Big issue with influencers is that most of the big ones would lose more money promoting your game even with a big cut, as the viewers would change to another streamer.
The target is midlevel influencers who have a semiloyal audience and that have a specific niche of genre. The issue then is that those influencers might not really care so much about the cut but rather would prefer new content and are the more likely to naturaly recommend the game regardless of the situation. Case in point: how Paradox uses Influencers to promote their games (and how it is ramping up now 2 weeks before launch) or how Anno is being promoted by Ubisoft.
Most indie games do not have that "semi infinite replayability" that most influencers look for (and that help sell more in twitch, as more story focused games can be "spoiled" through this media).
Correct.
As a developer/Publisher/PR-guy on behalf of the dev/pub you need to:
- know the Influencer
- know the niche of the influencer
- know the audience of the Influencer
Paradox has dozens of Influencers who don't get any money but a subscription to all of their games and DLC. The biggest Influencers are paid initially for sponsored content when a new game releases or a big expansion comes out. But the Audience doesn't care that they get paid for it, because those influencers and their audience are fans of Paradox games.
But it would be another tale if paradox would pay big influencers who has nothing to do with their games, like Shroud or ninja, their audience mostly doesn't care about Paradox games and the influencer himself would lose viewers.
An Influencer with 5.000 viewers who has a history of playing in that Genre/Niche is more valuable than an Influencer with 500.000 viewers.
On another Point: PR Agencies.
Cohh talked about it a month or two ago. He (or someone he know, don't remember) was contacted by a PR agency and they asked that he specifies what kind of Streamer he is, because "variety" is meaningless and they need to know what he plays in terms of Genre, so that they could forward offers to him.
On which he told his viewers, that shouldn't it be the task of the PR firm to find such things out? And Cohh played, X4, a space sim, my time at portia, a harvest moon-esque clone, Kingdom hearts, an RPG, path of exile, an Action RPG, etc. etc. what Genre should he tell them? He IS a variety streamer.
It looks like a bad PR agency, but all-in-all this kind of information is a market-niche. To know which Streamer is best for your client.
