In recent months, a new viral trend has been circulating on TikTok that has caused a stir among users. This is the NPC Live phenomenon, which gets its name from non-playable characters, that is, non-playable characters in video games. Something like movie extras. Some content creators have started doing live broadcasts on TikTok LIVE in which they imitate these characters. They do it in exchange for money that other users send them in the form of TikTok gifts, a very lucrative dynamic for the most successful streamers: some boast of earning up to 6,000 euros for each hour of broadcast.
The NPC concept describes those secondary characters in video games that are not controlled by any player behind the screen, since they are part of the game’s own programming. They appear to give the appearance of company to the main player or with a specific objective, whether to give a message, provide information about the video game or interact with whoever is playing.
These non-playable characters generally have lines of dialogue and programmed movements that they repeat over and over again, automatically, in short periods of time. They usually have a small repertoire of limited phrases and gestures that they repeat in a loop. Every time a player approaches an NPC, they reproduce the exact same reaction. For example, you may encounter an NPC who only tells you “You have to go to the right”; or others whose only function is to walk through a fictitious city while pretending to talk on the phone or cross a zebra crossing.
Some streamers have taken this type of characters as a reference and have created this new trend in which they imitate the robotic movements and phrases of NPCs. They do it over and over again for hours in exchange for TikTok gifts (redeemable for real money) from their viewers. The audience of these streams can buy virtual rewards for a few cents from the live stream itself and send them instantly. These gifts appear on the screen, and when the creator sees them, he responds with a phrase, gesture, or action from his “NPC repertoire.”
These NPC tiktokers have a specific reaction assigned to each gift that viewers send them, as if it were an automated response. For example, every time someone sends creator PinkyDoll ice cream, she says “Ice cream, so good!” (Ice cream, so good!); Every time she receives a cowboy hat, she responds “Yeeha, yes, you got me feeling like a cowgirl!” (Yeeha, yeah, you make me feel like a cowgirl!)
The phenomenon is a kind of adaptation of the reactions that some streamers have devised to thank – or simply make visible to their followers – that they have received a new subscription while performing a live broadcast. A couple of years ago the reaction of the former F.C. player went viral. Barcelona Luis Suárez when journalist Gerard Romero interrupted the interview he was doing on his Twitch channel to celebrate a new subscription with one of his ‘hakas’:
There is no doubt that some trends on TikTok are increasingly surprising. For many they are directly incomprehensible. But the truth is that content creators will do almost anything to monetize their online presence. And they have realized the profitability that live connections on TikTok offer them, in which it is the users themselves who pay them for the content, not the platform. That’s the key: these gifts that Tiktok makes available to creators can be transformed into real money.
Drawing a parallel with the real world, NPCs are like the street performer who juggles at the zebra crossing while vehicles wait for the traffic light to turn green; or like those human statues that act on the main avenues of some cities, such as the Rambla in Barcelona, ????that make a robotic movement when a passer-by puts a coin in their hat.
The difference is the setting. Tiktok NPCs do not act on a few drivers or walkers who are often in a hurry, do not carry change or are simply sick of seeing them. They are shown to a global audience. An unknown audience that doesn’t mind spending a cent to see how a person in a costume makes them spend their time. And from alms to alms, some become rich. Because there are a lot of people on the other side of the screen.
The influencer PinkyDoll, who is considered a pioneer of this trend and who calls herself “Queen of NPCs,” has accumulated more than one and a half million followers. She claims that she has earned more than 7,000 dollars (almost 6,500 euros) in a single NPC broadcast. The data is impossible to verify, because TikTok does not offer information in this regard. But as strange as it may seem, repeating phrases like “Lovely rose” 800 times in a row is generating quite juicy profits for some very select TikTokers.
Attracted by this viral and supposedly profitable trend, other creators have joined PinkyDoll and created their “NPC identities”, with their own phrases and gestures that they repeat depending on the reward they receive (and its associated value). Some streamers display a caption in some area of ??the screen during their broadcasts, so that the audience can see the reactions they will get depending on the gift they send them. Normally, the more valuable the gift received, the more “elaborate” the response given in return will be: a longer phrase, a different movement, a dance instead of a phrase…
The NPC concept is already part of the vocabulary of Generation Z, which describes as “NPC” people with little personality who simply follow the mainstream. Those people whose tastes are mainstream (belonging to the majority taste): they follow all the fashions, their tastes depend on what is popular at a specific time or what others say, they dress the same as everyone else…
They call them “NPCs” in an offensive way: they compare them to these non-playable characters in video games, who do not have interesting plots like those of a main character and who are limited to being “movie extras.” If they tell you that “you are an NPC,” they are telling you that you have little personality. This concept has become so popular among teenagers that it is now part of generational slang.
Videos have also been circulating on social networks for some time in which users imitate the robotic movements of NPCs from well-known video games, such as The Sims or GTA (Grand Theft Auto). They go out into the street and act like NPCs: they parody their way of walking, their robotic movements and even the game’s glitches that sometimes leave comical situations, such as characters waving at a streetlight or walking non-stop crashing into a wall.
The success of this concept and the entire memetic culture that revolves around NPCs has led to the appearance of these live broadcasts, NPC Live.
The live streams of the most famous NPCs can accumulate thousands of viewers and sometimes receive more than 400 roses in a row. Yes: when this happens, it means that the streamer has to repeat the phrase associated with that gift as many times as she receives it, even if he has to say “Ice cream, so good!” 400 times in a row.
On TikTok there are other dynamics similar to NPC Lives. For example, there are people who are quite well known on the platform for their live broadcasts in which they pretend to be sleeping. They get up to do the chicken dance in exchange for the gifts they receive from the spectators. Although it may seem like a strange dynamic, their broadcasts have thousands of viewers who do not hesitate to send them gifts to see them do the dance one more time.
Some well-known celebrities have also joined the trend. This is the case of the singer Nicki Minaj and the American streamer Kai Cenat. These personalities, with the large number of followers they have, can generate large amounts of money in a short time. This has been demonstrated by Kai Cenat who, with 8.8 million followers on Twitch, showed his earnings after participating in the NPC trend: almost 5,000 euros for a single hour of broadcast.
The growing popularity of this trend is causing a stir on social networks: there are those who pay to consume this type of content and there are also those who consider it dehumanizing and fetishistic. Although creators who imitate NPCs do not do what the audience asks of them, but instead access a list of actions that they themselves design, some users are criticizing the dynamics of these broadcasts: the incitement to get an action from the creator in exchange of small amounts of money, exercising control and power over that person and approaching the behavior of sexual content platforms such as OnlyFans.
Many users do not understand how there can be so many people consuming this content and criticize the fact that there are so many people who pay to laugh at these streamers. Others have described this trend as “strange, but addictive.” And by repeating the same phrase hundreds of times in a loop, with exactly the same voice and the same movement, it results in a constant and repetitive stimulus that makes thousands of viewers stay in the live stream.
