Games are always changing, and the latest shift is all about disrupting the way people engage with them.
YouTube video and live broadcasts from Twitch have lowered the barrier of entry so that nearly anyone can share recordings or streams of their gameplay, and that has changed what players expect of new games, according to a research whitepaper from industry intelligence firm Newzoo. And the developers most in tune with the millions of people who consume live and recorded gaming videos are the ones also seeing the biggest returns on their investments.
[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":1770786,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"games,","session":"D"}']“There was a brief moment when we collectively thought the fast pace of change in our industry would slow down following the mobile games revolution,” Newzoo chief executive officer Peter Warman said. “However, the opposite has occurred as a unique alchemy of forces and trends continue to relentlessly drive innovative change. Games are now branching out in all directions, with consumers at the helm and the industry taking a facilitating role.”
And the gamers really are taking the lead — or at least they are the ones encouraging developers and publishers to pursue ideas that make sense for video. A good example of this is Goat Simulator. Developer Coffee Stain Studios produced this release as a silly side project with cheap art and tons of deliberate bugs. It released a trailer to gauge fan interest. The response was massive, primarily from a crowd that loves making and watching videos on YouTube and Twitch, and Coffee Stain has since gone on to sell more than 2.5 million copies of the game.
Goat Simulator was built for Twitch and YouTube, and it worked. Newzoo thinks this lays out a blueprint that other developers should keep in mind.
“Gamers now expect direct involvement when it comes to games and media, and they prefer watching the content of their friends and peers above professional content,” reads the whitepaper. “Amazon´s acquisition of Twitch in late 2014 for close to a billion dollars cemented the importance of consumer generated content in the future of our industry.”
If you are a developer looking to capitalize on the YouTube and Twitch trend, then you may want to consider the following demographic data: 41 percent of people who stream games are men between the ages of 21 years old and 35 years old. So making something that appeals to that kind of crowd might have a chance of taking off on the various video platforms.
But you also don’t need to necessarily struggle to build something that the people currently on Twitch and YouTube will like because more and more people are coming online and making and watching videos every day. For example, smartphone games are growing rapidly on YouTube and sites like Kamcord.
“Mobile is becoming the new battleground for consumer content creation and livestreaming,” reads the Newzoo report. “Kamcord, for example, reached over 1.3 million unique content creators last year. Mobile game streaming is still in its infancy, but has the potential to overtake PC and console in the coming years as it reaches a larger and more mainstream audience.”