Scattered throughout TikTok’s endless video feed you can find all kinds of content related to video games. You can see Lore analysis videos, nice tips and tricks, cosplay, and, if you’re lucky, thirsty adaptations of characters like Leon Kennedy. The platform has become a place where people can learn more about the games they love and discover new ones. Some games, such as The walking village, have flourished mainly thanks to TikTok and have found millions of viewers on the app. But now that could all disappear.
In April, US President Joe Biden signed a bill into law that will ban TikTok if its China-based parent company ByteDance does not divest from the platform within 270 days of signing the bill. Polygon spoke with Philomena Schwab, co-founder of Stray Fawn Studio, about how TikTok influenced the development of the team’s game. The walking village. If TikTok were to disappear, Stray Fawn Studio would not only lose its account, but also its direct line to the game consumers themselves.
“We (had) some pretty big posts early on in development, which reassured us to continue working on the project longer, because if we hadn’t had that reassurance, not only from TikTok but also from the number of wishlists – like, how We removed a lot of wishlists from the messages and so on – we probably would have completed the early access version earlier,” Schwab said via video chat. “I think it was a good thing we didn’t do that because it was a pretty good release in the end. It helped us keep our spirits up in the game.”
At the time of publication, Stray Fawn Studio has over 68,000 followers on TikTok and videos viewed over 899,000 times. Statistics such as the number of followers on social media platforms can have a direct impact on the success of current and future games. Schwab said she has included social songs on her pitch decks, which in turn can help secure studio financing. She checked and about 55% of the followers on the Stray Fawn account are American – so the team would lose more than half of its followers on the platform if TikTok were banned, and that’s not even counting the Americans who just liked or viewed their videos.
In case of The walking villagethe success of the TikTok account also had a direct impact on the number of wishlists the game received on Steam. Schwab told Polygon that if a post had more than 200,000 views, it would “always” result in “several hundred wishlists.” According to Schwab, “You could clearly see the spikes coming in over time. So that certainly made a major contribution.”
TikTok also allowed the team members to find their voice. TikTok allows users to share video responses to comments and questions, and Schwab told Polygon that it really let team members’ personalities shine.
“I think, beyond the marketing benefits, it also helped set the tone of our studio a little bit, because we discovered that we’re naturally a pretty silly, funny group of people. And on other social platforms, we didn’t really feel like we could show that as well. And on TikTok it absolutely came true. I think we created a lot of crazy content. And it did quite well on the platform, which encouraged us to embrace this kind of studio mentality more,” said Schwab.
The walking village isn’t a huge viral hit, but that’s why TikTok has been so valuable to the team. TikTok and its algorithm can make a post from any person or profile, regardless of their follower size, go viral. Thomas Schulenberg, the CEO of a marketing platform called Gamesight, told Polygon about TikTok’s unique power to connect fans with games.
“I think one of the things we’re seeing for indies, something that really makes TikTok unique, is that content creators aren’t limited by (the number of followers) in the same way as (they are on) pretty much every other platform,” Schulenberg said via video chat: “The algorithm – the mystery man behind the curtain – allows content to be shown to more people, regardless of whether they are being tracked. And so we’ve seen some amazing, amazing success stories on TikTok that aren’t really paid marketing because they usually don’t look like running a bunch of ads.
There have always been indie darlings and surprising video games, regardless of TikTok. However, TikTok has played a key role in allowing even more indie creators to create popular games that go viral within days. There have been surprise hits in the past two years alone Palworld, Deadly companyAnd Sons of the forest have gained a large audience. They all have a presence on TikTok because the games have so many catchy, clippable moments.
“The ability to go from nothing to something doesn’t really exist (on other platforms). So you would think of games like Deadly company, Sons of the forestor content warning, all of those games have well over a billion views of their game on TikTok, which is just a completely absurd number. If you were to compare that to something like Twitch? No way, you know, in a million years,” Schulenberg said.
While TikTok helps bring hit viral games to life and supports game developers, its demise would also have a massive impact on all the people who love to play these games.
“For a lot of players, a big part of what they get out of the gaming experience is community – we call it community in general, community is such a general term – but they are concerned with the game outside of the game and TikTok is certainly one of those places they do that,” Schulenberg said.
If the US were to ban TikTok, it would impact the creators behind these games. It would also impact the app’s millions of users and those who enjoy video game content. A video that brings new eyes to a game and helps a developer get more wishlists for a game can also be the video that creates excitement among a group of players online. Often the jokes and memes surrounding a game can be just as fun as the content itself, as it can make people feel like they are part of something bigger. For now, game developers and the players who enjoy their games will just have to wait and see if they have to scramble to the next platform.