Eye Spy A Game-Per-View Kind of Future?
Gamers today aren’t simply just playing games.
They’re watching it too.
With the advent of the next generation of gaming consoles upon us, all eyes are on the landscape of the gaming industry, ironically to find out what our eyes are on instead.
With the expansion of social media and its integration into our everyday lives, organizations are always trying to develop strategies that use these platforms in an attempt to better reach their audience.
According to a report published by YouTube and Google, over 95% of gamers turn to YouTube gaming related videos for entertainment. Additionally, the amount of time spent watching gaming videos on YouTube in 2012 more than doubled from the year before, even exceeding the video sharing website’s overall growth in the U.S.
Game developers are using statistics from what the report classifies to be Announcement, Gameplay Demo, and Launch type videos, to make as big of an impact on the gaming community as possible.
However, with the gaming world, it also sort of works the other way around.
It’s not just the developers that realize the viewing power a gaming video has; gamers are well aware too. According to YouTube, Game Powered Entertainment (tutorials, walkthrough, how-to’s, community created content, etc.) make up for a majority of a game’s online views post-launch.
It’s why games are emphasizing share features or Facebook and Twitter integration, and a big reason why Xbox One and the PS4 will incorporate Twitch TV and Ustream respectively.
If the saying “real recognize real” has any substance to it, then gamers will always be there to watch one another.
Take for example – competitive gaming.
This industry is practically walking irony, because it’s built on a community hell bent on tearing each other apart at their respective games, but it only grows the more it sticks together.
Major League Gaming, an organization that has hosted and broadcasted competitive gaming tournaments since 2002, recently announced that its three-day event in Anaheim set a new attendance record of 21,000.
Excuse me? Twenty-one thousand.
To put that into perspective, the National Basketball Association only has one arena (Detroit’s Palace of Auburn Hills) that could seat that amount of people without going over capacity.
If 21,000 gamers and fans can flock to a venue for video game entertainment, then imagine the possibilities once this business really starts to take off.
When it comes to gaming on this kind of stage, the NBA seems willing to lend its support. Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey was famously quoted at the 2012 MIT Sloan Sports Conference for predicting that eSports would someday be the biggest sport in the world. Meanwhile, MLG hosted special guests Dwight Howard and a few other NBA players during their record-breaking weekend.
Gaming has an extremely long way to go before it reaches the attention like that of a billion dollar sports league, but the potential is there, even if it means reaching its audience in unorthodox ways.
Why? Because people of all ages love to be entertained, and video games offer such a wide variety of entertainment.
Whether it’s watching intense League of Legends gameplay on a MLG big screen or watching your relatives try the newest Just Dance DLC from your living room couch, one thing is for sure – the gaming community is no longer just playing around.
The views expressed in this article explicitly belong to the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of, nor should be attributed to, GameSided as an organization.