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Analysing 5 Years of YouTube Stats

🕑 Added 2019-11-08 10:45:34 +0000 UTC
Analysing 5 Years of YouTube Stats

Comments

Gunnar Clovis

Great work on this! These are really fascinating statistics... though I feel bad being so alone in your low view count stats! I've watched EVERY video of yours since your first Adaptive Audio one released (which is honestly still a favorite as it's such a great topic), typically many multiples of times, but the videos with your lowest total views tended to be the ones I rewatch the most! Feels bad...

In my observation gender gap in gaming is an accumulation of multiple factors - Majority of games focus on violence / action / conflict, those are experiences that are primal (easy to connect to) and simpler to represent with rules and systems. Males are a lot more likely to respond positively to violence (evolution) - Historically engineering, then computer science and computer engineering have been fields primarily represented by men. So naturally the first game developers were men and they did what appealed to them. History paves the road to the future - Social media like FB, twitter, youtube is inherently adversarial and hostile. This is due not so much to poor design than to cognitive errors in our social psychology. As mentioned above, males tend to be less pushed away by toxicity, some even enjoy it. So naturally youtube audience as a whole is primarily male. - Many males perceive modern advances of feminism in politics, in marketing, etc as being hostile and accusationary. Which in turn escalates gender tension on the internet as a whole. An article in bloomberg.com discussed that financial businesses, in wallstreet for example, now strongly avoid hiring women to dodge potential accusations and lawsuits. - As mentioned earlier computers and software have been historically a male dominated field. As a field that lacks the physicality of other male domains, it has been ridiculed by both males and females as nerdy and childish and anti-social. Naturally this toxicity pushes females away from the domain

More issues please !!!

Kat K

I find that gender gap really shocking. I mean, I really shouldn't – especially since I've experienced that gender gap first hand – but that disparity is *staggering.* I literally reeled back from my computer screen when I read it. I don't think this is through fault of your own, by the way; I've never once felt like your videos weren't inclusive or "for me." In fact, I've found your corner of online gaming culture to be one of the most positive and inclusive corners out there. It just goes to show how much work we as an industry have to do to make it clear that game design is for everyone.

Mark M

This is fascinating to me just as a fan, to see how other people are watching your channel. Nice to see that some of your best videos are also your most popular/most subscribed to. I suspect Design Icons will pick up once you start touching on games your main demographic is more interested in/has affection for, e.g. Zelda, Halo, Mario. It's a good series but Pac Man etc. isn't as eye-catching for many. Interesting to see I'm one of the few who watches through my console. Your videos scale very well to tv watching. A lot of youtube videos don't as they're made more for phone/laptop viewing, but the professional quality of yours makes it feel like watching something like the Netflix 'Explained' series. I think that similar quality, accessibility and light touch is what draws people to your videos, and I think that shows in what does well, rather than worrying about covering current games or having hot takes. People will still be interested in these things further down the line as long as they are well made and interesting.

Andrea

There’s room to explore aspects of video game making that intersect with gender but stay on target for game making theory if that’s how you want to make up for poor gender distribution. Some random ideas that I could be interesting or damn boring, I dunno: How does video game marketing impact game design? If I am a game maker, how do I select game mechanics and stories to engage a target audience? How do I pick an audience in the first place? What makes for well designed avatar-building features like appearance customization, class, etc... and community-building features such as chat rooms, guilds, clans, matchmaking, etc...? What makes for a well-designed content moderation system for an online game? What happens when this goes wrong? You may think about engaging younger gamers at some point, as well. I assume the gender distribution has gotten a bit better. Gamers in the 90s and 00s were predominantly male, so in some sense, this is primarily a demographic issue.

Andrea

Cool analysis. If Patreon constitutes a substantial portion of your revenue, you might consider more directly quantifying what drives people to become your patrons and what videos introduced the most total “lifetime value” to your patron pool. Lifetime value is a common business metric that is, roughly, your customer’s average monthly spend * average amount of time they remain your customer, summed up over your total number of customers. Attribution might be hard, but you could introduce a survey that you ask patrons to fill out when they pledge to your patreon page.

Virak

I love these stats kind of articles! (Similar to the vlogbrothers census) Thanks very much for sharing!

Felipe Lins

Another point about GMTK, Have you considered on uploading to other websites other than youtube? IDK if it worths the extra trouble, but never hurt to think about it. Maybe with foreign collaborators to sub the video and upload on popular sites over China and Japan (I guess niconico douga surpass yt on Japan, not sure). As a brazilian citizen, it's true that most people watch Youtube by far, but some audience sticks to Facebook video, and IGTV. I'm sure it's not worth the trouble uploading to these websites for our audience, but...who knows, maybe China, Japan, India would rather watch the show on other video sites.

Felipe Lins

Now you've just taught people a new skill: analysing data. Haha, just kidding. Nice analysis, it's ultra important for us patrons to have a clear understanding of content performance which should impact your decision on what to be more or less focused from now on. Excellent to know that you're also taking care of your personal life, maintaining a healthy schedule and living well along with the show, instead of living for it. Glad to be part of your success, and I wish you nothing but the best. Keep up the awesome work, Mark!.

Game Maker's Toolkit

Not going away - I always try to start what I finish! Just might be a little slower for new eps in 2020

EndlessTaboo

I love when you talk about old and weird games from decades ago that I’ve never even heard about. It’s amazing that there’s still so much we can learn from these super old titles. I must’ve watched your video about how to make a good detective game more than five times. It’s so good, I love it!

Albey Amakiir

I'm marked as non-binary. I wonder if my stats get added to male or female, or are simply dropped?

Wander

I just wanted to say that I'm in love with your Design Icons series and would be very sad to see it go away. The videogame industry can be so fast moving I think it can be easy for the lineage and history of games and their design trends to be lost to time, despite how recent they really are. I consider myself to be obsessive over video games and their history and yet I feel I've learned a lot from Design Icons already. I do hope you don't get put off from continuing the series.

Yücel Cil

Very good research. I think you hit the nail on the head when you say that "important" topics and "popular" games are the beating heart of GMTK.

Game Maker's Toolkit

YouTube does have this info, but it's quite limited. In general, videos have an "average views per viewer" of about 1.2 to 1.4. So, definitely some rewatchers out there!

I guess Youtube doesn't have that information, or you just can get it, but I'm always curious of "unique views" on a video. Some are very much watched because they are re-watched, and re-re-watched. I do that a lot. I watched videos I liked a lot many times, I'll put on older videos that made me react. I'll show videos to friends or colleagues (I've showed a lot of GMTK at the office on a TV, so those numbers come from there ^^). But still, I count as a single Youtube users. It would be interesting to see the numbers of unique users who have watched your videos, and compare that to the number of subscribers.

Amit Netanel

Super insightful, and even ends on a bright note - Quality trumps Quantity on YouTube sometimes! Thank you for that post.

Tim 🦆

Great analysis and congratulations. I think you might mean "I'm *not* too surprised about any of these videos"

Regarding the gender split: I'm watching every video together with my wife. But in the End it is on my account - so male. But the gap is nonetheless huge. Even if there are more like us.

That gender split — it’s even more out of balance than I expected. And there’s nothing particularly male-oriented in your videos. Kind of sad.

drixkarasu

Really interesting read. Thanks Mark!

Alice

Wow, this is fascinating! I defo think I should take note - while I'd never want to actively mislead people (that feels very yuck), I think I can sometimes be a little over the top with titles/thumbnails and stuff. Anyway, thanks for posting this - twas a great read!

Game Maker's Toolkit

Not all - if i went back in time with these stats I’d make Designing for Disability all over again. I knew it wouldn’t get tremendous views but it was important anyway. (That being said - getting almost 1 million views across these 4 videos, when talking about accessibility, is wonderful!)

Artem Gordin

Very sad to see Designing for Disability underperforming, but I hope it doesn't discourage you: I'm not a game designer or a disabled gamer, but those videos are some of my favorite – no one else is articulating this so well and it's so important and broadens the view of things! I'm sure those are the videos that make the biggest long-term impact and actually make those who view it better as people.

Dan Root

Totally commented before ready by the whole thing - soz!

Si Davies

Interesting article. nice visuals as always too!

Dan Root

Well done, by the way! ♥️

Dan Root

With the "most viewed" thing, when would you call a good cut off point to counting it? Like, Pac-Man is the least viewed but it's only been up for, what, two weeks? When would you consider a video's "shareability" to be gone? I guess trends can make a video resurface, too.


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