Uncomfortable truth is that gaming is oversaturated and has been like that for several years now. As someone with multiple failed video gaming channels that I invested way too much time and effort into, it might be the time to reconsider the direction of your channel, or maybe even start a new one. Both MrBeast and Pewdiepie started off as gamers, but are they doing any gaming content nowadays?
Exactly.
Yes, there are still gaming channels out there that seemingly take off overnight with tens of thousands of views and thousands of new subs every day, but when you take a look behind the curtain, you usually notice years of grind and hundreds of videos that were only getting 100-200 views each before YT algorithm just decided to push their newest videos out to masses for whatever reason. This gamble is honestly not worth the time, energy and effort in my opinion.
Now, I'm still kind of doing gaming content myself, but I'm getting old, so I decided not to pursue video games any more and took a deeper dive into the tabletop RPG/D&D space, which is also getting more and more crowded with each passing day. There are dozens of smaller D&D channels that started even before I started mine, but they are still stuck in the "100 subs, 50 views per video" algorithm hell.
I believe mine might be one of the last few semi-successful channels that hopped on the YT D&D hype-train back in the 2017-2018 period, which saw, at that time, the biggest wave of new players coming in. It very well may be too late for my channel as well to ever join the "big bois", destined to coast along the edges, collecting leftovers forever.
That said, after uploading 91 videos to this channel, here are my opinions and observations:
1. First hour after you upload your video is the most important time in that video's lifetime. This literally makes or breaks the performance of the video for eternity, at least in my case. After that, first 24 hours is the next most important period. After that, first 48 hours. And sometimes, if all the cards fall into right place, the video CAN continue getting above-average number of views for a full week.
I know that some videos suddenly go viral on Homepage after as many as 10 years after they got uploaded, but ask yourself - do you have the time/energy/willpower/resources to wait all these years before YT algo randomly graces you with all the views and subs you can dream off?
I don't and I bet you don't either.
2. Watchtime seems to trump every other metric nowadays. I've been obsessively analyzing the performance of my videos over the last few months. Every time one of my videos gets a micro/mini-viral effect and manages to surpass 2k views in the first week, it's usually due to that video accumulating a couple hundred hours of combined watchtime. I've had one video about a trendy topic in my niche at the time, it was over 1 hour long and for the first few days, people, on average, watched 12 minutes of it, which made it accumulate more watchtime in the first 2 days than any of my videos before. It was getting almost a thousand views per day for the first week.
So, you have to focus the most on doing everything you can possibly think of to keep people watching your videos from start to finish.
These days, I'm spending way, way, WAY more time editing videos, cutting out the many "uhmmmm" and "ahmmmm" parts of my voice recordings, and parts where the microphone picks up my heavy breathing. I make sure to have stuff sliding and popping in and out of the video to retain as much of my viewer's focus and attention as possible. My latest, 15 minute long video's average watch time was 6 minutes in the first 24 hours, which resulted in YT algorithm pushing it to from ~50 to ~150 impressions per hour on the Homepage in the last few hours. This small increase in impressions is all you need to keep your video "cruising" and getting dozens, hundreds of views for several days in a row. Sometimes, the effect snowballs, as you get more views and watchtime accumulates exponentially, you get more impressions and you can get a mini/semi-viral effects for a few days in a row that way.
3. CTR still matters a lot because it directly impacts what's known as "view velocity". Whenever you manage to get a video that accumulates a lot of watchtime, YT algo will push you to a wider audience, guaranteed. So let's say you get lucky and get a 1000 impressions in the first hour after uploading a video. A CTR of 6% will give you just 60 views during that time, while a CTR of 15% will give you 180. This seemingly small difference in views is actually ridiculously important.
Whenever I make a video that manages to get close or over 100 views in its first hour, I can be almost sure it will get at least 1.5k views over the next 2-3 days, because that initial surge of views signals to the YT algorithm that people are interested in it.
How to achieve high CTR? Contrast, contrast, contrast. Make sure the letters on your thumbnail "stab" your viewers' eyes. Bright colors on darker backgrounds/dark colors on light backgrounds. Use black/white stroke around letters and images you want people to see. Don't be afraid to make the stroke super thick. I went as far as 25 pixels thick stroke on my last thumbnail.
Use the biggest font you can cram in the image - small letters are harder to notice and read, people won't even consider clicking on it if it takes them more than a second to figure out what the thumbnail is saying/portraying. Don't write walls of text on your thumbnails either. Something in between 3-7 lines of text, each line containing 1-3 words max, is all you need. Test and experiment with every combination you can think of, discard anything that doesn't get at least 10% CTR consistently, rinse and repeat everything that goes above 15% in the first few hours.
Titles... find a balance between optimization for YT search engine and making the title enticing for those that even bother reading titles below thumbnails. I've noticed that titles can increase your CTR if you craft them well enough. I assume titles matter a bit less for younger audiences because they mostly only look at thumbnails, but don't assume anything when views are on the line. Test and see for yourself.
4. Interactions - likes and comments matter a lot. Even if you're getting awesome watchtime and CTR, low likes and comments can cause your video to suddenly grind to a halt. It happened to me many times so far. I know a lot of gaming channels openly beg for likes and comments, some of them go as far as giving incentives, but I found you can actually incorporate the "like share comment subscribe" call-to-actions in a much smoother way. For example, if I'm talking about a mage character in my video, I'll say something like "cast the spell on the thumbs up icon" or "comment down below if you've ever died to a Fireball!" to fit the topic of the video and it seems to work well enough - I've noticed my videos getting a bit more likes and comments nowadays compared to before.
5. Build a community - reply to every comment, at least click the heart icon if you can't think of a clever reply, yes even on those "First" comments. Interact with people on the Community tab, post polls about stuff relevant to your niche etc. This will definitely convert some first or second-time viewers into fans that keep coming back. I've got a few hundred people that regularly watch most of my new videos, some of them go as far as commenting on all of my new videos.
6. For small channels, subscribers only matter for monetization. You need 1k subs to puts ads in your videos. That's it. Almost 80% of my views are still coming from non-subscribers. It's literally just an ego-stroke these days. To some extent, maybe people take you just a weeny bit more seriously when they see a letter "K" or, if you're one of the few lucky ones, "M" next to the sub count. But, I see no difference between 1k and 3.5k subs in terms of views. I get more views because I've doubled the number of videos on the channel, not because I have 2.5k more subscribers.
If you ask me "What would you like more - a million subscribers, or a million views?"
I'll answer "Gimme all the views in the world!", any time of the day.
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Good luck!
