SebastianSB
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State of the Let's Play Channel
🕑 Added 2024-02-15 21:20:09 +0000 UTCI put this rambling post in the community tab but figured I'd put it here too?
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Viewership is at, functionally, an all-time low. It's not a huge surprise, since it matches the trend of the last few years. Weirdos like to blame it on furry, but you can see it was already decaying linearly before then, and if anything seems to have been slowed by stuff like the Echo and Adastra playthroughs.
I think 2024 is going to be an important year for me. Should probably get serious about getting an ADHD consultation, because I'm really consistently struggling to write, or really do most work that isn't the muscle memory I slip into every time I record let's plays. And if this channel keeps going downhill, I'm really going to need to be able to pivot to video essays lol
Please check out Deadlaws if you haven't! I think we've got something really cool going on over on GPG but I just don't have the social media pull to promote it very well and give it the attention it deserves for all the work people put into it: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhFUzvyRnohBF3nY7rUn9GfcPDg2yeS7c
As far as the Let's Play channel? Changes may be coming. I'm probably going to try some format changes to see if I can make the channel more algorithmically viable. This may mean fewer, longer videos, since video spam may be hurting the channel? Which is very funny because during its most successful growth period I was uploading as many as eight videos per day. It does seem like YouTube rewards much longer content more nowadays, so we'll see.
I might also reduce how many different playthroughs are happening at once, meaning we'll get through individual games much faster. Maybe only 2-3 main series at a time? My main focus game, alternating with my collaborative, co-commentated game, or something. Part of why the current schedule is so complicated is because I wanted to maintain the overall identity by having a balance between the genres that got us here, like RPGs and puzzle games, but I think that might spread things too thin, and people can't be expected to care about the same playthrough for six months.
Patreon supporters know that I've largely wrapped up my playthroughs across the board, so I'm just recording Password, Lies of P and Baldur's Gate right now because everything else is done (including Pseudoregalia, Blacksad and Portal Revolution, three games that haven't even aired yet). This wasn't planned exactly, but it is convenient. It means I can let timeslots die with the current game, then use that time to air the other games, wipe the slate clean, and then figure out what the schedule looks like next. And if it doesn't work, I can just change it again!
The goal is to keep giving people what they like about this kind of content, which is me doing what are now old-fashioned, regular-ass let's plays. So before I give up on them I'd like to go out swinging. But yeah, none of my videos really catch on anymore, and the moment I break format to upload a rant or something, ANYTHING that isn't a let's play really, that's immediately one of the month's top videos. Sometimes it feels like the worst thing I can do is upload the thing everyone is supposedly here for lol
I think one thing that doesn't help is that I've tried very hard to be the guy who always finishes everything I start, which feels good. It sucked back when people would reach the final episode I uploaded of something and find out that it just never continued. But that also means that I'm too busy finishing my vegetables all the time, and can't hop on anything new on a whim, or respond to what's trendy. I have to finish what I'm doing first, so maybe I'll get to that thing in six months, I tell people. So perhaps playing fewer games, with a less concrete release schedule, across longer videos, will allow me to slip stuff in whenever I want, idk.
We'll see what I end up doing lol. Challenge runs? Gimmick playthroughs?
Anyway, thank you to my Patreon supporters. The Early Access tier has been a huge success, so I'm ironically making more money from my job than ever before. I'm not starving. It's just that, obviously, the channel that powers all of this needs to actually do well, because if it collapses then so does the Patreon that's based on it. When you have an audience this size you lose people every single day, so you're either growing or you're dying. I'll see if I can figure out what to clip or prune so that the tree grows strong again, or whatever. However gardening works.
Comments
Nikki
Finishing every playthrough no matter what is admirable and cathartic for viewers, but I think you can allow yourself to mercy kill a series that both you and the viewers/algorithm hate. Also I hate saying this, and you probably hate even thinking about it, but one thing the algorithm likes that you aren't doing is clickbait. That's a huge thing I've seen successful channels (not just in Let's Plays, but also) do very consistently the last few years, and you've never given into that trend further than putting an emoting character onto your thumbnails. The highlight shorts seemed like a good idea in this context; did those do anything for your exposure?
jesenos
Seems like the media landscape itself can't figure out what it wants to be anymore- so I can only imagine how frustrating it must be to do a bunch tea-leaf-reading bullshit to figure this out. I wish I had something actionable to say here, but I'm just hopping in to say: yeah, that sucks, and I wish you luck in maneuvering this!
