At any given moment, game releases become huge hits or total flops due to the attention of streamers – but is this influence good or bad for game developers?
Twitch is one of the most influential platforms for the games industry. The streaming site now offers a large mass of content creators a stage on which they present their content, sometimes to hundreds of thousands of people. Streamers and their reach represent the most attractive targets for game developers to reach their own target audience. However, despite the popularity of this method, it also has its risks.
In the modern streaming era, the success or demise of a game is thus mostly in the hands of streamers. If big streamers share a game with their wide subscriber crowd, it naturally gets a huge increase in viewers and also players. Likewise, this drops drastically when influencers devote themselves to another topic. Countless case studies of such successes and failures show the result of this kind of marketing.
Hyper Scape – Ubisoft’s Battle Royale project
Hyper Scape was Ubisoft’s answer to the rising popularity of the Battle Royale genre. At the height of Fornite, Apex Legends and Call of Duty: Warzone, Ubisoft brought its own title to the already crowded market. To set itself apart from the competition here, the publisher relied on intensive marketing.
Ubisoft invested heavily in the Twitch market last year and paid some of the best and most well-known stars of the scene to play Hyper Scape. With streamer Turner “Tfue” Tenney, Ubisoft even stole a potential influencer from the competition. On the day of Hyper Scape’s release, Tfue alone attracted 50,000 viewers and played a big part in catapulting the game to the top of the Twitch charts.
Who will earn a spot in the Finals?
Find out during the Twitch Rivals: @HyperScapeGame Showdown Qualifiers.
Watch all-day long across the Hyper Scape directory: https://t.co/w2LvZRlTPL pic.twitter.com/rk8YEx1ctC
— Twitch Esports (@TwitchEsports) August 17, 2020
Hyper Scape’s viewership and player numbers these days, however, hardly compare to the peak on its release date. The title now exposes players to waits of more than 30 minutes and fails to retain new prospective players. Hyper Scape was a prime example of the short-lived nature of streamer-based marketing.
An opportunity for game developers?
Twitch has witnessed numerous similar cases since Hyper Scape’s release. Most recently, for example, Amazon paid numerous streamers to provide a stage for the new MMO “New World”. In this case, the extensive showing of the game even led to some serious errors in the game becoming public. In the case of New World, for example, players noticed that the title could cause serious and permanent damage to their hardware.
In summary, streamer marketing should be seen as a kind of kick-start for developers and their games. However, as a one-off launch event, it runs the risk of producing only dwindling viewer and player numbers in the long run. However, this strategy could work with the help of constant updates, events and campaigns. Ideally, such long-lasting efforts even turn the streamers into actual players of a title.
