Twitch Survey: Video Game Streaming a Growing Industry

Amazon just paid hundreds of millions of dollars to acquire video game streaming service Twitch. Twitch is a platform that allows gamers to watch other gamers play and talk about their favorite games. While watching other people play video games might not seem very exciting to those outside the gaming community, it certainly is a growing industry. How many have already used services like Twitch to learn about new games? And how many could be interested in the future?

Video Games

In Ask Your Target Market’s latest survey, 26% of respondents said they play video games often. 33% said they sometimes play video games. 23% said they don’t currently play video games regularly, but they have in the past. And 18% said they’ve never played video games.Not all video gamers are necessarily going to be interested in streaming platforms like Twitch. People who play desktop or console games, for instance, are probably going to be more serious gamers than those who play games on mobile devices or Facebook. But 74% of gamers said they play regular, single player video games. 39% said they play multi player video games. 35% said they play games on social networking sites. And 28% said they play mobile games.

New Games

But both serious and casual gamers need ways to learn about new games if they’re going to play any of them. 61% of gamers said they normally learn about games to play through friends or personal recommendations. 39% said they learn about new games through advertisements. 27% learn about video games through articles or reviews. 27% learn about games by watching online videos. And just 8% said they learn about new games in other ways, such as social media and specific gaming websites.

Streaming Games

So what do people think about watching others play video games online? 11% of overall respondents said they already watch others play video games online fairly often. 22% said they sometimes watch people play video games online. 23% said they rarely watch people play video games online. And 45% said they never do. You can view the complete survey results in the widget below and be sure to click “Open Full Report” to take advantage of all the chart and filter options.Photo Credit: tex playing video games from FlickrWhat do you want to know? If you need some consumer insights on a particular topic, let us know in the comments below and we’ll consider it for an upcoming survey post.

Results were collected on September 2 via AYTM’s online survey panel.