How To YouTube | FOR GAME DEVELOPERS

welcome to the ultimate guide on how to leverage YouTube as a game developer should you as a game developer start a YouTube channel why should you do that or why shouldn't you do that there are good reasons for both of that if you decide to start a YouTube channel which kind of content should you make and how do you grow on YouTube as a game developer those are the questions I will answer in this video and as I really want to make this video as useful as possible I'll also have a look at your game dev YouTube channels at the end of this video in case you're wondering that's why this video is so long probably it has to give you a little bit of context my name is Jonas I've started this YouTube channel less than two years ago and I'm already at 17,000 subscribers which to be fair is not the most amazing growth I've ever seen but it's still quite decent growth and the channel still growing the growth is accelerating as well I've made a ton of games in my life already I've made my first commercial game last year it's called islanders it has sold over 200,000 copies of course there's still a lot I need to learn I haven't figured this 100% out yet I just want to make this as useful as possible for my fellow game developers out there let's dive right into it first question should you start a YouTube channel of course there are advantages and disadvantages to starting a YouTube channel I'll just go through them and then I'll draw a conclusion first advantage is that YouTube allows you to build an audience that's also why I started this YouTube channel it helps to get your games zyne YouTube is basically a free marketing tool you can sign up for free it doesn't cost you any money and you can make free marketing for all of your games the second thing that I found surprisingly useful is that you can get the community involved in the development of your game and the first most obvious way that works is of course by letting them give you feedback and my last video I showed the beginning section of my game for example and I asked people for feedback and the amount of feedback you get is absolutely overwhelming if you have a decently sized audience that is how to build a decently sized audience we'll come to that later also you can use you to canner to fill out if people are interested in your game is you can kind of fill out is - something people want to play and of course there are a lot of other ways you can get your community involved into the development of your game for example one thing I'm doing as well at the moment is I'm having my community involved in the play testing of my current game will you snail this YouTube channel provided me with a lot of awesome playtesters for my games pretty much as many as I want more or less that that constant feedback loop where you make something and then you show it off and see how people react that just instantly will create a higher quality product than just sitting in your room by yourself and not getting any feedback at all I feel like this YouTube game development thing creates a very organic feedback loop that really allows you to make the best out of your game then another huge advantage I feel like is that YouTube can give you a second leg to stand on we all know game development is kind of risky you never know how much money you're gonna make so I feel like if game development for some reason one day doesn't really work out or there's a little bit of a down I ad rarely still have YouTube I can still make a little bit of money off of YouTube of course right now at the moment my channel is not quite big enough to really monetize it in in a meaningful way I like in a year or two years from now that will definitely be possible I think and another thing that I want to mention here is that YouTube also opens up a lot of cool opportunities that otherwise you would not have had for example recently I collaborated with leghorn proach you might know him he is a very nice game developer on YouTube as well and I've been watching his videos for a long time and I think if I hadn't started this YouTube channel then I just wouldn't have gotten the opportunity to work with him so if you have a youtube channel then suddenly all kinds of people start reaching out to you for different kinds of collapse and different kinds of deals and offers so having an audience having a YouTube channel definitely opens up a lot of cool opportunities as well the next big advantage I feel like is that by talking about game development by talking about your game it makes you understand those things a lot better it makes you understand your own game a lot better it makes you understand game development a lot better it's basically learning by teaching because if you want to teach something first of all you have to understand it yourself I've learned so much by making these youtube videos because I always make these little note sheets right before I make a video and just by doing these and then explaining my thoughts to the camera I feel like I've learned so much you get better at talking you get better at communicating you understand your own games better you understand game development better there is another huge advantage of making game development videos on YouTube and then the last massive advantage is that making YouTube videos can just be very enjoyable and you get to help people out what else do you want now I'm sure if you've heard all of those advantages can feel very tempting to just start your YouTube channel but hear me out because you haven't listened to the disadvantages yet there are definitely disadvantages as well the first huge disadvantage is the time investment it just takes so much time of your development almost 50% of my time spent on you to make this week for example I spent Monday Tuesday Wednesday on making games and now I'm spending Thursday to record this video and then Friday to edit this video so almost half of my week usually it's pretty much half of my week is spent on making YouTube content that is HUGE because that is time that you could use to make your game and then kind of what goes along with it is that you need to invest a lot of time in order to make it pay off I'm pretty sure you're aware that growth on social media platforms most of the time is exponential meaning that after one year you might have 1,000 subscribers after 2 years you might have 10,000 after 3 you might have 100,000 so it's not a linear growth it's an exponential growth which means at the beginning of the growth is very very slow and then it gets faster and faster the bigger you are basically and that just means it will take a long time for your work to pay off then the second big disadvantages that can be quite stressful for a couple of reasons first of all you have to stay somewhat consistent you have to upload regularly so that always puts pressure on to come up with new video ideas to start recording new videos start editing that always creates a little bit of stress and you have of course the stress of having to manage a community you have the stress of the numbers that go up and down that can kind of stress a lot of people out a bit another disadvantage is that investing a lot of time into YouTube is a little bit of a gamble because you don't know for sure how much it will pay off or if it will pay off at all and another disadvantage that I found is that that flat of opinions that you get from feet sometimes can also just be a little bit overwhelming like a hundred different ideas or pointing you in two different directions it can be very challenging to filter through that at times and I don't want to be like oh I'm so poor people are giving me feedback on my game on YouTube you'll be confronted with a lot of different opinions not only about your game but also with opinions about yourself about your person you need to be able to deal with all of those opinions that are coming your way you'll be and you'll need to be able to deal with opinions about your game and you'll need to be able to deal with opinions about yourself and on top of that the amount of opinions you'll get about yourself and about your game just will keep increasing and increasing as your channel growth grows and that doesn't necessarily make things easier you got to be able to take opinions to your face so here's my conclusion for this first question who should start a YouTube channel and who shouldn't I think there's two criteria first one you should only start a YouTube channel if you plan to stay in the industry for a long time drawing on YouTube is a lot of work and it will take a long time for that work to pay off so starting a YouTube channel only makes sense if you stick around if you stay in the games industry for a long time if you plan to do that sure start a YouTube channel and the second big criteria that we don't have to forget is only to start a YouTube channel if you actually enjoy making videos because of course if you don't enjoy making videos then making videos for 3-4 years will be very hard I just want to make sure to let you know that making videos is not for everybody you can also succeed as an indie game developer without having a YouTube channel YouTube is not mandatory if you don't start a YouTube channel you'll have a lot more time to work on your game which is a big advantage on the other hand if you do start a YouTube channel it'll be easier to get the word out there I'll offer a lot of cool new possibilities and opportunities that otherwise you wouldn't have had so just decide yourself what makes more sense for you I can't make the decision for you okay so let's say you've decided you want to start a YouTube channel the next big question you probably have is which kind of content should you make which kind of videos should you make simple answer to that is you should make videos that you want to make but you should also make videos that people want to watch and you want to find the middle ground between those two groups that's the sort of videos you want so now the question of courses firstly how do you find out what people want to watch and also finding out what you want to make sometimes can be a little bit tricky as well I can tell you the only solution to that is experiment if you just try a bunch of different things a couple of them will work you'll find out what you enjoy making and you'll also find out what people enjoy watching does it give you a little bit of additional inspirations as a game developers there are pretty much three big types of videos that you can make on YouTube and that have been proven to work pretty well the first one is Steph looks in case you don't know what a Deathlok is a devlog is basically just you documenting your progress that you've made on your game deathlok's are definitely the most beginner-friendly type of content you can make on YouTube as a game developer they just potentially have the biggest audience you can reach you don't necessarily need to be a game developer in order to enjoy watching deathlok's pretty much anybody can enjoy a well edited Deathlok because usually you'd watch deathlok's for the entertainment value and for we're getting a little bit of a feel of how it's like to be a game developer but you don't need to be a game developer in order to enjoy deathlok's so I feel like that's a big advantage of Netflix and then another big advantage of deathlok's that makes it kind of the most beginner friendly kind of content is that it doesn't require a lot of credibility like the other two types of content I will tell you about in a second they require a lot more credibility deathlok's don't require a lot of credibility you can be a 12 year old making games at home if you if you make Netflix that's 100% fine if they're entertaining if they're well edited people will watch them the last big advantage of deathlok's is that compared ibly there are pretty low time investment because you can just do what you what you would do anyways right you can't just work on your game and you can turn that into a video that is awesome because for the other two types of videos you cannot do that therefore save you a little bit of time here the one disadvantage of deathlok's is that you do have the most competition there are a lot of deaf locks out there already so your quality needs to be somewhat high in order to make it if you want to get some inspiration of how a good death log can look like a highly recommend you check out thin matrix and Blackthorne prop they both make excellent death locks Danny as well check out those channels if there's enough space in the description I'll link them in the description then the next of content you can make on YouTube as a game developer is educational content and with that I don't mean tutorials I mean videos like this where you just talk to the camera share your experiences share what you've learned talk about game design talk about game development talk about marketing or whatever wherever you want those are what I would call educational videos the big big advantage of making educational videos on YouTube is that there's not a lot of competition yet you can count the amount of channels that do educational videos on game development on one or two hands probably probably there's game makers toolkit extra credit Tim Ross wig Thomas brush and probably a couple more ask game dev there are a couple more for sure but compared to the other fields the competition is very low so you have a decent chance of reaching an audience if and here we come to the disadvantage if you have some credibility because that's one of the disadvantages of making educational videos people will only listen to you if they think you know what you're talking about which I guess makes sense right I've definitely felt that the moment I published islanders the moment it became clear that that game did read decently well on Steam people started listening to my advice a lot more and a lot of my educational videos were watched a lot more simply because it gave me a credibility boost suddenly I was not a random dude talking out game design anymore I was a co-creator of Islanders talking about game design and people were a lot more interested in listening to that not sure if that's 100% true but it definitely feels that way and in my head that makes a lot of sense if you want to educate people if you want to teach people then you need a little bit of credibility either in the forms of games you've made in the past or just in the way you present yourself it needs to look or feel somewhat professional in order for people to be interested in and listening to you the last proven kind of video you can make as a game developer are of course tutorials tutorials are a little bit strange because there are a ton of tutorials out there there are so many tutorials out there however there are not a lot of good tutorials out there in fact there are very little good tutorials out there basically what I'm trying to say is if you can make a really good tutorial if you can make the number one tutorial on topic people will watch it and you will get a lot of fuse and it will absolutely work wonders for your channel and of course if it's a relevant topic right however if you make a bad tutorial then it will just absolutely get drowned in the amount of tutorials out there and nobody will watch it so yeah I feel like tutorials are worth it if you can make good ones otherwise don't bother of course there are tons of other kinds of videos you could make really just get creative to whatever you want change those formulas those are just the three main types of videos I found that really work in this game development niche tutorials deathlok's and educational videos about game development okay now let's get to the elephant in the room I'm sure this is what most of you will be most interested in how do you grow on YouTube as a game developer and honestly there's pretty much the same for every youtuber no matter whether you're a game developer or not the number one thing or the only thing you need to do in order to grow on YouTube is you need to provide a lot of nicely packaged densely-packed value for a lot of people and every single part of that term has its own meaning and I will break that down for you I feel like some people go into YouTube with the assumption that it is for them they are in YouTube because they want to get something from it and of course that is completely fine you you can go into YouTube expecting to get a return on investment you should get something for your work don't get me wrong however people will not watch your videos just to help you out people will only watch your videos if they get something out of watching them as well they will not just watch them for the sake of making you happy that will not happen that is the number one thing you need to understand if you want people to watch your videos if you want people to consistently watch your videos you need to make videos that are actually worth watching that's why I came up with this phrase you need to provide a lot of nicely packaged densely-packed value for a lot of people I feel like that describes pretty well what you need to do let's actually start out with value because that is clearly the number one keyword in that entire phrase there are a lot of different kinds of value you can provide to your viewers but you need to provide value in your videos otherwise nobody will watch them the kinds of values you can provide our joy entertainment information motivation inspiration like the feeling of adventure the fact that you tell a story or just certain feelings people really like certain feelings like nostalgia or just emotional stuff people like like emotional stuff you can teach people how to do certain things you can just entertain them but there needs to be value in your video people need to get something out of watching your video and you actually need to design your videos around that you need to make sure that you know which value your video provides because you then need to pitch that value to the viewer number two nicely packaged nicely packaged means thumbnail title and the first seconds of the video you need to pitch the value you'll provide in the video in the thumbnail in the title and in the first seconds of the video for example take this video right people see how to YouTube for game developers or something like that they see the thumbnail and they click on the video and the first seconds of the video confirm yes you've clicked on the right video this video will actually deliver on what you wanted to see that being information on how to make it on YouTube as a game developer then the rest of the video is just value talking about that exact thing the value you provide and the packaging of the content the thumbnail the title and the first seconds of the video they need to match they need to fit together obviously otherwise people will not finish watching your videos will which will send very bad signals to YouTube and they will stop promoting your video so just make sure people know exactly what they'll get from watching your video and then make sure they actually get what they're looking for when watching your video you can also communicate that in a very indirect way for example if the main value of your video is entertainment then you have a lot more freedom with your title if the main value of your video is entertainment it should sound like an entertaining title right first part a lot off first of all you need to make a lot of videos and the reason why you need to make a lot of videos is because it just helps to grow your channel exponentially your old videos will keep getting fuze and those people will then watch the new videos or the people who saw your new videos will then watch the old videos that just boosts your entire channel apps or the more videos you have the more views you will get and then of course the second point is that the more videos you make the better you get at making videos I think that is in fact a number one reason why most channels take off exponentially believe me once you've edited 100-200 YouTube videos you'll be a lot better at it your videos will be a lot better and more people will watch them as a result of that but a lot of also has another meaning which is make long videos whenever you can what YouTube cares most about is watch time how long people watch the video so the longer the videos are the more watch time you will usually get longer video of course means that you also have to put more value into them you can't just unnecessarily stretch your videos into a 60-minute video or something there needs to be something useful in there otherwise nobody will watch it I want to note here that quality on YouTube is more important than quantity definitely however quantity still matters and oftentimes also quality comes from quantity okay a lot of cover then you also want to make sure that value is densely packed because people really value their time nobody likes their time being wasted that's why I say don't unnecessarily stretch your videos I know in my videos that also happens sometimes it's hard to judge I'm still learning as I've said if you make a tutorial or if you make an informational video just keep it as tight as possible what really matters to viewers is the value you provide per minute or the value you provide per second the more value you can stuff into one minute or into one second of video the more useful your video will feel to the viewer if the information density as high as possible keep keep the value density as high as possible and then if you can still make a long video despite all of that then what I mean with for a lot of people is that certain topics will just not interest some people let's just assume we make a hair styling video for people with brown hair there are a lot of people with brown hair out there so a lot of people will find the video useful a hair styling video for people with red hair and small feet or something like that then your target audience is at some point is becoming too small and your videos not gonna matter as much I'm a little concerned about that in this video as well here for example like how many game developers are there that want to start a YouTube channel and of those how many search for that in YouTube right ideally you want to go for topics that interest a lot of people for example what I've noticed is that a lot of people are interested in the Godot game engine at the moment when I made my Godot video a lot of people watched it yes if you can provide a lot of value for somebody that is great but if that's only three or four people that value applies to them it still doesn't matter right you want to make sure that the value you give applies or is useful for a lot of people or can be enjoyed by a lot of people that's the magic formula that's what you need to do in order to grow on YouTube people will only click on your video when they think they'll get something out of it and they'll only keep watching your video when they actually get something out of it I feel like that's kind of a beautiful thing right the way to grow on YouTube is actually to help as many people as possible the more people you manage to help the more people's lives you improve with your videos the more your channel will grow it's beautiful I have a couple more very quick tips for you before we finally get into the feedback section for your YouTube videos and your YouTube channels be authentic yourself don't be afraid to show yourself on camera you don't necessarily need to show yourself on camera if you don't want to but it definitely helps definitely an advantage gives you more credibility people believe you more easier for people to sympathize with you the Internet is actually surprisingly nice especially in the game development community the game development community is really really nice and welcoming so there's not a lot to be afraid of then the sound of your video matters more than the visuals that's something to keep in mind if you have a crap camera at least make sure that you have decent sound what also matters a lot is efficiency you don't want to waste too much time on making your videos you want to make sure you figure out a workflow that allows you to make videos quickly otherwise you will not have any more time to make games optimized for watch time I've already scratched on that a little bit but it's a really important one as I've said YouTube optimizes around watch time the longer people watch your videos the more YouTube will promote your videos especially at the beginning of the video you want to put a lot of effort into the beginning of your video because that's where most people usually click away if you can book people in the beginning if you can keep people watching in the beginning of your video they are much more likely to watch the entirety of your video so at the beginning as I've said you want to pitch the value you want to have a hook something that makes people curious something that keeps people watching and something that I've also found pretty effective is surprising people at the beginning of the video and then during the video the number one thing you can do to keep people watching is to mix it up every now and then ways to mix it up is to change the camera angle to switch the music just to do unexpected things and I think a good rule of thumb is that at least once a minute or better even at least every 30 seconds you want to switch something major up break the pattern because that is what keeps videos interesting and then the last big thing that matters when you want to grow on YouTube is consistency just keep making videos keep pumping them out sure you can take a break but you know what I mean then I have another two small tips that I feel like will definitely help you out on your journey the first one is come up with the video title before you start recording your videos that just makes sure the entire experience from title thumbnail and the topic of the video will feel a lot more coherent I feel like doing it the other way around making the video first and then trying to find a title and a thumbnail that matches those topics is a lot more challenging I can definitely recommend the workflow of come up with a video title first and then start recording the video cause then it will be a lot easier to to figure out what the introduction of the video should be etc etc then the second tip I want to give you is chill out about the numbers they're definitely gonna go up they're gonna go down and in the beginning they're gonna go nowhere like might very well be possible that you'll be uploading videos for one year and just get 100 subscribers doesn't matter because as I've mentioned growth on YouTube is exponential perhaps you'll get 100 subscribers in the first year and 1000 and the second year also be aware that often times the numbers actually go down meaning oftentimes you don't do anything there friendly and the numbers just start dropping you're getting less views less subscribers it feels like everything's going downwards rest assured it can't always go up it's very normal that the curves goes up and down so chill out about the numbers what I've seen is that every time after the numbers go down the next time they go up they go go even higher than before so just just chill out about the numbers it's it's really easy to obsess about numbers and let them affect your emotional state let them affect your your happiness or your motivation levels don't let the numbers affect you in any way you see we have a problem these are all of the YouTube channels you've sent me 42 I expected a lot less I kind of want to show all of them so apologies we'll have to go quite quickly we'll turn this into a speed round I'll give one or two pieces of advice per channel and then we'll move onto the next channel also I'll try to link all of the channels in the description I'm not sure if there's enough space there and there's a character limit for the description if I can I'll put them all in there if you want to help each other out a little bit I would highly encourage you to at the very least pick the three channels you liked the most and subscribe to them check them out as I said links are in the description if I can fit them in there this one is called Flavio fright us now what if you throw the book in moving okay so this video is called Godot Pokemon transitions how to I feel like you could work on the title a little bit how to make Pokemon screen transitions and what's a little bit of a shame for the stuntmen tears that I can't really see the screen transition right I like that there are subtitles if you make tutorials in a different language than English of course there's a lot less competition and sometimes that can be very very beneficial I've mentioned before right is the first seconds of a video I think are very important for me personally I feel like it takes too long to see what this video is about let's count on the seconds timer okay so seven seconds before the slots in my opinion that's too long at that point a lot of people will already have clicked away I think I've shown this a couple of times but the way I designed my thumbnails I create a bunch of thumbnails for every video here has you agree about ten different thumbnails for every video slightly different variations and then the good thing about that is that I can pick the best one in the end subscribe to doc Frankenstein first thing I can see here is that the thumbnails don't look very inviting to me personally they look a little yeah too much visual clutter not not as clean I like that title but the title does not go well together with the thumbnail in this case a weekend of game def and then you see some red text that you can't reach and a cat and a garden so that something they communicate something completely different let's check out the first seconds of the video hello stranger will come to this failed video actually like the humor I feel like this is quite fun but then once again the video starts out with with plants with gardening of course as I've said it's cool to surprise people and to perhaps start the video with something that they didn't expect but like after a sampling like that it's not then that unexpected anymore then I had some problems with my microphone because the quality sucked for a little moment and I can actually see this going places with a little faster paced editing and grammar and see that is actually a very cool nice interesting shot that has a lot of character why not put that further at the beginning because that feels like it has a lot more to do with game development than this opening shot right here and it kind of tells something about you it's definitely more interesting to look at and more on topic than this opening and then showing your bed for some reason shall let go I'm already subscribed very nice I think I already saw the last video which was kind of nicely edited sir we are the IRS you didn't do your taxes what do you mean you got a $2 donation on your it's dog i/o and you didn't fill it out of your text form so now we're here to bit oh hey let go it's pretty funny I like it it's just to slow pace it needs very way faster editing make this twice as fast and then of course you need to make sure that the value you're pitching in your title actually matches the value of the video right I've already watched the first 50 seconds of the video and so far we haven't made a game in Pico eight I'm sure you'll get there eventually right but at that point the people that were interested in Pico eight have already clicked away also the title is not 100% clear on what this video is like you could either add how to make a game in Pico eight which i think is not what this videos so if this is a little more of an entertainment based video then you could call it something like the madness of making a game in Pico eight or something something along those lines because I feel like that would just communicate a lot better what the videos about unfortunately I really feel like I can only scratch the surface for a lot of these channels just because there's so many peopre Nick okay that's a cool name and what I see here is already some very promising thumbnails here that is the kind of simplicity that combined with the correct title can do really really well on YouTube I feel like same goes for this for this ramped up the contrast the saturation a bit sort pops a little more so let's see what what the titles say Open GL game dev vlog 8 water and other liquids mmm that for some reasons that's a little dry to me it clearly says that it is a deaf look however it sounds very technical so I already feel like it will be a very technical Deathlok and not an entertaining Deathlok but let's see if if I'm right about that okay hello everyone and welcome to another dragon the flume and now I can move it around by deleting a few blocks just slowly flows into place that is very impressive that is a very cool water system in terms of the video I'm not sure what the kind of value this video brings is so what what does the fuel get out of watching this video so far provides neither information nor entertainment and it just shows the progress the developer made on this game which is quite nice but of course it's not the kind of content that does well on YouTube and I think that's looking crudeness already especially the flow animation right there it looks very nice let's check out one of your other videos really fractal ray marching Deathlok once again it says def look but it sounds like a very dry death look maybe you should think about try to like 3d fractal ray marching explained or tutorial or something like that 3d fractals with WebGL once again probably a very dry Deathlok that neither explains me how this works nor provides any entertainment ok hello everyone and welcome to another video at this week after working on yet another side project of mine and is the 3d effects program looks very very nice yeah big props for you to making first I'm making something like this looks really really cool just my main tip for you think a little more about what the viewer will actually get out of the videos that information is it entertainment how can you help viewers with your videos and then be a little more precise about that in the titles as well I feel like this could go places as tiwari yeah oh look at that that looks quite juicy I like those thumbnails ramp up the saturation zoom in a little more like for example only show a part of that mill play around with the composition on these thumbnails a bit if you like that's still a little bit too much clutter but in general this already looks very clickable also putting the unity logo here perhaps a good idea new features game development Deathlok 7 ok so what this title tells me is this is a video where you show off the new new features in your game what what is the kind of value you'll you're pitching to the viewer with that I mean that is probably interesting for people who are making games with unity we want to see what you can do in unity and then of course for people who've already watched one of your previous videos and want to see the progress you made watching that feeling of progress that feeling of being in the loop is value as well but the catch here is that of course you have to get people invested in your game first you have to get people watching your videos first so once I start caring about your game and about you then it's a lot more likely that they'll watch content like this as well we're going to need a flashlight so let's craft it let me give you into tools oh we need an apple and a knife to craft it it's gonna it's kind of realistic I like it yeah that's good hello there and walkin I'm not quite sure about that opening section wanna see the new features right that's what your title says new features and then the first seconds just feel like a little bit of a slow let's play where I don't really understand anything because I haven't seen this game before this game looks beautiful it looks pretty nice already which instantly gives you a lot more credibility so if I see a game like this I'm a lot more likely to keep watching of course because I can see ok this is a developer who knows what he's doing and I want to learn from him I want to learn from from your mistakes from what you'd what you did so that is of course a plus hello there and walking this is a dev look number seven it's going to get here and making some progress even though it's really hot here in Italy and kind of makes you feel tired sometimes a little bit of music perhaps github juice this up a little bit and other than that I like this a lot would like this a lot better as an opening if you like that feels a lot more personal hello there make sure to subscribe because it's going to be funny giving people a reason because it's gonna be funny it's definitely a lot better and more promising than just saying so subscribe so the aim of it is to warm you whenever you land on a cold island yeah so that's already more interesting than average this there's definitely some value to be had here - bro what the hell it's a really cool opening shot why didn't you use so this is an opening shot this is the model I added a particle system which change color over time and I would always encourage you if you make def locks like these definitely talk about the things that go through your mind talk about the things that went wrong talk about mistakes you've made people off that because mistakes are something you can learn from and also makes a little more sympathic because you're talking about mistakes you've made you're not like aha look at me I'm so awesome if you made any interesting mistakes then talk about them mistakes are gold and death looks okay I feel like there's more to be said about this channel that's probably more feedback I could give but we have to move on code Arzo looks like a tutorial channel advice number one make more videos how to create an editor tool in unity to randomize objects step something people are searching for first of all the titles a bit too long perhaps just how to randomize objects or how to randomize meshes in unity and also it's too soon out to see anything you can't really see what's going on here I would always try to zoom in as much as possible on these thumbnails because as you as you can see here they're very small on the screen so for example I'm not I'm not sure what you're randomizing here are those cars or something like that in case those are cars so why don't you just show three random cars or something like that on the thumbnail tiny stuff like that looks really complex and complicated secondly there's a lot of visual clutter and sorry a little hard to stand out with that darzee know guys you're watching coders hi my name is Jacob this video will be about how to use custom editor scripts to make for example placing similar objects in your seem more comfortable for you I like that he's pitching the value of the video right away he's telling you what will you get out of watching this video which in turn makes a lot more likely that the people who are actually interested in this will keep watching the video only thing that doesn't quite work for me right now is the title and the thumbnail although I'm not sure how as I'm not sure how many people are searching for for tutorials for this specific problem that's a little bit of a question as well which randomly activate only one child of this game object it's a useful tutorial this is awesome this is actually providing value and perhaps I would consider removing that intro here it's a nice looking intro I like it but what's the purpose of the intro brand building or something like that I feel like at this point in a youtube channel there's no purpose to showing a logo first thing when people click on your video because the first couple of seconds of a video are just so important and if you're unlucky people will click away before your intro is over so starting right here pitching your value as quickly as possible is the best thing you can do with a tutorial like this by the way the very same thing applies to entertainment videos the main value you're pitching is entertainment then you want to put something very entertaining at the beginning of the video so people can see okay this video will entertain me I keep hammering down the same points because they're really important and most people don't execute on them correctly hello guys you're watching cold days I'm my name is Jacob welcome back to the nice start talking while the interest running I feel like that is actually a cool way to go about it Mikey cheese six one three that rhymes okay is he here key navigation with arrow keys and unity easy unity tutorial that's a good title it pitches the value correctly honestly I just get rid of the text in this thumbnail and just these arrows together with the menu a little bigger in the center of the stump nail this text is too small I feel like other than that this does a very good job of pitching me the value perhaps you could have spent a little bit of time coloring that menu for example just giving it a green background making the buttons blue just giving it a little bit of a nicer color scheme so it doesn't look as try because a menu that looks like this instantly decreases your credibility maybe something like that people are like oh no no no I don't want a menu that looks like that please no no no if you can make your menu look a little nicer further tutorial I feel like that will increase the chance for people to keep watching oh no I'm sure this is copyrighted music I'm out of here okay that was already one piece of advice here you'll I'll subscribe to you fire-bellied indie game developer and resolution it's one of those videos that doesn't really have a well direct value to viewers who watch your videos for the first time this kind of video has value to the viewers who have been following the development of your game for a while and are invested in the development of your game something I could be a little more sumed in on whatever is in the center here for example hello welcome back to this dev vlogs like one second at the beginning where you're not talking just cut that out hello welcome back to so if you've been following a dev vlog you'll probably notice immediately that a few things have changed on screen yes another piece of advice for deathlok's don't assume that everybody has already seen your previous telex because if you do that then you won't be able to grow your audience so what you want to do in your dev Laxus you want to pretend like this is the first video people will watch for example just explain your game really quick what are you making who are you just if you can explain that really really quickly in one or two sentences new viewers will feel a lot more welcome and if you've been following your channel for a long time won't really be bothered by that so I feel like it's definitely worth it to just make sure you get everybody up to speed and people who haven't seen your previous staff locks know what's going on and that's it so that's the only stages that are in the quest the rewards system is not tied in yet so I'll go into how I'm actually making the quest system if you want to show people the quest system you're using in your game just always think how can you present this in a way so people will get the most amount of value out of this for example tell them I want to show you my quest system maybe there's something interesting in there for you that you can use for your own games if you use the word you more often in your videos people will feel more like you're making the videos for them and not for yourself the entire game has a max resolution of 640 by 360 this looks like a section that is probably useful for people who are using Godot and who can learn from you how you did certain things but Godot is not even in the title and as far as I can remember also not in thumbnail maybe a little bit of a missed opportunity yeah this is going into a very tutorial ish direction so perhaps that is a little bit mislabeled as well right valium VR oh you've got quite a nice subscriber count' already on and in fact I'm already subscribed to you that's funny here the thumbnails already look very very nice clean and crisp we can see a video with 22,000 views which is quite nice 6,000 views and you can see the amount of users really attached to the quality of the thumbnails this a very nice-looking thumbnail the thumbnail here says making my own Tetris the title says coating my own Tetris in unity so this gives me a very clear indication of what this video will be about what the valley you is I probably learn roughly how to make Tetris and unity and I'll see the progress of making this game over the course of 13 minutes or whatever that is we've been playing Tetris for 35 years now why do I have the success of this game I'm going to find out today by making my own version using the Unity game engine very nice see first 10 seconds you've already been pitched the value nice Tetris introduction Auto mega door and we are unity tutorial making realistic physics in virtual reality is a big time waster but luckily for you I'm going to show you in this video a nice trick that you can use in your game to easily make those levers and drawers without any trouble your heart a perfect introduction very very nicely done if you want to learn more about VR if you want to get start with VR check out the channel of balaam just keep making videos I'm sure your channel will keep growing you're on a very good path I like it my tabular yeah oh yeah that's the discussion added with matcha Bueller's hello everyone my name is Matt Ouma tabulous and I'm sixteen-year-old indie game developer this is episode 8 and this is being recorded on the 6th of August 2019 so much happiness interviewed a bunch of cool people already liked any suspicious ducks and Blackthorne approach yeah look this a little bit of a wasted opportunity if you already have black sound prod in your video then make it a bit more recognizable here this is too small too detailed like black thorn prods fans will probably just scroll past that without even realizing that this is a black thorn prod video what I would say some these episodes could probably benefit from just editing out the first 10 seconds or something like that just jumping right into the into the talk into the discussion and then hopefully people will get to know you that way hello everyone my name is Matt Ouma tabulous and I'm a 16 year old indie game developer this is episode 7 and this is by the way props for you for making videos like this at 16 years old this already looks promising recording on the 17th of July I people are not really gonna care when this was recorded just when I get into the interesting stuff perhaps start off these chats directly with an interesting question to whoever you're talking with I put the put the most interesting question first right at the beginning of the video start with the hook keep people watching you somehow need to figure out a way to keep people watching I think there's actually a lot of interesting and cool stuff in there in these discussions just gotta find a way to get people to that point then of course you have a couple of deaf locks here as well once again apologies we'll just move on 21-game to subscribe how I missed the Kenny jam deadline I kind of like such title because it says okay I messed up like the fitting dampener for that would be you probably a face that goes like this in classical classical youtuber fashion instead we just have a screen shot which as I've said doesn't feel very high effort and therefore doesn't feel like a very high effort video 10-second intro I can't recommend that especially not before you have pitched the value pitch the value of the video first and then if you absolutely have to then show your intro so what I expected going into this video is a voice that tells me a funny story about how you managed to miss the deadline for the scam jam that hope was disappointed a lot but at the release I have something interesting to look at here I have some show music in the background so this could definitely be worse okay no talking as though this is just a time lapse video of you making games the reason why I think this content does not have a lot of chances to succeed on YouTube is because it doesn't provide a lot of values to viewers the only thing it does is it kind of gives you that feeling that sense of progression it's something nice to look at and it's a nice atmosphere with some chill music in the background so yes there's some value there but I think for most people the time investment for the value you get it's just not gonna be worth it unity game prototyping Deathlok yeah this is something I seem to see a lot you energy game prototyping video start off with something that sounds like it could make for a great tutorial but then for some reason people just put Deathlok behind that I feel like that makes these titles super confusing because first part of the title sounds like a tutorial but then it's a staff lock so which one is it right okay I think you're you're getting the idea I certainly wish you the best of luck I think oh my god this is a beautiful thumb here by the way what is this for you I'm doing engine for making a level using platform effect okay this is using it's a nice sampling and once again it's just time-lapse without talking I feel like these some videos could benefit a lot from you talking over the over the time-lapse just explaining what you did and why you did what you did what went wrong what was your thought process going through this what was your experience can you recommend using this asset pack or whatever what have you learned from doing so if it just tell us a little bit but about while we watch you then the value density of your video increases right because then we have the value of watching this beautiful video of watching your beautiful creations of the chill atmosphere but we get told something interesting on top of that we hear some of these stories and we can learn from some of the things you did though voiceover would drastically increase the value of these videos and I feel like would make them a lot more watchable for mairinger unity custom editors handles tutorial so that is very specific and it's probably useful for people searching that exact term a little bit specific nice thumbnail mmm have you ever needed something that would make your life easy when you're doing level design or UI design or something really that you seen you in unity I like that you're showing your face that makes you instantly more empathic I also can see what you're doing here you're trying to make an interesting introduction just needs to be a little bit faster I would try to get to the point a little faster other than that well done no time to keep watching I would like to but we have to move on pocket Mars here we go videos making of the only outlaw GMT game June 2019 decent title it tells me what to expect thumbnail slightly too much clutter I started off my summer with the extra credits game jam and now I'm ending my summer with a GMT Kay game gym which was a 48 hour long Jam hosted by the game makers toolkit YouTube channel that took place last weekend in this video I'm going to explain how I made the only outlaw my entry for the jam in the Unity game engine nice very nice introduction into the video gave me exactly what I'm looking for it gave me what I've expected when I clicked on this video and it's actually quite nicely edited it has a lot of cuts a lot of pattern breaks and that makes the video quite interesting to watch that makes it feel quite high-quality DMT K always comes up with the best themes for the jams so I was really looking forward to participating this year but when the jam began and so this feels like a story this feels like somebody telling us his experience with the gem walking us through what happened what went wrong this feels a bit more like an emotional journey it feels more emotional it doesn't feel as dry as some of the other game def locks there's some nice music in the background I really like it I like it it has personality theme was revealed to be only one I was stumped most of my ideas were either c1 original too vague certain things talking Mars is struggling with and now I'm curious well how will he overcome these issues and yeah it's interesting to watch this caused me to remember a mini game from super mario 64 DS called wanted where you have a limited amount of time to find a specific character in a crowd I started off by creating a simple cross hair spray and making it follow the mouse cursor I gave the crowd and yes is basically just doing what a lot of other deaf locks are doing that being showing off certain progress but he's editing it really quickly it's not getting stuck on a specific recording forever it's just feels like it's quick progress and you're getting told interesting things at the same time yeah if you like this is how you do entertaining deaf locks well done Pocket Mars I like I mean there are only five videos so far I'm 100 percent sure if you keep making videos like these like if you build up a bank of 100 or maybe just 50 of these videos your channel will do really well you have only uploaded five videos and your latest video already has 500 views that is amazing performance like most game dev channels don't do nearly as good I didn't do as good for sure so this looks promising keep going Billy man oh I haven't subscribed yet and of course there are a lot of very young people on YouTube as well which i think is completely fine one thing you just have to keep in mind when you're really young is that unfortunately you get quite a credibility disadvantage so if people hear a voice that is really high and sounds like the voice of somebody who's really young then people are not just not going to take us seriously but I feel like there are certain ways you can deal with that you can just make videos that don't require people to take you seriously you can just make humorous videos and of course entertainment based videos you can tell stories my biggest recommendations for you just embrace the fact that some that probably most people won't take you as serious think how you can use that to your advantage certain connect devlog 3 background enemy - attack implementation I would really try to keep those titles short as possible what I do with my Deathlok titles a lot of the times is I don't even put the name of my game in there because putting my game name into the title just makes the title so long I really just try to find more interesting titles for my deathlok's and perhaps you can take some inspiration from that here for example my latest F look is called one week of game dev equals question mark question mark question mark I could have put will you snail in front of that but that would have made the title a lot longer and way less elegant so I didn't do that if people who've never seen any of my videos read will you snail indie game def lock they don't how might how my game is called hello everyone welcome back to my channel so one week has gone by and that's enough time for my dash attack enemies and the background implementation will go through each stuff starting with the background and I added some Lighting's as well to create a warm and sunny a lot of this video already feels very professional like not exactly sure how old you are but I'm pretty sure that at your age I wasn't able to make videos that look this professional with all of these zooms and stuff like that and it's good to do this is from blackboard brah oh yeah I can see some black font product in here very very nicely inspired by black thorn seriously keep going keep going you're still young you still have a lot of time be patient keep edit keep learning if you can upload a bit more often that's all you can do okay new edge games and subscribers now eleven why it def log six pathfinding you can clearly see that a lot of these videos have the same problems struggle with the same issues once again thumbnail not super clickable like two thumbnails for deathlok's always quite tricky to figure out the central own welcome to vi a vlog of my sound a stealth game quiet in this dev vlog thanks for the introduction terraeum that sounds interesting that's how it's done introduce people to your game which we'll talk about pretty much the only thing that i've been working on which is not finding and implementing that with the enemy works pretty well you know sometimes whenever you had music nice i like 'ok i'm showing debug information on the screen like a little bit of behind the scenes is interesting my god we have to there's so much more philip Lindenberg let's actually do a super duper speed round from here on out okay looks awesome excellent opening into a video this is a trailer Oh awesome wish you good luck with your game maybe this is not the most representative fun game development time-lapse here see if you're making a game development time lapse then it rarely is called a time lapse so people know what they're getting into I feel like this is a good way to do it problem work seems like a very talented guy here this looks looks all very nice geez gee Froy why you should enter game jams very compelling title Sumner can be improved number one tip make more thumbnails pick the best one hey guys we're just gonna be doing a quick little video on why you props for showing yourself on camera bonus points for that should be joining game jams so instantly pitching the value of the video very well done awesome I like and then just make sure I'm not gonna watch this but just make sure you're providing a lot of value quickly I'm edit everything out that it's not necessary like for example at the beginning here there are just a couple of little frames that you could edit out and editing out those little frames those little pauses really makes a big difference it just feels a lot more tight it feels more professional and feels less like it's wasting your time hey guys see there's like half a second of a pause there remove it pixel P each think this channel has grown quite nicely it's a very catchy name like having a catchy name for your channel is definitely a big advantage also a nice banner here at the top pixel art 101 free college course Game Boy okay so this gonna teach me how to make Game Boy pixel art well that will you actually do that not a big fan of the intros at the very least it's a very short intro welcome back have you ever wanted to oh nice quality audio showing yourself on camera bonus points bonus points bonus points everywhere learn how to draw Game Boy style art well we're pitching the value as quickly as possible or at least before the 10 seconds mark going dude it's good we'll give you it how many Pixar is working on the word and then also as a sign of credibility instantly showing something that looks really really epic so at this point we're already like oh my god this guy is gonna teach me how to make art awesome I want to learn from that guy perfect that's what you want you want to pitch the value as quickly as possible and you want to make sure that people know you're a credible source somebody you can run from I would watch more once again if I'm that short on time code Jeff go go Hedgehog Rangers unity indie game wrote like game dev block ten code gif Deathlok the title is way too long and it is not very clear what this video is make it more clear enemy combat AI unity indie game dev lock once again one of those videos that sounds like a tutorial at first but then puts Deathlok after that to ultimately confuse people or to make it sound like a very dry boring Deathlok a little bit of a long intro I feel like this an interesting intro definitely unexpected unexpected a skirt racing mechanics that I added along the way but before we get into any of that if you want to follow me along on my epic game they have journey then make sure to subscribe to my channel see here to go from idle to combat the condition is that okay and then once again some tutorial stuff in here clearly done stuff that will be useful for people that use unities and behind the scenes stuff some very technical stuff but then there's no unity in the title hey there's unity here as a hash tag but those hashtags don't really YouTube doesn't really care about those hashtags at all or what I can tell if you'll get really technical and if you make a video that is useful for unit users then why not make it clear a video oh yeah he's making a very cool mobile game and on his channel and he makes very good deathlok's talking about his game let's see how he names his videos three years working on the same game this is a very good child and of the first seconds of the video about that topic as well and kind of tell an interesting story then welcome back guys my upload consistency has unfortunately gone to [ __ ] and I don't really kind of upload in any sort of schedule at the moment I kind of just sporadically post the video when I look at my channel and I see that I have it correctly pitching the value but I feel like this is still not all that bad this is still kind of interesting cause it is sharing some of the struggles this game developer has it's sharing some of thoughts feels more feels a little more emotional feels a little more like a story not not the best intro I've ever seen not the worst intro ever seen you can do a lot worse than this I'll insert uploading but hopefully in the future I can change them let's get right into the video and then if at the twenty seconds mark you catch yourself saying let's get right into the video then you know that perhaps you should just remove those 20 seconds three years of consistent work on the same game and then here we got slowly into the topic and so on I like this very nice digital games procedure we'll destroy in unity lazy tutorial I like that and look at that it was two days ago and already has 800 fuse okay given it's already a little bit of a bigger Channel let's destroy something but procedural you know create a cube create a script grab a knife create a part mesh class in it awesome this is entertaining at the and at the same time informative it's only one minute long but it's densely packed with value I can already tell so I want to keep watching our cutting plane what makes a knife did you really think we need that yeah this is getting a little bit technical and I'm not sure if people will be able to understand us this quickly perhaps putting a download link of the project in the description would be a good solution to fix that problem oh yeah and it is perfect that basically pitches the value of the video within the first second there is no faster way to pitch the value of the video let's destroy something but let's destroy something Blake Mexican on production sorry I'll have to figure out a way to go even faster looking back at my first day learning unit looks like a very clickable video I don't know why it doesn't have a lot of fuse let's check it out hello and welcome to blight MacKinnon productions my name is blake McKinnon and today I'm gonna be talking about my first day learning unity six-and-a-half months ago bonus points for showing your face will get even more bonus points for not talking as much like a robot user hands a little bit maybe smile six and a half months ago not a big fan of intros because I feel like they're making it more difficult for you I've decided to make a different kind of video this week as blood breeds development has been moving along pretty slowly and there's no mice this game looks awesome instantly makes you look very credible I like that you showed us early on like 24 seconds already almost a little bit late could have shown that even earlier this looks very very good and gives me the feeling that you're a very credible game developer and that I want to listen to what you've got to say so why not show this a bit earlier you know the fruit subscribe subscribe fish flocking system fish simulator project update yeah good job perhaps show the fish a little more and close-up uploaded one week ago already has 500 views with just 24 subscribers so I can clearly tell that this video did something very right because usually that is not the amount of views you get with a channel of that size the video starts out with a shot of these fish who are moving in this really nice way it's kind of an eye catcher makes you curious gives the developers and credibility because this looks very nice [Music] [Applause] looks very impressive I'm impressed okay and think this will just show off what the fish can do right well if it's something that is visually very interesting to look at then a video without voice-over obviously works as well I'm not entirely sure whether it's possible to build an audience with just videos like this but it's certainly possible to get views and attention with videos like this if it's just some really visually appealing footage like I can see that working there's some value to that right hey this is editing Jonas here I want to surrender here's my capitulation unfortunately I won't be able to finish editing the rest of this video but rest assured it's pretty much more of the same more of the same issues you've pretty much seen everything there's to see my apologies fall off the chance that I didn't manage to cover but hopefully you were still able to learn from all of the other channels and all of the other advice I gave this is pretty much what it all comes down to how many people can you help how many people can you entertain with your videos how well can you entertain people with your videos how well can you add educate people with your videos and how time-efficient are you with that that is really what determines the success of your channel and then how you pitch those things in the thumbnail and in the title well I personally want to achieve with this video is a ton of new game development related channels and YouTube for me to watch so keep making awesome videos keep making even better videos and I'm really looking forward to one year from now where like any of the channels I've shown off in this video have taken off and are at more subscribers on me I'm really looking forward to that day I've been hammering home about these points enough I want to thank you all for watching and I'll see you in the next one

Channel: Jonas Tyroller

Views: 54,951

Keywords: game development, game dev, indie game development, indie dev, indie game dev, game marketing, indie game marketing, free indie game marketing, grow on youtube as a game developer, growing on youtube for game developers, game dev on youtube, youtube game dev, youtube, grow on youtube, build an audience on youtube, build an audience for your game, youtube growth tips, game dev growth tips, how to make a devlog, use youtube as a game developer, making games on YouTube

Id: weEWOJ3liQU

Length: 62min 26sec (3746 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 23 2019