I'm Matthew Patrick from the channels Game Theorists and Film Theorists,
and you're watching The Creator Show.
I am here with Matthew Patrick, also known as MatPat of The Game Theorist,
and now Film Theorists—that's two channels!
Two channels!
What kind of stuff do you do on your channels?
So, basically I like to say that we are the Myth Busters of gaming,
and now of film and TV as well—
where we are applying science, math, history, deep analysis of lore
to question some of the assumptions that you have, or learn more about some of your favorite
video games, TV shows, and movies.
You just launched a new channel. -Thank you, yes.
A month ago? -Yes.
But you got like a half million subscribers the first few days of launch and now a million subscribers in the first month?
Yes. -That's incredible! -Thank you!
How did you do it? Tell us! -Secrets!
Sorry, I feel like I'm beating you up here. -No, it's all right.
You know, I think it was a combination of things, right?
So, a lot of times when creators will launch a new channel,
they don't give it a strong enough value proposition
to get people to want to subscribe to it or get excited to subscribe to it.
They'll be like here's my new channel, and there will be like
a trailer up, or there will be like no videos, and it's like oh, this is a thing
where stuff will happen one day!
You will have a subset of like the really hard core fan base will be like
yeah, I'm gonna go with you where ever!
I'm gonna subscribe to everything that you do, that's awesome!
But then ultimately it's like, you know, there's nothing there for me to enjoy.
Whereas, with the launch of Film Theorists,
one of the things I was really going for
was hey, when you land on this channel, all of a sudden
you're going to see a handful of videos
that all represent kind of the spectrum of things that you can expect from this channel.
You want to kind of optimize for what people are already interested in and what they're watching.
And so, by throwing things into the mix that kind of break up that watch session
or that "lean back experience,"
all of a sudden, I am creating friction with that viewer,
and they're going to leave the channel. -That makes total sense.
What is your theory then— -A YouTube theory!
I caught myself. -Sorry, it happens.
Always, at least once per any video that I'm ever in.
I know a lot of creators do this because they're like
like, subscribe, blah, blah, blah—that's not a well optimized call to action.
What are some like better ways that they can do a call to action?
Well, do you know the science behind like decision fatigue and willpower?
No. -You don't?
Well, as a matter of fact, I do not. -Elbow buddies!
So each day, a human, a person, starts their day
with a set amount of decision making energy.
And everything that you do depletes it.
TV historically has been so successful
because it's a passive medium.
But YouTube and digital video in general
is very active decision based platform.
It's one of those things that, when I go onto YouTube,
I generally need to have an idea of what I want to watch,
and type it into the search bar, find their channel, and then like
oh, I want to watch this video.
So each step along the way I'm having to make a decision.
And that's exhausting.
And so, anything that you as a channel creator can do to help lessen
the amount of decisions that that person has to make, or make it easier for them to make those decisions,
you are inherently helping guide their watch session, and they're going to boost your own
watch metrics as a result, and YouTube is going to notice that and favorite.
We're so used to like saying
subscribe, subscribe, subscribe—do you feel like viewers know better?
Do we have to tell them that anymore?
You know, it's funny, I was the slowest—
one of the slowest people to adopt end slates,
because I'm like oh, come on!
This is so dumb! There are like 15 buttons all over the place where people can subscribe.
They know what it is and they know what to do.
And yet, I'm like, you know, I'm an experimental guy.
I have the scientific background, I'm like I'm going to test this and see how it works.
And I did it and like overnight it worked.
You have to remind the viewer that it is an option available to them.
And even though they might not subscribe off of that
video, what you're doing is you're priming them.
It's this psychological phenomenon called priming,
which is, I have seeded an idea to you,
and even though you might not act on it in that moment,
of like hey, you should subscribe,
yeah, I don't wanna click the subscribe button, I want to check out more videos that this person has.
When they're on the channel page or they see two or three other videos,
they're like oh, yeah. -Challenges.
Yes. -What challenges have you had?
Our videos take a really long time to make.
You know, each video takes around 100 hours to produce.
A hundred hours? -Yeah.
I'm just going to guess the things that go into making a video.
Research, which you have a background in. -Yes.
And you're super smart. -Yeah, very heavily researched.
Filming it, and editing takes a while. -Yes.
It's hard, it's hard, and you have to define kind of
what your aesthetic is, what your creative feel is.
And in the early days of Game Theory,
that was kind of what it was born out of was
I didn't have, like I didn't have a good video camera
to film myself, so I'm like let me rip down images
from online and manipulate them and tweak them
and make it a glorified slide show.
And over time I'm like now I'm going to teach myself how to animate,
because I was using such a raw program,
I actually literally had to stop motion animate every single thing that appeared on screen.
So I had files full of just
hundreds upon hundreds of Photoshop files
where it was like same image, move two pixels, move two pixels, move two pixels.
Oh my gosh. -And in the video itself I would
take all hundred files, squeeze them all down to like .2 seconds,
and I was literally editing like by the millisecond.
Yeah, like Game Theory film theory was all born out of an excuse,
outside of getting a job, was all born out of an excuse to teach myself new things.
And I love learning, and YouTube was just
a part of that.
I was learning YouTube as I went.
I was learning video editing, learning how to script,
learning how audiences behave on YouTube and what they respond to
and what they like, what they don't like.
So it very much was a learning process.
And I had the further incentive of when every video that you make takes 100 hours,
you want to make sure that you wring every last view out of that.
And so— -Make it count!
You do! You have to make it— because YouTube is a lot of work,
and every video you're putting your blood, sweat, and tears into.
And so, if doing things like
doing a more optimized call to action at the end
or an end slate, or making sure that your thumbnail is bright and visually appealing
and clickable and is as clickable as possible while still not being misleading,
then yeah, then you should do that.
Otherwise, you are kind of undervaluing the time that you put into that video.
I love that. -Yeah.
So that's kind of where all of that was born out of was just a desire to get the most out of
all of the blood, sweat, and tears I was putting into each video that we were uploading.
It's just so exciting to see how passionate you are about this stuff, and we loved having you on the show!
Thank you! -My head is spinning with just information.
There are so many good pieces of advice here, thank you so much for coming out here.
My pleasure! Thanks for having me! This is great.
No problem, and good luck. Can't wait to see all of these new stuff you're doing next!
Oh, there is a lot going on.
So it's exciting, exciting times.
MatPat, MatPat, MatPat!