What makes a game YouTubable?

[Music] so my name is vera and i'm gonna talk about what makes a game you to you to babble which was just the game that it was a the question that was asked just now i also i'm gonna show some statistics i made a short analysis of a couple of top ten lists the most viewed mobile games and most viewed games in youtube and then some an analysis of those like what does it mean what what makes a game youtube google and also i've added some of my own experience here so let's start this is a bit different from the slide that was seen previously but this statistics is from much made thank you guys i think this is very accurate so here you can see from the last year the most viewed mobile games on youtube and you can see some trends here like clash royale coming down from the peak

last summer and then there are some new games like this weird granny here on the orange making a peak this summer so let's look at this more closely for this august so the last month what was the situation here you can see that there's actually three battle royale games here there's two hardcore MOBAs then there's two supercell games which i would count as their own category base just based on you know how big and famous supercell is then there's one minecraft which is also it in its own category but there's two of these more random games that you wouldn't necessarily think that they're not from big developers or they don't necessarily fit in with the other trends here that seem to be these multi players so this granny a horror single-player horror game and then kick the body which is like a physics based crazy I would say app more than a game but it's still

there so let's compare a bit on the left here is the top-grossing mobile games from august 2018 so last month and then there's the most viewed ones the list don't look very similar actually the only one that is on both lists is a clash of clans what we can get here is that maybe having a game that makes tons of money is not exactly the same thing as a game that is fun to watch on YouTube but yeah we can see already from this mobile game is most viewed mobile games lists that there's a heavy presence of real-time PvP games already in the in the mobile list you can see here that's seven out of these ten games on the list are real time online multiplayer PvP games I did minecraft there even though some might say that hey it's maybe not on it shouldn't be on that list but minecraft has evolved so much there's so many mods

nowadays there's the PvP elements there's battle royale mods and everything so I'm counting it on this list because those are one of the most popular mods of Minecraft nowadays so let's look at other lists as well here's the most watch games on YouTube so not mobile games but out of all games and each and every one of them is an online real-time PvP game the only mobile game there there actually is arena of the lore but anyway you can see the same trend here like this is something that is happening and here are the most played games worldwide from July 2018 so two months old statistics but each and every one of these games is once again real-time multiplayer games and this is interesting why is this why is this real-time pvb ruling the charts right now especially in YouTube first of all

when you have these you know multiple people playing against each other in teams or saying a plain single there's basically endless gameplay because each play session will be different from the previous one there's a you know you you because it's humans playing against each other you cannot have the same exactly the same experience every time so there's always new things to kind of talk about and you can just keep playing it and basically and the social interactions it's just fun to watch I think in the eSports panel that we're also talking about this that the social aspects why are the team games now more popular than the 1vs1 games in eSports is because of the social interactions and this is supported by statistics according to Bartles player type this taxonomy 80% of all gamers are socializers first so we are actually as human beings also looking for social interaction in games

not just in our normal day-to-day life and of course because the the online PvP the real-time PvP is the most popular game type at the moment in general in the world it also gonna gives most potential for having most viewers in YouTube what let's look at the there were a couple of these odd ones out so in the mobile games list there was granny and then there was kick the body that didn't suit this trend here so this is this doesn't have any sound but I'm gonna tell so granny is a single player horror game where you are trying to escape a house where your granny or this weird granny has locked you in and you need to find items that will help you escape and basically even though it's a single-player game each playthrough is different because every time you start the game the item places are randomized so you never know where you're going to find the keys and the tools that you

need to need for escaping there's also a lot of different ways to escape so this also gives more playability repai replayability to the game and there's also a multiple difficulty levels so influencers will first play on the easiest and then they will try to see if they can beat the harder versions and also the developers are making constantly updates with new rooms and new items so it kind of keeps evolving and it doesn't get stagnant there's also very active modding community so even though these mods may not give any you know direct views to the actual game they will still kind of get people interested oh what is the original game that these mods are made of and that that's how it will keep the game alive and I would say that these early 2000 console graphics are actually a plus side for this game they're kind of funny and you can get really crazy screenshots that are kind of click Beatty so that will help and then there's kick the body that was

also on the most-viewed mobile games list this is a play this is more of an app than than a game in my opinion but the idea here is that you just try to kill this person with as many ways as possible which is kind of gruesome but it's apparently fun on YouTube and yeah it's this physics based crazy game where you have tons of different kind of items and you can just try to combine the items to kill the guy in a new way and what makes it also more usable than maybe some other apps or games is that it has these calm endless combinations of different items and how you can kill the guy and also it's very similar to this other kind of popular kids YouTube content because I don't know if you've watched any kids toy or game channels in YouTube but they're basically just showing kids content that they couldn't access otherwise so for example this

game has a lot of premium items that the kids probably cannot buy so the YouTube channels will just keep showing the new premium items and how they are used in the game and that's fun for them so it's very similar to the toy content in that way so ok wait what lutz looked some statistics the the real-time online PvP is is there and then there's the kick the body and granny odd ones out so what can mobile developers then kind of learn from this first of all just keep in mind that having a game that makes tons of money is not necessarily a game that is you to beable everyone knows candy crush it's fun to play and it's make it makes tons of money but it's not you do bobble nobody would want to watch somebody play candy crush on a youtube video so if you want to have a youtube herbal game you really need to make effort into making a YouTube mobile game not just a game that makes a lot of money this is something to keep in mind that even if

you are not making a multiplayer game but you should still kind of think of the social aspects how can you enable social interactions in your game to make it more fun to view or play and this this is very important that the game shouldn't go grow old very fast so if you have a certain amount of levels and those levels are played out in a week then that's not fun content to show after two months or a year so there should be emergent fun things that kind of just keep happening even without developers making constantly new updates so the game kind of doesn't lose its appeal after a while and you know if you want to try this the clickbait funny graphics seem to work on YouTube at the moment so maybe that's something to try as well I have also included here some things that the influencers especially appreciate when they're looking at games that they want

to play on their channels so one thing that I appreciate this is also related to the show few Lizer aspects is that they really want to play with their fans with their friends who are usually other influencers or with strangers so it's good if the game somehow enables them to do this it's more fun that they they can more easily create fun content out of the game if this is a somehow allowed or available and this is again repeating the longevity of the game and the emergent fun so for an influencer it's actually a hard work to try to find new games that will suit their channel that their fans will love and that they will also can just keep playing for a long time so when they find a good game that suits their channel they would rather you know played for even a year or two years then try to find new games constantly because that's a lot of work for them so if you can enable this and they love the game then that's better for both one thing that they appreciate

is collaborate collaborating with the developers and getting some demise in-game items vanity items or something but they can show in their videos but also remember that they will want to give those things to their fans so they just don't they don't want things just for themselves but they want them their fans to have something cool continuing here you know they they will want to engage their fans with some sort of in-game events or tournaments here's an example from what we did with Big Bang rising so these brand branded tournaments that the influencers have and their fans get the these customized hats if they joined the tournament and stuff like that this type of content is fun for the influencers and their fans so so keep this in mind this is something that some developers don't do much if you're working through an through a network or or managers you might kind of miss the direct contact

with the influencer altogether which i think is very valuable at least in some cases so having the feedback from the influencers and having them participate even in the development of the game and them getting a say in okay this feature it would be even cooler or it would be more fun for us to make content about this if you added these small changes so this is something that I actually really appreciate if you can enable it and this is also something that to consider how can the influencers especially if they're micro influencers if they're still growing how can they how can you as developers help them grow and how can they get new fans inside the game so quick recap here what makes a game youtube beable from a player or viewers perspective and remember that the influencers are also players when they are playing your game the social interactions is something that is really

important 80% are socializers remember that emergent fun just you know multiplayer is a great example because there the game always plays out differently when you have multiple people doing random stuff in there and then having gameplay for years so again multiplayer seems to be the current best solution to all these things but there are other ways as well and from influencer influencers perspective the interaction with fans so that they can actually create content that engages their fans and they can somehow join in or do something with their that influencer or they can do something with their fans it's really important for them and then the custom items that they can then give to their fans and also the good relationship with developers so these are kind of like my to long didn't read tips so thank you so much and and there's still time you got

a couple of took minutes for questions yeah if there's anyone here will run the mic out into the audience again if there's anyone who wants to wants to us we can take a couple of questions does anyone have a question for Avera about the year what you've just seen there's one down the front here that a roving mic thank you and say you had like a couple of nice little tactics about how to get influences onboard organically do you run those sort of campaigns alongside like more sponsored content as well or is that a case of one or the other I think they don't exclude each other because usually the the organic campaigns the influencer is just it's one of the fans of your game so they would probably make content out of the game anyway so they don't really I don't see that they would mind if someone else is getting paid at the same time because they just love the game of course there might be like if you're asking many many

people to do content for free but you're paying one it might be a problem but if you have a really good relationship with those people for example we had a couple of influencers who just kept making content out of Big Bang rising even though we never paid them we just invited them to the office and they got to be part of the development they got there saying okay this feature would be awesome and we made it happen so this type of things you can have run them side by side I don't see a problem you just have to you know be sensible you [Music]