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Looks like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has got Twitch’s vote.
The New York Democrat made her debut on the Amazon-owned AMZN, -1.56% streaming service Tuesday night, playing the online multiplayer game “Among Us” with fellow Squad member Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) to encourage voting in the Nov. 3 election.
And her stream was a hit, peaking with 435,000 viewers during her first match, while another 200,000 or so followed her progress over separate broadcasts streamed by gaming stars like Pokimane and Jacksepticeye, Forbes reported.
But this news has led many voters outside of the gaming community to ask: What is “Among Us,” and why would a 31-year-old politician join Twitch to spend hours playing it?
Streaming services like Netflix NFLX, -6.54%, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu and Disney+ DIS, +0.76% have enjoyed subscription boosts during the COVID-19 pandemic as people spend more time at home. More than one in four consumers (28%) in a recent Hub Entertainment Research survey said they’ve added at least one new subscription service since February. And Twitch, which launched in 2011 and primarily focuses on videogames and esports, has seen its viewership surge. The number of hours watched on the platform jumped 50% between March and April alone to hit 1.49 billion hours, according to StreamElements and Aresenal.gg’s monthly State of the Stream report. August saw 1.47 billion hours watched.
And “Among Us,” which is like a cross between a murder mystery party and the classic sci-fi film “The Thing,” has become a sleeper hit. Here’s how it works:
Four to 10 players work as crew members trying to hold a spaceship together. While they complete tasks to keep the craft in one piece during the flight, they also have to keep their eyes peeled for “imposters”— up to two players who are actually aliens bent on sabotaging the ship and killing the entire crew. So the rest of the players try to maintain the ship while catching the murderer(s) among them, which is made more difficult by the imposters having the power to “vent,” or travel between rooms without being seen by the other players. Every time a dead body is found, the players can call an emergency meeting to vote one person off the ship that they believe is an imposter based on any suspicious (or “sus”) activity they’ve seen. The objective is for the crew to either vote out the imposter(s) or complete all of the tasks before the imposters kill them all.
Make sense? You can also watch the trailer here:
And some highlights of Ocasio-Cortez making her way through the game here:
While Innersloth launched the game in 2018, its popularity has spun into overdrive recently as top streamers began playing it during the pandemic. StreamElements and Aresenal.gg reported a 650% spike in people watching “Among Us” streams on Twitch in August, when it was the platform’s 11th most-watched game with 30 million hours.
What’s more, the gameplay and its lingo have spawned Twitter accounts and memes, TikTok videos that have amassed more than 13 billion views, and even fan fiction drawn from in-game scenarios. Brands like Wendy’s have also gotten in on the action.
So reaching out to this young, connected audience is a no-brainer for a politician like Ocasio-Cortez. And she’s not alone. Former Democratic presidential candidates like Vermont Rep. Bernie Sanders and Andrew Yang have previously used Twitch for campaign outreach. President Trump’s re-election campaign has, too — although it was suspended from the platform for two weeks in June and July for “hateful conduct” after airing rallies where the commander-in-chief made comments deemed to be racist and offensive. Progressive advocacy group MoveOn has also streamed “Among Us” games on Twitch with organizations including Justice Democrats and Crooked Media.
And the Biden campaign has an official partnership with “Animal Crossing: New Horizons” for Nintendo’s NTDOY, -1.31% Switch console, a game where players develop their own virtual islands. Biden has his own campaign-branded location within the game that players can visit to speak with a digital avatar version of the former vice president. And players can also place Biden-Harris lawn signs in their virtual yards. While Trump’s reelection campaign has not officially created campaign signs or T-shirts for “Animal Crossing” — going so far as to mock Biden for doing so — players can and have made their own Trump-Pence merch for the game.
