The Exit 8’s Nintendo Switch release reception highlights issue with streaming games
The release of hit indie PC game The Exit 8 on Nintendo Switch last week spawned a controversial discussion on whether gameplay streaming spoils short, walking sim games- leaving potential players with no motivation to pick up the title for themselves.
Following its release on PC last November, The Exit 8 quickly became popular with streamers in Japan, with various humorous playthroughs showing streamers panicked reactions to unexpected anomalies. The Nintendo Switch release has now brought Kotake Create’s liminal space, anomaly-spotting walking sim to a new console audience- however it seems that many have already been over-exposed to the game’s secrets. As playing The Exit 8 involves escaping a looping Japanese subway station corridor by finding anomalies- the game becomes less tense and fun if you already know what these anomalies are due to watching playthroughs.
However, as Japanese video game journalist Hayato Ikeya points out in the above tweets, it is unfair to say that The Exit 8’s popularity in streaming videos and the fact that the game is easily spoiled through this medium are faults of the game itself. This discourse highlights how streaming can negatively impact a game. This is particularly the case for shorter and story-based indie games as after viewing the game in a video, the watcher has little motivation to pick up and play the title for themselves.
In this sense, the genre still has much room to evolve.
Streaming guidelines for various video games, even those for vastly bigger AAA titles, highlight this concern. Last year, Sega announced that although it was not imposing any restrictions on what parts of Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth could be streamed, it still asked streamers to mark any spoilers and avoid using thumbnails from key moments in the game (Related Article).
However, in The Exit 8’s case, streaming brought widespread attention to the indie game’s existence in the first place, and it is likely that the benefits of streaming have far outweighed the losses. In fact, developer Kotake Create has allowed streaming of the game since day one, and it seems like he plans to have a similar pro-streaming policy for The Exit 8’s upcoming sequel- Platform 8 (Related Article). However, with some people blaming the game for being easily spoilt by playthroughs, it seems that streaming has become a bit of a double-edged sword for the game.
On the other hand, it could be argued that even someone who has watched many streams of The Exit 8 could still benefit from playing it themselves. After all, the sense of tension and fear you get when trying to progress through a horror game is different when you are playing it yourself as opposed to watching someone else. Can you really remember what all the anomalies are? Are you sure you won’t accidentally overlook one? Or, perhaps it’s worth picking up a game you watched in a stream later on when it’s not so fresh in your mind. As one X user summed up, The Exit 8 has “become too famous.”
However, despite these concerns- The Exit 8 was the most downloaded game on the Nintendo online store as of April 18- showing that plenty of people still want to play the hit indie walking sim.
The Exit 8 is available now on PC (Steam) and Nintendo Switch.
