Netflix's most popular gaming content

I watched 933 million hours of video games on Netflix. Here's what I found.

The SuperJoost Playlist is a weekly take on gaming, tech, and entertainment by business professor and author, Joost van Dreunen.

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The last few weeks of the year always have a way of providing clarity.

For one, for game developers, the stakes continue to be high. So high that they are existential.

After what seemed to be a promising run-up to its release, the multiplayer survival horror shooter The Day Before proved so disappointing that almost half of the people who bought it immediately asked for a refund. It promptly resulted in the shutdown of studio Fntastic. Turns out that being the top title on Steam Wishlist means precisely zero for game quality, especially for a developer with an obfuscated company history.

Another thing that became obvious was that contrary to its former corporate motto, “Don't be evil,” Google was, in fact, evil.

A jury found the tech giant guilty of anti-competitive behavior by subsidizing top-tiered game makers in its ecosystem to discourage them from developing their own mobile storefronts. Starting in 2019 Google spent several billion dollars in payments and promises to a bevy of multi-billion publishers, thereby making life unfairly more difficult for everyone else.

And there was also Netflix’s engagement report (see below) that shared viewership data on more than 18,000 of its movies and series. As for the holdout, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos stated:

“It wasn’t in our interest to be that transparent because we were building a new business, and we didn’t want to give any competitors a roadmap. Creators liked it too, because they were free from the pressure of ratings.”

The firm says it will update the list every six months but warns to compare title performance. Sure, sure. Let’s see it already.

Between these examples, it’s encouraging to note that market economics have a way of catching up to the deliberate opacity that sits at the center of business models for both big and small companies. You can run, but you can’t hide. That much is clear.

On to this week’s update.

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BIG READ: Netflix's most popular gaming content

For the data junkie in your family, Christmas came earlier this year.

Netflix released a comprehensive engagement report for the period from January to June 2023 that includes data on over 18,000 titles. The company says it represents 99 percent of total viewing and that it plans to release the list bi-annually to contribute to improved transparency. Conventional market researchers have been struggling to accurately report on video streaming services because it doesn’t fit their model well.

For purposes here, I’ve narrowed down the chunky spreadsheet and reviewed only those shows that are based on video games or otherwise associated with interactive entertainment. My objective here is not pinpoint accuracy but an initial survey, because Netflix is likely to change its reporting structure over time and admits the current report is limited. As a final note, I’m wielding a broad definition here regarding what counts as ‘game-related’ content. I’m sure some will disagree that the adaptation of The Witcher was technically not based on the associated games. I also think that CD Projekt doesn’t care. Comments, as always, are welcome.

The immediate observation here is that game content accounts for less than one percent on Netflix. Over the entire period, Netflix subscribers watched 933.1 million hours of video game-related content, which represents 0.9984% of the total. There’s a disproportionate amount of attention for games that make it to the silver screen, I’ve argued because game makers continue to be insecure about the cultural breadth and relevance of their craft.

The star of the show is an old familiar name. With a combined total of 261 million hours, Pokémon is the most popular franchise across 29 different series and movies. By far the most viewed in the series is Pokémon The Series: Indigo League: Season 1 with 42.7 million hours total, followed by Pokémon Journeys: The Series: Season 1 (40.3 million) and Pokémon Master Journeys: The Series: Season 1 (22.4 million). What’s remarkable is that the Pokémon franchise on Netflix is unavailable globally.

Next, The Witcher is the second-most popular show with 233.4 million viewing hours. However, there is a noticeable decline between seasons. The Witcher: Season 1 totaled 72.2 million hours, followed by its second season with 59.3 million, and finally its third season with 33.4 million hours. One explanation may be a loss of momentum due to the relatively long gaps between releases: 728 days between the first two seasons and 559 between the second and third. The expansion with Blood Origin, which was viewed 65.3 million hours, indicates a broader appetite for stories set in The Witcher’s universe. (Bonus: Fireplace, a 60-minute feed of a fire pit with background music racked up 400,000 viewed hours.)

More generally, several major franchises saw significant drop-offs after their first season. Capcom’s animated series Castlevania went from 4.2 million to 2 million throughout its four seasons. Similarly, Angry Birds went from 4.3 million hours down to 600,000 hours by season three. And Skylanders Academy went from 5.6 million hours down to 2.7 million over the course of its three seasons.

There are exceptions, however. A handful of franchises bucked the downward trend and managed to increase viewership. The Cuphead Show maintained high consistent viewership across its first three seasons, between 14.5 million and 16.3 million. Similarly, Ubisoft’s Rabbids Invasion increased from 1.2 million hours to 16.1 million over its four seasons.

As the third-most-popular franchise, Sonic the Hedgehog totaled 152 million hours viewed. The data suggest that most recent releases perform better. The oldest, Adventures of Sonic (1993), yielded only a modest viewership of 1.5 million hours. Sonic X (2003 - 2006) started strong with 9.5 million hours for its first season followed by a drop to 3.7 million for season two. And Sonic Boom (2014 - 2017) totaled an average of 27 million viewing hours for each of its two seasons. By far the most popular was Sonic Prime: Season 1 with 82.1 million hours viewed. (N.B. Not all Sonic-related releases are available globally which may impact total viewing numbers.)

I‘ve previously predicted a broader push into gaming content by streaming video providers and the rest of Hollywood. Releasing an engaging series on Netflix is proving to be a valuable marketing tool in an increasingly cacophonic digital games marketplace. CD Projekt’s animated series Edgerunners, based on its open-world role-playing game Cyberpunk 2077, managed to jolt its player base back up to 1 million concurrents. And since then the company has announced additional film productions to expand the reach of its franchise.

In addition, video games are the new hot intellectual property. Recent successes (e.g., The Super Mario Bros. Movie) and announcements of upcoming major box office releases (e.g., The Legend of Zelda) offer a sense of relief from a broader super-hero fatigue.

My take: While video game adaptations still only account for a fraction of Netflix's total viewing hours, streaming data suggests a clear opportunity for gaming franchises to expand beyond play.

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NEWS

Epic’s win over Google

On Monday a jury found tech giant Google guilty of anti-competitive behavior and in violation of antitrust laws.

Specifically, it determined that (under Sherman Act Section 2) Google illegally maintained a monopoly over the Android app market through actions that unfairly limited competition, which harmed Epic Games financially.

The jury further found that (under Sherman Act Section 1) Google established anticompetitive agreements with top-tiered app developers, competitors, and mobile device makers that unreasonably limited options in the Android app market. It illegally tied the use of its Google Play Store to its payment system, which resulted in financial harm to Epic Games.

The list of these top-tiered developers is extensive. It includes: Activision, Aniplex, Bandai Namco, Bethesda, Blizzard, Com2uS, Electronic Arts, King Digital, Mixl, Niantic, NCSoft, Netmarble, NetEase, Nexon, Nintendo, Pearl Abyss, The Pokémon Company, Riot, Square Enix, Supercell, Tencent, and Ubisoft. All but two took the deal offered by Google, giving them a leg up on competition.

As an example, to dissuade Riot from launching its app store, Google offered it a $90 million package that included $12 million in pre-registration support on the store, $20 million in merchandising launch support, $10 million in post-launch promotion, $5 million for a gift card retail program, $15 million in co-marketing dollars, $10 million in a Google Ads reimbursement program, $3 million for a YouTube community development program, and $20 million in Google Cloud credits.

The verdict’s impact will take some time to be felt. However, it is likely to result in a reduction of the 30 percent app store fee charged by Google and Apple. Although in the latter’s case, its lawsuit against Epic Games did not result in a similarly clear guilty verdict, Apple was no longer allowed to prevent third-party payment stores outside its ecosystem.

Combined, the two outcomes are expected to reduce the widely dreaded app store tax, even as both tech firms will fiercely delay any practical measures for years as they appeal the respective decisions.

In the short term, the verdict allows for some much-needed oxygenation of the mobile ecosystem. Google knew that except for two dozen of the largest publishers, most mobile game makers wouldn’t dare dream of side-loading their titles. Holding Google accountable for offering billions in compensation to dissuade the largest game makers from pursuing their storefronts at the expense of every other mobile app developer will return some balance.

In the long run, the cat’s out of the bag. The unanimous verdict from a jury (which took only a short term to decide) has the potential to cascade across other ecosystems considering how blatantly Google sought to optimize its interests. The case against Google has brought visibility to the unfair practices found in app ecosystems and its verdict will galvanize anti-trust regulators and developers alike.

Shoutout to The Verge for its consistently excellent reporting on the case.

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PLAY/PASS

Play. The US postal services announced it will issue Dungeons & Dragons stamps to mark the game’s 50th anniversary. Oh hell yes.

Pass. The Entertainment Software Association has officially killed off E3. I’ve been critical of the event for years because it was an annual highlight at the start of my career.