Why TTRPG Publishers Should Be Sponsoring Streamers
Or “How I learned to stop worrying and love the Actual Play”
TTRPG publishers need to be sponsoring small actual play streams. Why? Welcome to my TED talk…
There are many common-sense reasons why, but also some in-depth and industry-specific marketing reasons. I’ll break them all down below and shed some light on how marketing impacts businesses long-term.
Let me get this argument out of the way first: “well, they’re free marketing right now.” No, they aren’t. They’re exploitive marketing and in any other industry that would be a severe black mark against a company, not to mention the ethical and legal issues. The TTRPG scene has notoriously bad marketing if you’re not the Big 2 (3 if we count the rotating 3rd best seller spot’s previous reigning champion since the launch of DnD 5E — Fantasy Flight). What do they have over the competition other than budget? Name recognition and strong business acumen.
Nothing we can do about budgets, and name recognition is (somewhat) the point of marketing, so let’s focus on the last point — business acumen. A good TTRPG publisher does not a good business relationship manager make. We’re nerds. We’re introverts. That’s it. You can get around that in a few ways.
- Hire a corporate business relationship manager from outside the tabletop space.
- Hire marketing teams from outside the tabletop space.
- Invest in tactics and resources typically not used in the tabletop space.
See the trend?
Ultimately, my advice here isn’t to “stop doing business like a TTRPG company.” That’s Paradox’s tactic right now (not throwing shade) and it’s not working (that’s a topic for an entirely different conversation though). What we (and I’ll include myself) need to do is understand HOW non-TTRPG companies do business relationship management and marketing in order to adapt those tactics to a more niche market full of folks like us, introverted, intelligent nerds who don’t LIKE marketing.
Okay, so at this point, you’re probably wondering how does all this apply to sponsoring actual plays? One of the most timeless adages in business is that you have to spend money to make money. Recent averages have 133 live channels streaming TTRPGs to 2455 viewers on any given day. 75% of that is DnD. THREE of those are VtM. The rest is the catch-all “Tabletop RPGs” category.
In the grand scheme of Twitch, that’s not a lot. But that’s looking at one channel out of several: Twitch, YouTube, Facebook, Podcasts… It adds up. These are channels putting a lot of effort into running one-shots or persistent campaigns for regular audiences AND introducing these games to people who have never played them and might not have even heard of them before.
Here’s where the free marketing comes in. We have ZERO data on how many people buy a game because they watched or listened to an AP of it. I wouldn’t be surprised if WOTC has done some market research on it, but most publishers can’t afford to. So we don’t know what kind of impact the streaming scene is having on game sales. However, anecdotal evidence says quite a bit. We can track how many people buy games at a convention after playing them in free play or scheduled games. We do get feedback from viewers that they ran out and bought a game because they enjoyed a show. And in many cases, we end up running games for those folks too.
THE POINT — I promised I’d get here eventually.
Actual Plays ARE driving game sales. We just don’t know how many. But Publishers rarely sponsor streams other than the top 10-or-so DnD streams OR (worse) unless those streams happen on their OWN channels.
Why are these bad things? Because they don’t increase engagement and don’t increase impressions. A small streamer that doesn’t have the funds to increase their own marketing or pay their casts is going to stagnate or die. We see it all the time on the video game side of streaming.
The Twitch TTRPG sphere is small, and even those at the top of their category barely make $100 a month from it (I would know). They can’t pay their casts, and they can’t afford to buy new games and create more shows because they don’t know if their viewers will stick around for a different game.
Sponsoring more smaller creators is a win/win on both sides. It’s an investment in talented GMs and players who are teaching viewers how to play a game, introducing it to new fans, and creating proactive marketing for a publisher.
For the publisher, this is recurring promotion, not just on Twitch, but across social media channels and any other platforms the stream goes to (VoDs on YouTube, for instance) with a focus on increasing audience growth.
For channels, being able to pay their casts, buy better equipment, and invest in marketing themselves increases channel promotion, increases their likelihood of growth, AND landing Twitch Partner. This in turn delivers MORE value to the publisher who is seen promoting and supporting fans of their work… and the cycle continues.
Sponsorships don’t have to be outrageous. We’re not talking about a $10k budget a month. But more players want to be paid for their efforts, channels want to see a return on the time they invest in a game, and we’re all doing it because we love TTRPGs and want them to succeed. Plus… streamers talk. We know who is willing to sponsor and who isn’t. We talk about who is easy to work with and who isn’t. We’re a community that wants to bolster the entire community — and that includes publishers.
So as we go into a new quarter, do some research. How many Twitch streamers are playing your game on a regular basis? How many are reaching out to see if you’re interested in working with them? Maybe throw them a couple hundred and see what that does on returns. Create some trackable URLs for them to share so we can collect data on this… and give back a little to the community that’s been supporting you and continuing to enable sales during the last 3 years when cons weren’t running and we saw a boom in TTRPG streams.
TL;DR — Sponsoring streamers who run your games in Actual Plays is a win/win for everyone and smart business marketing and relationship management — From someone who’s worked in Tech Marketing and BR for over a decade. This isn’t a complete analysis of the Tabletop streaming scene, but it’s a snapshot of the current state of it and some tactics we can use to grow.
Sources:
https://www.enworld.org/wiki/top_rpgs/
https://twitchtracker.com/games/509577
https://twitchtracker.com/games/509664
https://twitchtracker.com/games/492963
