Other games are interesting, too

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about a special viewer group that only watches a Let’s Play series of a particular game and starts to demand more content when the content creator likes to drop the series.

Like any other computer game player, YouTubers who create Let’s Play videos (LP) stop playing a particular game when they have beaten the game or exhausted most of the game’s challenges. At this point, they move on to a different game that is more enjoyable and provides new challenges to the content creator. Although this sounds like the natural progression of playing computer games, it can have surprising side effects for the YouTuber when there is a huge group of viewers that were just watching because of the video series featuring this particular game.

Normally, one would assume that viewers follow a YouTuber because they like his style of playing games or commentating the own gameplay. Those viewers usually enjoy any series the YouTuber creates and are always looking forward to the start of a new series as this mostly shows a completely new aspect of the player. Of course, some of the games a content creator plays might not be as interesting and, as a result of this, they skip watching this series. However, those YouTuber-centric viewers (YCV) are just one classification of viewers as there are also viewers who are only interested in a particular game. In contrast to the YCV, game-centric viewers (GCV) only care about one game and ignore all the other content the YouTuber releases.

This situation works well as long as the content creator continues to release videos about the GCV’s game. During this time, both relevant viewer groups are pleased with the YouTuber’s work as it satisfies their demands. Unfortunately, as soon as the GCV’s series is dropped, they feel ignored as their demands are no longer satisfied. Some of them might give some of the other video series a try, but most of them will stop watching the YouTuber’s videos entirely or even start to complain and demand more videos of this particular game.

As a result of this, the content creator faces a difficult problem as there is suddenly some kind of pressure to continue playing a game that already has become boring and hence ceases to be fun. In addition, the content creator most certainly will observe a significant drop in the total amount of views and start to ask himself if something is wrong with the current video releases.

In sum, there is no ideal solution to this problem. If the YouTuber gives in and continues to produce videos of the game, it will satisfy the demands of the GCV, but can completely ruin the content creator’s opinion of that game. Also, it can have a negative impact on the content’s quality and hence disappoint the YCV. If the YouTuber does not return to the game, he will have to deal with all the demands for a continuation, but will also be more happy with the games he plays which ultimately satisfies the YCV. Unfortunately, this will most like come at the price of losing a good portion of views per month.

In the end, I wrote this article in order to raise the awareness for this problem. YouTubers are also just humans and hence their interests might change over time. Constantly demanding the continuation of a series is of course understandable, but in the long run, it will cause a lot of damage. Naturally, some games are really entertaining to watch, but it does not hurt to try out different series a content creator produces as they might be very interesting, too.