Regular-ish Update #1 - Meetups, Tutorials, Youtube Analysis! (Patreon)

Published:

2022-07-05 17:24:39

Imported:

2023-12

Content

Hello! I want to get back into the habit of doing regular updates. In the past I've tried weekly, I've tried monthly, neither of which really felt right long term. So instead we now have "Regular-ish!". Which is to say rather than try to commit to a fixed schedule I just post updates when I generally feel like there's stuff I'm doing, or stuff going on, that you don't already know about yet.

GameMaker Meetup

Recently I attended the first offline, UK, GameMaker meetup since 2018! It was great to see some familiar faces and hear some awesome talks. I talk a little bit about the event here:

The talks will be going live over time but as my Patrons you have access to them all right now!

Where the tutorials at?

My content has seen a lot more variety of late, I've been talking about GameMaker updates a lot (there's been a lot to say!), discussing PokeyPoke and more about my personal story and journey as a developer. This content has been relatively popular! At least in the immediate term. Tutorials have always been "slow burn" content that grows over time and relies on search traffic.

While I've been enjoying changing things up, I recognize that you guys are largely here in support of my tutorials first and foremost. That's what the polls have always said both here and on my YouTube channel itself. While I've done a few small niche topics lately, I haven't really done any big tutorials since the Menus video in May. So I'm sorry if you feel maybe let down a bit by this and I hope to do much more of this work in the near future. In trying to really drive my channel forwards I've been focusing on trying to broaden my audience and appeal (and also just mix things up for myself). Now however I think it is past time I get back to getting some good ol' fashion tutorials out as there are plenty of my old videos that need fresh paint and so many topics and genres to be covered.

Metrics insights and video topics

For some insight, lets see how that Menu tutorial actually performed!

The grey area of this chart represents the "typical performance" of my videos. As you can see, this video somewhat under-performed. The reasons for this are hugely varied and hard to ever know for sure, but this sort of performance is fairly quite typical of my tutorial content. People also don't tend to watch very much *of* the video, and don't click on it when its in their feed. The latter makes sense right, you look for a tutorial when you need it! Very few people likely needed this exact, specific tutorial the moment it appeared in their feeds.

However! You can see that the line is increasing with respect to my "average video performance" over time. This is in part the natural growth of a tutorial that is doing well, as more people find it over time through search results. but also I have been doing some stuff where I use my non-tutorial content to *push* tutorial content where I can, as even if tutorial content is good, it usually needs this extra help in order to thrive in YouTube's ecosystem.

For comparison lets look at a video I published a week or so later:

Wow. This was a shorter video with a compelling (and relevant) thumbnail and title about a recent GameMaker update. I put a lot of work into the editing too to make the video engaging, and to try to keep retention high. This paid off! Having videos that are successful in the short term, bring new people to my channel and encourage them to check out my other work is hugely important to my long term sustainability.

Now I'm not sharing any of this to say "see, nobody watches tutorials and Im just going to make meta content instead". Absolutely not. Tutorials form the backbone of my work and none of you would be here without them. But I hope it at least helps to explain why I've been creating and experimenting with lots of different content lately (and I've been quite happy with some of the results!).

While I will always be making tutorial videos, longer term, I do want to try to become more than just "The GameMaker person". I do have a story to tell with my work that goes beyond just tutorials. I am a game developer after all! I want to try other engines, create other kinds of content, other kinds of tutorials even. But I am also only one person. For now I want to not spread myself too thin, and to deliver on what is expected from me. I just want to always do my best to be transparent with you all about why I'm making what I'm making, and what you can expect from me.

Cheers everyone

-S