5 min read
A little over a year ago, I made a post on what was my shiny new blog regarding the similarities I had observed between the virtual and real worlds and their societal habits and how, in a spooky kind of way, they aligned.
This time, dear reader, I write to you about the evolution of how a game is received and how it lives and dies by the feedback of key players in the industry. As this is my opinion as a relative outsider to the industry, these observations are purely speculatory and may not be entirely accurate, so please keep that in mind!
Recently, I’ve been watching a mini-documentary series by the YouTube channel noclip and their chronicle of the development of Hades by Supergiant Games whose aforementioned game has become my most recent purchase on the Nintendo Switch eShop, having been peripherally aware of the game for a long while until being won over upon watching the first episode of the documentary.
Having been an avid consumer of video games as a medium for the majority of my life up until now, and even taking up a mouse and keyboard for the purpose of making my own games, I’ve always found researching them to be an incredibly fun activity. From the days of playing demo discs that would come with the PC Gamer magazines my dad habitually collected in my childhood, to buying a backlog of Wireframe Magazine on the odd spa day with my wife in my current adulthood, I’ve always had a fascination with how games are received by the media.
Back in the day, video games, as far as I’m aware, would, if not living and dying by, at the very least be heavily affected from sales perspective by the games journalists of the day. Think about it, many people made informed purchases with their hard-earned dough on the recommendations found in Nintendo Power and other such game journalism oriented magazines, heck, even I would often turn to my favourite games magazine to consume every morsel of information I could find on an upcoming game that I was excited for.
To an extent, I would say that this is still somewhat the case, but one key thing has changed and given rise to a whole new lifeline that can determine the success of a game upon launch, and that one thing is Streamers.
Now don’t get me wrong, Games Journalists are still prominent on the platform, now moreso than ever with the readily available format it can now be found in from household names such as IGN and Game Informer that have been in the game for as long as I can remember, to internet mainstays such as Nintendo Life and Push Square (I may be slightly biased, as both are helmed by a friend and former colleague of mine). But there’s something to be said for the sheer power and influence content creators have on the success of a game.
This has grown to be the case so much that media covering it (among other storylines) have become quite popular as of late, from one of the top webcomics on WebToon, Let’s Play to the recent Apple TV series: Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet, in which there’s a huge storyline of the game created by the main characters being heavily influenced by a popular streamer who exclusively streams their game.
This point was really driven home to me in the aforementioned Noclip documentary in which the team of Hades could be seen watching people’s first impressions and initial feedback on Twitch streams. They mentioned that they watch big streamers play their game, but also smaller streamers who play their game because all of that is valuable player feedback, which I personally think is an awesome thing for a games company to do.
Personally, I like this way of doing things, but of course, all good things are best executed in moderation, I love the idea that a small indie game that someone poured their heart and soul into could become a well-deserving hit thanks to the influence of a large streamer, but it also makes me wary that something like the initial storyline in Let’s Play could happen wherein that same indie game developer/studio could be forever damned by the opinion of one player among a sea of others.
TLDR; I’ve noticed that streamers are taking a bigger and bigger role as time goes by in the way a game is received. Games journalism is still alive and well, but I think streamers being added to the pot of how a game is received by the general public is something really cool, but something to be wary of at the same time.
I’d be interested to hear your opinion on this particular matter, as I love discussing things like this with people. If you feel so inclined, feel free to drop me a tweet at @Themolian (But let’s be honest, if you’re here you probably already know my twitter handle!)
P.S If you want to get a taste of what it's like to make a game, please feel free to take a look at the course I'm running as part of Project Function here