If I Started a Gaming Channel in 2025, I'd Do This

YouTube is 20 years old now. So, is it possible to start a gaming channel today and get discovered at all when everybody else is so well established? No. Anyway,

see you later. Thanks for watching. I'm

obviously just kidding. The answer is it's not too late to start a channel.

There are channels starting right now as you're watching this video that in a year from now are probably going to be at 10,000 subscribers or even 100,000 subscribers. The fact is that most new

subscribers. The fact is that most new gaming channels fail not because of an abundance of competition, but because to be very brutal, their videos or channels are just kind of bad. And I say this

speaking from experience. My first

channel objectively was very bad. And

since that channel, with everything I've learned, I've still made mistakes. But I

do know if I started from scratch today with everything I know, things would be a lot easier for me. And I want to pass on some of that to you so you're not wasting months or years of your life like I did. We're going to break this one up today into four different steps.

And the first one is one that we get asked about a lot. How do you stand out?

The truth is that yes, most gaming channels do fail. And it's not because they're bad at games. There's a lot of reasons they can fail, but the one I see most commonly is that they think like a gamer and not necessarily a creator. A

massive mistake that you could make is just jumping from game to game to game that you personally enjoy and giving no consideration to the community that you're trying to build on YouTube. I

like Subnotica and I like Baltatro. And

these two games are very fun, but also very different. Playing them on one

very different. Playing them on one YouTube channel would just be a bit weird because I'd have to play each one in a completely different style. You

should eventually switch games, and we'll get to that. But if you're going to switch games, they should at least be in the same category. That's because

number two, you should be developing a unique signature style. Let's look at an example. Gray still plays. Now, Gray

example. Gray still plays. Now, Gray

isn't just playing games the normal way.

All these videos focus on exploiting different mechanics and creating different challenges. The more absurd

different challenges. The more absurd the better. Now, as you can see, there's

the better. Now, as you can see, there's a lot of different games on this channel, and they also jump around from genre to genre as well, but they all do have something in common still. In the

case of Grey Still Plays, all the games are carefully chosen because they're able to be played in a unique way. If

you speedrun Mario games, you speedrun Mario games. That's it. You can play any

Mario games. That's it. You can play any Mario game, but you are a speedrunner of Mario games. If you make silly videos

Mario games. If you make silly videos that take a game and play it the wrong way, you need a game that's open enough to allow you to experiment with it. The

bottom line is what kind of gamer are you? Are you really good at games? Maybe

you? Are you really good at games? Maybe

you should consider a speedrunning channel. Or are you someone that likes

channel. Or are you someone that likes to dabble with games that have a lot of mods? That's what Gray Still Plays is

mods? That's what Gray Still Plays is doing. Every time I crash my car, it

doing. Every time I crash my car, it gets bigger in GTA. That's not a mechanic of the game. That is something that mods have allowed Gray to do, which is perfect for a YouTube video. And that

brings me to the third way that new channels are standing out. They mix

personality with format. If an audience is watching your channel because of the game you're playing, you're probably doing something wrong. They should be watching it for the way you play it or the way you cover it. Even if you're doing things like reviewing games and

multiple creators are in this space trying to be the first one to have the best review, there is a way to do this.

Let's look at Splattercat Gaming. This

is the perfect example of a channel that isn't going over the top to try and stand out, right? Overall, the creator is very chill and personable and professional. The insightful commentary

professional. The insightful commentary is what sets them apart. Each video

follows a predictable, reliable structure. There's the intro, the

structure. There's the intro, the overview, your gameplay breakdown, and then the final thoughts. This makes the channel really easy to follow and viewers know exactly what to expect each time something new comes on the channel.

Viewers aren't just coming to the channel because of the gameplay. They

are here for a very specific value proposition and that is to discover new games for themselves. Splatter is acting as a curator providing insights, recommendations, and first impressions.

And he's worked really hard to become a trusted source in the community. So for

channels like this, it's all about being consistent and providing reliable, honest feedback. If you are going to

honest feedback. If you are going to review games on YouTube, the focus should be on being your authentic self and giving your authentic take. Because

that's why people watch YouTubers cover games. They don't want to hear from a

games. They don't want to hear from a corporation that has been paid a lot of money to review the game. They want to hear from a regular person who shelled out the money themselves and thought, "Hey, uh, these are my thoughts on the game and I really want to share them with you before you spend your money."

Anyway, let's get into part two. It's

time to talk about shorts because we always get asked about shorts now and I want to clear some things up. Should I

use shorts? Do shorts actually help?

Will shorts kill my long- form views?

The problem is a lot of creators aren't using shorts properly. They just see them as a cheat code to grow if growth is based on simply the subscriber number going up. Other creators who make

going up. Other creators who make awesome content completely ignore shorts as something that doesn't make any money anyway. So why bother? The truth is

anyway. So why bother? The truth is shorts are another platform on YouTube itself. And if you choose to use them

itself. And if you choose to use them and use them the right way, they can be really awesome for your overall reach across YouTube. In my opinion, shorts

across YouTube. In my opinion, shorts make starting YouTube easier. And here's

why I think you should use them.

Starting a YouTube channel is very exhausting because you're not just learning all the YouTube bits. You also

need to be good at making videos in the first place, editing and filming and perhaps lighting if you're on camera.

You need to have good audio. There's so

much to focus on. And you could spend an entire week making your first long- form video. And nothing feels worse than

video. And nothing feels worse than uploading it, waiting another week, 2 weeks, a month, and just having it never get any views. This is going to lead to burnout really quick, and it's going to make it impossible for you to stay consistent. But if you start YouTube by

consistent. But if you start YouTube by making shorts and you keep them relatively short, under 30 seconds, a minute, then you're going to have a different experience. In that one week

different experience. In that one week it took to make that big long form video, you could probably make five or a dozen YouTube shorts. You can get these shorts uploaded a lot faster than these long- form videos. And the shorts

discovery algorithm is a completely different beast than the long- form algorithms we have on the platform. Even

with zero subscribers, if you upload some shorts, YouTube will eventually test them with an audience. And if they do well, then YouTube will test them with more people. And over time, that begins to snowball. You're going to get

a lot of feedback from posting these videos. And it's going to feel good to

videos. And it's going to feel good to have made something that actual people actually saw. Then from there, you can

actually saw. Then from there, you can take this feedback on board, and you can keep optimizing your shorts. You could

look at your attention graphs and see where people dropped off. You can see which shorts got swiped away faster than other shorts. And you can continue to

other shorts. And you can continue to optimize and get better and better and better. And that is how YouTube Shorts,

better. And that is how YouTube Shorts, that experience can transfer to long- form videos. It's not that people who

form videos. It's not that people who watch your shorts are automatically going to be interested in the long- form content you eventually post. It's that

your skill set is going to sharpen as you make them and then you can use everything you learn to make the longer form videos and make them better. But as

I said, shorts is a different platform.

So no, you should absolutely not expect people who saw those shorts, even if you get 100,000 subscribers from them, to care about the long form videos you start making. Again, the discovery

start making. Again, the discovery algorithms are totally different. And

keep in mind, we like to replace the word algorithm with audience around here. Why is the discovery algorithm

here. Why is the discovery algorithm different on YouTube shorts? It's

because the audience who watches shorts is a completely different set of people.

People watching shorts are in a completely different headsp space when they open the YouTube app. They're just

looking for some quick hits. They're

looking to be entertained pretty quickly and then move on with their day. People

who watch long form videos are probably sitting down to have lunch. They have

extra time to actually enjoy the content for a longer period of time. time and

they don't want to switch every 30 seconds to something new. They just want to watch one big long thing that's 8 minutes long, an hour long, and be entertained for whatever amount of time they have set aside to watch something

fun. When you think about the actual

fun. When you think about the actual people watching this stuff, it starts to make sense why people who are watching shorts aren't necessarily going to watch the long form content. If shorts are something you want to experiment with, but you're thinking, "Ah, I'd kind of just want to reuse the stuff I already

have and turn into shorts," my recommendation to you would be to reuse the idea and not the clips themselves.

Think of it this way. If you make a short and it does really well, maybe you think, "Oh, I can make a longer version of this." You can't use the short to

of this." You can't use the short to make the long form video. Unless we're

talking about literally the idea, right?

You can't stretch a 30 secondond video into an eight-minute video. The same can be said for taking a long form video and turning it into a short. You shouldn't

try to just cut out the best parts. You

should take what made that video good and remake it for the shorts audience.

Reusing ideas is way more effective than just reusing the videos themselves.

That's all I'm saying. All right, enough about shorts. Part three, we need to

about shorts. Part three, we need to talk about unedited gameplay. A lot of new gaming creators start out by just hitting record and playing a game for maybe 40 minutes. And believe it or not, a lot of people just upload that

sometimes, or they do minimal editing just to add a quick intro to the beginning and that's about it. This

leads to incredibly long, seemingly unedited gameplay videos that tend to get tens of views before kind of fizzling out. But it's not necessarily

fizzling out. But it's not necessarily true that just because a video is 40 minutes long, people aren't going to watch. In fact, we've seen channels make

watch. In fact, we've seen channels make 12 plus hour videos that do very well.

Does that mean you should do less editing? Not necessarily. There is a

editing? Not necessarily. There is a difference in the audience that's being targeted with these types of content.

The biggest gaming creators don't just post long gameplay videos. They use the footage they have to tell a story and build tension and create stakes. You

need to be cutting out the boring parts, editing for pacing, and considering what story you're telling with this video.

It's not just Minecraft episode 12.

What's the goal? So, when you're starting out, I would focus on making videos that are actually shorter. The

shorter the better. Try to tell a complete story in a short amount of time and earn the trust of viewers in your community as you go. But what about this semi-new trend of ultra long videos?

Videos that are 8 hours, 12 hours, 70 hours long. Well, it's important to

hours long. Well, it's important to understand that the audience is completely different because when creators make videos like that, they are deliberately targeting what we would call a second monitor audience. These

are folks who maybe aren't fully engaged with the content, right? They're

literally playing Runescape while your video is on the second monitor. Or maybe

they just need to clean their house and they want something on the background.

Or maybe watching a long video helps them fall asleep. What they don't want is a playlist of videos going at different volumes and different levels of energy. They just want something

of energy. They just want something that's going to stay consistent for the entire 8 hours that they're going to bed. Making content like this can be

bed. Making content like this can be really awesome because you're going to get a lot of watch time. People are

going to maybe stop watching in the middle and come back later. However, it

is harder to build a community this way because again, these are not super engaged viewers. So, yes, you can make

engaged viewers. So, yes, you can make 8our videos. You can make 8 minute

8our videos. You can make 8 minute videos and both of those should be in your head as I am targeting different audiences with this content. But whether

your video is 8 minutes or 8 hours, you should still follow the same strategy of making something that is quality. Edit

out any nonsense that doesn't need to be in the videos. Focus on completing a goal so that by the end of the video, the audience gets a satisfying ending.

So if it's going to be an 8-hour video, perhaps that's a 100day challenge that you cut up into one big big full playthrough. Or if it's going to be a

playthrough. Or if it's going to be a shorter video, maybe it's just a smaller specific challenge that you're going to complete by the end of the 8 minutes.

And keep in mind the target audience for that video. Is it second monitor folks?

that video. Is it second monitor folks?

Maybe you do have a little more license to make a longer video. Or is it people who are just sitting down to watch something really, really cool, a challenge that they could not conceive of doing on their own, but they would love to see somebody else take it on.

Okay, onto our final section. We're

going to talk about trends. This is an ongoing dilemma for creators, and it isn't exclusive to YouTube either. This

could be on any platform. What's

trending, and how do I get involved?

Jumping on trends can be huge for your channel, but a lot of creators approach this in kind of the wrong way in my opinion. Some creators chase trends for

opinion. Some creators chase trends for trends sake without any real strategy, while others ignore them completely. The

first problem to tackle is how do you even find them in the first place? And

to find trends, I would highly recommend starting to look outside of YouTube. If

you're seeing a bunch of creators cover a specific game on YouTube and you want to get involved, you might already be too late. Chances are they learned about

too late. Chances are they learned about this game through some other means. A

lot of these trends pop up by just following specific communities. Hang out

in different subreddits, Discords, hang out on social media platforms like Twitter or Blue Sky, and find trends, by just being involved in the community.

This does mean that you might jump on something you think is going to become a trend and then turns out not to be, but that's kind of the gamble you take. This

is why some creators really blow up because they truly got there before anybody else. Another way to find trends

anybody else. Another way to find trends would be to hang out outside of your niche. Sometimes things that happen on

niche. Sometimes things that happen on completely different channels can inspire you to think, "Hey, I could do this in a gaming video." And if all of that sounds a little bit exhausting, that's because it is. Jumping on trends

is challenging, and that's why it can be so huge for your channel if you get it right. To make it less challenging

right. To make it less challenging though, try to avoid the mistake of chasing trends that are just trending in general. The things that you focus on

general. The things that you focus on should still be related to the things you are interested in and cover on your YouTube channel. That is to say, you

YouTube channel. That is to say, you don't have to cover every single thing that pops up that happens to be a trend.

Pick your trends wisely. Another thing

to keep in mind is that following trends doesn't have to be about the topic of the video itself. It can be as small as just meme sound effects or trending songs. If you've watched gaming videos

songs. If you've watched gaming videos in the last couple of years, you can probably imagine some of the sound effects I'm talking about that every gaming creator seems to use now in their editing. Try to pay attention and take

editing. Try to pay attention and take note of what these sound effects are, what they're what are they called, so you can download them for yourself and use them in your content. And don't

forget that trends come and go. And

therefore, you should never stop consuming content just as much as you make content. You're never going to find

make content. You're never going to find new trends if you just chain yourself to your own content and you don't pay attention to what everybody else in your space is doing. If you follow even some of the tips in this video and try them on your channel with varying degrees of success, let me know in the comments how

it went for you. And I recommend this video next if you watch this and thought, "There's still so much I don't know." I make it every year and I try

know." I make it every year and I try and pack it with the most up-to-ate advice that I can possibly put in it.

So, I hope you enjoy.