User videos turned Surgeon Simulator into YouTube hit

User-created videos played a major part in putting Surgeon Simulator on gamers’ radars and refocusing the development team at Bossa Studios.

Originally created at a game jam, the response to videos of the slapstick indie game uploaded by users was great enough to make Bossa put its development plans on hold and shift personal to fresh out the demo into a full game.

“It was obvious straight away we needed to do something with this,” Bossa’s senior marketing manager David Miller told Develop, in an extended interview about the creation of the game.

“Of course, at the beginning we only had the start of that YouTube sensation, so it still took a bit of a leap on our behalf.”

Uploads by one user in particular, Felix Kjellberg, better know as ‘PewDiePie’ on YouTube were shared among thousands of users. Kjellberg boast of over eight million subscribers to his YouTube channel, and many of them liked Surgeon Simulator.

As the days went by, senior management at Bossa decide to pull some staff of current projects to work on expanding Surgeon Simulator.

User-created videos are playing a huge part in the promotion of games today, with series such as ‘Let’s Play’ watched by millions of gamers. The next generation consoles PS4 and Xbox One both have a built-in video sharing capabilities, which represent another avenue to how developers can get their game’s in front of potential players.

You can read more about the making of Surgeon Simulator in this month’s cover feature.