In today’s gaming industry, gaming influencers play a crucial role for gaming companies and media agencies. With the global gaming industry projected to reach a value of $384.9 billion, these influencers have become highly important in connecting developers with players.
Despite the challenging economic climate, gaming influencers have managed to thrive and even become superstars in their own right. Platforms like Twitch have dedicated livestream gaming content, allowing top Twitch streamers to gain immense popularity and influence within the gaming community.
What is influencer marketing?
Influencer marketing (also known as influence marketing) is social media marketing that involves endorsements and product placement from influencers, people, and organizations with professional knowledge or social influence in their industry. By uploading original, often sponsored, content to social media platforms like Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, and other online channels, influencers can impact others’ purchase behaviors and other quantifiable activities. When a brand hires social media influencers with a significant following and creates credibility, the influencers discuss or reference the brand in a social media post. Testimonial marketing could be used to hide influencer content.
Influence is more about loose interactions between people in a community than fighting for a point of view or product in the context of influencer marketing (often to encourage purchasing or behavior). This kind of influence is frequently associated with advocacy. The majority of social influence debates center on social persuasion and obedience.
What is an influencer?
There is no universal agreement on what constitutes an influencer. According to one writer, influencers are “a variety of third parties who wield influence over the firm and its potential customers.”
Based on another definition, an influencer is a “third person who significantly influences a customer’s purchasing decision but may never be held accountable for it.” According to a third source, influencers are “well-connected, have an impact, have active brains, and set trends.” Moreover, just because someone has many followers doesn’t imply they have much power over them; it just means they have many followers.
Influencers can be identified through market research, which applies predetermined criteria to determine the level and type of influence. Activists are involved in various groups, including their communities, political movements, and charitable organizations. Influencers who are connected have extensive social networks. The public respects and trusts influencers. Most influencers are also early adopters (or leavers) of marketplaces. In this way, they become trendsetters.
Influencers are classified according to the number of social media followers they have. They range from well-known celebrities to niche content providers with a big following on social media sites like YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. The number of people who follow them ranges from hundreds of millions to a thousand. Influencers are classified into four tiers based on the number of followers (mega-, macro-, micro-, and nano-influencers).
Businesses need help reaching customers who want to consume less advertising and are ready to pay their influencers more. Influencer marketing is considered a way to broaden the reach of traditional marketing and combat a growing trend among potential customers to ignore marketing.
However, connections and relationships need to be made to achieve effective influencer marketing. It is possible for companies to find influencers and create content on their own. Even so, with the help of PR agencies like Pressfarm, brands looking to connect with influencers can save a lot of time and effort.
How Pressfarm can help
Pressfarm can help you create newsworthy content to gain the attention of media professionals and influencers. With a professional press release, some compelling guest posts and a vibrant media kit, they can help you capture attention when it matters most. They also go the extra mile by providing companies with access to their PR database of over 1 million journalists. These contacts are filtered so that you can find your perfect media match easily.
Thanks to Pressfarm’s understanding of digital PR and marketing, they can help companies like yours gain media attention through relevant search results on multiple search engines. Pressfarm’s team of PR specialists, expert writers and certified designers has what it takes to help your brand capture attention among the right influencers.
The impact of gaming influencers
According to traffic statistics, top YouTube gaming influencers can provide advertisers with a broad reach through their consumer-oriented methods in the age of social media. More specifically, these influencers have a total network of 3 billion consumers dispersed across many platforms. Macro and micro gaming YouTubers have established themselves in a specific consumer group, providing marketers with a cost-effective video game marketing strategy.
As a result of the broad and highly specialized nature of the greatest gaming YouTube Channels, various influencers have emerged. Kotaku, derived from the Japanese word ‘otaku,’ which means geek, has established itself as a reliable source of video game news among gamers. Others, like IGN and Gamespot, are well-known for their reviews. Beyond this, several individual influencers, such as PewDiePie, broadcast game playthroughs and take their audience on a journey with them. Others, such as Ninja and Shroud, are well-known for their e-sports expertise in Fortnite and PUBG.
Such diversity in the YouTube gaming scene encourages specialization and competitiveness. This allows influencer marketing agencies, public relations firms, and businesses to reach their target audiences in far more effective ways than traditional marketing.
A few examples to highlight this impact
For example, CD Projekt Red, the Witcher 3: Wild Hunt producer, has a solid anti-piracy strategy that includes releasing DRM/Denuvo-free titles. The enormous amount of PC sales (12 million) for Witcher 3 reflects the success of their plan. According to the North American Technographies Consumer Life Cycle Survey, almost 70% of consumers are more likely to buy a product with positive customer ratings. This highlights the importance of customer trust and goodwill in the gaming industry. Furthermore, it highlights the importance of YouTube gamers in the customer acquisition process. This contributes to the growing importance of influencer marketing, as top influencers enjoy a high level of trust from their audience, resulting in increased consumer loyalty for brands.
Influencer marketing also allows brands to make informed marketing decisions based on followers, social media engagement rates, likes/comments, and other factors. Such characteristics are used as Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), which allow businesses to select the influencers they require and track their progress in real-time.
Top 25 gaming influencers in 2023
Here are 25 reliable influencers to turn to
1) Mr. Beast
MrBeast is a YouTuber, philanthropist, and entrepreneur from the United States. He is credited as being the first to start a YouTube video genre dedicated to expensive stunts. He is also the originator of MrBeast Burger and the co-creator of Team Trees, an Arbor Day Foundation fundraiser that has raised over $23 million. Night Media, a talent management business based in Dallas, is in charge of its management.
2) PewDiePie
Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg (also known as PewDiePie) is a YouTuber and comedian from Sweden who is most known for his Let’s Play videos and comic shows. Kjellberg, born and raised in Gothenburg, Sweden, began his YouTube channel “PewDiePie” in 2010. Here, he predominantly posted Let’s Play videos of horror and action games. Over the next two years, his channel grew in popularity significantly. On July 11, 2012, he hit a million subscribers.
3) JuegaGerman
Alejandro Garmendia Aranis, a German YouTuber with 40.1 million subscribers, uploads commentary on video games such as The Walking Dead. His channel is well-known for its high frequency of content creation, and he is one of the top YouTube gaming influencers, with an average of 3.22 million views.
He is one of the most popular Spanish-speaking YouTubers. With over 90 million subscribers across all his channels, he’s also one of the most popular YouTubers of all time. He has written and produced several songs with his band Ancud.
4) VanossGaming
The gaming channel VanossGaming is run by Evan Fong, a 25-year-old Canadian.
Evan’s videos usually revolve around him playing a game with other YouTubers. According to the Canadian Press, “Vanoss and a group of mates chatting, joking, and cracking jokes about gaming from well-known titles like Grand Theft Auto V or Call of Duty: World at War.”
VanossGaming has been uploading videos since 2011 and has risen to the top 20 YouTube channels. Fong is also a music fan who hosts the Rynx music channel.
5) Markiplier
Markiplier is run by Mark Fischbach, a Hawaii native who currently resides in California.
He enjoys “Let’s Play” gaming videos, in which he utilizes the camera to record himself playing a game. Markiplier prefers to make statements that are raucous and uninhibited. He portrays an exuberant, larger-than-life image in his videos. On occasion, he appears as Wilfred Warfstache, a figure with a pink mustache. He dyes his hair in bright colors on a regular basis.
His favorite gaming genres are indies and horror games, such as the Five Nights at Freddy’s series.
Markiplier is well-known for presenting live charity streams in which he collects donations while gaming.
He’s currently a part of the Maker Studios sub-network Polaris.
6) Jacksepticeye
Sean William McLoughlin, better known as Jacksepticeye, is proud of his Irish roots.
He began uploading gaming videos to YouTube in 2012. PewDiePie spotted him in 2013 and referenced him in a video. As a result, the popularity of his channel, Jacksepticeye, surged.
He also enjoys “Let’s Play” videos, which include him providing comments while playing a video game.
He posts a few videos per day, though not all of them are about gaming. Many of them are about the life of a gamer.
7) DanTDM
Daniel Middleton (aka DanTDM) is an English YouTuber. When he started his channel, his core audience consisted of children aged 5 to 10. Dan’s channel has changed since its debut in 2012. He called it The Diamond Minecart at first (thus the TDM in the channel’s current moniker).
As the name implies, the majority of his videos featured Dan playing various Minecraft mods. He learned that Minecraft offered so much user-generated content that he could make movies full-time while keeping his youthful audience engaged.
He updated his channel in 2016 to cover a variety of new games. So, he was also conscious of the fact that his audience was maturing.
Dan holds the following Guinness World Records:
- “Most goals scored in a Rocket League game by a two-person squad.”
- “Most goals scored in a Rocket League game by a three-person squad.”
- “The most views for a Minecraft video channel dedicated to the game.”
8) Popular MMOs
As the name implies, PopularMMOs is a channel dedicated to popular Minecraft mods. Patrick Brown manages this channel. He’s married to Jennifer Flagg, a fellow YouTube player who runs the GamingWithJen channel.
Patrick is a huge fan of Minecraft and its add-ons. He’s featured Minecraft Mob Battles and Arena Battles, Epic Modded Let’s Plays, Mod Showcases, and Minecraft Mods Vs. Maps on his channel.
The pair has amassed a cast of characters who appear in their videos. Among them are Captain Cookie, Captain Cookie Junior, Bellie, The Disguised Man, Carter, Jelly Bean, and a slew of others. Jen can be seen in a number of the videos.
Pat also has a second channel, PatVsTheWorld, where he competes against viewers in challenges.
9) W2S
Harry Lewis, an English gamer, has a YouTube channel called W2S. Previously, he was known as wroetoshaw.
The majority of the videos feature Harry commentating on FIFA games, with FIFA 18 being the current focus. W2Splays, his secondary channel, features him playing non-football games.
In his videos, Harry is noted for donning a distinctive blue jumper.
He competes in FIFA ‘Pink Slip’ challenges, wager matches in which players compete for a FIFA Ultimate Team Player Card.
He’s known for exploding during games, which many of his films portray as amusing.
10) Ali-A
Ali-A, as Alastair Aiken, is a 24-year-old British YouTuber who primarily makes videos about Call of Duty games, Pokemon Go, and Minecraft.
His channel was originally named Matrix, but he eventually renamed it to Ali-A and launched a second channel, Morelia.
He publishes Call of Duty videos every day and thoroughly covers the release of any new game in the franchise. According to Guinness World Records, he has the most subscribed and viewed Call of Duty channels in the world.
11) H2O Delirious
H2O Delirious is a YouTube channel that posts Let’s Play and gaming videos. He has remained anonymous, simply identifying himself as Jonathon. He is a member of the Vanoss Gaming team, and his face has yet to be revealed.
In 2015 and 2017, he made spoof April Fools videos in which he feigned to reveal his face.
He frequently posts videos where he plays video games with his pals, many of whom are well-known YouTube gamers.
His crazy “delirious” laughter has made him famous.
12) TheSyndicateProject
UK-based 24-year-old Tom Cassell has run the TheSyndicateProject channel for the past seven years. Tom Syndicate is a nickname he’s earned through the years.
He started the channel by uploading Halo and Modern Warfare 2 videos, but his game selection expanded. His Call of Duty: Black Ops Zombies videos have made him famous.
Like many other gaming channels, he has a Minecraft segment with a series of videos titled The Minecraft Project.
Tom is also well-known on Twitch, where he has more than 2.4 million followers, making his channel Twitch’s most popular channel.
The FTC has already fined him for failing to disclose his influencer contacts.
13) CaptainSparklez
CaptainSparklez is Jordan Maron’s stage name. He has been running this channel since July 2010. His Minecraft Let’s Plays, animations, and mod/command block reviews have made him famous.
He also posts videos in which he plays various games, the most popular of which are called Trials.
He also live streams games on Twitch, which he then uploads to his second YouTube channel, CaptainSparklez2.
14) The Game Theorists
The Game Theorists, Matthew Patrick, aka MatPat, upload comparatively educational gaming videos.
Game Theory, which he defines as “the smartest show in gaming,” is one of his main video series. Here, you can keep an eye out for your favorite video games but leave with knowledge. As real-world research addresses video game logic, anything is fair game.
He attempts to relate one video game environment to another in his videos, which cover themes such as video game culture.
MatPat, unlike most other well-known YouTube gaming channels, takes a far more analytical approach to gaming.
Since he uses a team to host various aspects of his videos, the channel is called Game Theorists (in the plural).
15) theRadBrad
Bradley Colburn, a gamer from the United States, is known as theRadBrad. He uses the Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3 and 4, and the PC. His games are recorded and shared on his YouTube page and Facebook, Twitter, Steam, and Google+.
Unlike many of his favorite channels, Brad prefers to mix it up when it comes to gaming and upload videos of himself playing various games.
He maintains a well-organized channel. The year the video was made is reflected in most of his playlists. For example, he has playlists titled 2018/2017 Series, 2017 Most Popular Series, 2016 Series, 2015 Series, etc. These are from his series from 2011 to 2010.
He arranges his videos by game within each year’s playlist. For example, he has a collection of 17 videos on Call of Duty WW2, another with 35 films about Resident Evil 7. He also has many other game-related collections in his Most Popular of 2017 Playlist.
16) SSSniperWolf
SSSniperWolf is a female YouTube gamer – a relatively rare breed. Her real name is Alia “Lia Valentine” Shelesh. She went by the moniker “SexySexySniper” at one point.
Lia was born in the United Kingdom, but her family moved to Arizona when she was a child. She began playing video games at the age of six, and when she was eight, her father gave her a Playstation.
Sniper Wolf, a character from Metal Gear Solid, was the inspiration for her name.
17) TobyGames
TobyGames is one of Toby Turner’s YouTube channels. He is a YouTube personality and comedian. His primary channel is Tobuscus. Toby is a witty character who refers to his audience as “Audience.”
He makes no pretense of being a gaming whiz. In fact, the description of his Terraria videos reads, “in this Let’s Play series of Terraria, famously lousy gamer Toby Turner (who also goes by Tobuscus and TobyGames because he is indecisive) fumbles through the PC video game Terraria.”
18) Fernanfloo
Fernanfloo is a Salvadoran YouTuber who specializes in gaming. His channel, which has over 8 billion views, 570 videos, and 40 million subscribers, is the 39th most subscribed on YouTube. It’s also the fifth most subscribed in Spanish-speaking channels behind Badabun, JuegaGerman, HolaSoyGerman, and El Reino Infantil. Finally, it’s the most subscribed channel from his home country of El Salvador.
19) SeaNanners
On YouTube, Adam Montoya is known as SeaNanners. He creates videos in which he provides commentary on various games. He started out playing Call of Duty on the Xbox 360 but has now moved to PC gaming.
Among other games, he’s developed playlists for Resident Evil 7, Mini Golf, Call of Duty Black Ops 2, and Minecraft.
20) FGTeeV
As its name suggests, the Family Gaming Team isn’t like most of your favorite YouTube players. They cater to a younger audience, making them a more family-friendly channel.
The Skylander family runs the channel. Members of this family include FGTeeV Duddy, his wife FGTeeV Mom or Moomy, their sons Shawn, Chase, Mike, and their daughter Lexi.
They are the only gamers on this list, along with DanTDM, and they pride themselves on running a family-friendly channel.
21) Ninja
Ninja is a professional gamer, Twitch streamer, and YouTuber from the United States. Blevins began streaming in late 2017 when he joined numerous esports teams for competitive Halo 3 play, and his popularity expanded as he began playing Fortnite Battle Royale. Blevins’ rise to fame in the public media began in March 2018 when he and Drake played Fortnite together. Almost overnight, his channel became the most-followed Twitch channel.
Blevins began playing Halo 3 competitively in 2009. He has formerly played for Cloud9, Renegades, Team Liquid, and, most recently, Luminosity Gaming. Blevins began streaming in 2011. H1Z1 was his first game, and then he moved on to PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds. He began his gaming career with Luminosity Gaming as a Halo player in 2017, before moving on to H1Z1 and lastly PUBG, where he won the PUBG Gamescom Invitational Squads classification in August 2017.
Blevins became the first Twitch streamer to reach 3 million followers in March of 2018. Later that month, while playing Fortnite with Drake, Travis Scott, and JuJu Smith-Schuster, he broke the record for the highest concurrent audience on an individual stream (outside of tournament events) with 635,000 viewers. During his event, Ninja Vegas 2018, in April 2018, he broke his viewing record, attracting a total of 667,000 live viewers. Epic Games, the creators of Fortnite, were inspired by this stream to conduct a philanthropic pro-am game in Fortnite in June of that year. This game featured notable streamers as Blevins matched against celebrities. Blevins dominated the event with electronic musician Marshmello.
22) CarryMinati
CarryMinati, Ajey Nagar, is an Indian YouTuber and streamer from Faridabad, India. He is known for his funny acts and reactions to a variety of online subjects on his channel CarryMinati. His second channel, CarryisLive, is dedicated to games and live streams.
Apart from living gaming, Nagar is well-known for creating Hindi-language diss songs, satirical parodies, and comedy. From his house in Faridabad, Nagar and his staff create videos.
Nagar started uploading videos to YouTube when he was ten years old. He has been active on his main YouTube account since 2014. The channel was called AddictedA1 in 2014, and Nagar would broadcast video game footage and his reactions to the game. In 2015, he renamed the channel CarryDeol and began streaming Counter-Strike: Global Offensive gameplay footage while imitating Sunny Deol. He eventually rebranded the channel and renamed it CarryMinati. According to a statement by Nagar in May 2021 the channel has more than 30 million subscribers.
23) TheWillyRex
Guillermo Dáz Ibáez, also known as Willyrex on YouTube, is a celebrity and author from Spain. Willyrex and TheWillyrex are his two YouTube channels. His YouTube channel, TheWillyrex, has over 12 million followers and over 4.35 billion views as of November 2012, making it Spain’s third most subscribed channel and the world’s 75th most subscribed channel.
24) Lachlan
Lachlan Ross Power is an Australian YouTuber, professional gamer, and internet celebrity best known for his Fortnite Battle Royale video game commentary. He is the founder of PWR, a lifestyle brand and gaming company.
In 2013, power created the CraftBattleDuty YouTube channel, where he primarily provided Minecraft, Battlefield, and Call of Duty video game commentary. When he started uploading Fortnite videos to his channel in 2017, it quickly grew popular. His YouTube channel surpassed 10 million subscribers in January 2019, making him the first Australian gaming content creator to do so. The channel had over 14 million subscribers and 4.7 billion video views as of April 2021. This made it the platform’s sixth most subscribed and fifth most viewed channel in Australia.
25) Kwebbelkop
Jordi van den Bussche, best known on YouTube as Kwebbelkop, is a Dutch gamer who posts in English.
Kwebbelkop is most known for his English-language YouTube videos in which he plays and comments about video games. His ‘Kwebbelkop’ channel has over 13 million subscribers, and his videos have been seen over 5 billion times as of 2020. He also has a second YouTube channel, ‘Kwebbelcop,’ with over 1.3 million subscribers, and is active on Twitter (with over 400,000 followers) and Instagram (more than 1.1 million followers ). As a result, he is one of the most popular and well-paid Dutch YouTubers. He is claimed to have made over a million euros in 2016 through his YouTube channel and related commercial operations.
Van den Bussche began uploading videos to YouTube in 2008, and from 2012 to 2014, he focused on daily recordings of video games (mainly Minecraft, but also Grand Theft Auto V) with his friend and former roommate Jelle van Vucht, who was also successful in the same genre. For the first time in December 2015, Van den Bussche’s YouTube channel surpassed 100 million monthly views. In 2017, he co-managed one of the most popular YouTube channels in the Netherlands. Van den Bussche reaches an international audience of youthful people with daily videos. He uses YouTube advertising and product promotion videos to generate revenue.
Conclusion
Thanks to a diversified skill set and a strong desire to succeed, these top YouTube Gaming influencers can go beyond providing information for the top Minecraft servers. In fact, these influencers have the reach and capability to make a significant impact on gaming industry customers. Despite the slump in the economy, the gaming business continues to grow. Traditional marketing methods have failed, but influencer marketing continues to expand.
Thanks to the expansion of streaming services in the gaming field and the arrival of the next console generation, the gaming industry is growing, and so is the power of influencers in this space. Influencer marketing remains one of the most efficient ways for brands to target their niche consumers. By leveraging their extensive knowledge and ability to connect with their followers, gaming influencers can help game developers reach the gamers they need.