Sprinkled into TikTok’s countless feed of movies, you’ll find all types of content material associated to video games. You possibly can see lore analysis videos, cool tips and tricks, cosplay, and, should you’re fortunate, thirsty edits of characters like Leon Kennedy. The platform has turn into a spot the place individuals can be taught in regards to the games they love and uncover new ones. Some games, like The Wandering Village, have particularly flourished due to TikTok and have discovered hundreds of thousands of viewers on the app. However now, that might all go away.
In April, U.S. President Joe Biden signed a invoice into legislation that can ban TikTok if its China-based guardian firm, ByteDance, doesn’t divest from the platform inside 270 days of the invoice’s signing. Polygon spoke to Philomena Schwab, a co-founder of Stray Fawn Studio, about how TikTok impacted the event of the staff’s sport, The Wandering Village. If TikTok went away, Stray Fawn Studio wouldn’t simply be shedding its account but additionally its direct line to the customers of games themselves.
“We [had] some pretty big posts even early in development, which reassured us to continue to work on the project for longer because if we hadn’t had that reassurance, not only from TikTok but also from the Wishlist count — like, how many Wishlists we got out of the posts and so on — we probably would have wrapped up the early access version sooner,” Schwab stated through video chat. “I think it was good that we didn’t, because it was a pretty good release at the end. It helped us have courage in the game.”
At time of publication, Stray Fawn Studio has greater than 68,000 followers on TikTok and has movies which have greater than 899,000 views. Statistics just like the quantity of followers on social media platforms can immediately impact the success of present and future games. Schwab stated she consists of social numbers on her pitch decks, which, in flip, may help safe the studio funding. She checked, and roughly 55% of the followers on the Stray Fawn account are American — so the staff would lose over half its followers on the platform if TikTok had been banned, and that’s not even counting Individuals who’ve simply preferred or considered their movies.
Within the case of The Wandering Village, the TikTok account’s success additionally had a direct affect on the quantity of Wishlists the sport acquired on Steam. Schwab instructed Polygon that if a put up had greater than 200,000 views, then it will “always” end in “several hundred Wishlists.” In response to Schwab, “You could clearly see the spikes coming in over time. So that has definitely contributed quite a bit.”
TikTok additionally allowed the members of the staff to search out their voice. TikTok permits customers to share video replies to feedback and questions, and Schwab instructed Polygon it actually allowed the personalities of staff members to shine.
“I think aside from the marketing benefits, it also has helped shape the tone of our studio a little bit, because we found that inherently, we are a pretty silly, funny group of people. And on other social platforms, we didn’t really feel like we could show that very well. And on TikTok, it absolutely came out. I think we made a lot of silly content. And it did pretty well on the platform, which encouraged us to embrace this kind of studio mentality more,” Schwab stated.
The Wandering Village isn’t an enormous viral hit, however that’s why TikTok has been so precious for the staff. TikTok and its algorithm can enable a put up from any particular person or profile, regardless of follower measurement, to go viral. Thomas Schulenberg, the CEO at a advertising platform known as Gamesight, instructed Polygon in regards to the distinctive energy TikTok has to attach followers to games.
“I think one of the things we see for indies which is something that makes TikTok truly unique is that content creators aren’t gated by [the number of followers] the same way that [they are on] pretty much every other platform,” Schulenberg stated through video chat, “The algorithm — the mysterious man behind the curtain — does allow content to get surfaced to more people, regardless of following. And so we’ve seen just some amazing, amazing success stories on TikTok, which aren’t really paid marketing because they’re not usually like running a bunch of ads.”
There have at all times been indie darlings and shock hit video games, regardless of TikTok. Nevertheless, TikTok has performed a key function in permitting much more indie creators to make hit games that go viral in a matter of days. Prior to now two years alone, shock hits like Palworld, Deadly Firm, and Sons of the Forest have grown huge audiences. All have a presence on TikTok as a result of the games have so many catchy, clippable moments.
“The ability to go from nothing to something doesn’t really exist [on other platforms]. So you would think of games like Lethal Company, Sons of the Forest, or Content Warning, all those games have over a billion views of their game on TikTok, which is just a completely absurd number. If you were to compare that to something like Twitch? No way, you know, in a million years,” Schulenberg stated.
Whereas TikTok helps deliver viral hit games to life and helps sport builders, its demise would even have a large impact on all of the individuals who like to play these games.
“For a lot of players, a big part of what they get out of the game experience is community — we broadly call it community, community is such a generic term — but they engage with the game outside the game and TikTok is certainly one of those places they do that,” Schulenberg stated.
If the U.S. banned TikTok, it will impact the creators behind these games. It will additionally impact the hundreds of thousands of customers on the app, and those that like online game content material. A video that brings new eyes to a sport and helps a developer get extra Wishlists for a sport may be the video that prompts pleasure on-line inside a bunch of gamers. Oftentimes, the jokes and memes round a sport may be as pleasurable because the content material itself, since it could actually enable individuals to really feel like they’re a component of one thing bigger. For now, sport builders and the gamers who take pleasure in their games will simply have to attend and see in the event that they’ll be left to scramble to the subsequent platform.
