In 2005, the independent website “YouTube.com” was founded. It was a huge success. People could upload videos to the site for other people to watch. According to Wikipedia.org, and YouTube itself, by 2006, there was an average of 65,000 videos uploaded every hour. That same year Google bought YouTube for 1.65 billion dollars.
Today, there are many popular channels such as Yogscast, Smosh Gaming, and PewDiePie. You might ask, “What do these channels have in common?” They are all gaming channels. In fact, sixteen of the top 100 most subscribed YouTube channels are gaming channels, making 16% of the top most subscribed YouTube channels gaming channels.
A gamer is a person who plays video games or role-playing games. In this scenario we are talking about video games. The word “gamer” is typically used not with anyone who plays one or two video games, but someone who plays many video games and plays for multiple hours a day. Gamers are not necessarily people who live in their mom’s basement their whole life, in fact it is the complete opposite. Gamers are generally just people with a commitment to video games, just like a commitment to a sport, art, or an instrument.
Considering how many other topics there are out there, gaming is immensely popular on YouTube. That percentage only gets larger when you eliminate the 20 Vevo channels, which are all the music channels. And the 14 that belong to big businesses, like the National Basketball Association, which are going to get subscribed to anyway. After that, gaming channels make up nearly a quarter of the top most subscribed channels on YouTube.
There are a few theories about why gamers have dominated YouTube. In this example, I will use someone under the name of PewDiePie, the most popular person on YouTube. Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg, or PewDiePie, is the king of YouTube. He has about 25,000,000 subscribers and has created about 1,700 videos. From YouTube alone, he has a net worth of about 10 million U.S. dollars. You’re probably asking yourself, “How has he done this?”
Well here’s your answer. First of all, let’s talk about gaming channels in general. Through personal experience and from the expert gaming companies themselves, gaming videos are very easy to create, since they require no script and very little editing. Unlike comedy channels where there are at least 10 cuts per video and the videos take hours, even days to edit. These channels can only produce only one or two videos a week. Gaming channels, however, can produce eight or more videos per week. The equation here is simple. Two channels with the same amount of popularity where one makes two videos a week and one makes eight videos a week. The channel that has ten videos per week will obviously get more views.
In fact, gaming channels get even more promotion than that. Gaming videos are generally 10 minutes long, whereas comedy videos are only about 3-5 minutes long. The more watch time videos get, the more YouTube promotes those videos. And the more money YouTube and the owner of the channel make.
