Ask A YouTuber Anything
Lets Playing Is No Longer Fun? 

I feel this subreddit sucked the fun out of letsplaying for me.

Today's Date is: March 11, 2017

Ask A YouTuber Anything
Lets Playing Is No Longer Fun?
I feel this subreddit sucked the fun out of letsplaying for me.

Lets Playing Is No Longer Fun? While I can understand burn out, the question I am answering today comes from a YouTuber who, says making lets plays is no longer fun because other YouTubers are putting tags in their videos and using SEO to try to get views.

Uhm...

What do you think? Would YOU say play video games on YouTube is no longer fun, because you were too lazy to put tags in your videos and angry at the content creators who ARE putting tags in their videos?

A person who says they are making games for the fun of it, with no desire for money, subs, or views, is also saying they are thinking of quitting because it's not fun to compete for views against people who are putting tags in their videos (as per YouTube terms of service, which states you are supposed to do so.)

There are a lot of things that could make a person say lets playing is no longer fun, but saying lets playing is no longer fun because someone else uses SEO to get views is probably the last cop out excuse I ever expected to hear.

Today's YouTube Lets Plays question comes from Reddit:

I feel this subreddit sucked the fun out of letsplaying for me. from letsplay

While my original answer to this question appeared on the Reddit thread linked above, my answer here is longer and has more detail then the one posted on the YouTube Lets Plays Reddit forums.

Ask A YouTuber Anything
Lets Playing Is No Longer Fun? 
I feel this subreddit sucked the fun out of letsplaying for me.
My Answer:

Lets playing is no longer fun? I can understand how the attitudes of others can suck the life out of your own fun. Been there, done that. If you know anything about my life, you know I've survived shit, living with hell. I've developed a thick skin because of it. Child abuse, child rape, and pedophiles do that to you. I was 8 years old by the time I had learned that if you live by how others treat you, you won't live long.

Reddit is a website thick with trolls, cyberbullies, and people who have nothing better to do then hurt others. They are everywhere on this site. If you want to be active on Reddit you need to learn to avoid the idiots, ignore the jackasses, and report the bullies. But most importantly, don't let them get to you.

Remember: YOU are in control of where you o online. No one forces you to open that thread. You opened it of your own free will. The solution is quite simple: if that place bothers you, then don't go back there.

{{{{hugs}}}}

I know the feeling of Reddit being not a nice place over all. It's why you see me post on Reddit daily for a few weeks, then I'm no where at all on Reddit for several months. Then come back for a few weeks. Reddit overall requires a stomach of steel and the ability to walk away and take a break.

I've never personally found this particular sub to be toxic, but I also don't ready a lot of the threads. I tend to judge the thread by the title and deliberately avoid opening any I suspect might be a "hot topic" for trolls or bullies. But I do that every where on Reddit. This sub is friendly over all, thus why I like it. But their are other subs on Reddit that are just toxic to the max and I don't even go to them at all any more. Just plain better for my sanity. I mean, I'm the one who has the choice to open the page, close the page, or simply not even bother going to the sub at all, right? It's not like any one is forcing me to open Reddit at all. It's something I choose to do, and is equally something I can choose not to do as well.

That's the way I see it anyways.

As for YouTube, yeah, I completely understand what you are talking about. But lets playing no longer fun? Because you read about someone trying to do YouTube as a career? Really? How does someone else trying to make money on YouTube = lets playing is no longer fun? How does what SOME ONE ELSE does on THEIR YouTube channel translate into YOU on YOUR channel saying lets playing no longer fun?

When I first started uploading videos on YouTube I didn't even know you could get paid to do it. It never occurred to me at all, to think any one out there was getting paid for their videos. So there was no money motive in my uploading. It was more of a combination of

"I'm bored, I wonder what I can do today?"

combined with

"Hmmm, my phone says it films videos. I wonder how that works?"

with

"I think I'll film my dog while we walk today."

Next thing I know I'm making weird random vlogs that have no rhyme nor reason to them. After about a month I had 35 subs and I was: "OMG! People are watching my videos? Why would anyone want to watch this? Wait... didn't I set my account to private? How Are people watching my videos?"

After abut 6 months of that, my boyfriend bought me a camcorder, seeing how I was recording literally everything (EVERYTHING - me eating, cars driving by my drive way, me reading books, me sewing... and not as in me doing vlogs, but just, me setting the camera on the table while I went about doing daily things, usually I wasn't even talking and often I had forgotten the camera was even on.) He was like: "If you are gonna record every minute of your life, you should at least use a camera made for the job."

One day, while recording myself playing video games, I started wondering: "Wouldn't it be nice if I could record the screen so you could see what game I was playing?" I did a Google search to find out if such a thing was even possible, and THAT is how I found out about Let's Plays and gamers on YouTube. Before that I had no idea there was a trend in people playing video games and uploading the videos. Here I was thinking I'd thought of something new, and then find out it's been a "thing" for years. Oh well.

So, I researched how it was people made their videos to learn how to do it, but then once I had the software and stuff, I realized I had no interest in editing or doing any of the "typical" let's ply things most gamers seemed to do. So, I just went about playing my games as usual (which means I also very rarely speak in my Let's Plays as I'm often too focused on the game to even remember I'm recording) and when it comes time to upload, I just slap the raw footage from my facecam on top of the raw footage of the game, upload it and BOOM, I'm done and off to play the next game.

The result is my game videos are 2 to 4 hours long each video, because it's literally you watching me play a game, as opposed to me putting on a show to entertain viewers.... there are no cuts/edits/nothing removed... not even the neighbours fighting outside the window or my dog running by and taking everything off the table with her, or my cat crashing down off the bookshelf in the background.

There's one video, when a cyberbully on steam starts attacking someone, and suddenly I've got dozens of "Steam announcement" pop-ups all over the screen and I can't turn them off, so I head to the Steam forum doing it and report every one of them to Steam customer service, after telling them on the forum exactly what I think of their attack on this other person interrupting my game play.

It adds a full 40 minutes of none-game play time to the video - the whole thing is caught on camera and uploaded to YouTube, uncut, on screen, so anyone watching my video can now see the cyberbullies attacking that person...even though they have now deleted the posts, the posts are forever immortalized on that video, where they can not be hidden from the world, as I don't edit anything out of my videos.

After doing video uploads for a full 8 months, someone asked me what kind of SEO I was using to get views (as a couple of my videos went through the room getting 20,000 videos in a few hours of publication - MOST of my videos struggle to get 50 views total, so it stood out when a couple of them rose fast and some folks wanted to know what I did different and I'm not sure actually - looking at the videos in question, I think it was just the topic itself and nothing to do with SEO at all) and I was like:

"Uhmmmmmmm..... SEO? Uhm... I don't know. I didn't do any SEO."

They said "Well what tags did you use?"

I pointed out that each of my videos was literally titled:

"Daily Vlog With EelKat: March 31, 2016" or "Eelkat Play's Slime Rancher Ep. 01" and that the title was also the only words in the description, as well as being the ONLY tag in my tags.

I hadn't even bothered to think up "good" titles, let alone add a description or tags. I just typed the title, then copied it into the description and tag boxes, hit publish, BOOM, DONE.

Didn't do a shred of SEO at all. Never even occurred to me that I could or should! LOL.

I've been doing this for a year now, and it was only in February (3 weeks ago) that I just started going back and renaming my videos, adding tags, and putting in descriptions. A couple of them I've added thumbnails too as well, but most still have no thumbnails and probably never well.

And, I've yet to make a penny off any of this. My account says that since I started I've made $65 and won't get paid until it reaches $100, whenever that is.

The thing is, I'm just having so much fun doing this, that I've never really stopped to look at it as a business or tried to "succeed" at it. I've made no attempt to be "professional" in my videos, I've done nothing to edit them before uploading, I didn't even think to add tags for crying out loud! LOL!

But yeah, I'm 1 year and 600 videos into this and even with 1k+ subs, I'm still only getting 10 to 50 views per video. Most videos cap out at 30 views, so I'm giddy with excitement every time one reaches 50 views. I know, and then other people are bitching and complaining saying "I only got 100k views on this video, I usually get 500k, what happened?" And here I am piss pant excited as a Golden Retriever puppy every time a video gets 50 views! LOL!

I literally have videos uploaded in the past 2 weeks that still only have 2 views. TWO. Count them: 1, 2. Two views in two weeks. And even then I'm still:

"OMG! YAY! 2 people actually watched my video!"

So you say lets playing is no longer fun?

I think it's about attitude and motivation.

My attitude is always "OMG! YAY! Someone actually watched my video!" along with my motivation always being: "This looks like a fun thing to do, I'll record myself doing it. Maybe someone will watch it."

I think with me, part of it is just my whole outlook, where I know I'm recording crappy videos, crappy quality, crappy commentary, not even really trying to do much... and so it always amazes me when someone watches it... or better yet, when some one "likes" it and I'm thinking "You idiot, I just made a crap video, what the hell are you clicking the like button for? Who in their right mind would like this?" Maybe it's I start out with such a low opinion of myself and my videos in the first place that there's really no place to go but up, so I just get super excited over every single view? My views are way lower then yours, if I let that make me think lets playing is no longer fun, I'd be stupid.

Call it what it is. Either lets playing is fun for you or it's not fun for you. That's YOUR choice. No one else's. Someone else puts tags in their video and you don't, so now you say lets playing is no longer fun for? I'm sorry, but that's you trying to blame someone else for something they had nothing to do with. 

But the thing is there's no point when I'm going "Gotta put out more videos; gotta get more subs; gotta get more views; gotta get more money coming in..." I'm just having fun. If it makes some money on the side, great, if not, well, it was never the motive to begin with so it's no big deal and will not effect my continuing to make videos.

If I ever reach a point of not filming videos, it'll likely be because I just got bored with filming and moved on to some other hobby. I don't think lack of money, subs, likes, or views would ever cause me to stop filming, because those things were never my motive for filming in the first place. I started because I was bored and it seemed like it'd be a fun thing to do.

And most certainly I wouldn't be running around saying lets playing is no longer fun because that guy over there puts tags in his videos and I didn't.

Really, really step back and look at what you are saying. You are saying that because YOU were too lazy to put tags in your videos, thus you don't get many views, that lets playing is no longer fun for you because some other guy DID put tags in his videos and does get a ton of views.

Logic. It's something your brain does. Try using it.

If you TRULY ARE just playing games for fun then tell me WHY are you now saying lets playing is no longer fun BECAUSE people are putting tags in THEIR videos to get more views?

That sounds to me like you are NOT doing YouTube for fun and DID expect a lot of views. In fact, you don't sound like a hobbiest, you sound like someone who is pissed over not getting views.

Please, don't stomp around saying lets playing is no longer fun because other people put tags in their videos and you went out of your way not too.

Look at me. I had no clue tags were a thing. I was 8 months uploading videos before I realized I should be doing it. I'm not doing YouTube for money, but did that stop me from putting tags in my videos once I found out it was a thing we could do? Nope. 

Did I run around bitching and moaning and blaming others for putting tags in their videos and saying lets playing is no longer fun because they use tags to get views? Nope.

You just gotta TRY to have fun, and have an outlook that is not dependent on how others of you or how others act. Just as you can choose where you go on the internet, so to can you choose how others make you feel. Don't let how other act take away from your enjoyment. Heck, if I let how others acted effect my YouTube videos, I'd have stopped making videos by now.

I have videos with 5 views and 50+ dislikes. Every video gets 3 dislikes within seconds of uploading, yet takes days to get a single view, my dashboard says I average 132 dislike per 48 hours but only 51 likes every 48 hours, and at the same time only 280 views every 48 hours. That means I'm getting 75% dislike to view ratio.

Has it stopped me from making videos?

Nope.

Sure, if I did something with SEO and tags, I'd probably get more views, but, like you, getting views was never a goal. I needed a place to store my videos online. YouTube was the easiest place to do it.

In short, don't let naysayers get you down. Ignore them and move on. Don't let it strip the fun out of your video making enjoyment.

Stop telling yourself lets playing no longer fun and make lets plays fun again. It's as simple as changing YOUR OWN ATTITUDE. 

{{{hugs}}}

This article was originally written on: March 11, 2017

This page last updated on: March 12, 2017