I’d say the two primary game sites I follow are Giant Bomb and Waypoint, but other sites/Youtube Channels cross into my feed on occasion. I bought and enjoyed PUBG earlier this year, but it wasn’t until November and December that the amount of content around streaming PUBG comprised of the sites I follow. I can’t recall another game getting this much attention throughout the year, which was probably not helped by site-wide GOTY discussions requiring relatively easy to produce video content while staff readied for vacation.
Of course, these streams must be finding an audience - they wouldn’t comprise such a large portion of the video content if they weren’t. It doesn’t seem like Waypoint streamers seem tired of the game, so I’d guess it has to come from views declining and not a shift from staff. How much larger can the PUBG balloon grow?
I’d say that, in terms of just volume of video content I’ve kinda observed via osmosis exploding out of the streaming/video side of game coverage, PUBG isn’t totally dissimilar to Minecraft or GTA V (Online).
Both of which, at least in terms of sales and that sort of longevity, would seem to show that these balloons can grow to be extremely big. Plus, while both being much less popular for streaming now that at their peak, they’re still major sources of content for some of the larger streaming groups, which might indicate that these balloons have the potential to avoid popping for years, slowly deflating back down.
I think the sites that focus on previews and brand new releases will probably move away from PUBG (if they haven’t already - because that’s what their remit is, covering only “newsworthy” games basically) but that the video content that’s more around consistent streaming and YT views may well find a pretty long tail (and we could even be quite far away from the peak, as more maps and modes give PUBG a greater range of content along with better video authoring tools around replays creating more opportunities for semi-scripted content).
It really comes down to the mixture of covering what’s new, ongoing series of content, and and how popular that content is.
All through 2017, PUBG was extremely popular content, and I’d suspect that will continue for a while into 2018. Stuff like Awful Squad, Breakfast and Battlegrounds is pretty low budget high traffic stuff at the moment. That will taper to some degree. It’s already suffering some from saturation, but I’d expect to see it until there’s something else fairly major, which has similar replay/interest.
You can’t really replace something like a PUBG series with something like Permadeath (to use Waypoint references) because even when new games hit, the bump in popularity for those videos/streams is limited to playing through the game. So what you need is something with nearly infinite replay like PUBG, or a series which can easily shift from one title to the next without losing much interest.
Particularly where the most ambitious games on the market in terms of updates/changes is something like WoW, with a 77 day schedule. That may slow down, but for now, there’s new and interesting changes. Perhaps after launch, that will slow down a bit, but… I’d put pretty solid bets on PUBG lingering well into 2018, if not beyond. The tundra map? The Jungle map? Once tournaments figure out how to broadcast/shout-cast matches and competitions? There’s a ton of room for growing interest left.
I… really expect it to at the very least continue, if not grow, frankly.
The thing that keeps me coming back to playing and watching PUBG is the new content/gameplay changes and BlueHole has done a great job of putting those out at a steady pace.
2017: Launch of viral sensations Breakfast and Battlegrounds, Awful Squad, and Murder Island
2018: Blue Hole steps in to remove ads from Waypoint; Polygon rebrands as PUBGlygon
2019: Kotaku purchased by Epic Games, now serves content solely through Fortnite’s Battle Royal mode
2020: After two years of persistent and universal audience demand, PC Gamer rebrands as PUBG Gamer; in response, PUBGlygon rebrands as PUBGlyPUBGon
2021: Crowbar and Sickle: The Movie is a critical flop but proves to be a ticket-sales goliath, remaining in theaters for 48 weeks
2022: After Blue Hole adds a character creator to Battlegrounds, the special seven-part Monster Factory series receives two out of every three views on Youtube for the entirety of the year; Crowbar and Sickle: On Ice debuts to general disinterest
2023: Uproar emerges after Blue Hole reportedly spikes Waypoint’s new planned theme week, “Games at the Picket Line”; later leaked through Critical Distance, several articles detail labor abuses that have grown endemic as the company has grown to consume 3.5% of world GDP
2024: Broad support for unionization in gaming emerges, centered around Battlegrounds’ support team; DOJ threatens Blue Hole with an anti-trust lawsuit, leading Blue Hole to divest from its news and media holdings
2025: Workers seize means of production, promise to run PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds in cooperation with delegates from existing userbase; PlayerUnknown offers his benediction to the new operators; streaming services follow suit and democratize the field of PUBG content creation
2026: Fortnite’s Kotaku Royale mode wins the Pulitzer Prize in journalism
I think this is an interesting comparison. I feel like Minecraft and GTA V (Online) content hasn’t found the growth in sites like Kotaku and Waypoint that Battlegrounds has. There are other games that are huge on ‘streamability’, so to speak (Hearthstone and Dota 2 come to mind) that have enjoyed much less clout.
My instinctual explanation is that PUBG makes intuitive sense in a way that those other games don’t, but that doesn’t quite make sense for Minecraft or GTA V, both of which are, at their core, accessible games. I’m not deriding those other games as niche, but I can’t help but wonder why those didn’t take off in the same way. Or maybe they did and I was simply not watching at the time?
I think part of what helps PUBG is you can play games in a matter 35 minutes at max (if you win).
So it’s very low commitment. Whereas with something like Minecraft or GTA V i think you log on much like you would an MMO “okay what am I gonna do today”
PUBG is a way of hanging out with your friends , having a good time and not having to commit hours to a world if you don’t want to.
It’s been interesting to see journalists pick up a persistent game like this vs. Destiny or older games like Warcraft but I realize it’s because the streamability is high and the investment is extremely low versus MMOs like the aforementioned. So for that reason alone it’s very easy content that does big traffic numbers or has a positive net effect on site engagement.
And site engagement/traffic is how sites stay alive. So I suspect PUBG is going to stick around for a while.
weird but true: the first episode of waypoints breakfast and battlegrounds was the first time in my life that i sat down and watched people play games on a stream for more than thirty seconds.
PUBG stuff is gonna keep generating clicks i guess.
I wonder if Monster Hunter Worlds will be the next stream game Waypoint will do or at least a monster hunt mondays since you need to prep a bit to take on the really big games in MH?
