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Cross Visitation Data: Gaming + Streaming Services

March 1, 2023

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+

  1. Dragonvale 46x more likely

  2. The Forest 16x more likely

  3. Stalker 16x more likely

  4. Binding of Isaac: Rebirth 16x

  5. Rainbow Six 12x more likely

  6. Street Fighter 9x

  7. Raft 9x

  8. Dead Cells 8x

  9. Disco Elysium 7x

  10. 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

  1. God of War 282x

  2. Megaman 256x more likely

  3. Freddy Fazbear’s 159x more likely

  4. Magic the Gathering 72x more likely

  5. 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

  1. Creatures of Sonaria 212x

  2. Rainbow Six 14x

  3. Dragon Age 10x

  4. Doors Game (Roblox) 10x

  5. Twisted Wonderland 8x

  6. Call of Duty 6x

  7. Half Life 3x

  8. Merge Mansion 3x

  9. Genshin Impact 1.5x

  10. 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

  1. White Wolf 80x

  2. Castlevania 45x

  3. Starcraft 21x

  4. Pillars of Eternity 18x

  5. Horizon Forbidden West 17x

  6. Harvest Moon 8x

  7. The Last of Us — which happened! 7x

  8. Sims 7x

  9. Cookie Run Kingdom 7x

  10. 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+

  1. Megaman 161x

  2. Sonic 25x

  3. Poppy Playtime 23x

  4. Dead Space 14x

  5. Kirby 7x

  6. Assassin’s Creed 7x

  7. Brawl Stars 5x

  8. Undertale 5x

  9. Grand Theft Auto 5x

  10. 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

  1. Fortnite 32x

  2. Starcraft 31x

  3. Dragonvale 18x

  4. Mortal Kombat 16x

  5. God of War 14x

  6. Atomic Heart 8x

  7. Stalker 8x

  8. Phasmophobia 7x

  9. Diablo 7x

  10. 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

  1. Kingdom Hearts 56x

  2. Doom 13x

  3. Freddy Fazbear 9x

  4. Ace Attorney 8x

  5. Romance Club 8x

  6. Zelda 7x

  7. Kirby 7x

  8. Guilty Gear 6x

  9. Final Fantasy 6x

  10. 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