Pocket Beans: Hamburger Kultsender Machs Mobilformat

Key insights

6 takeaways

01
Rocket Beans TV launched 'Pocket Beans' on February 6, 2018, to position mobile gaming as a sophisticated medium comparable to console and PC gaming.
02
The program categorizes mobile titles by player behavior—specifically puzzlers, high-scorers, and grinders—rather than traditional genre classifications.
03
Rocket Beans TV operates with approximately 90 staff members in Hamburg-Eimsbüttel and produces roughly eight hours of new content daily.
04
The broadcaster demonstrates significant audience reach, evidenced by a 25,000-viewer concurrent stream during their third-anniversary event and six-figure views for VOD content.
05
The initiative actively invites local developers to submit mobile titles, aiming to integrate mobile software into the mainstream discourse of core gaming audiences.
06
A dedicated core team of eight individuals manages the production of the 'Pocket Beans' format, supported by the station's broader internal resources.

Summary

Hamburg-based internet broadcaster Rocket Beans TV launched Pocket Beans on February 6, 2018, a biweekly format devoted entirely to mobile gaming. The article, published by Gamecity Hamburg on February 7, 2018, pairs the announcement with an interview of Steffen Grziwa, the broadcaster's head of marketing and PR, on the show's rationale and the channel's current standing.

Pocket Beans presents mobile titles the editorial team considers distinctive amid a flood of releases, and includes a comedic head-to-head duel between hosts Daniel Budiman and Viet Nguyen. Grziwa frames the show as a bridge between generations, from those raised on Atari and C64 to those growing up with modern smartphones and consoles, and as an effort to counter the prejudice among core gamers that mobile games are children's fare. The team deliberately seeks more demanding games than casual hits such as Candy Crush. Rather than sorting by genre, episodes categorize games by player type: Puzzlers, Multiplayer, Highscorers, Grinders, and Offliners. The show also aims to give a platform to emerging developers who begin their careers on smartphones. Eight people form the core production team, supported by colleagues in production management, social media, channel management, editorial, and graphics.

The broadcaster has operated for three years from Hamburg-Eimsbüttel and now employs more than 90 people spread across four buildings because of space constraints. It produces roughly eight hours of new content daily, plus weekend special formats such as the Civilization G8 summit. Its third-anniversary live event, Battle of the BEANS, drew a live peak of 25,000 stream viewers, and the video-on-demand version reached six-figure views on YouTube within days. Grziwa also invites game developers to pitch mobile titles by emailing the press address, without any promise of coverage.