SuperJoost Playlist newsletter covered this topic a while ago after Netflix published their viewing numbers for the first half of 2023 but I was not fully satisfied with the results and got curious for more. Where is Cyberpunk? What about franchises that are not based on a video game but instead have a video game tie-in? And what about Netflix’s own games? Those are the questions I am answering here.
Franchises based on a video game
Here is the top 20 franchises based on a video game, by hours of content watched on Netflix:
An interesting mix of games for sure, from the venerable Carmen Sandiego and Sonic, to the more recent Cyberpunk, and through some mobile titles, MMOs, and even toy-to-life games like Skylanders!
And an interesting mix of formats as well: from feature-length movies, to animated series, some produced by Netflix, some not. Notably, Resident Evil with its long list of movies released in the last 20+ years is barely ahead of Cuphead and its three animated seasons totaling 36 episodes of 12 minutes released since 2022. The young demographic is certainly lifting a lot of properties very high on this list.
Franchises with a video game tie-in
Here is the top 20 franchises having a video game tie-in, by hours of content watched on Netflix:
There are on this list some unexpected properties perhaps, like The Office or Friends. Those may not have spawned as many game tie-ins as One Piece or even The Walking Dead, but they did in their time have one. Is it perhaps time to look at more IPs that could benefit from a one-of tie-in for a more casual population of gamers?
And finally, here is the shorter list only focusing on those IPs having an already Netflix-published tie-in:
No doubt Netflix will be publishing more games using other IPs available in their catalog, strong of their audience knowledge. For instance, there are already Chicken Run, Money Heist, and of course, Squid Games games in the works. But what about some of the heavy-hitting Netflix Originals in this viewership report: Sweet Tooth, or Ginny and Georgia?
Wondering which non-Netflix IPs are being left behind? Here are some IPs I picked from the top of the list without a video game tie-in yet: Murder Mystery, Black Mirror, Alice in Borderland, S.W.A.T., Lucifer, of course there are many more deserving to be on this list. What is your pick?
Considerations
Interested in seeing the full tagged data? Reached out on LinkedIn!
Did I miss some franchises as having a video game tie-in? Yes. Definitely. There were over 8,000 titles manually tagged and while I did manually verify a number of them, I may have missed some. If that is the case, do reach out and comment.
The methodology for franchises having a video game tie-in or not was not an easy one in practice but below are the rules I tried to follow. It is a long list as I tried to bring a personal take (read: bias) and some balance to the analysis.
- Having a video game set in the franchise universe released since the first Sony Playstation, excluding mobile-only titles, but including portable titles.
- Only titles released as of this writing.
- Individual property entries watched for at least 1,000,000 hours on Netflix in the first 6 months of the year 2023.
- The appreciation of whether a game set in the same universe as a property is a tie-in was rather variable. For instance, Barbie and Boss baby games were counted in even if only broadly set in the same franchises but I would not count Jurassic World Evolution as a tie-in to the Jurassic World animated series due to theme and audience.
- In general, the attribution of a game as a tie-in was more generous for kid-oriented properties. As a result, the numbers for Barbie and My Little Pony, for instance, are likely on the higher end.
- For long-running franchises like Mission: Impossible franchise, there may not have been a game in a while, but since there is a game tie-in for one of the movies, I usually opted to count it as a tie-in to the whole franchise.
- Some very popular properties such as Friends or Grey’s Anatomy had a single tie-in along the way and which may be long forgotten. For instance Friends had a trivia game released on PC and PS2. I counted this in although it may not have been a very commercially successful game or be easily available today. Yet I believe it definitely fits the bill of a TV property getting a video game tie-in.
- Simple character appearances were not counted. For instance I did not count the Injustice video game series as a tie-in to The Flash TV shows or movies as the game is not centered on the Flash property. Conversely, a movie like Pixels, tapping into multiple properties was not counted.
- The Spider-Man video games, while not directly tied in to the Tom Holland movies, were counted in, as I reckon their timing acted as an amplifier. I did not count them as tie-in towards earlier takes on the franchise though.
- While the Witcher game is based on a series of books, I have opted to claim the live action adaptations as based on the games.
- Finally, I am counting in those real life sports franchises that have licensed their rights to a video game, such as FIFA or Monster Trucks.
And a note regarding the source data itself: not all content from a franchise is available on Netflix, and not all content is available in every country, so there’s for instance more hours of One Piece watched outside of Japan where it is available on Netflix, and not counted here.