This story is being highlighted as one of Gamasutra's best of 2014. There's been a notable shift in the video game industry that many traditional game critics would rather turn a blind eye to than investigate. It's the rise of the "YouTuber," pulling in hundreds and thousands of rabid fans and causing incredible traffic and sales spikes for game developers, while the written word continues to trundle along, looking more and more quaint with each passing day. Getting covered by a big-name YouTuber is now essentially the dream of many game developers. The publicity someone like TotalBiscuit, NerdCubed or Northernlion can bring you compared to mainstay consumer websites like IGN, GameSpot and Game Informer is becoming increasingly significant. A year ago, I would have advised any developer to get in touch with as many press outlets as possible, as soon as possible. I still advise this now, but with the following caveat: You're doing so to get the attention of YouTubers. But view stats and subscribers numbers mean nothing without evidence that these videos are actually making a difference to the featured developers. Gamasutra got in contact with numerous devs to find out just how much of an impact YouTuber coverage had for them.
"When DanNerdCubed played Race The Sun and linked our Greenlight page, it had a bigger impact than all of the website coverage we'd had up to that point, combined."
"For sure, the biggest Youtubers have had a much bigger impact on our traffic and sales compared to the biggest sites we've been covered on," Aaron San Filippo, creator of Race the Sun told me. "When DanNerdCubed played Race The Sun and linked our Greenlight page, it had a bigger impact than all of the website coverage we'd had up to that point, combined," he adds. "I'm also pretty sure that TotalBiscuit's coverage on our Steam launch day helped increase our week one sales a lot, which probably helped keep us on the Steam frontpage longer. If we're smart, we'll try to arrange this type of event more intentionally next time!" Cliff Harris of Postitech Games, meanwhile, says that while it can be difficult to see any real correlation in the long-term, YouTuber coverage appears to trump traditional press coverage. "I'm not really aware of any games site for whom coverage of your game will result in an immediately noticeable sales spike," he notes, "but I have seen that with a YouTube Let's Play." "The vast majority of the smaller Let's Play channels don't really generate enough immediate sales," adds the Democracy 3 dev, "but they still increase awareness of the game and that definitely helps." Borut Pfeifer of Skulls of the Shogun studio 17-BIT agrees that, while it's difficult to present concrete figures on the differences between traditional press and YouTuber coverage, "it's hard to deny the impact." "Most indie game success stories on PC in the last year or two have had predominant YouTube coverage," he notes. "With Skulls we definitely sought people out and sent out hundreds of review codes to YouTubers, which is a lot more time consuming than regular press because they don't have consistent contact info."
"Most indie game success stories on PC in the last year or two have had predominant YouTube coverage."
One big Russian YouTuber called eligorko covered the game, as did several other smaller Russian YouTubers, and Pfeifer believes this coverage is the main reason why Russia is Skulls of the Shogun's second biggest country for units sold. "Although that came about randomly (we hadn't sent review copies there), because it's even more difficult to find and reach out to international YouTubers," he adds. UK dev Dan Pierce has found that YouTuber influence has varied depending on the specific game. When his team released Castles in the Sky last year, the biggest sales spikes came from Rock Paper Shotgun and Giant Bomb, while YouTuber coverage brought "very few additional sales." "The game was recently covered by someone with over 120,000 subscribers, and we only sold about thirteen additional units from that," he notes, adding that this may be down to the fact that Castles in the Sky is just a 10-minute long game, and not so suited to the Let's Play audience. However, his quick reactions game 10 Second Ninja has told a different story. "As far as I've seen, we haven't had a significant spike from written press, but we have seen spikes from YouTube," he says. "Specifically, getting covered by Total Biscuit gave us a sales spike that roughly mirrored the game being on sale for a week. Getting covered by Dan NerdCubed brought in a bump of about half that, despite his video having roughly 100k more views." So it sounds like YouTubers, at worst, will bring in the same level of traffic as traditional press, while if you're covered by a giant YouTuber, you can expect a rather lovely sales spike that no traditional press outlet can compare with. Does this mean, then, that you should focus more on getting covered by YouTubers, and treat traditional press as a secondary marketing mission?
"As far as I've seen, we haven't had a significant spike from written press, but we have seen spikes from YouTube."
Fortunately, it would appear that myself and many others are still in a job -- at least for now -- as developers are finding that traditional press has advantages that YouTubers cannot bring to the table. "Getting coverage on, say, Polygon or RPS is a lot easier than getting someone like Totalbiscuit or NorthernLion to take a couple hours to play your game," notes San Filippo. "And obviously, these guys often read about games on these sites, so I think it'd be a mistake to neglect either avenue!" YouTubers regularly choose to play games that are already in the spotlight, he reasons, and as such traditional press is important in getting the attention of YouTubers in the first place. "I guess the biggest difference is that you can't quantify the quality as easily any more, since Youtubers often don't give a score," notes Joel Nystrom of Ittle Dew studio Ludosity. "So you can't put 'TotalBiscuit: 9.5' but instead you need to put an actual quote on your promo material. This is probably better anyway - I've always though quantifying such subjective things are quite silly."
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