Twitch and beyond: Getting the big names in video to

play your game

Mike Rose - tinyBuild Games

@RaveofRavendale - mike@tinybuild.com

The rules of this talk

Rule 1: Everything in this talk applies to you

Rule 2: Get talking about your games!

Want to get press for your game?

“Getting Your Independent Game Noticed” on the GDC Vault

So let’s talk about video

The Let’s Play revolution

• If a big video celebrity plays your game, it can lead to big success

• YouTubers can bring millions of potential viewers to your game

• Twitch livestreamers can bring long-term popularity to your game

Has it worked for tinyBuild?

• The press didn’t like our first game No Time to Explain…

• But YouTubers loved it, so the game exploded in popularity

• When the press covered SpeedRunners, we barely even noticed…

• But when YouTubers started playing it, the players flooded in

• And when PewDiePie livestreamed SpeedRunners…

• We had our biggest sales day to date

• And it has been working for all our other games too

Conclusion: We love you video, make babies with us

Let’s start with Twitch

What is Twitch?

• Players can livestream games from PC, Xbox One and PS4

• More than 1 million viewers at any time

• 100 million unique viewers every month

• They even have their own conference now

So how do you get Twitch streamers to play your game?

Where do livestreamers find games?

3.01

3.75

3.83

3.91

3.96

4.74

4.8

0 1 2 3 4 5

EMAILS FROM DEVS/PUBS/PR

SPOT IT ON SOCIAL MEDIA

MOST POPULAR GAMES LIST ON STEAM

VIDEO GAME PRESS SITES COVER IT

SPOT IT ON YOUTUBE

NEW RELEASES LIST ON STEAM

ANOTHER STREAMER PLAYS IT

Livestreamers don’t receive emails

1

1

3

15

160

0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180

41+

31-40

21-30

11-20

0-10

NUMBER OF LIVESTREAMERS

EMA

ILS

What do livestreamers want?

3.44

3.86

4.01

4.12

4.62

4.71

4.81

6.45

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

THE GAME'S GREENLIGHT PAGE

A LINK TO A GAME'S WEBSITE

A PRESS RELEASE

A LINK TO THE GAME'S STEAM PAGE

A LINK TO A YOUTUBE VIDEO

AN INTERESTING DEVELOPER STORY

A FREE DOWNLOAD FOR THE GAME

A STEAM CODE

Livestreamers also want…

• Free codes to give away to their viewers

• Developers who will send viewers their way

• Access to preview builds of upcoming games

• Examples of Let’s Play videos for the game

They’re more likely to work with you if you know about their Twitch channel, so go and research Twitch streamers as much as possible!

What can go wrong?

The big killer: There are problems with streaming your game

Go download:

• Open Broadcaster Software (OBS)

• Xsplit Broadcaster

• Nvidia ShadowPlay

• As many streaming programs as you can find!

Make sure your games work with every single one

Most won’t stream your game

• Most livestreamers enjoy a specific type of game…

• and will skip over your game without even playing it

• That’s why it’s important to keep trying!

• Some games are just awkward to livestream – e.g local multiplayer

• And some games are fun to play, but boring to watch

tinyBuild + Twitch

• tinyBuild have put together our own list of livestreamers

• We keep livestreamers up to date with what we’re doing

• We offer them preview builds of our upcoming games

• We run Twitch Days for our games

• We’re also working with Twitch on special events

• We had our own hour-long show at PAX East…

• And we’re planning shows for E3, PAX Prime and more

Development streaming

• tinyBuild streams every Friday afternoon

• We show our players the latest updates to our games

• Helps build a community around our company

“Tips for development streaming”

From Rami Ismail

List of livestreamers

tinybuild.com/twitch

Now let’s talk about YouTube

YouTube is important

NerdCubed played Race The Sun-> bigger impact on Greenlight than all press

Russian YouTuber Eligorko played Skulls of the Shogun-> big in Russia (2nd biggest country for units sold)

TotalBiscuit played 10 Second Ninja-> doubled sales a week after launch

PewDiePie played Flappy Bird

-> Flappy Bird shot to the top of the App Store charts

Where do YouTubers find games?

4.8

4.51

4.44

4.32

3.59

3.51

2.83

0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4 4.5 5

VIDEO GAME PRESS SITES COVER IT

EMAILS FROM DEVS/PUBS/PR

SPOT IT ON SOCIAL MEDIA

ANOTHER YOUTUBER COVERS IT

ANOTHER DEVELOPER TELLS YOU ABOUT IT

NEW RELEASES LIST ON STEAM

MOST POPULAR GAMES LIST ON STEAM

YouTubers don’t receive emails either

119

14

3

0

2

0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140

0-10

11-20

21-30

31-40

41+

NUMBER OF YOUTUBERS

EMA

ILS

YouTubers

52

39

14

10

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

0-20

21-50

51-80

80+

NUMBER OF PRESS

EMA

ILS

Press

What do YouTubers want?

6.55

5.04

4.62

4.59

4.46

3.85

3.63

3.26

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

A STEAM CODE

A FREE DOWNLOAD FOR THE GAME

A LINK TO A YOUTUBE VIDEO

AN INTERESTING DEVELOPER STORY

A PRESS RELEASE

A LINK TO A GAME'S WEBSITE

A LINK TO THE GAME'S STEAM PAGE

THE GAME'S GREENLIGHT PAGE

The same as livestreamers!

tinyBuild + YouTubers

• tinyBuild has been working with YouTubers for years now…

• And much of our success can be traced back to their influence

• We asked a bunch of YouTubers to be characters in SpeedRunners

• We keep an super big email list for YouTubers

• We offer them preview builds of our games

• We meet as many as possible at events

We’ve started to prioritize YouTubers over press

List of YouTubers

By Thomas Bedenkyoutubers.brightside-games.com

Mobile games on YouTube and Twitch

• There are still dozens of YouTubers and Twitch streamers who cover mobile games – AppSpy, Lonnie, PewDiePie…

• It’s worth sending codes out for release day buzz

• If there’s a PC version of your game, send that out

tinyurl.com/mobileYouTubers

What about Vine?

• At tinyBuild, we like to be ahead of the curve…

• So that’s why we’re currently working with Viners

• Vine celebrities make six-second videos about your game…

• With the aim to expose your game to a mainstream audience

It’s too early to tell whether it’s going to work,

but it’s definitely worth keeping an eye on!

What did we do for Fearless Fantasy?

• Released on iOS yesterday!

• We made sure all the mobile game press knew about it

• We held a Twitch Day for the PC version

• We gave the PC version to all the big YouTubers

• Ran a Facebook promotion

• Used other tinyBuild games to drive

players to Fearless Fantasy

Remember the rules of this talk?

Rule 1: Everything in this talk applies to you

Rule 2: Get talking about your games!

Thanks for listening!Any questions?

Mike Rose - tinyBuild Games

@RaveofRavendale - mike@tinybuild.com