Tyranicon's Theory of How Streamers are Causing Immeasurable Decline for RPGs

[Tyranicon]

TL;DR: Retard ranting about how streamers suck.

So more and more, I've been seeing the effects of streamers on the RPG space, and it's not good. If you haven't noticed, the gaming industry has latched onto streaming as the prime marketing funnel for their products. The reason for this is sound: streaming is very popular, it has a bored, terminally online audience, and it doesn't cost that much to throw streamers some money to advertise your game for hours on end.

So why is this bad for RPGs (and most media in general)?

Let's break it down.

1. Streaming content focuses on the streamer providing "entertaining" commentary and interaction with the media. The perfect type of media is one that is bland and unobtrusive, allowing the streamer to more efficiently create "content." In other words, action-based, multiplayer games for children are preferred.

2. Because of the above, anything that is slower-paced is usually not something that will be covered by streamers. Anything that has too much text or is too "hard." We can see this by simply looking at a simple comparison between two games: Disco Elysium, which sold millions of copies, only has an all-time peak of 25k viewers on Twitch, whereas the Mortuary Assistant, a stupid zoomer game where you walk around and pretend to be spooked by ghosts, netted an all-time pear of 111k on Twitch. And despite selling only a few hundred thousand copies.

3. The aforementioned Mortuary Assistant game sold hundreds of thousands of copies because of Twitch. It's otherwise an unremarkable Unity project (edit: apparently it is made by only one dev, so props for that). This is a tremendous incentive for developers to switch to Twitch marketing.

4. This will create a shaping effect in which developers intentionally craft their games to be more pleasing to streamers. We can see this in the current RPG market already.

5. RPGs will be even more shit than they already are.

I'm ranting because I can't get my titty game seen on Twitch streaming can be a good thing. I'm sure there are plenty of monocled streamers offering insightful commentary, or playing through KoTC2/another difficult as balls game because they have the mind of a tactical genius or something. I dunno. I'm just upset because as usual, the most popular thing is a race to the bottom and catering to the lowest common denominator.

I'm depressed.

 

[KIss My Ass]

3. The aforementioned Mortuary Assistant game sold hundreds of thousands of copies because of Twitch. It's otherwise an unremarkable Unity project. This is a tremendous incentive for developers to switch to Twitch marketing.

I thought it looked neat. I'll get it eventually but I'm not paying more than $10 for it.

 

[lukaszek]

i member when streamers destroyed poe, now everything is measured in screens cleared per second

 

[Tyranicon]

3. The aforementioned Mortuary Assistant game sold hundreds of thousands of copies because of Twitch. It's otherwise an unremarkable Unity project. This is a tremendous incentive for developers to switch to Twitch marketing.

I thought it looked neat. I'll get it eventually but I'm not paying more than $10 for it.

My wife got it at launch and I wanted to give it a shot, but it autosaves everything and there are no seperate save slots, if that tells you anything about the quality of the game design.

 

[Ryzer]

Bro, the last AAA RPG we had was released in 2009 and it was Dragon Age Origins, I wonder why you care about it. Indies will continue making interesting RPGs, becoming popular and that's all we care.
By the way, you also have the backing of RPG codex ( plus its frontpage) which represents thousands of people not counting streamers and others.
And if you want more funds, start a kickstarter, you and your game can become popular way faster now than before.

 

[Dadd]

Maybe there isn't as much overlap between regular twitch viewers and RPG players as you think.

 

[Butter]

We have empirical evidence on this matter. Didn't Sawyer explicitly say that they went full VA on Deadfire because streamers didn't want to read everything aloud?

 

[Serus]

Mainstream games including CRPGs will suck even more, that's all. Who cares? I honestly didn't play, let alone buy, an "AAA" game in many years despite playing and enjoying some new games. All those new games were made by small or very small (including one person) studios* and some "free" projects. Unless those small and very small companies and projects will be influenced as well then i'd say - no harm is done.

*Pathfinder Kingmaker was the closest to being a larger project but we are talking about an unknown Russian studio's first(?) game.

 

[Tyranicon]

It's not just AAAs. Stream-oriented marketing is the way to advertise in the industry moving forward. Including all your beloved/hated "indie" studios like Owlcat, Larian, etc.

I too have felt the siren call, but I'm too lazy to make my games not look like shit and be filled with text dumps.

 

[santino27]

I blame all the idiot muppets who have made strreaming careers a viable thing in the first place.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

You are about 15 years late I'm afraid. The whole explosion of Let's Players caused several changes in design among games, to the point where even AAA games had a "cool" moment in the first 15 minutes or so of gameplay to have that in the first part of the inevitable Let's Play series. Some games even started to include Let's Players comments instead of your usual media quotes, much to their butthurt. Twitch is just that, but with people streaming all day and/or night long.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Cool theory and all but you're taking my ability to see hours of unedited gameplay at will from my cold, dorito-dusted hands.

 

[Technomancer]

I can't get my titty game seen on Twitch

Stream on pornhub.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

I can't get my titty game seen on Twitch

Stream on pornhub.

Pornhub is basically mainstream clips and onlyfans thot's 30 sec trailers, not worth it

 

[InD_ImaginE]

While massive Twitch phenomena definitely helps, you also need to consider how much those popular games intersect with what's popular with the public to begin with. FPS Horror Adventure/Walking Sim has long been popular before Twitch Marketing is a thing. It's been big for years for people making Let's Play video in Youtube. So is most other common Twitch Games, namely big block buster ones or on the other hand anything with Coop/Competitive games.

CRPG is significant niche that doesn't really intersect much with Twitch viewing culture. People planning to make CRPG to begin with is very likely aware of the fact. Coch is actively losing viewer on CRPG playthrough vs the latest blockbuster AAA games and it is not that those who stay are going to buy the CRPG, they stay because of the Streamers. Compared to that to simple 8 hours game the average pleb can pick up and play of course the interest is different.

Apologize for being rude but even without Twitch or streaming culture, CRPG will never be mainstream in 2020s and your porn/rpg hybrid will not be popular still. This really changes nothing.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Besides that, games come out way too fucking fast these days. You have 100s of new games every. single. fucking. day. Steam is a dumpster fire but there was not way out of falling in such fate, I think. GOG is certainly headed in that direction. I'm happy that the streaming model of every company having their own outlet isn't succeeding like it did on the streaming market, because I already have 4 launchers and I sure don't want any more.

 

[Tyranicon]

While massive Twitch phenomena definitely helps, you also need to consider how much those popular games intersect with what's popular with the public to begin with. FPS Horror Adventure/Walking Sim has long been popular before Twitch Marketing is a thing. It's been big for years for people making Let's Play video in Youtube. So is most other common Twitch Games, namely big block buster ones or on the other hand anything with Coop/Competitive games.

CRPG is significant niche that doesn't really intersect much with Twitch viewing culture. People planning to make CRPG to begin with is very likely aware of the fact. Coch is actively losing viewer on CRPG playthrough vs the latest blockbuster AAA games and it is not that those who stay are going to buy the CRPG, they stay because of the Streamers. Compared to that to simple 8 hours game the average pleb can pick up and play of course the interest is different.

I dunno, I think most people here think that RPG dev happens in a vacuum, but it doesn't.

It's true that historically cRPGs are not big draws for streamers, but devs are aware of this and are changing gears. Not optimizing your game for streamers is leaving money on the table, and nobody, not even artsy-fartsy RPG devs, want to leave money on the table.

Let's take a look at one of the biggest cRPGs in dev right now: Baldur's Gate 3.

The team at Larian did extensive Twitch integration to foster what they called "community runs." This included a mechanic that let Twitch viewers vote on dialogue and roleplaying choices, check the player inventory and stats, etc. By itself, this concept is actually really cool. But the reason the introduced it two years ago was obvious.

But as we can see, BG3 had no real staying power on Twitch, because cRPGs do poorly. Larian is anything but incompetent. Eventually somebody will take a look at the Twitch numbers and ask questions on how to bump them up.

This is happening across the board for the industry for years, but now it's reaching a point where if you don't do Streamer outreach, you have effectively no marketing.

In the indiedev circles I run in, the advice is always the same: your only chance is to shotgun your game to a bunch of streamers/youtubers and hope for the best.

Apologize for being rude but even without Twitch or streaming culture, CRPG will never be mainstream in 2020s and your porn/rpg hybrid will not be popular still. This really changes nothing.

Ah you're not rude. I'm a no-name solodev with no real connections, and no money. I'm already more successful than I expected, especially since I'm -gag- in it for the art. If I get anywhere, it'll be in spite of everything in the world today.

And because of the power of tits.

 

[gaussgunner]

It's true that historically cRPGs are not big draws for streamers, but devs are aware of this and are changing gears. Not optimizing your game for streamers is leaving money on the table, and nobody, not even artsy-fartsy RPG devs, want to leave money on the table.

Maybe that says something about you as a dev. Do you want all the money on the table, or do you want to make quality shit?

In the indiedev circles I run in

Fucking indiefags, there's your problem.

 

[Skorpion]

While massive Twitch phenomena definitely helps, you also need to consider how much those popular games intersect with what's popular with the public to begin with. FPS Horror Adventure/Walking Sim has long been popular before Twitch Marketing is a thing. It's been big for years for people making Let's Play video in Youtube. So is most other common Twitch Games, namely big block buster ones or on the other hand anything with Coop/Competitive games.

CRPG is significant niche that doesn't really intersect much with Twitch viewing culture. People planning to make CRPG to begin with is very likely aware of the fact. Coch is actively losing viewer on CRPG playthrough vs the latest blockbuster AAA games and it is not that those who stay are going to buy the CRPG, they stay because of the Streamers. Compared to that to simple 8 hours game the average pleb can pick up and play of course the interest is different.

I dunno, I think most people here think that RPG dev happens in a vacuum, but it doesn't.

It's true that historically cRPGs are not big draws for streamers, but devs are aware of this and are changing gears. Not optimizing your game for streamers is leaving money on the table, and nobody, not even artsy-fartsy RPG devs, want to leave money on the table.

Let's take a look at one of the biggest cRPGs in dev right now: Baldur's Gate 3.

The team at Larian did extensive Twitch integration to foster what they called "community runs." This included a mechanic that let Twitch viewers vote on dialogue and roleplaying choices, check the player inventory and stats, etc. By itself, this concept is actually really cool. But the reason the introduced it two years ago was obvious.

View attachment 33563

But as we can see, BG3 had no real staying power on Twitch, because cRPGs do poorly. Larian is anything but incompetent. Eventually somebody will take a look at the Twitch numbers and ask questions on how to bump them up.

This is happening across the board for the industry for years, but now it's reaching a point where if you don't do Streamer outreach, you have effectively no marketing.

In the indiedev circles I run in, the advice is always the same: your only chance is to shotgun your game to a bunch of streamers/youtubers and hope for the best.

Apologize for being rude but even without Twitch or streaming culture, CRPG will never be mainstream in 2020s and your porn/rpg hybrid will not be popular still. This really changes nothing.

Ah you're not rude. I'm a no-name solodev with no real connections, and no money. I'm already more successful than I expected, especially since I'm -gag- in it for the art. If I get anywhere, it'll be in spite of everything in the world today.

And because of the power of tits.

the power of tits is the only reason twitch is still around, its certainly not games

 

[Tyranicon]

It's true that historically cRPGs are not big draws for streamers, but devs are aware of this and are changing gears. Not optimizing your game for streamers is leaving money on the table, and nobody, not even artsy-fartsy RPG devs, want to leave money on the table.

Maybe that says something about you as a dev. Do you want all the money on the table, or do you want to make quality shit?

In the indiedev circles I run in

Fucking indiefags, there's your problem.

Fuck, I'll never be able to afford a yacht.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

But as we can see, BG3 had no real staying power on Twitch, because cRPGs do poorly. Larian is anything but incompetent. Eventually somebody will take a look at the Twitch numbers and ask questions on how to bump them up.

Because CRPGs are just not popular. That's it. It is in nature of the product to be unpopular. Compared to AAA action open world RPG, even with 0 paid promo, it will be popular because it is popular with mainstream. Online engagement is certainly a marketing Matrix, including Twitch, but fundamental of a product matters.

If you want to appeal to Twitch Streamers you are not going to make CRPG because even if some CRPG loving streamer like Coch play your game, if your game has no mainstream appeal it will won't sell period. You even give example yourself with Larian. In spite of everything they are doing right it still isn't pulling Streamer in because such games has not the people to watch.

In the indiedev circles I run in, the advice is always the same: your only chance is to shotgun your game to a bunch of streamers/youtubers and hope for the best.

Yes but this is consequence of "indie dev" is something that's extremely common today with noise to signal ration being incredibly high. "Older" indies in CRPG space, like Iron Tower, Underrail, has years to build their community around. With the fact that most indies won't have big marketing budget this means main source of sales will be community based. You can see that's why indie devs are making account in Codex/ResetEra/whatever. Hell this is one of your main marketing avenue here in the Codex.

Streamer is fundamentally the same. They are external community with set of preference and logic and each Streamers has core communities with certain preferences. Here is the thing, CRPG, like traditional CRPG not AAA Action Blockbuster RPG or AAA Larian Style neo CRPG, they are niche and there are limited community around them.

If you are specifically aiming to get as most streamer to play your game to get as much as exposure as possible which will translate into sales/revenue.... it is the equivalent of making a game that should be popular with the masses to begin with because it's not that Twitch viewer will buy anything regardless of genre/preference. If anything their choice of streamer in general reflect said preferences in game. Streamers that "surpass" those preferences in games are like top 5% of the industry and even then they are actively losing viewers when they play something less popular.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

And because of the power of tits.

I mean this is a valid community/selling point. I have friends working as freelance artist and there are entire ecosystem around basically porn art and video games. They give example of random porn game patreon making thousands of USD every month. Those games even has dedicated community around them which feeds these kind of games around.

 

[Late Bloomer]

I think it would be important to note who streamed Disco Elysium and who streamed Mortuary Assistant. A lot of a streamers audience will watch them play anything. Its a cult of personality of sorts. Basing it solely on the games being played is omitting far to large of an equation.

When it comes down to it, games have been going this direction for a lot longer than streamers have been a thing. The hastened pace of games is not new. So far it shows no signs of slowing down. As an example in the MMO genre. We are at the point where in many MMO's you pick up a quest at point A, fly to point B, once you finish the task the quest will auto complete on the spot. There is no exploration involved whatsoever. And people love it.

There will always be room for slow paced games. For RPG's with meat on their bones. With exploration, deep combat, lore worth thinking and talking about. Those games have never been a focal point of the industry. Nor will they ever be. There are streamers for that market too though if you are so inclined to waste your time. And if Indie devs are making their games with streamers in mind, I would most likely not be interested in what they are creating. The best games were made by people who wanted to play what they were making. Not concerining themselves with metrics, streamers, focus group testing.

I would rather AAA game studios stay farther and farther away from RPG's and CRPG's. They will just turn into shit like all the rest of the garbage they produce. I am content with playing old games, modding those games, and catching up on my backlog. If a new RPG comes out and its worth playing I just consider that a blessing, shell out the money and play the heck out of it.

 

[Tyranicon]

Because CRPGs are just not popular....

These broad movements in the games industry tend to be unpredictable. Perhaps you are right, and it won't largely affect cRPGs, especially indies. I think there is a point to be made that if you're stupid dedicated enough to work in cRPGs, then you probably won't be chasing the streamer bandwagon.

But I think the most likely outcome is that bigger developers will do what they have historically done, and that is to move to more action-oriented titles, especially Soulslike and similar ( as Spiders apparently did with Steelrising). Other indies will likely follow suit, robbing the genre of potentially good games, leaving it dependent on hypersmall devs who treat it as a hobby.

And so the cycle continues.

Spoiler

Or AI comes and fucks up the entire status quo. The media apocalypse is coming soon. And maybe a real apocalypse, who knows?

 

[e-mailio estevez]

Really just needs a big streamer with patrician RPG tastes and a patient audience or some RPG-lover with big boobs