‘Twitch Plays Pokémon’ has had an incredible run. Thirty-six million views total, with peak viewership at 120,000 with such a massive amount of activity that it actually caused Twitch to crash at one point. In the end, 658,000 people participated while creating a large Reddit community and some incredible user-generated content. Brands were jumping in. Speculations that ‘Twitch Plays’ could become a regular mainstay in the gaming community were rife.
According to these charts, the fun’s all over.
‘Twitch Plays Pokemon’ rode the wave — the crest being where Twitch beat the Elite 4 — but that all came down crashing within a fairly short amount of time. Once this game was beat, the community moved on to the third generation, Pokémon Crystal. With a lot of momentum built from the initial run, one expected that this would keep going. Not so.
As of yesterday, it looks like there were just 20,000 viewers watching — a far cry from the initial spike in viewership and below the average of about 40,000 viewers.
Those are the hard facts, but it’s too early to tell if this is a lull or if the situation will recover itself. It appears the live streaming audience is a fickle one, and without an infusion of new and novels ways to be entertained, it is possible that ‘Twitch Plays’ may have just been a fluke one-off.
Game marketers are looking are going to be incorporating Twitch and live-stream gaming into marketing strategies, but perhaps may tread lightly. We’re only just getting an inkling if this is what we can expect for the future.