K4sen stands out among the pantheon of famous Japanese streamers for his ability to freely float between different realms of the live-streaming space. Beginning his career making Call of Duty content on Niconico, he later transitioned to League of Legends and streaming on OPENREC.tv before finally switching to Twitch in 2021 and joining the gaming esports group ZETA DIVISION. Even as he remained committed to competitive gaming, k4sen became known for hosting massive streamer collaboration events.
The most recent of these is k4sen’s Final Fantasy XIV (FFXIV) event. FFXIV is Square Enix’s MMO based on the Final Fantasy series, providing the developer’s most solid link to online gaming (as compared to their mainline single-player titles like Final Fantasy XVI or their remakes of earlier titles like Final Fantasy VII Rebirth). K4sen invited seven other Japanese streamers who had virtually no experience with FFXIV to tackle the game’s hardest raids and see if they could come out on top.
In this article, we’re looking at the success of k4sen’s event, including a look back at his top streams of all time and the importance of influencers in driving viewership for FFXIV.
K4sen’s Final Fantasy XIV Event Benefits VTubers and On-Camera Creators
Every collaborating streamer covered k4sen’s event on their own channels, but k4sen’s viewership is perhaps the most stable indicator of the FFXIV event’s popularity. Across three streams over three days (the 2nd, 3rd, and 5th of September), k4sen generated 859K hours watched for his FFXIV event. The first day was by far the most popular, with a peak viewership of 58K signaling the hype for this event as fans of the many collaborators tuned in to see the streamers’ dynamics.
The event took three days as the group pushed themselves to beat a specific raid: The Whorleater (Extreme). The boss is particularly difficult, with many one-hit KO opportunities. As such, two mentors were on board to help guide the inexperienced team: Tonkaito_hendy (ヘンディー) and sasatikk. After proving themselves worthy (and with the event a success in terms of viewership), the group pushed on and cleared two more Extreme raids over extra days. As such, the event ran longer than expected and stirred up buzz for all of the streamers involved.
Looking at every participating streamer, including the mentors, reveals a definite gulf in viewership. Along with k4sen, Kuzuha and fps_shaka rounded out the top 3 with 1M and 825K hours watched, respectively, before a big drop down to 351K hours watched for sasatikk in 4th place. Aside from these top three, the other streamers were a mix of VTubers and on-camera streamers which showed the diversity of the event (made possible by k4sen’s influence) and the growing popularity of live streaming in Japan.
This means despite hosting the event, k4sen was actually pipped for the top spot by Kuzuha – an incredibly popular male VTuber. K4sen retained some status though, still having the highest peak viewership out of any of his collaborators. It’s worth noting that the two mentors brought in the next highest viewerships, presumably because their fans are also specifically fans of FFXIV content.
K4sen’s History of Record-Breaking Events and Esports Popularity
While this most recent FFXIV event has been a phenomenal success for k4sen, it’s far from being his most popular stream of all time. Two of these FFXIV streams made it into k4sen’s top 15 all-time streams, sitting in 11th and 13th place with 316K and 300K hours watched, respectively. An impressive showing, but outperformed by one title in particular…
The majority of k4sen’s most popular streams are League of Legends (LoL) events from the past two years, occupying 7 of the top 15 spots. These LoL streams are tournaments hosted by k4sen featuring some of the best players in the game and other popular streamers. His most popular LoL stream generated 468K hours watched, albeit with a slightly longer airtime of 12 hours. Some outliers exist, such as his most popular stream for Rust which generated an incredible 813K hours watched – again, due to a collaboration with other streamers.
It’s incredible to think that one streamer has enough influence to pull together big names despite their busy schedules. Part of k4sen’s success is his ability to adapt to different content forms. Although the streams discussed here are all games, k4sen has also hosted a poker tournament, a summer vacation trip, and an academic test (a popular trend among VTubers). Of course, he is also generous with his time, participating in other streamers’ events like Junichi Kato’s incredibly successful Hyper Game Tournament.
Final Fantasy XIV Benefits from Influencers Between New Expansions
K4sen’s Final Fantasy XIV event reasserts the importance of influencers in the gaming space. While it’s impossible for developers to consistently pump out meaningful, hype-worthy content for fans, lulls in activity can be mitigated by working with influencers to keep their game relevant.
Looking at the recent viewership for FFXIV confirms this theory. Over the last six months, FFXIV saw two large surges in weekly viewership: 6M hours watched for the release of the latest expansion Dawntrail in July, and 5.8M hours watched for k4sen’s event. In other words, k4sen’s influence is almost as great as an entire expansion’s worth of content – something that takes around 2.5 years to put together. Even other events organized by Square Enix struggle to match this level of support, like the Final Fantasy XVI crossover event back in April that doubled weekly viewership to 2M hours watched.
As FFXIV jumps from strength to strength, Square Enix is hoping to close in on old guards in the MMO genre like World of Warcraft with its recent The War Within expansion. More influencer marketing and community outreach is sure to help buoy viewership between expansions, capitalizing on the ever-growing popularity of the MMO genre on live streaming. Stream Hatchet will be watching for when k4sen brings his collaborative power to another game soon.
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