[Audience sounds]
Calm down!
I see we got a little bit more time for questions.
So uhhh...
You! Girl!
Uh- yeah. I was wondering if uh-
You know what? Stop, sorry.
I can't be seen talking to you
The internet might get the wrong idea about our relationship
So instead, let me talk to um...
You!
Unattractive adult human male.
Why are we still doing this?
I mean, weren't you supposed to telling us about why
the Ninja Mixer decision was a mistake?
Look, I'm getting to it, alright?
But first. In honor of this new and exciting, exclusive streaming partnership
with Blender, I am pleased to also announce
this special edition merch...
the Ninja Blender.
*Audience gasps*
*clears throat*
What do you want now, Cap Buzzkill?
You realize that's someone else's product, right?
Huh! Clearly, it's not.
As you can tell, right here on the front
has my name: Ninja.
That, that's me. Yours truly.
Top Fornite game streamer.
Uh, what's say you, dead meme guy?
*flossing*
Well, will it blend?
Uh yeah. That's kinda the point.
Well then, you can cash me outside using it.
How 'bout dah?
*tries to get high five*
aw *becomes sad*
YO DRAKE!
Thanks for coming to my press conference!
What say you my homeboy?
*speech synthesizer* Yo Ninja bro! You know Drizzy's got your back
You're blowing my mind with this dank merch.
But can we get back to the episode, hotline bling?
Yeah. You know what?
All right, let's do that.
Hey offstage guy!
Press the big red announcement button!
*Presses big red announcement button*
Thanks. See you all later.
*epic Intro Plays*
Hello Internet!
Welcome to GAME THEORY *this is not a game theory tho*!
Still running to the mail every day
hoping to find that elusive check from Mixer.
hmm, nothing :'(
Welp... if it hasn't come at this point
it ain't coming anytime soon.
Since after today's episode Mixer is
NEEEVEER
gonna want to talk to me.
Either because they're so offended by what I have to say,
ooooor
because they see my point
at how dumb they were to spend TENS OF MILLIONS
to make this deal in the first place.
See, last time I talked about all the good this deal provided.
Ninja totally made the right move,
cashed out when he was on the decline,
and guaranteed a lifetime of stability
in the unstable world of online video.
Mixer..
ehh
True to it's name it's a bit more of a mixed bag.
Seeing some short-term successes,
searchability is up, traffic is slightly higher..
But in an ideal world you don't just strike a deal
costing tens of millions of dollars with one of the biggest
talent in the world for just one week of news stories.
You do it for the cash.
So let's take a quick look at the number, shall we?
Ninja, on his first 18 days on Mixer
got himself 10 million views.
Now on Youtube, you can buy cheap
views using Youtube's ad systems for about 2 or 3 cents a view.
And that's not any sort of any click farm
sketchy blackhat views.
These are views that are outright purchased via Youtube's
own advertising systems.
So that's about
three hundred thousand dollars ($300,000) worth of
viewership for the first
half month of this partnership so far.
Not too shabby.
But since that first big push,
things have started to level off
with him getting
twenty thousand (20,000) average concurrent viewers per stream now.
that translates to about
three hundred thousand (300,000) views per stream.
Doing some
quick back of the napkin
math here.
That's 300,000 times roughly
260 streams per year,
or 78 million views, times 3 cents.
About two point three Million dollars
worth of views
at any given year.
Definitely good!
But it's still far below what I assumed
(and what I've heard through my contacts),
that he's actually getting paid.
And still, that's not the whole story.
When it comes to gaming itself,
our views are actually much less valuable
than the views of, say, a channel that appeals to moms
who are making most of the household purchases.
Optimistically speaking,
a view in gaming is like three tenths of a cent.
Point zero zero three dollars ($0.003), my friends.
So if you're looking for the actual
value of ten million views,
you're talking something more like thirty thousand dollars ($30,000).
That is a really low number
that rounds out the year for Mixer
with two hundred and thirty four thousand dollars worth of value.
If you're paying someone eight figures
to get you views,
(well...)
that's still two figures short.
But remember what I said last time.
Most livestream platforms, like
Twitch and Mixer,
are earning most of their money off of you:
your donations.
Taking a cut of every subscription,
ember, bit, byte, superchat, and sparkle
that you give to your favorite streamer.
So let's look at what those numbers
could look like for Mixer here.
A subscription on Mixer is $6
Now normally, Mixer would take a split of that.
But considering they just paid
a solid eight figures for ninja's exclusivity,
chances are they're taking his whole cut.
At least for awhile as a means of
making up that lost revenue.
Subtracting out Amazon Prime subs,
at the height of paid subscribers
during his time on Twitch,
Ninja had about fifty thousand (50,000).
This was about the time that he
had 4 million total followers.
Now that's him at his absolute height of power
When he left Twitch, he was at twenty thousand,
but we're going to assume best case scenario here.
Matching that 50,000 number on mixer,
a relatively unknown platform with half the
number of new followers is nigh on impossible.
However, mixer is doing a free giveaway
month to incentivize people to subscribe.
And then hopefully forget about
the fact that they've given them
their credit card information and are on auto-pay.
So let's just say he gets all those
Fifty thousand (50,000) people on over.
That would be three hundred thousand (300,000)
dollars per month going to Mixer
That is the best, best, best, case scenario!
It's a great number to be sure,
especially off of one guy, and it
results in three point six million
dollars total for the year headed Mixer's way.
Which is phenomenal, unless
of course you paying tens of
millions of dollars a year to keep
that guy on your platform, which Mixer seems to be.
What would normally be a huge payday
is just your really expensive employee
holding down a third of your platform.
In short:
Any way you slice it, the numbers just don't add up in Mixer's favor.
No, the Ninja deal wasn't just about pure revenue, it was a long term play.
They're not thinking about one year, they're thinking about the next six!
And that, is what we haven't covered yet.
Going back to when we started talking about Mixer,
a video platform has two goals:
1. Build a creator and viewer community
2. Monetize it, with advertisers and fan contributions.
When it comes to attracting advertisers,
There's a case to be made that a lot of the companies who weren't thinking about adverting on Mixer.
Suddenly are thinking about it now.
But the controversies Twitch has been seeing recently
and their plateauing viewership numbers,
advertisers in the gaming could be persuaded to hop ship into a different streaming platform
with a brand-friendly Ninja as their poster child
and one with the added stability of Microsoft.
Buuuuuut it's hard to advertise on a platform when there's only one person on it.
That's where the community piece comes in, and where the Ninja-Mixer partnership REALLY starts to fall apart.
To understand why communities are important,
think about each platform as a country
And their community as their population
Instagram is Finland where everyone is somehow leggy and blonde.
Facebook is the country where everybody is over 40 and miserable. (Maybe... Russia?)
And Twitch is the country that if your rich enough you could probably toss around your cat(!)
Too soon? Yeah, maybe too soon.
The thing about any country is that in order to make it work you need LOTS of people to fill LOTS of different roles,
and it turns out that video platforms work in much the same way.
There are gonna be small upstart creators on every platform.
There are gonna be a couple really stand-out names at the top!
But what really holds a platform up in the long run,
is its middle class.
Consider former president Obama's case for the US needing a strong middle class from 2011
Summed up in a blog post written by David Madly
"The middle class has a strong interest in making Government work well because... Quite simply, the middle class depends more on public services than the rich."
End quote. If your not getting held as supplies to the Ninja-Mixer situation.
Basically what he's saying is that if your in the middle class, you need the system your working in.
(Or in this case the video platform your on.)
To work for YOU!
The things that the middle class tend to push for benefit the most people,
because they representing the AVERAGE USER of the platform.
Good public transportation and affordable health care
are two great examples!
If you're rich, those things don't matter as much to you
because you got yourself a car, a driver
and enough money to pay for the best hospitals.
But for the middle class, those things matter because getting saddled with a twenty thousand hospital bill
means a huge chunk of your yearly income disappearing until that bill gets paid back!
Now look, at YouTube:
Recently, YouTube made a huge policy change to prevent unfair copyright claims against creators.
After years of pushing, YouTube came out with new features that make it harder to make false copyright claims.
They EVEN started suing some of the worst copyright trolls
to make an example to of what happens to people who abuse their systems!
And who were the ones making the biggest push to get something like that enacted?
MID-TIER CREATORS, those with tens, or even hundreds of thousands of subscribers.
Not so much those with subscriberships in the millions,
because big channels can sometimes backdoor their way out of those sorts of copyright situations.
Using their agents, or their YouTube contacts.
Or heck those creators may not have even known those claims existed in the first place
because they have teams dedicated to handling that sort of stuff.
Mid Tier creators though don't have that luxury.
Every false copyright claim is a punch to the gut.
It is money directly out of their pocket.
It is money that is quite frankly probably going to their rent check!
At the end of that month.
So they make their voices heard in HUGE numbers over the course of months, until the system started changing.
And just to make it perfectly clear. There were indeed big creators fighting for this as well.
I'm not saying every channel with over a million subscribers was like-
"Eh, I don't care about the copyright system." A lot of us do.
And a lot of us have been fighting for this tool for years!
Ourselves included. But many other channels had other options in these sorts of circumstances.
Or DIDN'T FEEL IT as acutely as the middle class.
Obama also advocated for an economy grows, "not from the top down but from the middle out."
The blog post notes that the highest classes "Can easily opt out of a country's regulations.
Or even more to another country.
Whereas when the when the middle class is strong,
they have the political power to achieve their goals."
Think again on who this applies to us:
top-tier creators on any platform often don't have the rules apply to them.
Just look at the situation Twitch is dealing with right now over favoritism
And if they're not getting the treatment they want from that platform,
they just move to another country. Like the 'United Mixer Emirates'
But the middle class has to make the system work for everyone,
because they don't have the luxuries of moving,
and bringing all their stuff
or fans with them.
It's also pretty well known that in economics the middle class is what drives innovation.
Entrepreneurs disproportionately come out of the middle class.
And the inventions that solve everyday problems comes from people who are dealing with those everyday problems!
Not the rich elite.
I'm not saying that Obama's way is the right or the only way.
The point of this way overextended analogy is that moving platforms forward in the long run.
Requires creator communities.
Not just a couple of elite individuals sitting at the top.
Nothing really replaces a creator middle class.
And it also doesn't save the platform in the event that something changes,
like say a game losing popularity.
Let's talk about a hypothetical scenario where Fortnite disappears tomorrow. *whoosh*
What would happen to all the platforms where people play it?
Well, YouTube would stop getting Fortnite videos and well basically go on as normal.
Since it's all about dem' diamonds these days fam!
But there's just so much other stuff on YouTube that the viewership they would lose would be negligible.
YouTube's creator middle class has tons of interests.
From Acrylic pouring to listicles about awkward save systems in games!
Losing Fortnite doesn't really matter a whole lot.
There's plenty of other stuff to watch.
By the way Rabbid Luigi. I watch your channel EVERY week.
Literally every week, just saying you got a fan over here congrats on your big move.
Moving over to Twitch, if they lose Fortnite, almost 10% of the entire platform disappears.
According to viewership statistics of games played on Twitch.
Twitch has a much smaller creator community with narrower interests and a less built out middle class.
Aaand you can probably see where this is going.
The situation on Mixer is the most dire.
Where Ninja accounted for 50% of the total platform viewership in his first stream.
Like I mentioned earlier, accounts for 32% since then.
If Fortnite disappears Ninja would still be there,
but the other games he's played typically haven't pulled the same audience for him.
Based on his Twitch stats he loses 31% of his audience when he plays Apex Legends.
78% when he plays League Of Legends.
And over 90% of his audience when playing PUBG, HALO or Final Fantasy
Since so much of Mixer's viewership is based on Ninja,
and so much of Ninja's success is based on Fortnite,
that investment in Ninja starts to look a little unstable in the long run.
The long term problem with Mixer is buying up Ninja, and ONLY NINJA
is that he's one creator basically playing one game at the very tippy top of the creator economy.
Great PR play in the short run! But in the long-term top creators don't decide wherever the platform lives or dies.
The platform spends it cash on one Mega Star,
effectively making the rich richer, and ignoring the fact that you can't create platform culture
with just a single person.
Presumably, the hope is that with Ninja's move, lots of mid-sized creators
will be inspired to make their jump to Mixer.
But unlike Ninja, there's no revenue guaranteed for it.
No promise of financial or creative freedom like he has.
For the millions that Mixer has probably paid for Ninja, they could have made the less splashy PR move,
but probably much more impactful move, by giving that money to mid-sized creators.
They could have encouraged hundreds, or even thousands, of mid-sized creators
to build out a more diverse, and frankly more loyal, set of streamers on their land.
Giving the audience more options,
and hoping that some of them would indeed become hugely successful in their own right.
Instead of having one creator whose income now doesn't rely on the quality of his streams,
they could have instead backed thousands of streamers who would still be hungry for their opportunity,
who haven't gotten their big chance out in the spotlight.
And would still be looking to build audiences in their own right.
They'd be buying for the number one Mixer position.
Rather than just someone whose plopped into it and is basically unbeatable from this point forward.
Ninja was a risky investment, not a diversified one.
And not one that directly contributes to the platform growing in the long-term.
What Mixer showed was that they care about a headline, not a community.
Which, to me, doesn't bode well for the future of streamers there.
But hey! Who is to say? Maybe i'm wrong.
Maybe their bet will pay of and there will be a steady stream of players
headed over there to make their fortunes on Mixer inspired by
Ninja's intrepid (if not exactly risky) jump on over.
Maybe we're around the corner for the MIXER REVOLUTION!
Maybe, tell that to Google Stadia.
In the meantime, though, I want to say this.
Doing this episode I recognized how incredibly lucky I am to have the audience that I do.
To be in that proverbial YouTuber upper class.
I see how hard it is for smaller creators to get discovered these days.
One of the reasons I love having other shows on this channel, like:
Game Exchange or Smash History back in the day
was that it gave greater visibility, and ad revenue quite honestly,
to other creators who are doing really good work but had smaller audiences.
I love that idea of being able to pay it forward.
Of working together to be stronger than the individual parts. Y'know?
But, sadly, YouTube, and digital platforms as a whole have changed.
Nowadays I can't really host many other creators shows on here like I used to,
just because of how digital platforms work.
We gotta keep that momentum up!
And the science works because it's like "Oh, we're practically the same show!"
Spoiler alert! Don't tell anyone!
But, everything else, it just doesn't quite match up properly, right?
Anyways the reason I'm saying all this is this episode gave me an idea.
Honestly, I want to try something new.
Mixer may not be going out of their way to support mid-tier and lower-tier creators,
but you know what? We will here.
Over the next few episodes I'm gonna just, take some time
to send out a little love to someone out there who's really grinding away and doing awesome work!
And who deserves to be recognized!
Just to pay it forward, hopefully give them some visibility, spread some good karma out there.
So today! I chose you Rabbid Luigi!
I've watched Rabbid Luigi's channel for years!
Like I mentioned earlier in this episode, in fact!
For those of you who don't know, Rabbid Luigi does top five and top ten countdowns,
which may not sound like anything ground breaking,
but his topics are always fun and creative.
Like: Greatest Games On Failed Platforms and
Top Five Games That You Can't Legitimately Finish.
[Rabbid Luigi] I once made a video about difficulty spikes, which is where there's this sudden rise in challenge
that the player can't prepare for, and often gets stuck at.
[Matt] And in each of his lists there's always and entry or two that surprises me
or some fact that catches me off-guard.
[Rabbid Luigi] Gammation, got to work on Gamma Attacks,
supposedly the sole copy is owned by Anthony Denardo.
Who tried to sell in 2008 for HALF A MILLION DOLLARS!!!
[Matt] His calls to subscribe are also things of beauty.
Play the clip!
[Rabbid Luigi] Even when you do get around to saving, you have to watch this stupid ad like a mobile game
about this mediocre YouTuber reminding his viewers to subscribe if they enjoyed the video
and hit a bell for notifications, or whatever?
WHAT THE **** IS YOUTUBE? THIS IS 1996!
[Matt] Right? They're awesome!
They're like more seamless than our transitions into the sponsors at the end of videos!
I will say though, Rabbid, your French episode. Nnnnnyea it's a bit of a weird decision.
[Rabbid Luigi] *Badly speaks French*
[Matt] I mean the WHOLE THING was French.
So if you like yourself gaming countdowns with a delightful accent
and an equally delightful sense of snark,
then Rabbid Luigi s a personal favorite of mine!
Link is down below in the Thingy-Ma-Do.
And if you have any favorite channels that you'd like me to check out,
and potentially call out if I like them, let me know down in the comments below!
SO ANYWAY, In honor of Rabbid, THIS has been MatPat. And remember: it's all just a theory.
A GAME THEORY!!!
Thanks for watching!
*End music plays*