47 min.
Podcast: Devolver's Clara Sia on the streamer-led discovery process for games Tales From GameDiscoveryLand
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- Technologie
Welcome to the third Tales From GameDiscoveryLand podcast in Season 1. In this episode, we talk to Clara Sia. She’s currently the ‘influencer strategist’ at noted indie publishing label Devolver Digital, but has previously worked in streamer relations for a number of years, and streams on Twitch herself.
Our subject? The vitally important - and very complex - YouTube and Twitch ecosystem, one of the primary ways that PC and console players discover games in the 2020s. Below is a lightly edited full transcript of the entire podcast.
Reminder: you can get hold of episodes via our official podcast page, and also via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher and Pocket Casts. If you need it, here’s our podcast RSS feed. And thanks in advance for listening.
Simon: Streamers - they're kind of important to people discovering your game, in 2022. Incredibly important, in fact. Which is why we were so excited to get veteran influencer manager and strategist Clara Sia to the podcast.
Clara is currently working at Devolver, and previously had a long-time stint at a third-party agency. She even streams herself on Twitch, and we had a lot to talk about, given the complex nature of the streamer ecosystem.
So let's dive straight into what I like to call streamer anthropology with Clara. I'm Simon Carless, founder of GameDiscoverCo, and this is the Tales From Game Discoveryland podcast.
Simon: Hey everyone, and welcome to The Tales from GameDiscoveryLand Podcast. I'm Simon, and I'm here with Clara. How's it going?
Clara: It's going swimmingly. Yourself, Simon?
Simon: I am doing great, thank you. I'm very excited to talk to you because we're talking about streamers, and… something that I think is very important and honestly still not discussed enough in game discovery. This is how you deal with streamers, and how you interact with them, and how they think.
I wanted to start by asking you - you've been a longtime Twitch partner yourself focusing on indie titles, I wanted to ask how you personally pick games to feature. Is it the outreach from the dev? The game being great? All of the above?
Clara: Typically, all the above, I've always been a casual streamer. So just because I have a little purple check mark it doesn't mean I'm serious or like, a career streamer. I originally started playing Guild Wars 2 and then I moved on to other MMO. I originally did it because… people were giving me in-game gold towards a legendary [weapon] to stream. I… grew to love it and I moved on to triple A titles and retro games.
Then I got [Twitch] partnered later that year, and I discovered indie games for the first time. Actually, I just decided I didn't care about numbers, I cared more about just having fun and finding new things.
So the discovery is now my favorite aspect of picking and streaming games. I used to do these themed weeks like, you know, paper-themed indie games, dark-themed games, farming… Or if a game or dev at a booth made an impression on me at PAX and then follow up after, I’d play their game.
But now I'm super casual. I used to stream five days a week. Now I'm just two nights a week. So I pick something that's come out recently… that fits my current moods. It’s oftentimes more chill these days… I think they're called cozy streams now. And because I'm not a career streamer, I have the luxury to play what I want, and I don't bother with this strategic game choice.
That being said, if I ever did want to put serious focus into my stream, there'd be a number of things I'd have to change about it to be commercially successful. And that would include game choice, I would definitely have to be more strategic about it.
Simon: That's the nice thing about Twitch. You can have people from all areas, people doing it for fun, and you can have people doing it more strategically for income. And I did wonder about indie titles in particular.
It seems like maybe indie titles have a tougher time breaking through on Twitch sometime
Welcome to the third Tales From GameDiscoveryLand podcast in Season 1. In this episode, we talk to Clara Sia. She’s currently the ‘influencer strategist’ at noted indie publishing label Devolver Digital, but has previously worked in streamer relations for a number of years, and streams on Twitch herself.
Our subject? The vitally important - and very complex - YouTube and Twitch ecosystem, one of the primary ways that PC and console players discover games in the 2020s. Below is a lightly edited full transcript of the entire podcast.
Reminder: you can get hold of episodes via our official podcast page, and also via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher and Pocket Casts. If you need it, here’s our podcast RSS feed. And thanks in advance for listening.
Simon: Streamers - they're kind of important to people discovering your game, in 2022. Incredibly important, in fact. Which is why we were so excited to get veteran influencer manager and strategist Clara Sia to the podcast.
Clara is currently working at Devolver, and previously had a long-time stint at a third-party agency. She even streams herself on Twitch, and we had a lot to talk about, given the complex nature of the streamer ecosystem.
So let's dive straight into what I like to call streamer anthropology with Clara. I'm Simon Carless, founder of GameDiscoverCo, and this is the Tales From Game Discoveryland podcast.
Simon: Hey everyone, and welcome to The Tales from GameDiscoveryLand Podcast. I'm Simon, and I'm here with Clara. How's it going?
Clara: It's going swimmingly. Yourself, Simon?
Simon: I am doing great, thank you. I'm very excited to talk to you because we're talking about streamers, and… something that I think is very important and honestly still not discussed enough in game discovery. This is how you deal with streamers, and how you interact with them, and how they think.
I wanted to start by asking you - you've been a longtime Twitch partner yourself focusing on indie titles, I wanted to ask how you personally pick games to feature. Is it the outreach from the dev? The game being great? All of the above?
Clara: Typically, all the above, I've always been a casual streamer. So just because I have a little purple check mark it doesn't mean I'm serious or like, a career streamer. I originally started playing Guild Wars 2 and then I moved on to other MMO. I originally did it because… people were giving me in-game gold towards a legendary [weapon] to stream. I… grew to love it and I moved on to triple A titles and retro games.
Then I got [Twitch] partnered later that year, and I discovered indie games for the first time. Actually, I just decided I didn't care about numbers, I cared more about just having fun and finding new things.
So the discovery is now my favorite aspect of picking and streaming games. I used to do these themed weeks like, you know, paper-themed indie games, dark-themed games, farming… Or if a game or dev at a booth made an impression on me at PAX and then follow up after, I’d play their game.
But now I'm super casual. I used to stream five days a week. Now I'm just two nights a week. So I pick something that's come out recently… that fits my current moods. It’s oftentimes more chill these days… I think they're called cozy streams now. And because I'm not a career streamer, I have the luxury to play what I want, and I don't bother with this strategic game choice.
That being said, if I ever did want to put serious focus into my stream, there'd be a number of things I'd have to change about it to be commercially successful. And that would include game choice, I would definitely have to be more strategic about it.
Simon: That's the nice thing about Twitch. You can have people from all areas, people doing it for fun, and you can have people doing it more strategically for income. And I did wonder about indie titles in particular.
It seems like maybe indie titles have a tougher time breaking through on Twitch sometime
47 min.