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How to grow a gaming channel on YouTube. Whoever you look at, the same question.
Learn how to grow a gaming channel on YouTube with tips on game choice, storytelling, audience retention, and video editing.
Key Takeaways
- Focus on games you love and build your unique personality to attract viewers.
- Storytelling dramatically improves viewer retention and engagement in gaming videos.
- Voiceover is crucial to making gameplay videos interesting and relatable.
- Editing techniques like jump cuts and mood music enhance video quality and watch time.
- Leveraging trends and news can help new channels gain initial subscribers quickly.
What the video covers
- Gaming YouTube is highly competitive; only the top 5% of channels grow successfully.
- Choose games you enjoy and focus on 1-2 games initially to build expertise and content ideas.
- Make viewers interested in your personality as well as your gameplay to build a loyal audience.
- Use voiceover in your videos to make content engaging and connect with viewers.
- Adding value through tutorials or entertainment is essential; boring gameplay or livestreams won't attract views.
- Storytelling is the top secret to boost audience retention and make videos engaging.
- Implement storytelling by introducing setup and characters, creating a problem, showing highs and lows, and leaving suspense.
- Editing tips include cutting out uninteresting parts, adding mood-appropriate music, using keyframing for zoom effects, and adding text for dialogue and info.
- To gain initial subscribers, capitalize on trending games, news, updates, and viral content strategies.
- Consistent engagement and emotional connection with viewers help sustain growth and adapt to changing trends.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction to Growing a Gaming Channel
- 00:18What Successful Gaming Creators Do Differently
- 00:44Choosing the Right Game for Your Channel
- 01:08Making Viewers Interested in You
- 01:37The Importance of Voiceover
- 02:38Adding Value and Using Storytelling
- 03:16How to Use Storytelling in Gaming Videos
- 06:30Editing Tips to Make Videos Engaging
- 09:02Gaining Initial Subscribers and Leveraging Trends
- 10:33Closing and Final Tips
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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More than half of the viewers on my channel are either a gaming channel or they want to create one in the future!
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Literally, gaming YouTube is the most competitive niche, and that's why out of the thousands of people who start their gaming channels, only a select few, the top 5%, actually see their channels grow.
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And those successful creators aren't any different. They play Minecraft, BGMI, and Free Fire. But along with that, they do something else that maybe 95% of the channels don't even know. That's why they don't grow!
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So, today's video is for those very secrets. I'll tell you the top secret to make gaming videos engaging, tips to gather an initial audience, examples of your favorite channels, and so much more!
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But first, let's address the question that almost everyone asks: Which game should you play?
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You see, choosing a game is just like choosing a niche for your YouTube channel.
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If you enjoy the game, your viewers will also enjoy it. So, I recommend that you play the game you like the most, regardless of its popularity.
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And the audience is there for everything nowadays, so don't worry about views. Also, in the beginning, focus on 1-2 games so that you gain more knowledge and skills about them, which will help you come up with better content ideas.
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And here I'll give you a very important tip that is "make people interested in you."
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Of course, people should be interested in your content (meaning gameplay), but it's even more important that they invest in you and your personality.
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But why? You see, all the top gamers like Mythpat, BeastBoyShub, Techno Gamerz, people watch them for their gameplays, but more importantly for their personality and entertaining skills.
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And that's what you need to do too. If people become interested in you, you'll have a big advantage.
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Let's say the main game you play goes out of trend, or you get bored with it, then you can simply play another game and your subscribers will enjoy it just as much.
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Now, of course, if you want people to invest in you and connect with you, you'll have to make sure that they watch your videos for a longer time, and that will only happen if your videos are interesting.
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How do you make videos interesting? Well, for that, you need to use a secret that will boost your audience retention by 10X.
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We'll talk more about that secret later, but before that, let's talk about something very important: voice.
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If you're thinking of making gaming videos without your voice, then you're making a big mistake!
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Because with good voiceover, you can make a boring video interesting, and without a voiceover, even an interesting video can become boring.
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Also, as I mentioned earlier about making people interested in yourself, a good voice will help you with that.
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You can either record audio during gameplay or add voiceover later, but audio must be there.
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I've made a separate video on recording high-quality voice, so you can watch that. Okay, so we've covered the basics, now let's look at some interesting tips.
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As I said, it's 2023, and gaming has become a very competitive niche. Moreover, if someone can play a game themselves, why would they watch your video?
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So, of course, if you think that you'll grow just by livestreaming or making boring let's play videos, then you're wrong!
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Views won't come from that kind of content. So, what's the solution? Well, it's very simple.
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You need to add value to your content in some way. For example, if you're making tutorials, then you directly provide value.
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If you're making gameplay videos, you need to provide value in the form of entertainment.
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And for that, you need the top-secret, which is storytelling. I remember the day very well when I first watched a Techno Gamerz video.
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I didn't know Ujjwal bhai, nor did I know the game he was playing, but despite that, I watched the entire 40-minute long video without skipping.
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Why? Because of his amazing storytelling. By using this tool, you can instantly hook and retain viewers, which will increase watch time and make your video go viral!
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How to use storytelling in your videos? Well, it's a broad and advanced topic, and I can only cover so much.
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But today, I have these 4 points for you that you can use to implement storytelling in your gaming videos.
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Starting with point no. 1: Introduction of setup and character development. Before you progress in the gameplay, make sure to provide viewers with basic context about the game and its rules so that it's easy to follow.
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After that, talk about the important characters in the game in a way that viewers emotionally invest in them.
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You can create emotions like fear, anger, or attachment around those characters. The character could be an enemy, a player, or a villain.
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Point no. 2, which is the most important for storytelling: Create a problem. We humans are problem-solving creatures.
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We love to find problems and solve them. Even in life, if all problems were to disappear, things would become boring, right?
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That's why if your gameplay doesn't have a strong goal to accomplish, viewers won't have a strong reason to watch your video.
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That's why in the intro of your video, in the initial 30-40 seconds, give viewers a strong reason to watch your video by creating a problem.
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This problem could involve taking revenge on a specific player, killing a powerful mob, or achieving the end goal of the game.
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Remember, the stronger and more creative the problem, the more enjoyable it will be for viewers.
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For example, in Dream's Manhunt series, Dream intentionally puts himself in dangerous situations like risky stunts, surviving with half a heart, or jumping into lava with only a strider for company.
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This intensifies the gameplay, and because viewers' emotions are always changing, they won't get bored.
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Point no. 3 is highs and lows. Creating a problem will hook viewers in the intro, but the rest of the video might still seem boring if you don't use this point.
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To explain it, think about a movie you've seen and ask yourself if your emotions were the same from the beginning to the end.
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Of course not! A movie has moments of happiness, excitement, and sadness, and that's what makes it interesting.
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So, just like movies play with your emotions, you need to play with your viewers' emotions during gameplay to make the video engaging.
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In other words, create moments of highs and lows in your videos. If everything is always in your control and you keep winning, the video will become boring.
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That's why many YouTubers intentionally create dangerous situations in their videos to prevent monotony. The best example is Dream's Manhunt series, where Dream deliberately places himself in risky situations like doing boat clutch stunts, surviving with half a heart, or jumping into lava with only a strider.
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This makes the gameplay extremely intense, and since viewers' emotions are always changing, they won't get bored.
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Point no. 4: Leave suspense. When a viewer binge-watches multiple videos on your channel, the algorithm receives a positive signal, and in return, YouTube shows that viewer more of your videos.
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This increases views, but due to watching more videos, the chances of viewers subscribing also increase.
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So, when your video is about to end, instead of concluding everything, you can leave some suspense for the next video.
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If a viewer likes the current video, chances are they'll watch the next one too.
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Alright, by doing this, you'll understand that half the work of making a video interesting from boring is done; for the remaining 50%, you'll need video editing.
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I have a total of 4 editing tips that, if you use in your next video, will instantly make it engaging.
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No. 1: Cut out the crap. If you want to make a video engaging, the simplest thing you can do is remove parts that aren't engaging.
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So, during editing, use jump cuts and remove parts where nothing interesting is happening or where value isn't being provided.
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No. 2: Music for Every Mood Most people just pick a random song and put it throughout the video, which isn't the right way to use music...
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Firstly, you should use not just one but multiple songs in your video. The songs should match the mood of your gameplay...
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For example, if there's an intense fight happening in the game, you can use orchestral music like this: If there's a calm scene, like building a house in Minecraft, you can search for funny comedy background music, and you'll get songs like
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this: Let's say there's a suspenseful scene; you can search for suspenseful music with no copyright, and you'll get a music like this: As you can see, using the right music at the right time can be a powerful tool for editing
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gaming videos. No. 3: Use Keyframing Using keyframes, you can create zoom-in effects for important parts of the game.
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For instance, if there's a zombie standing somewhere, and I want to zoom in on it, I can do that using keyframing.
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It will look great! I've explained how to use keyframing in my editing tutorial, which you can watch if you want.
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No. 4: Use Text I've mentioned this in my previous videos as well: adding text to your video makes passive viewers become active.
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So, use text for all the dialogues and important information in your video, and it will make your videos really engaging!
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Alright, with all this covered—audio, video, and storytelling—you'll take your gaming videos to the next level.
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But there's still one problem. If you already have an audience, great, but if your channel is brand new, then who's going to watch your videos?
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You have 0 subscribers... In this situation, you can use these 2 methods to easily gain initial subscribers for your channel.
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The first method is Trend Jacking. I've seen many new gaming channels grow using this method.
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Basically, in trend jacking, you create videos on trending topics within your niche. It could be a game-related update, a new weapon, a new mob, a glitch... anything that's trending in your niche...
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In 2019, when PewDiePie's Minecraft series was trending, a small YouTuber named Dream created videos related to PewDiePie's Minecraft seed, and he went viral.
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This is one of the best examples of trend jacking in the gaming community... it helped Dream gain his initial audience, which made it easier for him to grow later.
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And you can do the same. For example: This year, in February, the mob sniffer was released in Minecraft.
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But Pushkar Hindi Gaming 2.0, this guy made a video on it as soon as the announcement was made, like a news type video.
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Despite having fewer subscribers, look at the views—12 thousand. Obviously, people who were searching for information about the sniffer probably came across his video since there was less competition at that time, and that's why he got many views.
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And it's not just Pushkar Bhai, there are many creators who consistently go viral due to some trend or news.
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So, whatever game you're playing, keep an eye out for any news, updates, items, glitches...
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anything that you can create a video on to gain views and subscribers. Then there's the second method: YouTube search.
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To understand this, you can skip to 2 minutes and 59 seconds in the video on your screen, and that's where I'll continue.
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Bye! Go, go, go, watch it quickly!"
Topics:gaming channel growthYouTube gaming tipsgaming content creationstorytelling in gamingaudience retentionvideo editing tipsvoiceover gaming videosgrow YouTube subscribersgaming nichegaming YouTube strategy
