Twitch Rivals could give Fall Guys longevity on the platform

Twitch Rivals’ first Fall Guys Fridays event this past weekend helped Mediationic’s new obstacle racing game achieve its highest viewership on the platform—and it could breed longevity for the game as well.

Since its release at the beginning of August, Fall Guys has quickly become one of the most-watched games on Twitch due partially to the broad audience it can appeal to. With game modes that emphasize simplicity, it’s easy for viewers to follow a streamer’s journey to victory and get mesmerized by the bright colors and jelly-bean shaped characters in costumes.

But the same thing that’s made the game massively popular as it launched could prevent it from having a lasting impact on Twitch. That simplicity that reels streamers and viewers in from across every genre on Twitch could also lead to boredom in the near future. 

A recurring event like Twitch Rivals’ Fall Guys Fridays could change that, however.

The goal of Twitch Rivals as an esports tournament organizer is to use competitive gaming to shine a light on the platform’s content creators. And this past week, streamers who competed came from variety streaming, battle royale gaming, FIFA, tactical shooters, and even League of Legends. 

On Friday, Aug. 28, Fall Guys hit its all-time highest viewership as a category with nearly 700,000 viewers, according to Twitch stat tracker SullyGnome. But the Twitch Rivals channel itself never eclipsed 50,000.

The bulk of Fall Guys’ viewership during the Friday night tournament came from the who’s who of streamers who were competing in the event. From TimTheTatman and Shroud to xQc and Tyler1, any top streamer you could imagine was playing Fall Guys.

Much in the way that a party game can appeal to the masses during a get together on the weekend, Fall Guys Friday has the potential to be a mainstay on Twitch that could keep gaming personalities from all over the platform coming back. 

When Fortnite was making its meteoric rise on Twitch, streamers like Ninja and Myth were obviously important. But at the same time, KEEMSTAR’s weekly Friday Fortnite tournament helped increase the game’s publicity in the spring of 2018. The event highlighted streamers’ personal channels while also helping introduce fans to many of the game’s best content creators, like Tfue, who was largely unknown prior to his success playing with Cloakzy during Friday Fortnite events.

Fall Guys Friday tournaments might not do as much to introduce viewers to unknown gamers, but by serving as a sort of melting pot of streamers who play a large array of games, it could give Fall Guys a reliable weekly audience boost.

Ultimately, the ability of Fall Guys to be a mainstay on Twitch will come from its developer’s ability to provide content updates that keep players continually coming back. But with esports as a strong supplementary source of weekly viewership, the game has the potential to maintain a reach that could keep it among the top content on Twitch.