Category: Let’s Play

Everybody loves statistics

Posted Aug.08, 2011 under Let's Play

Hi! Remember me? I am Qieth, and I used to run a moonkin blog here. These days, this blog seems like a graveyard, but I’ve been thinking about getting back to blogging. Of course, these days my focus have moved from writing blog posts to recording videos for Youtube.

When I ran the blog, I was quite obsessed with statistics for views, referals, time spent on the site and the like. And it’s no surprise that this is a major source of motivation to continue doing what I do. After all, anyone posting anything on the internet does this with the intent of having it seen. Preferrably by a lot of people.

Now, Youtube is an odd sort. There are some of the very big channels that post relatively few videos, who gets massive amounts of views. And there are small channels that post way too much content to ever be seen. Of course, over saturating your channel with crappy videos isn’t excactly going to put you on the front page.

As an LPer, I post at least a video a day, which is fine for the kind of content I do. With some series running up to 30-50 episodes, it translates into 1-2 months of solid uploading, and if I slacked on that, it would take even longer to finish a series. Viewers might lose interest in the content, or at best they would get lost in the storyline.

I’ve been trying to wrap my head around how to approach my Youtube statistics. There are three factors with hard numbers that one could look at: Subscribers, comments and views.

Most people, especially the small channels I suppose, focus a lot on subscribers. There are all these sub4sub channels with no real content or personality, and these box4box dudes that aren’t really getting their moneys worth, because none of them are getting any traffic anyways.

Comments gives a bit better representation of your traffic and a good insight in your viewers thoughts and feedback. Unfortunately, very few viewers actually choose to comment on a video, so it is in no way any sort of measure of success.

In my book, the figure that really counts are views. These are the people who are, in one way or the other, choosing to watch your content for any period of time. Some are the die hard fans, some just happened to click a related video, and some find your videos because they were looking for that kind of content and your video might result in them checking out your other stuff.

Until now, I used to evaluate my videos based on how many views they got after the first 24 hours. I simply assumed that after 24 hours, my videos was probably pushed away from peoples subscription boxes, and I would upload the next episode anyways. I had sort of accepted that I would get around 10% of my subscribers worth of views on my videos after a day or so. But then one day, just a couple of days ago, I was fooling around with Youtube’s Insight tool, and while new videos were getting 2-300 views, it turns out that my entire channel, all 400+ videos, were accumulating over 80.000 views.

What? WHAT? Where the hell does 80.000 views come from all of a sudden? Sure, I looked back a couple of days, and some of the videos from a couple of days ago may have reached 4-500 views, but that did not in any way account for 80.000 video views. As I looked deeper into the statistics, I realise that a lot of the views are coming on old, completed LPs. Obviously, one of the biggest magnets for views are coming from the Portal 2 videos – my first Portal 2 video is at the top of page 1 if you search for “Let’s Play Portal 2″. But even looking back at other series – Alice, Amnesia and so forth, they are pulling in quite a lot of views still. Enough, apparently, to mount up to over 80.000 views per month.

As a blogger, I was very proud of my site getting some 30.000 views per month during its peak. I thought that was immensely well considering its short lifespan of 1½ years and the relatively small community of moonkin players out there. Getting 80.000 video views per month on Youtube trumps that more than twice, but there is a lot more work time put into making the content. After all, there’s a huge difference between typing for 30 minutes and running a spell-check, and recording for an hour, editing and cutting for half an hour and then leaving the computer to render for another four hours.

I expect views to fall as Portal becomes less attractive, and I expect them to rise as new games spring to life. Such is the nature of the internet. I am still a bit puzzled at how I am coming up at the top on certain Youtube searched – that might just be good SEO, or it could be the beginning of becoming search engine friendly. If more people are finding good content on my channel, I’ll move up on searches, even as partners and 100.000k subscriber channels are doing the same. Quality over quantity, I suppose ;)

Still, I’ve been doing LPs for just about 10 months. It’s quite a nice start so far :)

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Portal 2

Posted Apr.19, 2011 under Let's Play

It’s been nearly four years in the making, but today, Portal 2 was finally released. And what a release. The ARG that Valve has been running for the last couple of weeks has been massive, and there has been so many people involved in the project.

From clues hidden in indie games, to poweing up GlaDOS with potatoes and CPU’s in order to release the game sooner, there has been such a massive hype about the game. And for good reason!

The game released around 6.30 in my timezone – the time I usually get up for work. I was hoping that I could sleep a little bit longer, but because of the ARG, and all of the work a lot of people have put into it, it meant an early release in Denmark.

Thankfully, I had a day off, not because I TOOK the day off, but because I’m working over Easter and my work place decided that it was probably unhealthy if I worked 7 days straight. So it was a happy chance that I just happened to have my day off on the release of Portal 2!

And what a game it was. Man, it has been absolutely amazing to play Portal 2. The writing is brilliant, the puzzles are genius, and the whole experience is just awesome.

Naturally, I’ve started a Let’s Play of the game, and this is where you come in. Oh, of course, I want you to watch it, but I’d also love it if you could help spread the word a bit. I feel like I’m at a point where I’m making pretty good content, and I want to spread the word about my channel a bit more. At the time of writing, my video comes up on page 2 when searching on Youtube. You can help out by viewing, commenting, liking and/or favoriting the video on Youtube. Share it with some friends too, perhaps. Go on. That’s the spirit!

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Super Meat Boy

Posted Apr.10, 2011 under Let's Play

I remember back, way ago, when I found a little flash game on Kongregate.com (flash game in the link). It was about a tiny little man – well, boy. This particular boy was made of meat. We called him Meat Boy.

Meat Boy was intent on saving his girlfriend, Bandage Girl, who had been kidnapped by the evil Dr. Fetus who is, incidently, a fetus in an air tight suit covered suit. Dr. Fetus is a real ass, and time and time again he steals away Bandage Girl and sets up tons of traps to kill off Meat Boy.

Meat Boy, the flash game, was a brilliant playthrough, although not overly difficult. Years later, actually last year, Team Meat, the creators of Meat Boy, finally released Super Meat Boy! It took me a few months to actually pick it up, because I figured “I would probably be too frustrated to enjoy it”. Eventually, I did pick it up, and as it turns out, I do get very frustrated about it, but I am enjoying every step of the way.

Super Meat Boy is an insanely challenging game. You get three levels with tutorials, which explain running, jumping and wall jumping, and then you’re left on your own for the remaining 300+ levels. The learning curve is steep, starting off at “difficult” and ending somewhere around “OH MY GOD I WANT TO DIE!”, and that’s when you complete the light world, and realise that there is a dark world counterpart for every single level you’ve just completed.

Super Meat Boy is probably one of the best games released in 2010 for a number of reasons – it has an amazing atmosphere despite the simple graphics, it has challenging gameplay despite using just the movement keys and two more buttons, and it has some of the most awesome soundtracks ever made.

I’ve been doing my LP of Super Meat Boy for a couple of weeks, and recorded most of my failures for your pleasure. But by no means, don’t take my word for it. The game is cheap, only 14 EUR (and I believe there is a 50% discount on it on Steam right now!) and it will give you hours and hours of enjoyment. It will probably also shorten your life a bit.

- QQ

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Let’s Play with Qieth

Posted Mar.26, 2011 under Let's Play

Last year, I started to get serious about doing Lets Play’s (LPs). My previous attempts at some Starcraft and Modern Warfare commentaries were generally a massive failure. As it turns out, I’m not really fit for commentating a game that I suck at.

But when I started doing LPs of games that I was at least decently good at, such as the random Minecraft videos I put up, it actually turned out alright.

I’ve been doing LPs for a good six months now, and I’ve tweaked the process a lot. Going from recording 15 minutes videos at each sitting, to being able to produce 2 hours worth 6-8 episodes in a single sitting, I’d say I’m well on my way to succes.

At the moment, I am uploading at least a video per day. And despite work and real life, I manage to get ahead on my videos, so I can easely continue to upload at least once per day. Obviously, different peolpe like different games, so some of the series might not cater to the individuals interests. I hope, though, that there is a bit of entertainment in watching my fails and frustration anyways.

I figured I would post the completed LP’s and give you a chance to check them out, if you haven’t already.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent

Amnesia was a very interesting game to play. I am not good with horror. Some might say that I outright hate horror. I’m not good with the movies, and I’m definately not good with the games. At least with a movie, I can cover my eyes like a coward until the danger passes, but in games, I am forced to take action myself.

Amnesia was especially bad for me, because every action and every step had to be done by me. Walking through corridors, peaking around corners, slowly opening the creaking, wooden doors. It was terrible!

But at the same time, it was an incredible experience. The game affected me on so many levels, even after I turned off the computer. After the first week, I was mentally exhausted, and was easely starled. It was only after I completed the game that I got back a measure of self control. And if a horror game can do that to you, then it has been a massive succes.

Batman: Arkham Asylum

Batman was a nice change of pace. It was more of a hack-n-slash with lots of action, and that really suited my wants and needs. I had a rough start in the game, because I generally suck at remembering controls, and take quite a while to get used to combos and skills.

In the end, though, it turned out to be an enjoyable game to play through.

Heart of Darkness

Going back to a game that was so dear to me in my younger days, Heart of Darkness was a rather quick LP. That is, the whole series was rather short, after I cut out most of the massive fails. There were a lot of them, after all.

Still, it was a good game to go back to, and I enjoyed the process a whole lot!

Dead Space 2

I never played Dead Space, so going into Dead Space 2 was to me like going into the womens locker room. – I somewhat knew what to expect, but most of it was in my head. Dead Space 2 was very different from Amnesia, because while both of them are horror-like, Dead Space was more of a BUGGAWUGGA-scare-the-shit-out-of-me.

Never the less, I very much enjoyed playing through the game. It had a lot of character, and a bit of humor, and while I didn’t really enjoy the scares, it was satisfactory to finally complete it.

Those who didn’t make it

I have started a few LPs which I eventually decided to stop again. Either because I never got around to boot up the game again, or because they didn’t really fit the style of LPs. I’m talking about Trine and Darksiders of course, and if you want to check them out, then go ahead – just don’t expect any sort of closure on them.

If you want to follow my current LPs, then you know where to find them!

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