Summary
- Kai Cenat is a huge name in gaming, but rarely plays more than a couple of reliable games.
- Elden Ring lets him influence people in two ways - firstly, his audience might branch out more...
- ....and secondly, other streamers might change up their stale formulas to try something they care about.
Over the weekend, popular streamer Kai Cen🎶at beat Elden Ring after a 166-hour slog൲ featuring over 1,700 deaths. Though Cenat came to 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Elden Ring directly off the back of playing 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Ghost of Tsushima, those mark a significant break from tradition. Cenat became one of the world's most popular streamers through a reliable diet of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Grand Theft Auto, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Call of Duty, and top tier sports title💧s, but now he has tasted pixelated cuisine. For gaming culture, this coul🍌d be a big moment.
Many of the biggest streamers in the world aren't really streamers in the way we typically think of that word. They're live podcasters, comedians in a never-ending stream of consciousness stand-up routine, culture onlookers performatively overreacting to YouTube videos in a ouroboros of parasocial manufactured drama. Though Kai has played games for probably tens of thousands of hours across his career, he's spent just as long goofing off with friends.
Streamers Can Influence Huge Audiences
There's nothing wrong with this approach. Streaming does not need to be restricted to gaming, even if many suddenly turn hardline on that issue when hot tubs are involved. For a lot of people, especially younger audiences, streaming is their primary form of entertainment. Part of that is the advent and rise of 'second screen viewing', where you might play a game or be working on one screen, and watching some light entertainment on the other, but plenty of people tune in on their single screen to watch a streamer for a few hours the same way you might binge a box set or watch a movie.
That puts streamers at the forefront of pop culture, but too few are willing to engage with it. Though his brand is more than gaming, Cenat operates in that circle and yet has gotten there by playing games that most gamers would refer to as 'casual'. Even his time spent on GTA is mostly spent in the endless playground of Online rather than engaging with the narrative. And Cenat is not an exception - he's the rule. Most streamers play one or two specific shooters, maybe a sports game, and otherwise just talk to their audience.
Across the streaming spectrum, there are a wide range of streamers who play a bunch of different games or who specialise in any number of specific genres. But at the top of the pile, there's a clear and often unambitious theme.
Elden Ring was the biggest game of 2022, and it has taken 27 months for one of the biggest streamers to get to it. Ghost of Tsushima was Player's Voice winner at TGA in 2020 and he's just got to that too. And in doing this, Cenat becomes the exception. Many of the other streamers at his level of popularity have never played these games on camera, if they've played them at all.
Streamers Tend To Stick To The Same, Safe Games
For people who only really know gaming through watching the biggest streamers, this will have opened up their world. It's a little pointless to try to split games into 'real gaming', especially when this division would leave GTA outside of the definition, but obviously there is a wider world than CoD, GTA, and FIFA. Those are your starter games. By embracing Ghost of Tsushima and Elden Ring, Cenat will hopefully not just ♊introduce his audience into following in his footsteps exactly, but into branching out into new experiences of their own.
It's unlikely they'll jump from watching Cenat on Elden Ring to playing 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Citizen Sleeper, but maybe 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:The Last of Us, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:God of War, or 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Resident Evil could be next, and then beyond that Control, Prey, or 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Like a Dragon may await. If streamers are going to be such influential parts of the gaming ecosystem, they may have more longevity by becoming tastemaking curators. Cenat will go back to his usual streams, maybe grabbing another off-piste game here and there (168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Bloodborne seems the next sensible place to go), but more streamers could learn🌳 to show some indivi⛎duality instead of playing up everything the algorithm says works.
It's also a pretty brave choice for Cenat to make. Ghost of Tsushima has a cinematic flow that makes any half-decent player look good at it, but Elden Ring is monstrously difficult, especially for an outsider not only to the Dark Souls formula, but to this level of gaming in general. It's very easy to look stupid while playing Elden Ring. Across those 1,700 deaths, I'm sure Cenat did, a lot.
Streamers of this level aren't used to losing. They can pump endless money into pay-to-win live-service games and play these games like it's a job, while the Just Chatting streams centre themselves as kings in a group of fair weather yes men laughing at all their jokes. I don't know Cenat or his entourage personally, but having watched enough streamers over the years, there is always an air of untouchability to them. Nobody is untouchable in Elden Ring.
You cannot pay for weapons or abilities or victories in sub donations or ad r🍬evenue, only in blood and sweat and pain. You must die, die, and die again, and though you may tell your👍self you learn from all your mistakes, sometimes your deaths are just a pointless waste to underline that you are not good enough, not even close.
That's a hard brainspace for a top streamer in a game outside of their comfort zone to put themselves in, and listening to Cenat reflect on his experience, he sounds more genuine than in the screaming hoots and hollers of previous viral clips. Not falling off his chair shrieking, not jumping up and down erratically, just talking to the camera, talking to his audience, one on one about the power of gaming.
That's not a feeling you get from pulling Messi on FIFA - you have earned that moment yourself, through effort and perseverance, not through stuffing the lottery machine with tickets your fans paid for. It's a feeling I hope stays with Cenat for a long time, one that may change his streaming habits, push his fans into new experiences, and make other streamers take notice.
168澳洲幸运5开奖网: Elden Ring
- Top Critic Avg: 95/100 Critics Rec: 98%
- Released
- February 25, 2022
- ESRB
- M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Language, S🐲uggestive Themes, Violence 💦
- Developer(s)
- ꦬ From Software
- Publisher(s)
- 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Bandai Namco Entertainment, From Software
- Engine
- Proprietary
With worldbuilding from Game of Thrones scribe George R.R. Martin and developed by FromSoftware, Elden Ring is a masterpiece in what has become known as the 'Soulslike' genre of action role-playing games.
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