YouTube Gaming Videos

Gaming has been a staple content genre on YouTube for over a decade now. The first YouTube craze was comedic skits and blog videos, but the second craze was definitely centered around gaming videos. Back in 2011, YouTube was still only a few years into being formed, but it was at this point where viewership started to rapidly increase, with the rise of YouTube gaming videos. The rise in YouTube gaming came synchronized with the release of arguably the greatest and largest game of all time, Mine craft. When Mine craft was first released, people almost instantly started to record game play and upload it to YouTube. Some of the Previous largest YouTube channel, PewDiePie's first videos were on Minecraft, as well as veterans such as The Yogscast, CaptainSparklez, Syndicate and many more. The Minecraft craze is what brought me into the YouTube landscape, as I am sure it brought many other millions of people to start watching YouTube. The first series I watched was made by The Yogscast, and it was a series called 'Shadow of Israphel', of which was an adventure series, in which a script was followed. This type of content was monumental to YouTube history, and just the beginning for YouTube gaming. Although Minecraft was first released in 2011, for a few years after its' release, it was the most watched game on Twitch, until eventually new games toppled it, although in recent years, being 2019 and 2020, Mine Craft has returned to rule YouTube gaming once more, with 100.2 billion views in 2019 alone, 40 billion views more than second place Fortnite. (Alexander J, 2019). The popular game at the time completely dominates the YouTube gaming scene, such as names like Fortnite, PUBG, CS:GO, Five Night at Freddy's, Rocket League, GTA 5, Pokemon Go, League of Legends and most recently, Valorant and Among Us.

What start of as game specific YouTube channels, often transform into variety gaming channels. This is the case for the majority of YouTube gaming channels. Mine craft specific channels such as the Yogscast, Syndicate, SkyDoesMinecraft and DanTDM have all since transitioned into variety gaming, as there is a larger audience, and especially as games grow older, interest is lost. Although there are anomalies, such as CaptainSparklez, who has stayed loyal to the game, and still focuses on Mine Craft, showing that there are loyal viewers, and as long as there is a stable player and viewer base, channels don't have to change.

In terms of the styles and genres of YouTube gaming videos, there is way to much content to even talk about. Content in YouTube gaming ranges from let's plays, where the YouTubers plays through a game, best bits videos of the highlights from a play session, challenges within the games set by the YouTuber, Role Play, Survival, Ranked Climbing, competitions, and so much more. The gaming universe and community is so vivid, creative and expansive, and this is why it is one of the largest and most popular categories on YouTube. There is a channel for every niche, as well as a community for people to join. Sometimes, when the biggest YouTube channels create a certain type of video, for example, create a Mine Craft series, many of the other smaller channels will join in on the hype, by creating a similar series, in hope that fans from the larger channels will see the content and will gain new followers.

In terms of the editing styles for YouTube gaming videos, this is where the channels differentiate themselves. You have channels like PewDiePie, who edit in, what I like to call, the generic YouTube manner. This involves having a simplified thumbnail, with the You Tubers face on it, making a stupid facial expression for effect. The videos also include a webcam, so that there is a connection between the You Tuber and the viewer. The video is edited to a state where the video ends up being around 7- 15 minutes long, as this is statistically the best time period to make YouTube videos, as watch time is the current most important factor when it comes to making money from YouTube, but anything over 15 minutes, and viewer retention starts to decrease. (Clarke D, 2021) Within these videos, the editing is minimal, in terms of transitions, pop-ups, effects and the content that they edit. This means that the transitions are smooth and minimal, the pop-ups, such as merch, titles, alerts and information only show important information, so that the audience isn't annoyed by their presence. Effects on the average YouTube video are very simple and small, such as sound effects added, zoom ins on certain parts of the video, usually the webcam, as well as distortion effects such as twirls and colour changes to amplify a mood. The final element of the average YouTube gaming video is text. Text can fall under 2 parts, either the text acts as subtitles for the most important parts of a video, or text can be different to what the You Tuber is saying, and is usually comedic, such as opposing what the You Tuber is saying, or can alert the audience to things they might not have realized. The other forms of editing for gaming videos on YouTube include extreme editing, this included loud sound effects and 'memes' being added to the video. Memes add comedic effect, and are mostly used to satisfy audiences between the ages of 14-22, where louder sounds and memes are most commonly used. Overly edited videos can sometimes be very funny, or be extremely annoying, it depends on the audience. The last main type of editing is minimal editing, where there are only cuts for when audio is bad, or the game play is incredibly boring. This type of editing is often done for let's plays, highlight videos, especially of streams and ranked game play videos, where the whole game is needed, so that the audience can see how and why certain events happen.

For my style of YouTube gaming video, I will be doing an in-between style of editing, where I will use the base You Tuber format, but apply my own spin on to it, which for parts will include heavy editing styles, but only for short periods of time. The Gaming video I will make will be on a game called League of Legends, where me and 4 other friends are competing in a monthly tournament, in which we will see how far we get. The game play will likely last for around 3 hours, and so I will try to edit a 3 hour tournament into 15 minutes of game play. This will mean that the only content that will be within the montage will be funny moments or epic plays, meaning that if my content is enjoyable to watch, the viewership retention should be quite high, seeing as the 15 minute video is all highlights. As well as this, the highlights will be editing, using text to subtitle what we are saying, so that the audience understands the audio, as well as the joke more clearly, as well as using techniques such as having large text for shouting, and vice versa for more quiet tones of voices. I will also be including sound effects, and perhaps the odd meme here and there, as my target audience will likely be from around the ages 15-25. Between matches and at the end of the video, I will be using animated tables and statistics to display how well my team is doing, as well as perhaps animating some parts of the highlights, such as creating animations for the characters that we select, as well as victory/defeat screens, and depending on the length of the video, small animations for funny moments.

Having my own editing style, as well as my own form of humour will hopefully allow my channel to grow, as the audience might enjoy the unique style. However not the whole video will be my unique style, because it could be too much, and people would get annoyed and bored by the over-excessive editing and animating edits. YouTube gaming videos have been around for a decade, and some of the base features of these videos have persisted throughout, and so it is very important to follow along the same lines as these videos.

Bibliography

(Alexander J, 2019) Minecraft is still the biggest game on YouTube by tens of billions of views, available at; https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/5/20996849/minecraft-youtube-rewind-fortnite-grand-theft-auto-roblox-biggest-games-views#:~:text=Roblox%20videos%20brought%20in%2029.6,continues%20Minecraft's%20domination%20on%20YouTube. (accessed 12th April 2021)

(Clarke D, 2021) How Long Should a YouTube video be in 2021, available at ; https://www.socialvideoplaza.com/en/articles/ideal-length-for-youtube-video (accessed 12th April 2021)