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

[Faarbaute]

Tyranicon

You know what you have to do: You're gonna have to make your vampire smut game the Goddamned best RPG the world has ever seen! Anything short of greatness will mean defeat. Fail, and the twitch thots will bury you. Asmongold will stream Pentiment 2 and you will die in poverty. The path is clear. Godspeed.

 

[ItsChon]

The problem is that many of the features that culminate in a good RPG are what make RPGs not conducive to being streamed, or even lets played. I can kick back and watch someone play games like Counter Strike, Valorant, League of Legends, WoW, etc, and have a good time, but even as someone that loves a game like Underrail, watching someone play it live would be boring. Same applies to something like KotC II, or Kenshi. Let's Plays on YouTube are more viable, but even then.

Look at a game like God of War Ragnarok as an example of a game that's built for streaming. Dogshit game to play, but I damn near watched half the games cutscenes on YouTube and enjoyed it. That's an example of something that's fun to stream, despite being a bad game, and I don't see how we could make RPGs more like it to increase their "streamability" without actively hurting their quality as a game.

 

[Storyfag]

1. Streaming content focuses on the streamer providing "entertaining" commentary and interaction with the media.

This isn't even that bad. Problems begin when the streamer begins to interact with his audience at the expense of his interaction with the media. Live streams are, for the most part, cancer.

 

[Atrachasis]

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.

Couldn't this be construed as evidence that streamers don't automatically generate high sales for a product? If so, why should devs feel motivated to optimize their games for streamers? Their target metric is sales, not streams. Any producer looking at these numbers would naturally go, "screw the streamers, let's make another DE-clone".

 

[Angthoron]

I don't know what you mean, OP.

I learned of RPGs on twitch streams and became a huge RPG fan. You know, awesome RPGs like Fallout 76, Fallout 4, TES: Skyrim V, Mass Effect: Andromeda, Final Fantasy 7 Remake and many more.

I even began dabbling in older, less mainstream RPGs now, classics like TES: Oblivion 4, Dragon Age 2, Gothic 4: ArcaniA and Pillars of Eternity. What amazing games!

Spoiler

 

[Galdred]

TL;DR: Retard ranting about how streamers suck.


2. Anything that has too much text or is too "hard."

It's not that it is too hard, it is rather that it is a very bad fit for streamer: The streamer can either:
- skip the text
- remain silent, or say random unrelated things to let people read
- read the text aloud

All of these options are bad, with reading aloud probably being the worst.

Regarding streamers, the other thing is that most other marketing funnels are dead:
- You cannot count on the press much: they'll mostly ignore you anyway, and if they don't, the impact will probably still be minimal
- advertising costs a lot of money, and you need quite some experience to make it work. It also requires your game to be relatively highly priced given the cost of WL acquisition
- social networks actively try to prevent you from reaching customers without paying: FB will bury your unpaid posts, reaching viewers on youtube requires a rate of content creation that no game dev can match, reddit moderators will make sure you cannot talk about your game, and so on.
You still need to try your luck, but streamer shotgun remains the only half reliable option that doesn't cost 5 digits advertisement budget.

 

[ghostdog]

Awkward Erotic RPGs will always have Ssseth... if you manage to convince him to promote your shitty indie game, over the hundreds of other shitty indies that try to get his attention. And he has some space among his ad-sellout-videos. Titties will probably help, though.

I say "shitty indie" with a lot of love.

 

[Angthoron]

Yeah, your biggest "marketing" chance isn't livestreaming or let'splaying.

Thing with RPGs is, if they're good, you want to play them yourself. If they're bad, you don't give a fuck about them at all.

There's a few streamers that loved D: OS/D: OS 2, Witcher 3 and so on, and actually livestreamed pretty much full playthroughs of them, but it does hurt the audience, and since it hurts the audience, it's hard to run such things as a "passion project". I mean, that's obvious, right? If your passion project hurts your primary day-to-day revenue stream and kills your visibility, you probably won't be doing that too much. Yeah, a couple of Youtubers will pick it up and let'splay it on their obscure channels, but that's not what you want.

Reviewtubers, on the other hand, are a pretty decent niche and you're more likely to find new customers through them via a gameplay slice/review.

 

[thesecret1]

It's a nice theory and all, but you are forgetting that by caving to such impulses, game developers are putting themselves as targets of the scorn and ridicule of RPGCodex, THE most prestigious site on the internet when it comes to role-playing RPG games (RPRPGGs for short). Any RPRPGG-making studio is thus sure to fail if it compromises the quality of its games by pandering to the streamer culture.

 

[Ol' Willy]

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.

There are channels where dudes play various tactical games with decent commentary. Obviously, they never make it big

 

[Ereshkigal]

I can kick back and watch someone play games

and have a good time

 

[just]

perfect time for me to start making shitty rpgs and you'll have to play it
or move to goat/cat/duck simulators

 

[Angthoron]

Why not a goat RPG? It could be very streamable.

 

[Serus]

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?

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.

They are not "mine", thank God. I probably would have ended in prison for debts if they were. By indie developers I meant stuff more like Pierre, VD, Styg, etc..., even that old fart Vogel - not Larian. And those are only the ones Codex likes or acknowledges. There are many others not as recognised here but who have games on steam or elsewhere. Yourself included. Those people already produce games against market standards (sometimes even common sense... Pierre). Do you believe that they will change because game industry marketing causes some more retardation in mainstream CRPGs than before? They already do things differently. Perhaps you are correct about all this - but i just don't see it.
The only problem as i see otoh, is that this generation of indie developers raised on 1980s-1990s games/crpgs will eventually stop creating good content. But that has nothing to do with the issue you have here. People raised on Dark Souls probably won't make games I (and many Codexers) like anyway. Streamers causing games and gamers to become even more retarded or not.

Edit: some corrections.

 

[thesheeep]

I really don't see the problem here.

RPGs are in a better state than ever, more good stuff being made than ever before - and even more bad stuff, sure, but you aren't forced at gunpoint to play that, right?
All that has changed is marketing - and honestly, marketing that is targeted at actual gamers that are interested in the genre is so much better than what happened in the decade(s) prior.

Games can do extremely well no matter if they also do well on Twitch.
Games can do extremely well on Twitch but their actual success is very limited.
You don't need Twitch success for a successful game, nor do Twitch viewers directly translate into a successful game.

None of that has changed the way games are made in an important manner.
If anything, it has improved some games that are already well suited to the Twitch format to be even better integrated in that format.

The audience for more cerebral games will never be big - yet those games keep getting made and keep being successful (well, some of em).
Just take something like Dwarf Fortress, there's no doubt this game is "rather cerebral" and has no mainstream appeal whatsoever.
It had its thousands of viewers on Twitch on release - and now it's dead there.
And it's still wildly successful outside of Twitch.

Nobody makes games "for" streaming (notable exception: Actual streaming-based games).
Or will change what they implement based on "this will/won't do well on Twitch".
At best, you'll get some games with Twitch integration, which really isn't that hard to implement (Twitch API is fairly straighforward).

The problem you are having Tyranicon is that you are competing in a completely crowded field with a game that looks like like an RPGMaker game (in itself a crowded genre).
I'm not blaming you here, I like that stuff. But I'm weird
Anyway, that has nothing to do with streaming existing. You'd have the exact same issues if there was only non-live YouTube.

 

[Dadd]

RPGs are in a better state than ever, more good stuff being made than ever before - and even more bad stuff, sure, but you aren't forced at gunpoint to play that, right?

Are you high?

 

[thesheeep]

RPGs are in a better state than ever, more good stuff being made than ever before - and even more bad stuff, sure, but you aren't forced at gunpoint to play that, right?

Are you high?

Nah. I'm just being honest with myself and not negative for the sake of being negative - I know that's the Codex modus operandi, but I guess I'm not following trends here...

The amount of actually good RPGs released (and in high variety, too) is higher than it has ever been.
That's just a simple fact.

 

[NecroLord]

Tyranicon I like you a lot. No homo though.
The fact you stick to your own independent game ideas is worthy of respect.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

Thing with RPGs is, if they're good, you want to play them yourself. If they're bad, you don't give a fuck about them at all.

This is a point where there's been a generational gap recently. Kids most of the times are more interested in watching streams than playing the games the streamers are playing. Streaming is their TV, and much like you were always expecting your favorite cartoon to air when you were a kid yourself, kids these days expect their favorite streamer to play their favorite game (the streamer's, not the kid's).

 

[Norfleet]

Look at a game like God of War Ragnarok as an example of a game that's built for streaming. Dogshit game to play, but I damn near watched half the games cutscenes on YouTube and enjoyed it. That's an example of something that's fun to stream, despite being a bad game, and I don't see how we could make RPGs more like it to increase their "streamability" without actively hurting their quality as a game.

It's also a game that you won't need to buy as a result of having seen it already, yes. That's the flaw of games where the creators were clearly just wanting to make a movie.

The only problem as i see otoh, is that this generation of indie developers raised on 1980s-1990s games/crpgs will eventually stop creating good content.

And by tihs, you mean they will eventually die, but by then, you will probably also have died.

 

[Hobo Elf]

The kind of cRPGs we like to play are never going to be popular, especially among streamers. Well, apart from Witcher 3 anyway.

 

[Mortmal]

. 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.

I remember not so long ago a french guy telling us how much he was making with his 3D sex game, 53500 euros a year after steam cut and taxes. For stuff like that https://www.lucie-adult-game.com/ that doesnt seems especially high effort, avisual novel nothing more, and grants 3.29X the minimum wages here. I dont think there's much streaming about this, nor even forum talk.
So you know what you have to do with your vampire rpg if you want money.

 

[just]

So you know what you have to do with your vampire rpg if you want money.

write in french

 

[Nifft Batuff]

I don't think that people that watch a stream of a game then want to buy and play it.

 

[Moaning_Clock]

I don't think that people that watch a stream of a game then want to buy and play it.

It works great for roguelikes. Isaac did benefit greatly back in the day (and yt of course)