Cross Visitation Data: Gaming + Streaming Services
Fandom is the world’s largest fan platform sitting at the intersection of entertainment & gaming. With 350M monthly visitors and over 45MM pages of content across its portfolio of brands (including Gamespot, TV Guide and Metacritic), we have extremely valuable first party data that enables us to provide unique and proprietary insights & trends around anything & everything in gaming and entertainment.
More than 150 million gaming fans flock to Fandom and our 100K+ gaming centric communities each month, enabling us to unlock precise and unmatched insights into the world of gaming. Beyond understanding every detail that resonates with fans within each IP, we can see the complex relationships between the games, their storylines and their characters.
Even more powerful than our depth of insight into gaming is our ability to connect the dots with television and movies to understand the relationships between every imagined world, franchise and character. Gaming has long been a source for TV and movie franchise extensions - like Spiderman and Hogwarts - but recently gaming has also become the next treasure trove for new content development, joining books and comics as a major source of rich storylines and characters for new series and film franchises.
Halo, Arcane and most recently, HBO Max’s The Last of Us, have demonstrated that gaming to show/movie development is a formula for success. So what game will be the next big streaming franchise? The gaming world is complex - but Fandom has the deepest and broadest set of data to help studios examine what IP will be a hit for their services and fans.
Macro Insights:
- What type of games are most likely to provide the best source material for a feature film or streaming service? Narrative driven games.
57% of fans say the storyline and thematic elements of the game are key factors for them.
Halo, Arcane, Cyberpunk and Last of Us are all narrative driven
- Does overall game popularity and genre translate to popularity in another format? Yes.
70% of fans will play a game simply because they are a fan of that franchise.
Action, sci-fi, fantasy are the top genres that resonate with the gaming community, which is why we see The Last of Us, Star Wars, Marvel, and Harry Potter all having huge success with cross-media franchises.
Studios with strong franchises in these genres may find success in the gaming market, similar to what we’ve seen with franchise games including The Last of Us, Lego Star Wars: The Star Wars Saga, the LOTR Middle Earth Games and The Witcher role playing game.
Source: FanDNA + Fandom’s Inside Gaming report
The below data dives into which IP’s gaming fans are most engaged with for each streaming service. For example, visitors to the Peacock Wikis are 37x more likely to engage with Angry Birds than other Fandom users; 29x more likely to engage with Sonic than other users; and so on.
Top Cross-Visitation For Peacock
Angry Birds 37x more likely
Sonic 29x more likely
Just Dance 19x more likely
Mario 14x more likely
Everquest 12x more likely
Pokemon 9x
Fallout 8x
Dragon Ball 8x
Minecraft 7x
Elder Scrolls 6x
What we know: Though we see things like Law and Order and The Office get decent amounts of traffic, the top Peacock Wikis are actually animation, driving a lot of young gaming IPs to be the most cross-visited. With some of Peacock’s top wikis being in the animated/kid-friendly category, this represents a potential opportunity for the streamer to focus on kid-friendly IP’s as upcoming shows.
Top Cross-Visitation For Paramount+
Dragonvale 46x more likely
The Forest 16x more likely
Stalker 16x more likely
Binding of Isaac: Rebirth 16x
Rainbow Six 12x more likely
Street Fighter 9x
Raft 9x
Dead Cells 8x
Disco Elysium 7x
Might and Magic 6x
What we know: On our site, Paramount traffic is driven mostly by Nickelodeon content, which makes a lot of these first person shooter games all the more interesting. It's an opportunity for P+ to look at first-person shooter IP’s for potential crossover hits.
Top Cross-Visitation For Apple TV
God of War 282x
Megaman 256x more likely
Freddy Fazbear’s 159x more likely
Magic the Gathering 72x more likely
Persona 5 51x more likely
What we know: Sci-fi and fantasy are among the most represented genres for Apple TV including For All Mankind, See and Foundation (and not surprising to see that also represented in cross-visited games). While AppleTV+ had the fewest results of any streaming service, the crossover it did have was huge - representing a really big opportunity for this particular streamer.
Top Cross-Visitation For Amazon Prime
Creatures of Sonaria 212x
Rainbow Six 14x
Dragon Age 10x
Doors Game (Roblox) 10x
Twisted Wonderland 8x
Call of Duty 6x
Half Life 3x
Merge Mansion 3x
Genshin Impact 1.5x
Plants Vs. Zombies 1.4x
What we know: Lots of variety on Amazon - which means they have many different genres of gaming they can lean into and are well positioned to take advantage of gaming IP crossovers. Creatures of Sonaria might come from something like Peanuts, but there are a few first person shooter games represented here, likely driven by more violent programming like Jack Ryan, The Boys, and Invincible.
Top Cross-Visitation For HBO Max
White Wolf 80x
Castlevania 45x
Starcraft 21x
Pillars of Eternity 18x
Horizon Forbidden West 17x
Harvest Moon 8x
The Last of Us — which happened! 7x
Sims 7x
Cookie Run Kingdom 7x
Subnautica 6x
What we know: Not too surprising the channel that has Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon would cross perfectly with a game called White Wolf. Lots of genre/fantasy represented by HBO Max. Narrative-driven games like White Wolf and Horizon are big opportunities for HBO Max to continue to capitalize on the gaming IP crossover.
Top Cross-Visitation For Disney+
Megaman 161x
Sonic 25x
Poppy Playtime 23x
Dead Space 14x
Kirby 7x
Assassin’s Creed 7x
Brawl Stars 5x
Undertale 5x
Grand Theft Auto 5x
Red Dead Redemption 4x
What we know: Interestingly, some of the results defy expectations a bit - some horror, some first-person shooter, some combat. So while you may assume Disney’s targets would all be family-friendly IP’s like Sonic, there's actually a lot of adult content here which opens a new door of possibilities for Disney+.
Top Cross-Visitation For Netflix
Fortnite 32x
Starcraft 31x
Dragonvale 18x
Mortal Kombat 16x
God of War 14x
Atomic Heart 8x
Stalker 8x
Phasmophobia 7x
Diablo 7x
Overwatch 4x
What we know: There is a gaming genre variety with Netflix - horror, shooter, action/adventure and battle royale - which opens the door for them to capitalize on some crossover IP hits. Netflix is also the home of Vikings, Vikings: Valhalla and Record of Ragnarok so its not surprising fans would lean into God of War/ more Norse content.
Top Cross-Visitation For Hulu
Kingdom Hearts 56x
Doom 13x
Freddy Fazbear 9x
Ace Attorney 8x
Romance Club 8x
Zelda 7x
Kirby 7x
Guilty Gear 6x
Final Fantasy 6x
Resident Evil 4x
What we know: Lots of sitcoms and light-hearted fare are driving Hulu traffic on Fandom’s site, so it's interesting to find Romance Club and Ace Attorney. American Horror Story might drive horror games like Freddy Fazbear, too. And since 57% of fans say storyline & thematic elements of the game are key factors for them, procedurals like Ace Attorney could be a surprising target for Hulu.
IMPORTANT TO NOTE: The below IP’s that have already been films/series BUT - it's not just about only leaning into completely new IP’s but also about what types of content streamers should license, even if they already exist. It’s important for studios to consider what's a good content fit for specific platforms/streaming services, whether it's built from scratch, getting the rights to existing content or carving out a space to develop a different part of the franchise.
Angry Birds
Sonic
Mario
Pokemon
Fallout
Dragon Ball
Minecraft
Freddy Fazbear
Ace Attorney
Kirby
Resident Evil
Mortal Kombat 1
God of War
Diablo
Horizon Forbidden West
Harvest Moon
The Last of Us
Creatures of Sonaria
Rainbow Six
Dragon Age
Twisted Wonderland
Genshin Impact
God of War
Megaman
Freddy Fazbear’s
Magic the Gathering
Rainbow Six
Street Fighter
Some other interesting takeaways:
Apple TV viewers WAY over index for God of War. There's a God of War series in the works already - but for Amazon Prime where it doesn't register in the top ten.
Streamers should consider Starcraft or Half-Life adaptations. These are both decades-old franchises with huge followings, stronger-than-average narratives, and the opportunity for great visual effects.
Dragon Age and Elder Scrolls could be sleeper hits for a streamer. Similar to The Witcher, Wheel of Time, etc.
Final Fantasy, Horizon Zero Dawn, Assassin's Creed, Fallout could be "serious" adaptations
The Rainbow Six video games are based on Tom Clancy novels, which have long been a source for successful film & TV adaptations (Hunt for Red October, Jack Ryan, etc)
Freddy Fazbear (from the Five Nights at Freddy's game series) popped up for Hulu - this series is very popular with Gen Z and it's been rumored WarnerMedia is working on a film adaptation already
Some of these IP’s were already films of varying degrees of success: Angry Birds, Doom, Resident Evil, Mortal Kombat.
Methodology
Cross Visitation Data: Top 10 Gaming Wikis for Fans of Each Streaming Platform
Source: FanDNA, Fandom’s first-party platform data