Speaking as a “certain kind of player” to me this seems like a bad idea. It’s a cool experiment and I can see why Twitch likes it, it does open new possibilities. Thing is though drops tend to create a giant rush of interest that rapidly declines (look at the OWL viewership just after the keys to the last beta dropped as a prime example) and surely the goal of this campaign is just as much to promote OW on Twitch as it is to promote OW itself.
If a bunch of subs go to small streamers that dry up after this promotion, and big streamers switch off to other games what’s the long term benefit? It’s nice I guess but surely there are better ways forward. I really hope this is the first step in a line of innovation in Twitch interaction as this doesn’t feel like the answer.
If I could throw in my two cents the first thing to do is save this marketing budget for later. Watching OW2 footage so far hasn’t been that great as it all looks undercooked, disjointed and frankly quite poor, like the current state of push is terrible. Thing is it isn’t ready yet, so obviously it looks unpolished and lacking. I get this skin event isn’t the final big push to tempt new and ex-players and is mostly aimed at existing players but I’m not sold on the timing or direction of this marketing campaign.
This may not be the exciting innovative idea but I’d say hold onto the money till we’re nearer launch and a finished game then just pay big streamers directly to play it and be positive about the game. You’ll get your audience attention and market traction during the crucial period in a way we know works with more options to easily continue that relationship long term if it proves worth while.
If you must experiment though there has to be better ways of doing this, tracking long term engagement with multiple streamers through say chat interactions, subs, bits, clips would be better as it’ll cause more long term, fully rounded engagement with the game and streamers. Plus rather than going, BETA KEY DROPS!!! then silence for a month then AHH NEW BIG SKIN AND JUNKERQUEEN STUFF actually pace out the new releases to maintain the hype without needless down periods. How about some part of this campaign lets you earn beta keys you can hand out to Blizz accounts that don’t own OW1, so we can share the experience with friends and maybe convert them to OW2 as well as getting feedback unjudged by OW1. Seems like an obvious one to me. I’m really not sold on this marketing plan and I don’t think it’ll pay off.