Does Hearthstone really benefit associating themselves with Youtubers?

Multiplayer Discussion
1

Every expansion Blizzard teams up with youtubers and streamers. They get these personalities to promote the game and cards.

Does it really help a gaming company, or does it actually hurt them ?

Youtube went from a video platform for regular people to a platform trying to sell you stuff in every video, with as much clickbait as possible.

From tech video trying to sell you useless VPN services and shaving creams, to woodworking channels trying to sell you a useless hand plane. You’re no longer watching videos, you’re watching ads.

The Hearthstone videos these people make thrive on emotional clickbait videos, clickbait thumbnails and I don’t think it actually helps gaming companies in any way to associate themselves with them.

2

Influencers are effective in generating sales revenue

5 Likes
3

Influencers are effective in generating sales revenue

Does Blizzard even know how much “influence” these people have when half the viewers on these “social media” platforms are fake.

At one point in 2013, YouTube had as much traffic from bots masquerading as people as it did from real human visitors, according to the company.

NY-Times The Flourishing Business of Fake YouTube Views

4

I understand what your conveying in this post, while it is true… You still also could consider how helpful it can be to watch these streams, and videos…

I make a clear example here in this post, and I’m sure I’m not the first to point it out, yet it helps.

5

It’s a symbiotic relationship, it promotes the product in this case the game itself and promotes a community creation for the player base, youtubers/streamers get their add revenue and increase their viewership numbers. I’m not sure most streamers/youtubers have full control on what adds play but do have a say in how frequent and the general themes of said adds (videogame related, health products, etc.)
The community is usually pretty toxic and negative beeing a competitive game and I personally prefer youtube over twitch that to me it gets slow and super anoying.

2 Likes
6

I had a window open for Trump on YouTube. Ignored the grand masters thing entirely cuz I refuse to actively pretend to watch or support anything with blitzchung. A couple of packs wouldnt ever be worth that. At no point until he eventually gets perma’d will watching or supporting that stuff even enter my mind.

7

I don’t really think people should watch the youtubes nearly as much as they do, but since they do, I guess while I type more about the game, other players out there who also aren’t really playing are watching youtubes. Either way they get a lot out of the youtubers, it’s like free promotion, free testing, all they really give in return is early access, I’d say they benefit a lot more than the youtubers.

9

Be assured, they help HS a lot. This is the modern marketing.

10

I don’t think I’ve ever watched a HS YouTube video, but I’ll put streams on in the background when I’m doing something else. It’s probably effective at keeping me engaged with the game even when I’m not actively playing.