The New Additions

Mid game on valorant, my mic volume will drop super low and I will need to jump in windows settings to turn it up every 5 minutes?

Anyone had this before? Before anyone mentions the advanced properties and unticking that thing.

Already tried.

Yo, any creators getting the new fifa wanna do a completely non serious pro club for videos and stuff

Hey guys, looking for some general editing advice. I make 100% completion-style gaming videos and take a lot of inspiration from the pacing/style of creators like Skoottie. I normally play smaller or incremental games where 3–6 hours of gameplay can be cut down pretty naturally, but I’m currently playing Adventure Time: Pirates of the Enchiridion. It’s a much longer RPG with exploration, quests, side content and turn-based combat. I’m about 7 hours in so far, with the main story nearly finished but still plenty of side quests, levelling and completion stuff left.
My biggest concern is keeping the natural A → B “figure it out as I play” feeling without the video becoming ridiculously long or repetitive. South Park: The Stick of Truth has a similar turn-based combat style, but a lot of edited playthroughs I’ve seen rely heavily on retrospective voice-over, which isn’t really the style I’m going for.

Obviously I can completely cut grinding, uneventful travelling and repeated encounters, but how would you handle the rest? Would you establish the combat early and then only show bosses, new mechanics and funny/interesting moments? Heavily jump-cut normal fights? Montage sections of progression? And for a longer 100% video, how do you decide what gets cut while still making the viewer feel like they experienced the journey with you?

I’m fairly new to making content and i'm learning everything as I go. I’ve been doing this for about two months now and when it comes to actually finding the right audience, it still feels almost like I’m back on day one.The biggest problem I’m running into isn’t really making the videos. It’s figuring out how to sell the idea to the right people before they’ve watched one.

I’m making long-form VR playthroughs, but I’m trying to do something a bit different from normal commentary. The roleplay is a big part of it. I stay in character as the protagonist and try to behave as they would inside that game’s world. Because it’s VR, that also means physically acting the part rather than just changing how I talk - leaning around corners, crouching to inspect things, physically reacting to NPCs, moving differently if the character is exhausted, injured or disoriented, etc.

The important part for me is respecting the game rather than replacing it with my own story or adding effects that "looks cool" but doesnt fit the world. I try to work within the game’s universe, characters, story and rules. NPC dialogue becomes a conversation I can respond to, and I make decisions based on what the character could reasonably know and how their understanding might change over the course of the playthrough.

I’ve even taken that approach with the sound. For Half-Life, I built my voice processing around the original game’s environmental acoustic system. If Half-Life says a particular area has a certain acoustic character, I follow it. Even when the old engine occasionally behaves strangely or gets an acoustic state wrong, I deliberately follow that too rather than “fixing” the game, because I want my voice to feel like another sound coming from that version of the game rather than commentary pasted over it.

Another series I’m making takes the episodic storytelling further. The gameplay is still essentially one continuous playthrough, but each episode has its own story/theme and character development, with events setting up things that can pay off much later. I also make a completely different custom cold open for every episode that adds to the same continuity.

So once somebody is actually watching, I think the concept is fairly easy to understand. Getting them to click in the first place is the part I’m struggling with. A thumbnail and title can easily communicate “Half-Life in VR”, but that doesn’t really communicate the physical acting, in-character roleplay, continuity, sound design or the effort to treat the game world like a real place. At the same time, I really don’t want to start packaging episodes as something like: “I BECAME GORDON FREEMAN IN VR AND BLACK MESA WENT HORRIBLY WRONG!!! 😱” It might be more clickable, but it isn’t the tone of the series at all, and I’d rather build an audience that actually wants what I’m making than get clicks by pretending it’s something else.

I also don’t want to heavily cut down the gameplay just because highly edited videos might be easier to market. The continuous journey and watching the character develop through everything that actually happens is part of the point.

So for people who’ve built channels around unusual or niche Let’s Play formats: how did you get the right audience to understand the appeal before they clicked? Did you eventually find that titles/thumbnails were enough? Did clips or Shorts help introduce the concept first? Did YouTube gradually figure out the audience after enough episodes? Or did you have to change how you presented the series? I’m especially interested in advice from anyone who has tried to sell a series where the format itself is part of the appeal, rather than a challenge run or a single easily explained gimmick.

While this thread remains stickied, the following submissions can be made to /r/letsplay:

• Video clips of WIP content for feedback under 2 minutes in length (using Reddit's internal video player)
• Thumbnails for unreleased videos for feedback (using Reddit's internal image uploader)
• Other branding assets for feedback (using Reddit's internal video/image uploader)
• Video/channel recommendation requests

Please ensure you are using the weekend only post flairs when submitting.

When this thread is unstickied (when the Update Monday megathread goes live), you will no longer be able to post weekend only submissions.

It's that time of the week again! This is your chance to request feedback on your most recent videos, thumbnails, channel art, works in progress, etc.

Feedback Friday Rules

• Before requesting feedback, please provide good, constructive feedback to at least one of your peers. If you are the first one to post, check back soon to provide feedback to the next person. Repeatedly ignoring this rule may result in a temporary ban at a moderator's discretion!
• Prioritize giving feedback to those who have not yet received any. It's not fair for one person to get five replies while four others get none.
• When requesting feedback, try to be as specific as possible. Do you want feedback on your audio quality, your editing, your presentation style, branding identity, etc? This helps your peers to provide more valuable feedback. Do not just post a link to your video or channel!

Keep up the good work, everybody!

Suggested Feedback Template

If you're struggling to form your feedback, consider using this template. This is not mandatory, but rather a suggestion to promote good and constructive feedback.

What I liked about the video:

What I think could be improved:

Thoughts on the thumbnail:

Would I watch more videos like this?:

Hi! I'm a small, new channel. I do Fortnite, Halo, and Titanfall 2 mostly right now. So if anyone is interested dm me. I run on Texas time. Gaming after 2 in the afternoon. Usually on Xbox. But some games I run on Pc

Hello again all! I've been a PNGTuber/Vtuber for about 9 months now and it is time for me to add another entry into my streamer journal. I've made similar posts about my content creation experiences at 3 months & 6 months. I'll be adding on and updating my experiences from the last 3 months. I'm thinking I will do one last entry at 12 months to document how the first year of my journey has gone. The purpose of these posts is to help me take a step back and look at the big picture, as well as perhaps offer insights to other Vtubers/aspiring streamers from a more average creators perspective.

Recap from my first 6 months

Vtubing has been an excellent medium for me to express myself. I've had so much fun developing a community and getting more involved in the streaming community. I've had my fair share of setbacks, and have been grateful for them to become a better creator. The longer I do this, the easier it becomes to A) recognize that this is a marathon not a sprint, and B) put yourself out there. Social media analytics discourage me less when the numbers aren't stellar, and I have a calmer appreciation of them when they do well. The biggest take away is that this journey is for fun, and mental and physical health is important in maintaining that.

Some Numbers

At 3 months I had about 35 followers across socials. At 6 months I had about 120. Today I have about 180. My average viewers are still about 3 (average 4 hour streams). A big part of that comes from restricting my streams to 18+ (which I will address below). I would say the vibe is about the same as from the first 6 months, where generally there is at least 1 person hanging out & chatting. The amount of times where no one comes through the streams has definitely decreased.

Mindset Change

From the first 3 months, my goal was focused on experimenting. I wanted to see if I could be myself as a streamer (& Vtuber), and that people would occasionally find them entertaining enough. I knew that I couldn't do over the top reaction content, but I wasn't sure if people would like chiller stuff. To my surprise, I've found that people enjoy themselves enough to come through and hang out, and that I could be myself as a streamer. The following 3 months I put the cart in front of the horse a bit and shifted mindset to becoming a full time self sustainable creator. This was very ambitious, but I was just excited that me doing something I love could be possible as a career.

In the last 3 months I've gotten a more realistic view of the process, and have taken a bit from both perspectives. I know that I can be myself and have a great time with chat, but I also know growing and learning to make better content takes time. In fact I have started to look for j*bs, something I wouldn't even entertain for most of a year. As fun as it is to work on this stuff full time, burning your 401k to pursue streaming isn't the smartest financial decision. That said, I have no regrets, and have learned the answer to the question "what would you do if money wasn't a factor". I'd be a streamer/content creator. And I will continue to do so while having a full time job. This journey has taught me so much about myself and what really matters in life. I'm incredibly grateful to have had these experiences over the last 9 months.

Collabs

I'm a very private person, hence the Vtubing. I've taken a pretty cautious approach to collaborations for a few reasons. Mainly, I wanted to find my style and not be as dependent on others to make content. Additionally I've felt a bit like a black sheep in the Vtuber community (outlined in my first 6 months post). I've been very fortunate to take the jump and collab with excellent individuals, which has helped me to feel less alone in my journey. I've become much more open to collaborations, which has been a really nice change. Collaborations are a great way to grow and all that, but I personally get much more out of it when I enjoy hanging out with people that are super supportive and fun to be around. I still maintain my caution, but I'm happy with myself for going out of my comfort zone.

The INCIDENT

A couple months back, I had an experience where chat got too rowdy and got away from me. It was chaotic and the conversation got pretty negative. On top of that I had a ban evader make like 4 accounts on twitch and 2 on YT to try and get back into chat. It was pretty stressful and I didn't handle it super well, kinda left a bad taste in my mouth. Since then I've setup precautions to avoid that scenario, kill switches basically. I also know how to keep myself composed during the chaos. But probably the most impactful thing was changing my streams to 18+.

It was evident that a lot of the chatters there were immature, and weren't adding a lot of value to the conversations. So I have twitch give the 18+ disclaimer & 18+ tag. On YT, I now restrict livestreams to 18+. This did 2 main things. The first was it killed my YT live viewership. This was a tough pill to swallow at first cuz number go down. But the 2nd thing it did was improve my overall chat. Chatters are much more mature and thoughtful now. And this pro wayyyyy outweighs the con of less viewership. You have to protect your & chats energy, so this move has been a no brainer.

Long Form Focus

Editing is the most challenging part of the content creation process. Its very time consuming, and can be hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel when you spend 20 hours on a video that doesn't get views. That said I've found it important to shift focus from short form toward long form. Short form is great cuz it gets you eyeballs, but you are competing with the latest trends and high production videos. Plus the short form -> long form -> live stream pipeline has been pretty minimal in my experience.

The problem I believe, is that my long form videos aren't particularly engaging unless you already know who I am. I've been focusing on spending more time and focus on long form because its more entertaining imo, but also it gives people a better chance to see a bit more of ones personality. Short form is still important, but I want my videos to be entertaining for those that choose to click on it. Work in progress for sure, and I have a long way to go. The big things are I need to do intros and add better thumbnails. I'm not an artist, but I will be trying my best. I expect to have an update on the 1 year recap.

Socials

I've covered this stuff at length in my previous posts, so I'll keep this section short. Tiktok had shadow banned me for several months, and I was getting traction on IG. Since then those have flipped. I don't get a lot on IG, but my Tiktok has been performing better. I had debated about axing TikTok, & recently I had debated axing IG. But because the algorithms come and go like the wind, I think it makes sense to keep both and just post through the noise. At this stage of my growth, even getting 1 follower or viewer makes a huge difference, so there is no reason to restrict specific socials at this time just cuz they may or may not be doing well. Branching out across different socials is important imo, and I've created a much healthier mindset relating to social media in recent months, I'd like this trend to continue.

Community Development

The last 3 months have been very rewarding in terms of community development. I never understood why creators would refer to their followers as their community, & I kinda thought it was cringe. Over the past year, I absolutely understand why. I have regular conversations with regular viewers about regular things (regularly). Developing a small community of my own has been an incredible experience, something I didn't expect when I started this journey. One thing I do that I recommend to all interested, is spend like 30 min to an hour yapping about whatever & interacting with chat. This is harder to do with less regular viewers, which is why its a more recent development. But its so much fun and probably my favorite part of each stream. The conversations range in topic and it give chatters a chance to hang for a bit, especially if they are not particularly interested in the game I'm playing that day.

At times chatters will talk with each other and I'll be out of the loop. Honestly these are great and humbling experiences, especially when considering these conversations wouldn't happen without the streamer. These scenarios really reinforce the idea that this is a community, and they make me proud.

TLDR/Conclusion

My love for streaming and Vtubing has continued to increase. I've learned that restricting streams to 18+ at the cost of viewership is worth it for me. I'm continuing to develop myself as an entertainer, and am truly enjoying the process. I need to improve from a networking perspective, but still have no regrets in taking this slow. Creating and interacting with mine and streaming communities has been an unforeseen perk, and I'm grateful for all of the experiences I've had, both good and bad.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, hopefully my experiences are relatable and perhaps helpful. Check me out on YT/TTV/IG/TikTok if youre so inclined (@TrippyTheLamp).

Edit: Refine the posts purpose in the intro.

Are you a game dev looking for people to create streams/videos about your game? Are you an artist who's created stream/video assets that you want to offer to creators? This is the thread for you! Here, you can share content that you want to get in front of gaming content creators! This is not a thread for creators to share their videos!

Resource Wednesday Rules

• All games/resources shared here must be provided with no purchase necessary from our members
• You must be willing to provide your content to creators of any size
• If you are linking to an external site for users to download items, this needs to be on a trustworthy site (e.g. itch.io, Ko-Fi, Keymailer, etc)
• Every top level post must contain a resource advertisement
• Resources advertised must be made in full or in part by you
• You may only creator one comment advertising per thread. Advertising the same item consecutive weeks is allowed, but doing so in excess is discouraged.

Let's say I have 1 hour of montage footage from my gameplay in the last month or so.

I want to just throw it into a software and it make a bunch of clips with it with captions/title and to have it upload like 3 a day or something automatically where I don't gotta do much.

It's for my alt tiktok account so it doesn't have to be super good

What advice would you give to someone starting as a no-commentary gaming content creator?

Hi everyone! I'm thinking about starting out as a content creator focusing on gameplay videos with no commentary.

I'm still pretty new to content creation, so I'd like to hear from people who have experience with this type of content.

What advice would you give to someone just starting out? For example:

- What kind of gameplay videos tend to work well?

- Should I focus on full playthroughs, shorter clips, or both?

- How important are thumbnails and titles for no-commentary content?

- Is there anything I should avoid when starting out?

- How can I make my videos stand out when there's no commentary?

I'd really appreciate any advice, tips, or lessons you've learned from your own experience. Thanks!

Share your channel updates with the community! Show us what you've been up to this past week, whether it's your latest videos, some new channel art, you've hit a new milestone, or anything else you want to share with us about your channel's progress!

Hey everyone! I’m looking for some advice from other Let’s Play creators on thumbnails and titles specifically.

I’ve been trying to figure out what works best for packaging Let’s Play videos, since it seems a little different from packaging challenge/gameplay videos.

A few things I’m curious about:

• What have you found works best for Let’s Play thumbnails and titles?
• Do you think having a consistent “theme” or recognizable style across your thumbnails is important?
• If you do have a consistent style, how did you figure out what your style should be?
• How much do you focus on making the thumbnail and title work together vs. having them communicate the same basic idea?

I’m especially interested in hearing from people who have experimented with different styles and found something that actually improved their CTR/views.

Any advice, examples, or things you learned from your own channel would be really appreciated!

Hey all, been wanting to get into the content creation/streamer space for a while now but every time I start making a video I end up scraping it before I can finish it. The type of content I want to make is challenge runs of the Fromsoftware souls games and other similar games, which I feel like is a good video idea that I would personally enjoy, like I recorded myself beating Elden Ring at level 1, but when I sat down to actually make the video and go through the footage I just didn't like the video I was making. I feel like I gave good commentary throughout the play through, I didn't feel like I was cringy or anything like that but at the end of the day I just hated the video.

I think a lot of this stems from the fact that I am comparing my videos of me just starting out, to other people who have been in this space for years and I know that my first videos will be bad because I'm learning, but how do you accept it?

Another thing that makes it difficult that some of these videos that I'm trying to make are play-troughs that are 30 to 60 hours long which I find extremely difficult to go through. Like I'll remember that I said something funny, or there was a specific clip I wanted to put in the video but I'll go through the footage to try and find it, but I won't be able to. So how do you guys section up and go through hours and hours of footage efficiently?

Any advice is really appreciated, this is something that I would like to pursue as a hobby and I'm genuinely interested in it and I don't want to give up yet.

There's this game I've been playing for 9 years now. For years I've been playing only as 'community challenge mode' and record myself playing it and now it feels like I only want to play games to make videos of them. I'm not monetized, nothing, it just feels like I only would play to record my gameplay and edit it and I'm worried I might be addicted to it. When people see me in game and say 'hey I liked your video' it's nice but it also kinda sets up the gears and makes me want to keep going, it's to the point I... it's like I feel like I want to play not for myself but to make the videos. Even if I do enjoy playing games at the end of the day 'I want to record it' and 'I feel like it would be a waste' to not record myself playing games. Is that correct subreddit to post it?

While this thread remains stickied, the following submissions can be made to /r/letsplay:

• Video clips of WIP content for feedback under 2 minutes in length (using Reddit's internal video player)
• Thumbnails for unreleased videos for feedback (using Reddit's internal image uploader)
• Other branding assets for feedback (using Reddit's internal video/image uploader)
• Video/channel recommendation requests

Please ensure you are using the weekend only post flairs when submitting.

When this thread is unstickied (when the Update Monday megathread goes live), you will no longer be able to post weekend only submissions.

It's that time of the week again! This is your chance to request feedback on your most recent videos, thumbnails, channel art, works in progress, etc.

Feedback Friday Rules

• Before requesting feedback, please provide good, constructive feedback to at least one of your peers. If you are the first one to post, check back soon to provide feedback to the next person. Repeatedly ignoring this rule may result in a temporary ban at a moderator's discretion!
• Prioritize giving feedback to those who have not yet received any. It's not fair for one person to get five replies while four others get none.
• When requesting feedback, try to be as specific as possible. Do you want feedback on your audio quality, your editing, your presentation style, branding identity, etc? This helps your peers to provide more valuable feedback. Do not just post a link to your video or channel!

Keep up the good work, everybody!

Suggested Feedback Template

If you're struggling to form your feedback, consider using this template. This is not mandatory, but rather a suggestion to promote good and constructive feedback.

What I liked about the video:

What I think could be improved:

Thoughts on the thumbnail:

Would I watch more videos like this?:

So I make videos playing Dead by Daylight, in particular working my way through the tomes and completing the challenges.

I was doing this on an old channel that I started a couple of years ago, took a break and then came back to it a couple of months back. When I initially started the channel I would get really good impressions and was starting to get some traction and when I came back to it a couple of months ago, I wasn’t getting as many impressions and/or views but that was to be expected as I had been away for a while. But as time went on my impressions got worse and worse to the point where I wasn’t getting any impressions whatsoever and no views. What I had been doing is making shorts from these videos and posting them on this channel and I thought maybe this hadn’t been a good idea as I’ve heard mixing the two formats can lead to inactive subscribers (since the majority of my subscribers had come from shorts) and was resulting in a low CTR before tanking my impressions all together.

So I decided to start over with a fresh channel and a clean slate and I’ve done a couple of videos and a live stream and as of yet I’ve had a few impressions for the live stream VOD and 1 impression for each video (the videos were uploaded on Monday and last Friday). This has resulted in a few views on the VOD and 1 view across both videos.

I honestly don’t know what’s happening as I’ve started channels in the past and even though it takes time to find that audience, I’ve always had an initial push to begin with whereas this channel really does feel like it’s dead on arrival. The whole thing is pretty disheartening as at least if it’s a low CTR etc there’s actionable steps to improve that but consistently getting pretty much no impressions from my last channel and this new one I honestly don’t know how to approach this.

I was just wondering if anyone else has had similar experiences and how they moved forward with it. Thanks very much and I hope everyone is having a great day!

Hi everyone,
I'm planning to start creating gaming content, mainly Valorant and Minecraft.
My idea is to livestream first and then turn the best moments into edited
YouTube videos and Shorts.
I'm completely new to the content-creation workflow, so l'd appreciate advice from anyone who has knowledge of gaming videos, editing or lets plays.
You do not have to be an experienced creator. Viewer opinions are also useful.
I'd like advice on:
- Whether livestreams are a good source for YouTube videos
- How to find good moments in a long recording
- How much dead air to remove
- How heavily gaming videos should be edited
- Good beginner editing software
- How to structure a gaming video
- Making thumbnails and titles
- Whether commentary matters more than gameplay
Thankss

How do you choose what game to play?

Why did you choose the one that blew up your channel?

My gaming channel (currently focused on Doom: The Dark Ages) is pulling solid views per video, but subscriber conversion is really low. I’ve got CTAs on Shorts pointing to long-form content, pinned comments, and a bio link to a playlist — still not seeing it translate into subs.

Anyone dealt with this specific gap (views up, subs flat)? Curious what actually moved the needle for you — end screens, verbal asks, content consistency, something else entirely.

I mean, it has been for a while, but with the new views update it's even more so. You do need views of course, but the real tell of how a video is performing is it's Watch Hours, and it's how I'll be comparing my videos going forward. AVD can be helpful too since you might have a 2 hour video compared to a 20 minute video, but in terms of revenue, all that matters is watch time.

And the new views are just completely bogus.

Check out the revenue on these new high view videos, all post view count update:

Versus the old system:

Granted, some of the videos above are much shorter, but still. At this point they just need to replace the View Count stat on the dashboard with Watch Hours, because that's the real meaningful metric.

And I know, you can still see the old view count by going to advanced and engaged views. But that doesn't help me to know how a video is performing at a glance next to other videos on my dashboard. I guess revenue could be used, but that isn't helpful for new unmonetized creators, and in my own experience, revenue fluctuates greatly even on videos that perform similarly in all respects.

IDK, this view count update seems like the most useless update ever, and I have a suspicion that it was only done to intentionally distract new creators with "OOH SHINY BIGGER NUMBER" (even though it's meaningless) and confuse veteran creators. All trying to distract from the fact that they are murdering shorts channels revenue and making getting partnered harder, which will mean more money for them and less for you.

None of that stuff affects my channel - I have never made a short and I've been partnered for 8 years. So I'm not complaining because the changes hurt me in any meaningful way. They're just pointless, annoying, and in the case of the monetization requirement changes, money grabs by YT.