The team suspected that “certain Reddit threads were
a kind of nucleus for harsh, meticulous feedback” but
wanted to see how influential those threads actually were.
It turned out that Reddit was indeed a key channel but, as
Geffen puts it, “Not exactly in the way we thought.”
Reddit was bigger and more active than the client had
anticipated – they had underestimated its importance
relative to the “big four” social channels (Facebook,
Twitter, Instagram and YouTube). But most of the heated
Reddit topics weren’t seeping onto other platforms.
“In fact, we found that many of the key discussion
topics we studied remained contained within Reddit, not
bleeding out into Twitter or other places with any notable
scale,” says Geffen. He adds that this isn’t to say Reddit is
a closed-off channel, more that in gaming buzz terms it’s a
self-sustaining ecosystem.
Having a detailed map of where your audience is and
what they do when they’re there helps the people
distributing games work out how best to spend their time
and money. It can help them figure out how to seed their
messages within communities, and how to target people
at the intersection of several communities. As Geffen puts
it, “The ideal scenario is to
get [the different segments]
talking and sharing with
one another. Then you’ve
got a much better chance at
organic spread throughout
the whole audience.”
Pulsar recently did a
study of the trailer and
release of Fortnite Season 6 and compared it with Call of
Duty: Black Ops 4. “We found an identical segment, of
almost exactly the same size (26 per cent share), in both
audiences. We called them Fortnite Fanboys, young guys
who passively watch Fortnite gameplay and how-to
videosviastreamsonTwitchandYouTube.”
BattleRoyaleineveRything
Armed with that information a company can do several
things. One is to seed Black Ops 4 marketing in spaces
Fortnite players frequent (or vice versa), another is to
invest in partnerships with the other game’s influencers
and associated brands, using their clout to reach your
own potential audience.
Geffen adds, “At a higher level, identifying and
profiling that crossover audience might lead to other
strategic moves. For example, is BO4 attracting that
audience because it
emulates Fortnite in some
way? Should future CoD
releases borrow that design
sensibility, or lean into
battle royale mode? Or,
perhaps the goal is not to
‘steal’ Fortnite players, but
instead to satisfy their
appetite between new Fortnite seasons?”
We’ve focused on marketing and hype but it’s worth
knowing that these insights can also affect the games
themselves. Geffen notes that the extended life of a game
is a perfect use case for the type of social data research
the company does. They can track community responses
in real time, comparing it to pre-release baselines and
using that to offer insight into what’s working and what’s
not. The data can thus also help with recommendations
fordevelopersranging from fixing glitches to adding
fan-favouriteweapons and tweaking maps.
Philippa WarrLEFT: Knowing how
the Fortnite and
Black Ops 4
audiences intersect
can help companies
decide how to reach
those players.Where esports fans are
One Pulsar study breaks down where esports chat is
happeningonlineandhowitdiffersfromplacetoplace:“isBO4attractingthat
audienceBecauseitemulates
FOrtnite insOme way?”tWitter
The dominant
venue houses 42%
of the chat around
esports – it’s
mainly about the
latest news.instagram
The place for 19%
of the game talk and
where you’ll most
likely find esports
memes and
reactions.tumblr
The 17% of the chat
that’s happening on
Tumblr has a focus
on big-picture
league
performance.forums
Forums (which
includes Reddit)
account for 12% of
the chat and lean
towards post-match
analysis.1234
NEwS |OPiNiON |DEvElOPmENT