As many of you know, I worked on a beloved series of skateboarding games, the last of which shipped in 2010, called Skate 3. As with many games and movies, Skate 3 hit the sales charts when it was released, peaked at a certain spot, and then steadily declined until it was no longer charted at all. Virtually no games come back onto the charts, especially when they leave for an extended period of time. This, however, was not the case for Skate 3.
Some of you maybe aware of the YouTube phenomenon where video makers gain a huge following just by recording themselves playing games. One such YouTuber is pewdiepie or Felix Kjellberg, a Swedish video maker. Kjellberg is likely the most famous and influential of those who make “Let’s Play” videos. His videos have millions of views and because of that, he generates a massive amount of advertising revenue for YouTube. He himself is a millionaire, just from his share of said revenue. Let that sink in for a second. Kjellberg made his millions by recording himself playing videos games and commenting on the on-screen action. Granted he does have a personality and obviously people enjoy watching his videos. It is interesting though that in this day and age, this was a viable method of becoming a multimillionaire.
So, as you can now understand, Kjellberg with his millions of viewers (and dollars) is a hugely influential person in the video game industry. Eight months ago, he decided to make a video of him playing Skate 3, which I posted above. That video currently has over 13 million views, which is phenomenal. He went on to make several more videos featuring our game, all of which have several million views. As a testament to his influence and to how people enjoyed seeing the game play, people went out and started buying up copies of Skate 3. The majority of these people never played any of our games previously and probably never would have even thought of picking up a four year-old skateboarding game. The demand was so high, a UK game retailer asked EA to make more copies of the game so they could put them on their shelves.
The end result is that Skate 3 re-entered the video game sales charts after a four-year absence. For the end of August, here are the charts for the US and Europe. It’s so odd but also awesome seeing our four year-old game nestled in the charts with games released this year.
Of course, I don’t see an extra dime of money from all these new sales but I’m just happy a whole new bunch of people are playing our game.