Channel Identity Crisis (Below 1k Subs)

Poly Gamey

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So I have been running a channel on and off for around 7 years now. Originally I planned on running it with my partners as a way to talk about Polyamory and Video Gaming because well we were poly, we played video games, and 7 years ago no one was talking about Polyamory. My partners never did anything for the channel and the animations I did were getting too time consuming and I lost interest because I just wasn't getting feed back so I stopped uploading. After about 2 years I tried picking it back up again making animations and the same thing happened where the lack of feedback started eating at me but this time it was also my partner insisting that "making these videos is easy" and when I sat down with her and showed her how much time it actually takes me she showed she had no interest in helping and still kinda talked down about the idea. Spending 8+ hours on a 5 minute animation and the only feedback I got being my partner still being like "It cant be that hard" once again led to burn-out. I came back a year later that relationship fell apart and I went to live on my own and started making more like... just talking to camera style videos where I talked about polyamory and it was okay but I felt... wrong. Polyamory is a relationship style and I was single... who was I to like.. tell people about this thing that I just dont do. That stupid buzzing in the brain let me on another drop. At this point I changed my name and internet branding over from "Poly Gamey" to "Mr No Buddies" which I intended as a sort of joke as the original idea was to make videos in games like Ark Survival Evolved and Rust and 7 Days to Die where I'd try and farm food to share with people to try and make friends... that never got off the ground because as that name might imply it also came packaged with a lot of depression. I tried posting some gaming stuff for a while and then did some politics and philosophy talks which went onto the channel and just none of it stuck.

Then 2020 happened. The pandemic hit, my family lost their home and we were forced to set to the winds. I moved to the big city and decided to buckle down, I'd focus for like 3 or 5 solid months on making a 26 part series of videos on The Rimworld of Magic mod for Rimworld. These videos sought to lay out the basics of each of the classes for the mod and talk a bit about the mod dev's motives and contextualize things as well as throwing in funny little stories. The reason I did this is because I was streaming the game at the time and even if I didn't particularly like Rimworld itself the mod and the viewer interactions made it A TON of fun. There was just something magical about that time... but it was also making me miserable. I was much more quiet and shut in... I was irritable with my friends irl because as it turned out actually wasn't enjoying myself with the game but it was just the socializing. My room mates would mention that I sounded like I spent more time upset than I spent having fun and I realized that it was true... I wasn't having fun. But I set out to finish the series and I did. 26 videos and about half of them I hated, but YouTube loved them. The lowest of them has almost 1,000 views and the highest has almost 9,000 views over a year which is insane for my channel. But I dont enjoy the game... so I moved on, inspired by having completed an entire series, and I am still inspired for it as it keeps getting comments.

After that I did a short arc where I'd put out what one of my friends charitably calls "Video Essays" on the topic of Magic in Video Games and switch off by having conversations with various people about video games and art creation and how one creates a sense of wonder. This well as it turned out wasn't all that deep and I got 7 "Essays" out before running dry, and 6 discussions before I ran out of people to talk to.

Now I do still put out about 3 videos a week but they are all just gaming videos and a few are doing pretty well. Thanks to the dev of "Soulash" my video has hit 700 views in 12 days which is AMAZING, but Im looking at these games and they aren't really the kinds of games I start playing and lose myself in. Instead they are games I kind of force myself to play when I am upset with them because "Come on you need to make 3 videos this week" and like... i dont know what to do. I have been playing games I enjoy in my off time but feel wise they are so far from what I have been playing that I am actually considering starting a whole new channel and... and letting the old one go. Which sucks cuz the old channel has all this stuff that I made.... and it has the avatar that my friends made and the banner I commissioned special for it when I was confident it would all work itself out which was silly because it was for a niche of games that barely exists. But those things just dont feel like they really line up with the direction of things I enjoy. The avatar and banner of a wizard dog teaching a university of cute animals doesn't feel like it lines up with factory builders and colony builders does it?

As you can see this channel has a lot of history and I am afraid some of it will hurt me moving forward.... a 7 year old channel with a series of videos that have tens of thousands of views but the channel itself only having less than 500 subs... Im worried that my successes as well as my failures are going to ruin my ability to grow moving forward as I hear the algorithm can really backfire on a person in my position. Like should I just go forward with this 7 year old channel with all sorts of nonsense on it that Im probably not going to make more of? Is just making a new channel worth it?

Channel Link - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTGteLWWNDC9VHJE8nEFHKw/videos
 
Joined
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Can't tell you what you should do. I can say that if I had your channel and wanted to keep going, I would manage the existing videos on that channel. Anything that didn't fit the current gaming brand would be set to private. Or you could make a 2nd channel and separate videos accordingly. Providing that you have the time to run 2 channels, that is.
 
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Opxyz02

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Can't tell you what you should do. I can say that if I had your channel and wanted to keep going, I would manage the existing videos on that channel. Anything that didn't fit the current gaming brand would be set to private. Or you could make a 2nd channel and separate videos accordingly. Providing that you have the time to run 2 channels, that is.
Lest support us check this channel https://youtube.com/channel/UCISuXR5sD2cWVwrhdYkq_Mw