Why The Yogscast Eventually Failed

this game is beautiful it is beautiful isn't it so in this nose amazing the issue is that when night falls bad things come out i haven't really played very much with this game i don't really understand very much beyond fat no no trees dude there's something up there in that cave is that yeah it's a green thing look bouncing christ almighty it's a creeper if you played minecraft in the beginning you knew who they were it was almost impossible for you not to oh god there's one right at the back of the house i've got this one in june 2012 they were the first british youtube channel to hit 1 billion views so thank you everyone for the billion views and everything by october 2012 they were the 12th most subscribed channel across the entire platform by october 2013 socialblade's top 50 youtube channels was displaying them alongside some of the most well-known names in youtube history at their peak simon and lewis of the yogscast had it all however in the years following such the viewership on the yogscast channel has been following a linear pattern of decline how does a channel go from the 12th most subscribed on all of youtube to a channel that hasn't increased their subscriber count in the last five and a half years was it a result of the lack of creativity from the corporatization of their youtube channel did simon and lewis lose motivation for innovating the project after so many years of growth or was the downfall the result of a company shake-up following the allegations against some of the key individuals at the yogscast [Music] to become two of the most famous minecraft youtubers of all time was never the channel's goal in fact it's hard to tell if making videos was ever even the goal because back in the beginning mid 2008 24 year old lewis brindley and 30 year old simon lane seem to have created their youtube channel blue zefos as a background marketing strategy for promoting their main gig an itunes podcast by the name of the yogscast the york pod all capitals except the o's are lowercase the name for the yogscasted come from their world of warcraft guild ye old goon squad podcast using yogs as the acronym considering simon and lewis had been playing world of warcraft at the time of launching the itunes podcast they will begin to upload how-to and guide style videos on their new youtube channel how to 25 man soft plus three drakes in the beginning luis stated that these videos were supposed to be somewhat of a fun personal project and the views didn't matter however like many other youtubers they soon got interested in watching the views climb from other people watching their content and originally it wasn't really for anyone but i soon realized that i wanted other people to see it and then i'd be up the next morning looking forward to seeing if there were any people who'd actually watched it shortly after this the creators would realize that we were better at being funny than informing people and as a result simon lewis would change their content from more serious guide style videos to light-hearted comedy content accompanied with this switching content style would also be a slight switch in the games being played as the duo would begin to experiment with other games such as saints row 2 lord of the rings online and borderlands these videos were made at such an early point in youtube's history that there's barely any data available for their performance however a screenshot from 2008 approximately nine months after beginning the channel displays the yogscast sitting at 1 800 subscribers on top of this many of their world of warcraft videos had racked up a decent amount of views most of this traction was the result of titling their videos specifically as how to followed by some kind of challenge within world of warcraft how to commander springvale how to lord walden how to lord godfrey which helped them to stand out amongst other gaming youtubers as people were always searching for guides on these specific topics however there was another game on the rise which by 2010 was also beginning to demand specific how-to videos minecraft on the 3rd of december 2010 york's class would upload their first minecraft video titled minecraft part 1 how to survive the first night we need to chop down some trees and make some wood and this is like number one priority right now now this was extremely smart as it helped the video to rank in search results because many people were specifically searching for how to survive the first night given the relative novelty of the game this was similar to cipher pk's strategy for blowing up on fortnite who stated that uploading videos titled how to win when the game was first released helped him to grow extremely quickly but back to yogg's cast simon lewis didn't just make this first video one of those boring step-by-step guides where you watch two minutes then never return to the channel ever again but rather they mix the guide aspect of the video with commentary comedy and story in more of a let's play style so this is it this is the game this is minecraft universe [Music] it's just us in the dark this gave them the opportunity to introduce a part two to the guide on how to survive the first night you're basically looking for where there's stone this grey stuff here oh there it is right above us then a part three four and five the ultimate result of which being a returning audience for the people who had initially clicked on the video simply to watch a guide on how to survive the first night this extended watch time then began to boost yogg's cast in the algorithm and judging from the graph shown we can see that their two and a half years of grinding youtube was about to begin to pay off within only one month as the yogscast created more and more of their extremely basic yet hilarious minecraft videos the joy went from gaining about 150 subscribers a day to well over a thousand per day at the time of posting their first minecraft video the yogscast had 30 000 subscribers however within only three months they were at 200 000. thanks for supporting us yeah thank you very very much 200 000 of you this extreme growth of 170 000 subscribers in three months as opposed to their 30 000 in three years previously caused them to drop the world of warcraft content entirely with the goal of riding the minecraft wave and while this was somewhat of a risky move given the uncertainty of minecraft's future it would be from this game switching risk that their most successful series would eventually be born the shadow of israel a minecraft series that absolutely blew the competition out of the water and catapulted the yogscast into youtube's mainstream well boys this was it the greatest minecraft series to ever be created remembering that this was still back in january 2011 the production value was unlike any other minecraft series the hell has happened here on top of this simon lewis mixed the perfect quantity of serious content with comedy content no the apartment must be destroyed what a minute ago he wanted to go through it and now we've got to destroy it yeah i guess so um i wish you'd make up his bloody mind which accurately appealed to the younger audience looking to binge watch minecraft videos by may 2011 only five months after posting their first minecraft video yogscast had hit 400 000 subscribers incorporated themselves as a proper company and had gotten a separate workspace for working on youtube videos so i'm at yogscast global headquarters in bristol who are you guys i'm lewis i'm simon hello well let's show us around them maybe we could do a proper business you know that's what lewis was thinking like we could get an office space and go somewhere do work and then come away from it the yogscast then took a similar route as line as tech tips hiring numerous people to help with the content creation process despite the massive uncertainty surrounding the future of youtube as a business what's this guy doing this guy's duncan he's our art and general skills man he does all of the building in minecraft i know he's very talented regardless the hiring of staff would end up being a huge benefit as in october 2011 only five months after hitting 400 000 subscribers york's cast would hit 1 million so we hit a million subscribers this morning i'm gonna go and wake simon up with one of these a giant confetti shooter that i bought on amazon however this achievement was pretty unimpressive compared to what would happen to the group shortly thereafter they would become the first british channel to gain 1 billion views also peaking at the 12th most subscribed channel in october 2012 as mentioned earlier the earliest screenshot available for the most subscribed channels shows blue zephos or yogscast up there with collegehumor ray william johnson the fine bros and even pewdiepie as minecraft continued to snowball in popularity so did the yoggs cast and when utilizing collaborations with other large creators such as captain sparkles seananners and sly fox simon lewis would pass 2 million 3 million 4 million and eventually 5 million subscribers approximately two and a half years after uploading their first minecraft video five million subscribers i i'm totally blown away by this um thank you so much and five years after initially creating the channel they had run a kickstarter to create a game called the yogg ventures began hosting regular public appearances and exhibitions bringing their fan base closer and in 2014 the sunday times listed louis brindley amongst the top 500 most influential people in britain for the year it's safe to say that at the time it seemed as though nothing was going to stop the growth of the yogscast well except for a few little things after three and a half years of absolutely monumental growth slowly the channel began to lose steam yoga's cast went from gaining 400 000 subscribers per month in january 2013 to 150 000 per month in january 2014. while 150 000 subscribers per month was still an insane amount the regression was certainly worth noting as only one year later in january 2015 they would gain only 12 000 subscribers and this wasn't just a bad one-off month by 2015 their growth chart had pretty much gone completely flat with an average monthly gain of around only 10 000 subscribers creating the question how could such a sudden halt in growth be a possibility for the yogscast channel in march 2015 simon lane who was 50 of the yogscast duo would randomly disappear from the videos fans naturally began wondering where he had gone resulting in a response video from lewis titled where's simon explaining his disappearance i'm doing this still quick video to really tell you about simon he has been pretty seriously ill for the last four weeks being in and out of hospital he you may have noticed that simon had apparently recovered shortly thereafter however wanted to take some extra time off to fully recover before getting back into actively making content three months into simon's hiatus louis would once again update everyone on what simon was doing uh how's simon doing he's doing well he's enjoying the summer sunshine we saw him the other day he's jolly isn't he however simon wouldn't return for another three months after this update a grand total of six months without him on the channel simon's break happened to correlate pretty accurately with the channel's view stagnation however the exact effect is hard to measure given their views were already slowing down from 2014. regardless it's safe to say that simon's hiatus was a general negative for the channel however it's not like this was the only problem that the yogscast was facing by 2015 it seemed as though the videos had failed to keep up the wow factor that had helped them stand out back in 2011. their editing production value and comedy was unique during their rise and at their peak but by 2015 it was more or less in line with every other minecraft creator on top of this yogscast had kept up this extremely basic let's play video style where they would navigate a new world and figure things out as they went along with their commentaries on your way to visit your girlfriend at university if you've got a new girlfriend simon i think we both do oh he's the same girl oh crap that's awkward uploading the experience is a long single take videos split up into separate parts this had worked extremely well in 2011 when the competition was basic but by 2015 a single video that took 15 minutes to record just simply no longer cut the mustard when you were competing with people like popular mmos who had accurately targeted ideas with highly engaging commentary at the end of the day by 2015 they no longer had anything unique to offer and the only thing helping yogscasters stick out from the crowd were their personalities was this the fault of yogscast themself or the natural result of an eternally evolving landscape well we've seen a similar trend in many of our other minecraft downfalls such as skydesk minecraft and to a lesser extent stambica where by 2015 the content that they've become used to making simply didn't compete in the same way that it did back in 2012 showing that perhaps it was simply a pattern for these early minecraft youtubers at the same time however it was yogscar's responsibility to adapt change and innovate in order to keep their content ahead of the rest so a more specific question might be why was there a lack of innovation on their part well this is just a theory but it could have been something to do with how their business was set up or more specifically their huge team of people the massive yogscast team would have helped dramatically with productivity but the issue with productivity is that it destroys creativity an element that seemed to be missing by 2015. people being paid to help out with making the content are going to maintain the status quo will be less likely to take risks with a new style and are more likely to remain inside their comfort zone because they aren't being paid extra to leave it all of which leading to far less innovation for the channel a whole team of employees might have ended up being more of a negative rather than a positive for the yogscast as it's going to be 20 times harder to get a whole team to change the style or direction of the videos if by 2015 the whole team was running full steam ahead with daily uploads in the wrong direction in january 2016 one year after the subscriber growth had flattened the ogs cast had their first ever month of negative growth losing 2 810 subscribers and just like 2015 this subscriber loss was not just a one-off yogscast would see negative subscriber growth for 10 out of the 12 months in 2016. once again likely owed to these basic multi-part single take videos that were incredibly outdated by 2016. possibly after noticing their lack of success with minecraft york's cast would switch to other games such as gary's mod and player unknown battlegrounds if we jump out to 75 like to the north west in a sec we can get a car on the road three two one jump and while these videos performed reasonably amongst their already established audience they would do little in the way of redeeming their declining subscriber count this pattern continued from 2017 until 2019 at which point a steadily declining subscriber count would become the least of the yogg's car's concerned but over the past two weeks two different people have now had to uh depart from the company and as of today a third person is now under investigation in july 2019 eight women came forward with allegations against yogg's cast member the cathcast accusing the creator of sexual harassment the craziest part about the whole thing was that the calf cast was in a relationship with another girl at the time of the whole ordeal ceo mark turpin would take to reddit stating earlier today i was notified of some serious allegations made against kaf and his conduct with particular members of the audience having reviewed the evidence and carefully considered this situation we've concluded that caf's conduct is a material breach of our talent agreements and code of conduct that results in us terminating his relationship with the yogscast effective immediately but wait it gets weirder the ceo of yogscast mark turpin who made this post announcing that kaff would no longer be working with the group then stood down as ceo himself as behind the scenes he was asking for inappropriate photos from yoga's cast community members he would take to reddit once again stating i've sent some inappropriate messages to several members of our community and i'm deeply embarrassed about this era of judgment there's no justification or excuse for my behavior i was in a position of considerable responsibility and you all deserve better from me if you've been upset by my actions i am very sorry regretfully yours terps another member shin would then leave a month later after similar allegations it appeared as though the allegations against shin weren't all that concrete though with him stating for a long time i've chatted privately with community members but i've come to realize his behavior might not be considered appropriate by everybody to me it seems like maybe shin was accused of something that might have been misinterpreted as sexual harassment many years later with lewis stating i believe some members of the community have been made uncomfortable or upset which sounds like shin didn't exactly do anything all that severe obviously all three of these individuals are not simon lewis or the yogscast as a whole however it still likely had some effect on the yogscast as a brand since these events two years ago in mid-2019 the yogscast channel views have dropped from around 20 million per month to only 9 million per month a 90 drop from their 100 million average monthly views back in mid 2012. the channel currently sits at 7.16 million subscribers down by around 250 000 from their peak of 7.4 million approximately five and a half years ago but while their viewership and subscriber count has been in pretty consistent decline over the last couple of years it's hard to determine whether or not they've actually really had all that much of a downfall when considering other advancements in their business the yogscast published two video games called cave blazers and brunch club in the last three years opened up the yogscar studios where they rent rooms and equipment to content creators looking to make videos they've created an agency that specializes in influencer marketing called fourth floor creative and even hosted their own convention called yogcon did the york's cast really have a downfall or did they simply shift their attention to alternate business practices i'll leave that one up to you guys to [Music] decide [Music] you

Channel: SunnyV2

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Keywords: notch, minecraft, mojang, minecraft notch, notch in minecraft, minecraft birtday, Sunnyv2, sunnyv2 downfall, downfall, yogscast minecraft, the yogscast, lets play, yogscast, dream minecraft, dream, minecraft downfall, stampy downfall, l for lee, stampylonghead, iballisticsquid, where are they now?, a brief history, documentary, dantdm, stampylongnose, youtube documentary, rise and fall, Biography, narration, video essay, twitch, youtube, stampy, family friendly, sunnyv2, minecraft history

Id: E8lmGTIDQ-k

Length: 17min 20sec (1040 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 24 2021