After caving to pressure from his chat, Twitch streamer Northernlion almost broke his viewership record simply by playing one game. After caving to pressure from his chat to play Umamusume, an anime horse girl racing game, he instantly became the game’s biggest streamer.
His chat was begging him for literal days to give it a shot, and, when he finally relented, his community delivered. Memes and clips immediately spread like wildfire on Twitter, enough so that it funneled even more viewers in who were excited to watch him play.
At some points over the past few days, Northernlion has held a whopping 94% of the game’s total viewership on Twitch as a middle-aged man playing a game about horse girl high schoolers, something he himself has had to grapple with at certain moments in the game.
However, it does seem like he at least enjoys it.
Northernlion instantly becomes top Umamusume streamer
So, what is Umamusume? What is this horse girl game that’s probably all over your Twitter/X timeline?
In a mechanical sense, Umamusume: Pretty Derby has no real “gameplay”. The entire point of the game is to strategically train your chosen horse girl and give them the right stats to succeed via a number of social and training events. After that, you just sit and watch them race.
And, while this loop may sound simple, the process of properly training your racer is much more complex than it seems on the surface, and people get very invested in their trainee succeeding and winning the URA Finale at the end of the campaign.
This loop is so engaging that even people who’d seem far outside the target audience of Umamusume are locked in and motivated to win.
A mix of hype from his audience and Northernlion himself enjoying the game has created a perfect storm for him to become the game’s top streamer.
His July 2 stream peaked at 31k viewers, his second highest viewership peak on Twitch after several years of streaming. He’s also got almost double his typical average viewers while playing Umamusume, and this one streamer held over 93% of the game’s total Twitch viewership at one point.
He’s also by far Umamusume’s top streamer, beating out every other streamer in the world upon the game’s global release. At 36 years old, he isn’t the target audience that most people would think a game like this would appeal to, but that doesn’t mean he can’t enjoy it.
Northernlion even joked about being sad that he wasn’t going to be able to find time to play it over the weekend because he has to watch his kids, saying that he might try to “sneak a career in” while his children are on the playground.
The same is true of other streamers like Premier Two (aka Pete) who’s in his 40s and topping the charts with viral clips of Umamusume.
So, while the target demographic for a gacha game like this is likely people in their late teens and early 20s, a good video game is still a good video game.
Though the game was only available in select regions before its June 24 global launch, it was so hyped that publisher Cygames was a massive sponsor for the 151st Kentucky Derby. The esteemed horse racing event was the first time Umamusume: Pretty Derby was playable in the US.
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