharge?
The best part of developing Overcharge is when I started to hit my groove and started to realize that what I was building was not only possible, but that what I was building was actually in harmony with what I had envisioned. I would work for 12 hours straight, smashing through obstacles and busting plateaus. By the end of the night, I was think to myself, “wow, I killed it today.” Then I would wake up the next day fresh and ready to start the process all over again.
No stress, no doubt, no burn out, just the purity of building something that pushes the envelope a few inches further. While I probably have half the IQ of someone like Sergey Brin or Elon Musk, I suspect there were certain points throughout their careers that they felt similar elation.
- What’s next?
I’ve recently brought on Andrew “Zyori” Campbell, who is well known for his involvement in the Dota 2 community, as a partner, advisor and business manager. We’re in the process of signing several promising partnerships with other technology companies and gaming organizations. All in all, the sky is blue and we’re very optimistic about the next 2 years. Now it’s just about showing up every day and working up a sweat.
On a more charitable note, I’m hoping that I’ll have time in the next year or two to put together an academy of sorts that will teach gamers how to code. It may seem completely tangential but I’m truly concerned that many young gamers will neglect academics to the point that they won’t have a reasonable career path if they don’t make it to the big leagues in esports.
Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg both said that if you could only learn one skill to be successful, it would be learning how to code. I think many gamers are incredibly smart, but if their minds aren’t cultivated, they’ll never reach their true potential in-game or out-of-game. And who knows, they might one day work at Microsoft, Facebook, or maybe even Overcharge.
The Overcharge.tv platform is currently in open beta and runs in any modern web browser. It will be available in the Windows/Mac App Store as a native application in early November, 2016.
