www.Tobold.com
Tobold@GMail.com
A blog with my thoughts regarding games I am playing and other stuff in life. Please read my Terms of Service
RSS Feed
Saturday, October 09, 2021
Are social media affecting game design?
When was the last time you learned about a new game from a print magazine? If you are anything like me, more often than not these days you learn about a new game via the internet: Social media, newsreaders, YouTube suggestions, and so on. Today, via YouTube suggesting a video review to me, I learned about Vagrus - The Riven Realms, an indie RPG with a strong trading component. Sign me up! However, I could help but feel that the medium YouTube is hurting the game: Vagrus is very story-heavy, and that is something that doesn't make for a good "watch it played" video.
Dungeons & Dragons, which had gone out of style during 4th edition, made a huge comeback in 5th edition due to video of people playing the game. If the DM is a good show man, like Chris Perkins or Matt Mercer, D&D 5th edition is very watchable. More so than 4th edition, which is a bit more mechanical. And I don't believe that Hasbro / Wizards of the Coast aren't aware of that. They are apparently currently working on edition "5.5" to be released for the 50th anniversary in 2024. I am pretty certain that when making game design decisions these days, they are taking into account the question "and how does that look played on YouTube?".
Streamers playing indie games on Twitch are an increasingly important marketing channel for these smaller games. You can see that by the way indie companies cater to those streamers, creating NPCs in the game with the face of the streamer for example. But again that means that prospective customers will learn about a game by watching it played; and "how good is it to watch?" becomes a design criterion.
That isn't necessarily a bad thing. Watching a game played tends to give me a much better idea of it than a typed review. But there are things I like in games, like narrative, which are disadvantaged by this. Unless a streamer is great at voice acting, reading game narrative in a video usually doesn't impress much. Not as much as the same story would have impressed you if you had read it while playing the game. And so I am wondering in how far video social media like YouTube and Twitch are ending up affecting game design to something more showy, less introperspective.
- posted by Tobold @ 10:28 AM Permanent Link
Comments:
<< Home
Newer› ‹Older
I think social media definitely plays a role in game design these days. Like you pointed out, Twitch and YouTube have become an important piece of marketing and devs want to take advantage of those avenues.
Some Devs also use social media to help improve their game. Larian Studios and Supergiant games have both said that watching Twitch streamers play the early access version of games greatly benefited the development of their games. So it's not all negative.
At the same time I think social media has made it even harder for devs to communicate with fans because what dev wants to put their name out there when people receive death threats over just about anything these days.
Some Devs also use social media to help improve their game. Larian Studios and Supergiant games have both said that watching Twitch streamers play the early access version of games greatly benefited the development of their games. So it's not all negative.
At the same time I think social media has made it even harder for devs to communicate with fans because what dev wants to put their name out there when people receive death threats over just about anything these days.
I agree with Bigeye. Cohen Carnage is my favorite streamer and every once in awhile he shows off early access games. I think social media has a tendency to improve the product. But what do I know, I wish we had true mobile gaming again and not casual phone games.
Post a Comment
<< Home
