A new report reveals that most gamers typically play video games for about 7 hours a week. In that same period, however, they watch over 8 hours of video game-related videos and streams. In other words, a lot of people reading this are spending more time watching Twitch than playing video games.
As reported by GamesIndustry, this claim comes from a newly released report by Midia Research and is based on data collected from gamers in the U.S., UK, Australia, Canada, Germany, France, Sweden, South Korea, and Brazil. The study looked at how many hours different gamers spend playing games as well as watching videos about games, and looked into how that correlates to in-game spending habits.
According to the report, gamers surveyed typically spent 7.4 hours a week gaming, and 8.5 hours a week watching game-related videos. Midia also claims that 24 percent of console/PC players and 48 percent of people who regularly buy stuff in-game watch video game-related content every month.
Midia’s conclusion is that publishers are leaving money on the table by not tapping into this market of gamers willing to spend money on stuff by bringing more video content “inside their own ecosystems.” The report argues that as developer and publisher profits go down, these companies should look to bring gamers who watch content on YouTube, TikTok, or Twitch back to the games they play via more video content inside their favorite titles. So instead of YouTube getting all the ad dollars, these companies could create (or pay creators to make) new exclusive videos, pop them into their games via some video player thing and then sell ads to third parties.
“It’s time for game publishers to think about in-game video as something beyond marketing alone,” said Rhys Elliott, games analyst, Midia Research. “By reclaiming video engagement, publishers have the potential to unlock new revenue streams, like advertising, and drive growth.’’
This doesn’t sound like a great idea to me, a person who doesn’t want to deal with loud video ads in my games, but I can see a bean counting executive looking at this data and going, “Hmm, perhaps we should put some Burger King ads into our main menu?”
On an unrelated note, here’s a song I like: