So a while ago and now buried under tons of articles about Fortnite streamers was a piece of
information put out by I think it was an indie developer and I have tried to
find that info but the Google results pages are full of articles about top Fortnite streamers. So credit to the person who inspired this and sorry I can't link to it because of the entire problem you helped highlight.
What the information did do was point out an issue I've seen growing in the industry for a while and I've touched on it before in other blogs. Also the likes of Jim Sterling have touched on it. The problem being as far as I'm aware I'm the first one to pull all these pieces together and realise that rather than just a lot of proverbial single tentacle creatures it's all one giant massive thing.
You see the internet is broken at present. The way the internet functions and works at present and the systems it uses are broken. However as technology has advanced aspects of technology have bled out to other places more things have got broken too. If you're wondering what I'm talking about, it's algorithms. It may seem stupid the idea of algorithms being damaging but allow me to explain how. At present the systems that promote content reward those who cover things that are already popular to a certain level. Ninja plays Fortnite. People have pointed out when he played a different game he had 45,000 less viewers than normal. Being attached to something popular can help people discover your content in a sea of other content. This is why for a while Polygon was covering Game of Thrones and not video games.
The present economy of the internet relies on attention, attention gets eyes on adverts and it's far safer to cover things already popular or trending than covering something new. Not wanting to cover something new, unproven or no longer popular is likely the reason despite their shouts about diversity that Polygon just didn't bother covering games from actual new studios in non traditional game developing countries you don't see often in media production, as doing so would be a risk. Why cover unknown indie games like Unrest when you could cover the big hyped AAA games only who have the marketing and thus already have generated some attention which algorithms will reward with more attention. Youtube itself is a huge issue here as often (in my experience) watching a video on a certain subject will get many more on similar subjects appearing in your recommendations. Also there will often be 1-2 from the same channel you just watched if it's a channel more focussed on one game or thing in media. Also youtube's algorithm has been suggested to have been tweaked to also reward creators more if their previous video did well by promoting or pushing their next video up the list of videos that it promotes in the recommended section. While a poor performing video makes the algorithm think the channel is dying and thus not worth promoting as much as it will yield potentially less profit one way or another. Thus covering a small lesser known indie game unless your audience are watching you for that and support that, well it doesn't just mean one poorly performing video anymore but it could impact your week of uploads or longer on youtube.
This system where algorithms matter harms indie games because unless you become
one of the games that develops a following or gets covered by a big youtuber
then there's less incentive for people to play said game as a youtuber and thus less people
see it so there is less attention so less people will cover it. People thought
it was strange that Into The Breach literally has "From the Makers of
FTL" as part of its store page image, however understanding algorithms
helps make sense of this.
FTL was quite popular and so it's building from what remains of that attention to generate attention for the new property. It's not a new thing either you'll often see in films things pop up saying "From the director of [other popular film / franchise]" because that's an attempt to be able to generate buzz for the new product based on the popularity of the old already popular or successful one.
New is scary to big companies and as Polygon (part of the VOX empire) shows, new games by developers outside of a specific clique are scary too them so they avoid them. It's not just big media publication corporations like Vox properties that are scared of new things, no it's the big media corporations too. This is why sequels and hell even licensed brands keep appearing in the cinemas because the marketing algorithms determine that the audience recognises the names so they're deemed "safer" bets than making something new. Scott Pilgrim vs the World was considered to have done badly and only just been deemed to have done Ok by the end of its cinema run when audience numbers picked up, however it's DVD sales apparently exploded. You know what didn't have that problem? The then established Fast and Furious films which were up to number 3 or 4 I think at that point. It's because of algorithms determining the potential audience and recognition of properties that likely gave us Battleship the movie.
With Twitch, the top played games are shown and if the game you're playing isn't in the top list then people will have more trouble stumbling upon your stream. This also seems to impact the popular streams as it's rare I spot a game being played there that's not already popular or being done on some specialist stream such as a speed running event.
It's worth pointing out that all the search metrics and information available doesn't just impact the film but the video game industry too. With shareholders not too up on the video game industry and executives from the packaged goods industry using said stats and information to make choices it rewards an industry of trend chasing rather than creating something new that blows up. It's safer. Share holders can ask "Well these mobile game things are making millions when are you doing to do that, why should we stay with you and not sell up to get more from a mobile developer?" and then you get the crap that is the increasing number of microtransactions. Share holders could ask "Well out data says Battle Royale is big now, so why are you making this single player game crap?" And companies have to either try to justify it or they choose to can the single player game to chase a trend for fear of losing shareholders or scaring investors off. Algorithms and data can cause a homogenisation of the industry and reduce the range of title on offer causing experimental games or new ideas to be canned because they are unsafe option.
It's funny one of the biggest games in the world these days is Minecraft which while inspired by infiniminer, it wasn't trend chasing. Infiniminer wasn't some huge popular
title as Minecraft was a risk really
but a risk that was taken because it was seemingly a passion project for a
small game studio and it paid off big.
The internet and the fast spread of trends, the ease in tracking said trends and algorithms that reward sites with better search engine placement for following them by deeming them more relevant. It's a big problem that will only get bigger in the future. However it's not all doom and gloom as it's worth pointing out some sites and places are trying to counter this.
Destructoid regularly tries to cover lesser known games and weird one (and yes full disclosure I did operate a cblog there and have talked with many of the staff on discord so take that as you will)
Twitch has the bounties board which lets companies pay for promotion there and they do sometimes try to keep 1 spot on the popular streams section open for people playing more obscure games.
Steam have the discovery queues and the new test lab stuff to help try and recommend and show games off to you.
Youtube....... um don't seem to do much as they will recommend videos based on what you've watched so it's quite possible you'll get stuck in a comfy area of Fortnite videos; which is great for youtube to keep you watching but bad for the industry and a whole as it's not pushing people outside of that comfort zone.
Same with Polygon and many other sites, they're fine to complain about lack of representation in gaming when focusing on the very top AAA games and entirely ignoring cultural context of works to complain they're not catering to American culture and society. However they're very reluctant to show off the actual representation of countries cultural products from countries who aren't part of the mainstream AAA Japanese or American gaming industry. I mean those get people angry and drive rage clicks to their sites while covering an unknown indie game, while infinitely better for the industry, is worse for these companies bottom lines.
So what is the solution to this? I honestly don't know in the present age where
adverts and views on said adverts or articles are ultimately what determines
the revenue and discoverability of said sites. For all the pieces on about"Angry youtubers", well mainstream video games journalism sites are
equally angry just about other things that often are more petty or based on
media and cultural illiteracy (which is also a problem) than actual industry
issues. I mean then again that's probably safer because actually going after an
industry of greed could mean they lose sponsors and ad money on those sites by
pissing off those exact people who would pay to advertise there. Maybe in this
case the solution is sites like Exclusively Games where the set price backer /
supporter model and not being a publicly traded stock market company. This
allows them the potential freedom in the future to cover a variety of different
games and topics outside of just indies that are already popular or AAA games?
Or maybe it's a sign of the coming of a new lot of smaller outlets taking over and independent people doing it for their love or passion for the industry rather than massive media network corporations after ever more money?
The answer is I don't really know. I don't know the answer really in this case other than looking at everything, something is broken and something needs to be done and not just because the algorithm said so.
What the information did do was point out an issue I've seen growing in the industry for a while and I've touched on it before in other blogs. Also the likes of Jim Sterling have touched on it. The problem being as far as I'm aware I'm the first one to pull all these pieces together and realise that rather than just a lot of proverbial single tentacle creatures it's all one giant massive thing.
You see the internet is broken at present. The way the internet functions and works at present and the systems it uses are broken. However as technology has advanced aspects of technology have bled out to other places more things have got broken too. If you're wondering what I'm talking about, it's algorithms. It may seem stupid the idea of algorithms being damaging but allow me to explain how. At present the systems that promote content reward those who cover things that are already popular to a certain level. Ninja plays Fortnite. People have pointed out when he played a different game he had 45,000 less viewers than normal. Being attached to something popular can help people discover your content in a sea of other content. This is why for a while Polygon was covering Game of Thrones and not video games.
The present economy of the internet relies on attention, attention gets eyes on adverts and it's far safer to cover things already popular or trending than covering something new. Not wanting to cover something new, unproven or no longer popular is likely the reason despite their shouts about diversity that Polygon just didn't bother covering games from actual new studios in non traditional game developing countries you don't see often in media production, as doing so would be a risk. Why cover unknown indie games like Unrest when you could cover the big hyped AAA games only who have the marketing and thus already have generated some attention which algorithms will reward with more attention. Youtube itself is a huge issue here as often (in my experience) watching a video on a certain subject will get many more on similar subjects appearing in your recommendations. Also there will often be 1-2 from the same channel you just watched if it's a channel more focussed on one game or thing in media. Also youtube's algorithm has been suggested to have been tweaked to also reward creators more if their previous video did well by promoting or pushing their next video up the list of videos that it promotes in the recommended section. While a poor performing video makes the algorithm think the channel is dying and thus not worth promoting as much as it will yield potentially less profit one way or another. Thus covering a small lesser known indie game unless your audience are watching you for that and support that, well it doesn't just mean one poorly performing video anymore but it could impact your week of uploads or longer on youtube.
FTL was quite popular and so it's building from what remains of that attention to generate attention for the new property. It's not a new thing either you'll often see in films things pop up saying "From the director of [other popular film / franchise]" because that's an attempt to be able to generate buzz for the new product based on the popularity of the old already popular or successful one.
New is scary to big companies and as Polygon (part of the VOX empire) shows, new games by developers outside of a specific clique are scary too them so they avoid them. It's not just big media publication corporations like Vox properties that are scared of new things, no it's the big media corporations too. This is why sequels and hell even licensed brands keep appearing in the cinemas because the marketing algorithms determine that the audience recognises the names so they're deemed "safer" bets than making something new. Scott Pilgrim vs the World was considered to have done badly and only just been deemed to have done Ok by the end of its cinema run when audience numbers picked up, however it's DVD sales apparently exploded. You know what didn't have that problem? The then established Fast and Furious films which were up to number 3 or 4 I think at that point. It's because of algorithms determining the potential audience and recognition of properties that likely gave us Battleship the movie.
With Twitch, the top played games are shown and if the game you're playing isn't in the top list then people will have more trouble stumbling upon your stream. This also seems to impact the popular streams as it's rare I spot a game being played there that's not already popular or being done on some specialist stream such as a speed running event.
It's worth pointing out that all the search metrics and information available doesn't just impact the film but the video game industry too. With shareholders not too up on the video game industry and executives from the packaged goods industry using said stats and information to make choices it rewards an industry of trend chasing rather than creating something new that blows up. It's safer. Share holders can ask "Well these mobile game things are making millions when are you doing to do that, why should we stay with you and not sell up to get more from a mobile developer?" and then you get the crap that is the increasing number of microtransactions. Share holders could ask "Well out data says Battle Royale is big now, so why are you making this single player game crap?" And companies have to either try to justify it or they choose to can the single player game to chase a trend for fear of losing shareholders or scaring investors off. Algorithms and data can cause a homogenisation of the industry and reduce the range of title on offer causing experimental games or new ideas to be canned because they are unsafe option.
 |
| Screenshot from the game Alone |
The internet and the fast spread of trends, the ease in tracking said trends and algorithms that reward sites with better search engine placement for following them by deeming them more relevant. It's a big problem that will only get bigger in the future. However it's not all doom and gloom as it's worth pointing out some sites and places are trying to counter this.
Destructoid regularly tries to cover lesser known games and weird one (and yes full disclosure I did operate a cblog there and have talked with many of the staff on discord so take that as you will)
Twitch has the bounties board which lets companies pay for promotion there and they do sometimes try to keep 1 spot on the popular streams section open for people playing more obscure games.
Steam have the discovery queues and the new test lab stuff to help try and recommend and show games off to you.
Youtube....... um don't seem to do much as they will recommend videos based on what you've watched so it's quite possible you'll get stuck in a comfy area of Fortnite videos; which is great for youtube to keep you watching but bad for the industry and a whole as it's not pushing people outside of that comfort zone.
Same with Polygon and many other sites, they're fine to complain about lack of representation in gaming when focusing on the very top AAA games and entirely ignoring cultural context of works to complain they're not catering to American culture and society. However they're very reluctant to show off the actual representation of countries cultural products from countries who aren't part of the mainstream AAA Japanese or American gaming industry. I mean those get people angry and drive rage clicks to their sites while covering an unknown indie game, while infinitely better for the industry, is worse for these companies bottom lines.
 |
| Screenshot from the Steam page for the game Toren |
Or maybe it's a sign of the coming of a new lot of smaller outlets taking over and independent people doing it for their love or passion for the industry rather than massive media network corporations after ever more money?
The answer is I don't really know. I don't know the answer really in this case other than looking at everything, something is broken and something needs to be done and not just because the algorithm said so.
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