So I have now been watching Twitch for over a year and for those wondering, yes – I do watch people play video games more than traditional sports like baseball or basketball. Of course, for those who know me, you know that I never watched sports very often so the reality is, I’m watching sports more than ever before, just in a different form.
As I watch more and more eSports I find myself paying more attention to trends I can glean from Twitch. What I pay the most attention to is this screen below:
As you can see from the image above. Twitch shows you all the games that are streaming right now, how many people are watching, and the genre of the game. While the full list of games is much larger than what you see above, it’s usually really just the top ten that I pay attention to.
Here’s a few nuggets I’ve picked up looking at this over the past year. Yes, you could write software to do this, if I had more time that would be a fun project, but I don’t so we’ll have to stick to observations made by a human.
- Fortnite has been consistently in the #1 spot for most of the year, the only game that seems to unseat it for any sustained period of time is League of Legends. Note, before Fortnite, League of Legends was the top game so this makes sense. Lately I’ve been seeing the two switch off more frequently than before which I think is due to the fact that new games like Call of Duty Black Ops and Warframe are getting quite a few eyeballs.
- Warframe has been in the #3 or #4 position for the past few days, seemingly out of nowhere. When this happens, it usually means a new game, or an update to an existing game came out. In this case it’s an update and it looks like people are interested.
- Call of Duty Black Ops and Red Dead Redemption came out around the same time and were in the top ten together for a little bit there. Now Red Dead Redemption has fallen off the top ten but Call of Duty is still going strong
- Given how popular Fortnite became, people have been wondering if Call of Duty with their new Battle Royale mode could be a reasonable competitor. It’s still too early to tell but given that it continues to enjoy some time in the top five it’s definitely getting some solid viewership
- A growing number of people are coming to Twitch to essentially watch a podcast. That “Just Chatting” image you see in the #5 spot is people who are just on Twitch talking about stuff. I think we are going to see this category grow a ton over the next year and more people look at Twitch as their primary content source which means streaming more different and interesting content to keep people engaged
Phew – okay, that was a lot but I wanted to write down my observations. To some of you this might be one of the most boring posts I’ve ever written, but if you’re into gaming and eSports, I’d be interested to hear what you think of my observation and of course any you’ve had yourself.
I want to hear from you, comment and let your voice be heard!
