By Jon Scarr
At some point, game marketing stopped being about trailers and billboards and started being about people. According to a new Boston Consulting Group report, more than half of gamers say they would try a new game if their favourite creator switched to it. That is a bigger influence than most traditional advertising can dream of.
We have been circling this shift from a few angles lately. In Gamers Are Buying Less And It Is Not Just About Price, the big theme was selectiveness. People are guarding their time and money. In Gaming Is Growing Again and Adults Are the Ones Leading It, the story was how gaming keeps following us into adulthood. Creator influence fits right between those two ideas, because creators shape what feels worth trying in the first place.
You can see it play out every week. A streamer picks up a new game, suddenly it is everywhere. Friends talk about it. Clips spread. Storefront charts move. Meanwhile, big budget trailers sometimes come and go without much impact. It is not that ads stopped existing. It is that trust shifted.
Gamers listen to people they spend time with. Creators stream for hours, share frustrations in real time, and react honestly when something does not land. That kind of exposure carries more weight than a polished marketing beat. It feels closer to a recommendation from a friend than a sales pitch.
BCG frames this as part of a larger shift toward user generated content and creator driven discovery. From where most of us sit, it just feels normal now. If you want to know whether a game is worth your time, you watch someone play it. And more often than not, that is what actually pushes you to try something new.
Why Creators Carry More Weight Than Ads
Traditional marketing still exists, but it no longer leads the conversation. Trailers, banners, and launch ads create awareness, yet they rarely decide what people actually play. Creators fill that gap because they show games in context. You see how something runs, how it feels minute to minute, and whether it holds attention beyond the first impression.
That matters more than polish. A trailer is controlled. A stream is not. Bugs show up. Boring stretches are impossible to hide. When a creator sticks with a game anyway, that signals confidence in a way ads cannot replicate. When they drop it after an hour, that message spreads just as fast.
Time also plays a role. Creators are present during the hours gamers actually play. Late nights. Weekends. Background streams while people decide what to load up next. That repeated exposure builds familiarity. By the time a viewer tries a game, it already feels known.
BCG’s data reflects this shift clearly. If more than half of gamers are willing to try a game based on creator behaviour, that means influence now comes from visibility and trust, not from reach alone. Marketing still starts the conversation, but creators often finish it.
Why Gamers Trust Creators More
Trust is the whole thing here. Creators earn it by being consistent, not perfect. You watch someone struggle with a boss, call out a messy UI, or laugh at something genuinely ridiculous. Those moments are not scripted, which makes the reaction feel useful. It also makes it easier to believe them when they say a game is worth your time.
Creators also help you filter. There are too many games, too many updates, too many live service seasons, and too many backlogs. A creator who shares your taste becomes a shortcut. Not a flawless one, but a practical one. If they are excited, you pay attention. If they sound bored, you move on.
BCG notes this influence directly, but it also hints at why it works. Creators do not just show the best 30 seconds. They show the middles. The load times. The parts where a game slows down. That is the stuff you never get in a trailer, and it is usually the stuff you care about once you actually buy the thing.
The Creator Economy Is Huge and Uneven
BCG also calls out the scale of user generated content, including payouts that will reach $1.5 billion in 2025 from two games alone. That is wild money, and it explains why so many platforms want creators to stick around. The creator economy is not a side hustle anymore. For some people, it is the whole career.
Still, the “everyone can do it” idea is a bit misleading. The report notes that while more than 40 percent of respondents say they are consuming more user generated content than last year, only about 10 to 15 percent have created content themselves. That gap matters. Most of us watch, share, and react. A smaller group creates. An even smaller group gets paid enough to treat it like a job.
That imbalance shapes what gets attention. Platforms and algorithms tend to reward creators who already have momentum. Smaller creators can be excellent, but discoverability is brutal. It can feel like the same handful of voices decide the conversation, even when the wider community is doing great work in the background.
So yes, creators are powerful. But the creator economy is not evenly distributed, and it is not always fair. It is a ladder with a lot of missing rungs.
What This Means for Publishers and Studios
If creator influence is now a main driver of discovery, studios have to build for watchability as much as playability. That sounds a bit cynical, but it is just reality. A game that produces shareable moments travels faster. A game that looks confusing on stream gets judged quickly, even if it feels better in your hands.
It also changes how studios handle launches. Early access, preview builds, creator events, and sponsored streams all exist because creators can flip a game from unknown to everywhere in a weekend. That can be great when the game is ready. It can also backfire when it is not. A bad first impression on stream spreads faster than any patch notes can recover.
There is a human side too. Creators are not just marketing channels. They are people with audiences built on trust. If a studio tries to overcontrol the message, viewers notice. If a creator feels misled, they say so. That transparency is why creators carry weight in the first place.
For studios, the lesson is simple. Make something that holds up when someone plays it live. If it is fun, the internet will do the rest. If it is not, no trailer can save it.
Creators Are the New Front Door to Games
Creator influence is not a trend that goes away. It is now how many gamers discover what is worth trying. BCG’s stat about more than half of gamers following a favourite creator into a new game says it all. Trust is the new marketing currency, and creators have more of it than most ads ever will.
That does not mean trailers are useless. They still set the stage. But creators are where games get tested in public, in real time, with real reactions. If you are selective with your time, that is exactly the kind of signal you rely on.
So I am curious. Have creators actually changed what you play, or do you still ignore the hype and go your own way? And when you do try something because of a creator, does it usually work out?