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GLAAD study finds nearly 1 in 5 gamers are LGBTQ. The 2024 Streamer Awards. “Democracy” & Helldivers takeover the internet as new era of gaming begins. EA CEO talks potential sports metaverse. And Xbox puts an end to the console wars?

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Here’s what we have for you today:

• Nearly 1 in 5 Gamers are LGBTQ per GLAAD Gaming Report 🏳️‍🌈 

• The 2024 Streamer Awards hosted by QTCinderella & Pokimane ✨

• New Game Helldivers: How “Democracy” took over the internet 🚀 

• The end of the console wars teased by Microsoft and Xbox? 🎮

• EA CEO teases sports metaverse “Watch This Space.” 🏈 

🏳️‍🌈 Nearly 1 in 5 Gamers are LGBTQ

The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) revealed their inaugural report on the state of State of LGBTQ Inclusion in Video Games, in partnership with the Nielsen Games Team.

As noted in the VentureBeat article covering the study, 17% of active gamers surveyed – almost 1 in 5 – self-identify as LGTBQ.

However, this same report also noted that the gaming industry lags behind other media in representation as only 2% of games feature prominent LGBTQ characters while almost 29% of films released in 2023 had an LGBTQ character and 11% of primetime television series last year fell into that bucket.

👀 Our POV

Representation matters. Period. Especially in a world that is constantly polarizing and fostering division. However, from a brand perspective, the interesting engagement metrics that are also featured in this report show that 69% of LGBTQ players put in at least 4 hours on console and 66% spend at least that same time on mobile. This is in comparison to 64% and 55% of non-LGBTQ players. 1 in 5 is a big number when we talk about at least a domestic population of roughly 216M gamers.

Perhaps something to keep in mind for brands who are socially conscious, angled toward inclusivity, authentic, and aware of how remarkably engaged gamers are when brands are welcomed into their playground.

- Brandon Painter (Private Lobby)

✨ The 2024 Streamer Awards

QTCinderella hosted the 2024 Streamer Awards, her 3rd annual edition of the award show alongside Pokimane and featured live performances from several popular creators. The highly-anticipated event reached a combined peak viewership of 645,166 concurrent viewers according to Streams Charts.

Fans voted on 28 different categories, with 117 nominees in total. A few of the major categories & winners included:

• Stream Game of the Year: Lethal Company

• Best Content Organization: AMP

• Best Streamed Content Series: Name Your Price - AustinShow

• Best Streamed Event: Creator Dodgeball World Championship - Ludwig

• Best Breakthrough Streamer: Jynxzi

• The Sapphire Award for Best Female / Marginalized Gender Streamer of the Year: Valkyrae

• Gamer of the Year: Jynxzi

• Streamer of the Year ( for the 2nd year in a row): KaiCenat

Head over to The Streamer Awards to checkout the full list of categories and winners.

👀 Our POV

The 2024 Streamer Awards' were a masterclass in community engagement. Put simply, QTCinderella and her team give the community what they want.

Celebrating a wide array of livestreaming content, from VTubers, IRL streamers, to creator-led IRL events, the Streamer Awards highlight how diverse livestreaming really is.

We hear the marketing buzzword “whitespace” all the time but QTCinderella and the Streamer Awards have captured the whitespace in gaming & livestreaming better than anyone. Hats off to everyone involved, truly.
 
- Zach Eller (Private Lobby)

🚀 Helldivers: How “Democracy” Took Over The Internet

Every once in a while, a special game comes around and seemingly unites the internet. That game was Helldivers 2 this past week, the latest from Arrowhead Game Studios (ASG) & Sony. The Starship Troopers and Terminator-inspired co-op shooter is an evolution of their well-received “Helldivers,” released in 2015. ASG took a top-down twin-stick shooter and turned it into one of the most enjoyable third-person shooters released recently.

Helldivers 2 encourages players to shoot, dive, airstrike, and nuke their way through the galaxy, spreading democracy to unliberated planets in a global campaign to which each mission contributes. Since its release on February 8th, the game has skyrocketed to a peak of 409,376 players on Steam while likely boasting similar numbers on PlayStation. Its success looms large in the face of Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League, which achieved just 13,459 at its peak since releasing around the same time.

Unfortunately, Helldivers 2’s instant virality and universal acclaim attracted enough attention to max out servers and have players waiting in a server queue. For a game with a relatively small marketing push compared to larger titles, the instant success is nothing short of impressive and indicative of where the games industry is going. As larger studios have built a bad reputation for paid games with pricey microtransactions and unfinished products, gamers seem to enjoy smaller titles focusing on fun. The most-played charts will be riddled with Fortnite, League of Legends, Minecraft, and the usuals. However, games like Lethal Company and Helldivers have captured the attention and dollars of gamers everywhere.

Where does Helldivers Stack Up:
At the time of writing, Helldivers 2 was the third most played game on Steam, with 403,171 players. It is beat out only by Counter-Strike and Dota 2, with Palworld trailing at 224,672.

_{*stats found on SteamDB*}

Helldivers has already smashed user records for some of our favorite games out there. At 333,000, it beat the Steam all-time current player count records for Destiny 2, Starfield, and Halo Infinite. Since then, it’s only continued to rise as a game we won’t soon forget.

👀 Our POV

I won’t lie; I think Helldivers 2 is one of the most important game releases we’ve seen in a while. It reminds us that a game doesn’t need to come from a AAA studio or cost $70 to be good. Helldivers 2 is showing the titans of the gaming industry that you can’t simply buy the next hottest game. That success requires intentionally focusing on the player experience and creating a game that puts fun first. Major studios and publishers are full of passionate and talented people, but the end product often gets muddied by a desire to squeeze every penny from the consumer as cheaply as possible.

Helldivers is more than another 4-player co-op shooter where you go on procedurally generated missions. It’s the maniacal laughter and satirical voice lines your character shouts as you mow down hordes of aliens. It’s the rush you get from watching enemy robots crest a hill just as your buddy's airstrike touches down to vaporize them. It’s the way your body ragdolls as your own mortar blows you to smithereens after an enemy gets too close. Helldivers leans into the goofy fun of a horde shooter while uniting players under shared goals. It’s a shining example of what a co-op shooter should be, and I encourage anyone reading this to try it.

- Brendan Valentine (Private Lobby)

🎮 The end of the console wars?

Microsoft held it’s much anticipated Xbox Business Update last week where they announced they officially announced they are bringing (certain) Xbox exclusive games to PlayStation and Nintendo Switch consoles.

In their update, Xbox made sure to make a few promises to it’s players:

• “The biggest games in the world will be on Xbox. ”

• “Our games will come to Game Pass day one.”

• “A robust and innovative multi-year hardware roadmap.”

• “Compatibility with your library is a priority, inclusive of cross-play, cross-save, and robust cloud features.”

• “Xbox will continue to help game creators find the biggest audience possible.”

This move comes after a period of speculation and leaks regarding Microsoft's strategy for its gaming division, especially following the massive acquisition of Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion.

🤔 So, what’s the deal?

• Cross-platform Strategy: Microsoft is planning to bring Xbox exclusives, Grounded, Hi-Fi Rush, Pentiment, and Sea of Thieves, to PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch. Starfield and the upcoming Indiana Jones game, were not included as previously rumored.

• Community Response: Community sentiment is widely varied from Xbox diehards fueling the loudest dismay. This quote from Reddit is pretty great: “Who could have imagined that the winner of the Microsoft and Activision-Blizzard acquisition would be PlayStation”.

• The End of the Console Wars?: Microsoft's move to publish Xbox exclusives on competing platforms could signal a new precedent in the gaming industry, potentially marking the beginning of the end of the "Console Wars." This strategy reflects a shift towards viewing the Xbox more as an ecosystem than a standalone console, aiming to expand the audience for its games beyond the confines of Xbox hardware.

👀 Our POV

Bringing Xbox exclusives to PlayStation and Nintendo Switch platforms is a game-changer. I was recently advising my dad about what console he should get and his desire to play Starfield was one of the key factors in his decision.

For now, it seems as it Starfield isn’t one of the titles that will be going to PlayStation and Switch; however, the move to go multiplatform from Microsoft is massive. I don’t think it can be understated. Console exclusives are or at least were, a major part of what made gamers buy that specific console.

My take: It's a bold leap, driven by slowing console sales and the desire to increase profitability. As a gamer, this is great news that makes the scene more accessible, competitive, and ultimately in my opinion, healthy. As a Microsoft shareholder, there’s a lot to consider here but I think this should be great news in the long run. The entire concept of consoles and the console wars is going to change and evolve in the next few years but that’s ok. Change is ok, friends.

- Zach Eller (Private Lobby)

🏈 EA CEO Teases Sports Metaverse

As a fun fast-follow to the Disney and Epic Games news, the always-questioned “metaverse” topic came up during EA’s earnings call when an analyst asked a simple, yet fairly leading question: had he [CEO Andrew Wilson] thought about "taking all of your siloed sport communities and thinking about a way to bring them all together" to "just sort of create, for lack of a better word, a metaverse?"

Wilson’s answer laid out several seemingly well-defined data points that all led to a similar conclusion… It can be done. This led to many speculating that perhaps this was something the company had been considering.

• The EA player community is over 700 million strong, half of which interact with the EA Sports catalog

• Research of theirs shows that Gen Alpha and Gen Z use EA franchises as an entry point to sport fandom

• That same research shows an average session in these titles is about 90 minutes before they go off to other channels to talk about the games, to then create content about their experiences in these games, before finally watching other players’ content about their own unique experiences in these games

He continued on to say EA sees "an incredible opportunity" in all these interconnected relationships between EA Sports' popularity, how players behave within it and outside of it, and how it can interact with other experiences.

"So best I can say is: watch this space," he concluded.

👀 Our POV

With content and experience being two cornerstones of gaming’s appeal, and technology continuing to elevate the ability for the industry to deliver stories in all kinds of moving formats, of course EA has given this type of thing a thought or two.

I’m on record saying that I’m a huge fan of what 2K has done to build toward an open-world basketball experience in their titles. The work that the team has completed to so authentically integrate brands, and build a platform that one-ups itself year over year (any fans of The City?), where it really allows players to play and socialize in a frictionless world of its own is truly best in class.

Madden has done a little bit of playing in a similar manner, while EA’s F1 titles have taken arguably more steps to establish this type of immersive exploration in its catalog, but the eloquence in which Wilson and team talk about interoperability or navigation across fanbases? Yeeeaahhh buddy. We could see a challenger to the chokehold Roblox seems to have on traditional sports extensions with this particular dynamic audience.

Also might hint at, dare I say it, web3? 🤭

- Brandon Painter (Private Lobby)

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