MeinMMO demon Cortyn is fed up with Twitch Drops. They are marketing from hell – and devalue good content.
Presumably, this has been a problem for quite a while, but it only seems so aggressively to me since Blizzard jumped on the bandwagon – which has increasingly happened in recent months: Twitch Drops and their penetration. Since I regularly find myself in three Blizzard games, it is hardly possible to escape this advertising:
- “Watch our reveal stream for Hearthstone and you get a card pack!”
- “Watch this Overwatch tournament and you get a Halloween skin!”
- “Watch WoW at the release of Dragonflight and you get exclusive mounts!”
I know this will cause confused facial expressions and wonder among the “I won’t buy this game, I can just watch it as a Let’s Play” generation, but:
I prefer to play games myself rather than watch others play. Of course, there are exceptions. Sometimes you want to see a guide in video form, simply hear the opinion of a Twitch streamer, or just be “entertained” while eating.
Twitch Drops devalue the content that grants them
On one hand, I understand the argument of players who just want to grab “free stuff.” Letting some player run in the background to grab free skins, toys, or mounts in-game is certainly tempting, and depending on what you can get, it’s also a nice thing.
I also acknowledge that it’s a nice bonus if you are interested in this type of content anyway. Those who follow the “Overwatch League” and are interested in the matches earn rewards on the side because the content genuinely interests them.
On the other hand, it’s all so transparent. More viewers on Twitch or YouTube means that a game is particularly prominently displayed, which in turn attracts even more viewers, who may then become players. This is not necessarily a bad thing – it’s a clear PR action to create more attention for the game. In a few months, one could say: “World of Warcraft has received more attention than ever before” or “The Overwatch League reaches more viewers than ever before.”
But is that true? At least in my friend circle, the Overwatch League has not “reached” anyone.
Later, the numbers and statistics look good. Because one can honestly say (and this is certainly truthful) that thousands of viewers tuned in to the league every day. But they saw very little of it.
I would probably get annoyed if I were one of the content creators for these games and noticed that I suddenly have ten times the viewers – but only 10% really want to see my content. The rest have minimized me and muted me in the background to grab any rewards. I can hardly imagine a stronger devaluation of my work.
Overwatch League: 20 hours streamed, saw none of it
Especially with Overwatch 2, it has been common in recent weeks to have some stream running in the background. Either some content creators or the Overwatch League on YouTube. This was then rewarded with legendary skins, voice lines, and other cosmetic stuff. Many of my friends – myself included – took advantage of it and hardly saw a minute of the content.
The reality is that you start such a stream, then mute it and banish it to the background, and eventually turn it off when you finish your gaming session.
With World of Warcraft, it’s similar. If I let some WoW content run on Twitch for a few hours at the launch of “Dragonflight,” there is a mount that used to be worth $3,000.
I know this is another chapter from “Cortyn’s crazy gaming views from the last millennium,” but: At the launch of a new expansion of World of Warcraft, I really have better things to do than watch other people play. Randomly selected example: play the expansion itself.
This always reminds me of a slightly dystopian sketch by the satirist Volker Pispers (via YouTube), who suggested that the unemployed could be obliged to watch advertisements so that the industry has a guaranteed number of advertising viewers.
Twitch Drops are as stupid as we are – do we deserve them?
One can already ask which side is the more foolish. The PR people, because they think such drops really lead to becoming fans of such streaming content, or us players, because we are willing to take part in any nonsense for a 2-second voice line, simply because we love to collect. Probably neither side is much better off.
Lastly, it annoys me what rewards are offered, as they make the respective game poorer.
If someone asks me in a few years where I got the cool fel-infested dragon, it would be much more interesting to say: “I got it from this rare enemy” or “It waits at the end of a long puzzle.”
Instead, the honest answer is: “It was available if you had a stream running, but I don’t even know what was playing because I didn’t watch it.”
I hope this whole “drop madness” on Twitch and YouTube will subside in the coming years – not just at Blizzard, but in all games.
