- Gaming is easily one of the most crowded spaces
on all of YouTube, but somehow people are still blowing up,
even if they start their channels right now.
In fact, in rare cases, some channels blow up
with their first video and that success is happening early
because these channels are starting their YouTube journey
knowing what works today on YouTube,
and after watching this video, you will too.
I've been making these gaming guide videos
for a few years now, but in this one,
I want to avoid the generic tips.
So here's what we're gonna do instead.
First, we'll talk about what's not working
so well in gaming right now.
Then we're gonna dig into what is working
and from the perspective of a lot of different types
of gaming channels.
And finally, I'll share with you
my biggest revelation from last year.
It completely changed the way I see gaming on YouTube.
This affects everything, from how you physically record
and produce your content, all the way through
how often you should be posting your content.
So what's not working right now
and how can you keep from wasting
a whole bunch of time making videos
that pretty much nobody is discovering?
Well, for starters, going all in on one video game
is a losing strategy, at least, in most cases.
Centering your entire YouTube channel
around one video game isn't just unsustainable
for you as the creator,
I mean, even your favorite games get boring after a while,
but it's also unsustainable from a business perspective.
Unless you've chosen a game with a massive TAM,
or total addressable market,
you are not gonna be enjoying much long-term success.
And when I say massive total addressable market,
basically think of games
like Minecraft, The Sims, Diablo,
games that are huge household names and franchises.
And heck, even creators who do focus on one of those games
tend to also bounce around a bit.
In the case of DarthMicrotransaction TV,
they're pretty much all in on Diablo IV,
but occasionally do talk about other games.
Path of Exile, Last Epoch, World of Warcraft,
those videos may not be getting as many views
as some of the Diablo videos,
but they're still enjoying respectable view counts.
In one example, they have a video
titled "Why Gaming Isn't Fun Anymore."
It's doing really well for their channel
and potentially could, over time,
reach a lot of new viewers.
Over in a whole different corner
of the gaming YouTube universe is lilsimsie.
Her channel covers, you guessed it, The Sims,
except even lilsimsie is leaving room in her channel
to cover different games, in this case, a recent video
about an upcoming Sims competitor.
Channels like lilsimsie and DarthMicrotransaction TV
are making content for one audience, not one game.
And look, focusing on one audience
can be tough and also risky.
I'll help with that more in a little while though,
because the next type of gaming video
we need to discuss right now is news and updates videos.
This type of content has changed so much.
When you cover new updates and releases,
your strategy should not be solely focused on search and SEO
because think of it this way,
what happens when a new game comes out or a new update?
Well, first, a bunch of journalists
and big YouTubers get early access,
which gives them a leg up.
Then all the other humans
get a hold of this game when it finally launches,
and the content creators among them
all make the same exact video.
And finally, in the case where you make that video
and you've covered the new update, then what?
You still need more to do, right?
I mean, most channels don't just stop
at one video every six months.
Essentially, this means it's not a great strategy
for everyone to be the news and update person.
So instead of just reporting on the news,
you should use the one thing that you have
that literally nobody else does,
and that's your specific opinion.
For example, here's somebody who took a different approach
when they covered the recent Minecraft 1.21 update.
At the time of recording, you'll notice
that they have 6.5K subscribers,
but their update video has 789,000 views.
Why though, is this just luck?
Well, let's take a look at their video page.
It does seem like they've been more focused on Minecraft
since this big viral hit for their channel.
Specifically, they seem to be giving their opinions
on a lot of different Minecraft topics and updates.
Some of these videos are doing better than others,
but ultimately, no, I don't think
that their massive successful video was all luck.
To me, some of these titles and thumbnails
and topics are just more appealing than others.
For example, the videos featuring strong opinions
about easy to quickly understand concepts
are doing really well,
but the videos that speculate a bit too much
or have slightly confusing titles or thumbnails
are still doing well, but not to the same degree.
The coolest thing about this video
is that it's not just good for YouTube search.
The opinion in both the title and the thumbnail
is also on display, meaning that this video
is going to show up in YouTube browse as well as search.
So when it comes to covering news and updates,
be more like TheGeekFactor.
Their Minecraft 1.21 video beat out update videos
from channels with over a million,
and in one case, 11 million subscribers.
Another type of gaming video
that hasn't worked in quite some time
is the generic Let's Play video.
I'm talking specifically about these videos
that you click on
and it feels like the creator just kind of hit record,
but didn't go into the recording session
with much of a plan.
Now you can absolutely play a game
and provide real time commentary
and react to things that are happening,
but you have to plan ahead a little bit.
You need to do some research and pick a video topic
that's going to tell a story, and that needs to be clear
in the title and thumbnail as well.
When you don't do that work up front,
you don't get views on your Let's Plays.
The thing is these types of gaming videos
are so easy to make and therefore, they are super saturated.
Recently, I had a chance to talk to The Spiffing Brit,
and he summed all this up pretty nicely.
- [The Spiffing Brit] If you are going
to go into a saturated market, you have to find
the emerging market inside of that saturated game.
I think the best example of this would be the first arrival
of 100 days content in Minecraft.
And so if you are going to break into a saturated market,
like say Minecraft, you've got to enter
with either an established hook that people would recognize
or would find interesting that it's proven to have worked,
or you've either just gotten a one in a million idea
that no one else has ever done,
and it's gonna shake the landscape.
- When it comes to games, there's a lot of ways
you can add a bit of story progression to your videos,
and if you do that, you're gonna be ahead
of so many other gaming channels.
Now that you know what's not working on YouTube,
but let's dig a little bit deeper
into what is working super well in gaming today.
We already touched on doing gameplay challenges
and adding a bit more storytelling
and progression in the videos,
but Spiffing Britt had more to say on this topic
that I wanted to share.
Remember earlier when I said
I wanted to help a little bit more
when it came to finding one audience for your content?
Well, Spiff does that really well on his channel.
Every time he posts a new video,
it's about a different game,
but you'll notice that there's a specific theme
across each upload.
- [The Spiffing Brit] Take your unique selling point
and just move it to a different game
that you do want to play.
When I'm tired of playing one game,
I just go find a different game.
- If you want people to watch your channel for you
and not just the game you're playing, this is how you do it.
You need a thing that people remember you for.
When I think Spiffing Britt, I think, "Oh, that's that guy
that breaks games in YouTube all the time."
And yeah, if you didn't know Spiffing Britt
isn't famous for just breaking video games.
Some of his most popular videos
revolve around breaking YouTube itself.
He became known for breaking things
and now he can break all kinds of things, not just games.
A genre of videos that's new to me
started to catch my attention a lot more last year.
And then I noticed gaming channels
are really jumping into this space.
You should really start paying attention to video essays.
Video essays, or some might even consider them
documentaries, are really cool for a bunch of reasons.
One, they allow you to create at a slower pace.
You can play your game, take some notes,
and really craft a video over a long period of time.
Two, since you're uploading less,
you only need to think of one title
and thumbnail combination rather than a whole bunch
over the course of a week or a month.
And three, you get to enjoy games a lot more
rather than if you just picked up a new game
and pressed record to get content out as fast as you can.
Your essay is about the experience that you had in a game.
You're not just reacting to what's happening in real time.
You are informing people about your unique experience
that you had time to sit down
and actually appreciate for yourself.
We covered a channel recently
that made a video essay about an older game
called Wing Commander.
It was their very first video
and it did take some time for it to finally gain traction,
but once it did, it hit over 100,000 views.
Their second video essay was about Star Wars: X-Wing,
and it also hit 100,000 views,
but in even less time than the first video essay.
The audience that they're talking to with this content
is likely a bit older and maybe has some nostalgia
for these classic space games.
That understanding of their audience
has made Space Cadet Rewind a huge out of the gate success,
and that's even if their videos
take several months to produce.
But another channel that's also doing gaming video essays
that don't take quite as long is known as Idyl.
He started out by making videos on Old School RuneScape.
Some are about various challenges
and others were about plugins that he actually created,
which I mean, talk about effort.
Not only is he making a video,
but he's having a program an entire plugin
to go along with it so that he can make the video.
He's enjoyed some pretty good success
making those types of videos in the past,
but more recently, he's pivoted into video essays
and not just on Old School RuneScape.
He's branched out a bit more,
and these video essays chronicle his experience
in various MMOs.
These videos are created after Idyl takes some time
away from uploading to sit down
and actually play and experience the games.
The titles and the thumbnails alone speak to a video
that obviously took a lot of time to create,
and they demonstrate a very clear point of view up front.
Creators that do this slower paced kind of content
tend to disappear for a while,
but once they finally pop back up in your recommended feed,
you know immediately that not only did this video
take a long time to make, it's gonna be worth watching.
I mean, seriously, in the last six months,
how many videos have you made?
And when you total up that six months worth of videos,
how many views are you left with?
If your upload frequency is high
and your views are low, let me ask you this:
what if you did take a really, really long time
to make your next video?
You're gonna spend this month making a video
on a topic that you're really passionate about
and that not enough people are talking about.
Considering the time investment,
this obviously won't be for everybody,
but it's something you might consider.
Another type of gaming video
that's worked really well for a long time
is a category that all dub high skill-level content.
Speed running is a prime example,
but it's basically anything that could require
a lot of skill to achieve,
thus getting your gaming channel a lot more views.
One of the benefits behind this content
is that your title and thumbnail kind of create themselves.
They're super popular because the story
is also built in, right?
I mean, you're being upfront about trying to hit
some type of record or otherwise achieve
something impressive in a familiar game.
Players of that game either watch that content
to simply be entertained or to learn from you,
so they can also become better speed runners themselves.
You'll also notice that sometimes
this content is super long,
and that's because it really doesn't require any editing.
This works because it's actually super important
not to edit the original run.
If you need to prove that you actually beat this game
in an hour and a half,
you can't have jump cuts in the video.
Otherwise, it would be too easy to cheat.
But if this type of content has been around for so long,
why am I bringing it up today
as some kind of magical new strategy?
Well, in the case of those super long
speed running videos, it's watch time.
I don't know if it's because of YouTube shorts
or something in our drinking water,
but all of a sudden, it feels like a bunch of people
are willing to sit down and watch a one hour,
a three hour, or even a 12 hour gameplay video.
Yes, this was my big revelation of 2023,
and I studied it a lot, so I could sit here today
and tell you how you can potentially benefit from this.
And it doesn't matter if you speed run games
or if you're not even a gaming channel.
Watch time is a key metric on YouTube,
and it's one that here at vidIQ,
we don't often talk about too much.
Honestly, that's because so many of the creators
that come to us are asking kind of the same questions.
They tend to ask, in no particular order,
about titles, thumbnails, subscribers, views,
and ultimately, monetization.
But the truth is if you can figure out watch time,
it's gonna bring all of that stuff into focus.
But that does mean that you should be brainstorming ways
that every so often you could make a super long video.
If you did this even once in a while,
what would you make that video about?
How long do you think it would take to record and edit it?
And most importantly, what can you do
to make sure that even just a portion of those viewers
makes it to the very end?
Well, as I talked about earlier,
storytelling is gonna be key.
And for gaming channels, it's kind of easy
because you can lean on progression to tell that story.
Viewers love progress, whether it's speed running,
massive Minecraft builds or even long grinds and MMOs.
That's exactly what Settled did when he began
his Swampletics series in Old School RuneScape.
And even if you don't play MMOs,
pay attention because this strategy could work
for so many other types of channels.
Each episode on average was about 20 minutes long,
and they focused solely on his character
that was locked in a specific region of the RuneScape map.
Quests being completed, rare items being dropped
or just levels going up.
Once Swampletics wrapped up, Settled had become
one of the biggest creators in all of RuneScape,
but he wasn't done
because then he made his next genius move.
He took his entire series
and compiled it into one massive 12-hour video.
At the time of recording this video,
that video has four million views.
But why?
Who the heck is watching a 12-hour video
that's just a whole bunch of other previously released
videos crammed into one package?
Would a YouTube playlist not have served the same purpose?
Well, I have a few theories here,
and these are based off of several hours
of my own research on the topic.
What I found is that this type of video
is perfect for the kind of person who loves to binge.
You know how Netflix started releasing
seasons of shows in like two parts?
Yeah, people don't like that.
Whether it's for five minutes or for five hours,
a viewer wants to hit pause and resume on their terms.
What I've also seen is that people love
to put this kind of content on in the background,
whether it's because they're doing chores
or maybe they're trying to go to sleep.
The fact of the matter is they're not going to engage
with YouTube to keep playing videos.
They just want something that's gonna stay on.
With games, a lot of people in the comments of these videos
admit to sitting down and actually playing the game
alongside the video.
It keeps them company and it gives them ideas
and inspiration for things
they could be doing with the game.
Games like RuneScape can be played
in so many different ways,
so if you sit down and watch someone's 12-hour video,
whether it's all at once or in parts,
you're gonna pick up a lot of things
and you're gonna learn a lot about this game
that you may not have known before.
And on the subject of playlists,
no, I'm sorry, they are not good enough.
I don't know about you, but I find it incredibly difficult
to pause in the middle of a series on a playlist
and pick it back up later.
It's so much easier to have a 12-hour video, hit pause,
and then whenever I want, come back to it.
YouTube remembers my place on one long video
way better than it remembers my place in one long playlist.
YouTube, honestly, your playlists are just a bit clunky
and could probably use an update.
But also, YouTube, just don't listen to me
because I'm enjoying the really long videos
and the tons and tons of watch time I'm getting from them,
so thank you.
My big takeaway from last year
and from all of this is watch time.
And yes, titles and thumbnails
and click-through rates and average view durations,
it's all important, but if someone clicks on your video
and they don't stick around, it doesn't matter
because that video stops spreading.
Viewers want to be taken on a journey
when they click on that Let's Play video you made.
They want to hear your opinions
when they click on your gaming update news videos,
and they appreciate it when you spend time
crafting your content.
But to get that watch time, you need quality content.
And in this video I take a look at your gaming videos
to see how you can improve
your overall editing and presentation.