With 515,088 concurrent viewers, the game Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout (PS4, PC) is the new hit on Twitch in August 2020. Especially Felix “xQc” Lengyel benefits from the new game, and the German Twitch streamer Marcel “MontanaBlack” Eris has already showcased it. What makes Fall Guys so appealing?
So popular is Fall Guys right now: Fall Guys was briefly visible on Twitch last weekend. However, it really took off with the release last night on Steam and PS4, where it was released as a free “PS Plus” title. Viewer numbers on Twitch shot up.
At its peak, Fall Guys reached 515,088 viewers. That was more viewers than any game could achieve at the same time on Twitch in the last 30 days.
It seems clear already: This is going to be the new Twitch hit.
Currently, some of the most well-known Twitch streamers are turning to the game: The most successful streamer for Fall Guys is xQc. He averages 42,878 viewers when he plays Fall Guys. But the German streamer MontanaBlack is also in the lead. He showcased 2 hours of Fall Guys with an average of 43,937 viewers.
We love watching people fail
Why is Fall Guys so popular on Twitch? An explanation for the popularity of Fall Guys comes from e-sports journalist Rod Breslau (via twitter). He states:
Whether it’s Fall Guys, Jump King, or Getting Over It, watching people fail and completely freak out is just as entertaining, or even more entertaining, than watching players perform flawlessly.
Rod Breslau
Indeed, the graphically and gameplay-wise rather simple indie titles Jump King (2019) and Getting Over It (2017) have been surprisingly successful on Twitch in the past. The games were the cause for individual Twitch clips that achieved extremely high view counts. It was noted that these were almost always clips where players failed.
The players had to climb a tower in the games. If they made a mistake, they would fall down. There, they lost progress and thus invested time and had to repeat sections.
This frustrating experience caused players to get incredibly upset like xQc (via twitch), to become dumbfounded, or to simply quit the game immediately like shroud (via twitch).
In Fall Guys, triumph and failure switch rapidly
Here’s what it’s all about: Fall Guys isn’t driven by frustration as much as Getting Over It or Jump King, but failure plays a major role in the fascination of the game on Twitch.
When we look at the top clips of Fall Guys on Twitch, we do see some good plays where players perform cleverly and take victory.
But there are also plays where people mess up, realize it, and look visibly embarrassed. Often, victory and defeat are closely intertwined, and the one who just triumphed is seconds later the loser.
Like party games in real life, it seems that in Fall Guys not only the “great moments” are remembered, but also the failures when they come with a nice reaction.
The frustration over one’s own failure and the immediate reaction to it is something very human, which everyone can relate to, and secretly enjoys that other people can handle failures as poorly as they do themselves.
Fall Guys just launched yesterday on Steam. At release, players on PC and PS4 overwhelmed the developers. There were server outages and heavy criticism. But the developers managed to ease the situation with a tweet and turn it into a positive:
Fall Guys asks for mercy after a disastrous Steam launch and it works great
