Why VTubers might be key influencers for marketing your next game

gamedeveloper.com:

Gamesight CEO Adam Lieb has faced a strange challenge for the last few years while preparing marketing plans for clients: explaining why partnering with a VTuber might be one of the best ways to market their game on Twitch and other livestreaming services.

The task is strange for two reasons. First, it's always a bit surreal to have to explain to the people who control the purse strings why setting up a business arrangement with what is effectively a semni-fictional animated character is worth the money.

But what's more strange is this: since VTubing (the practice of livestreaming while wearing the face of a motion-captured 3D model) took off, personalities like Ironouse, Kuzuha, and Kobo Kanaeru have rapidly built huge audiences that many marketers would want to target—but large game publishers still aren't quick to partner with the streamers, even if they're huge fans of their games.

Lieb told Game Developer that he's had to make this argument so many times that he and his team finally went out in search of hard data that could make their case for them. What they found was this: Despite making up just .4 percent of the content available on YouTube Live Gaming and Twitch, they accounted for 5.7 percent of all views across the two game-focused platforms.

That's a fascinating discrepancy—one of several datapoints that indicates such streamers are potent marketing partners for developers and publishers. What's driving that interest? According to Lieb, Gamesight data analyst Niko Racelis-Russell and creative solutions coordinator Yane An, it's a combination of two factors: a high up-front investment from streamers, and a high amount of organic interest in seeing these personalities play games together.

High-profile streamers