Critical Role's Campaign 3 Is Drawing Big Audiences
Critical Role's newest campaign is putting up some impressive numbers on Twitch and YouTube. Last month, Critical Role launched its latest Dungeons & Dragons campaign, giving both newcomers to the web series and fans a new story to dive into. As expected for the series, which is one of the biggest "actual play" shows of its kind, the series is putting up some gaudy viewership numbers. As of press time, the first episode of Campaign 3 has over 2.1 million views on Twitch and another 2.67 million views on YouTube. The second episode, which was only posted to YouTube on Monday, has generated 1.4 million views on Twitch and an additional 1.1 million views on YouTube. In total, Critical Role's two Campaign 3 episodes have over 7 million views on the two platforms in just two weeks.
By comparison, the first episode of Critical Role's last campaign has over 14 million views on YouTube over the course of nearly 3 years. The finale of Campaign 2 (which aired in the spring) has over 1.9 million views on Twitch and 1.5 million views on YouTube. So - the first episode of Campaign 3 has been viewed about 1.4 times as much as the end of Campaign 2.
We'll note that, due to the size of each Critical Role episode (an average episode runs over 3.5 hours), many viewers may choose to watch an episode over the course of several days, which translates to multiple views on both Twitch and YouTube. These numbers also don't include listens from a podcast version of the show, which is shared a week after a new episode goes live on Twitch.
While not quite the same as a new "season" of television, the new campaign is clearly generating a ton of interest from fans both old and new and represent another sign of just how far Critical Role has come over the last few years. Not only was the show recently featured in the Hollywood trade magazine Variety, it also has an upcoming animated series based on their first campaign set to air on Amazon Prime early next year. Critical Role is also preparing to enter into the YA novel arena, with a first book set to debut later this month. A video game is also in the works, as are multiple D&D publications, including a full-length campaign published by Wizards of the Coast.
New episodes of Critical Role air every Thursday at 7 PM PT on the show's Twitch channels. VOD versions of the episodes are posted to YouTube every Monday.