So, I’ve been thinking—building an audience on YouTube (or on any platform) is hard. Not exactly newsworthy but still an important fact to keep in mind, whether you’re at 100 followers or a million.

I’ve always prided myself on being a variety gamer who creates variety content on the GamerZakh channel but I failed to understand a fundamental aspect of community building. Day9 recently talked about how to build a community and he set 3 rules:

• Be consistent
• Learn the technical skills required
• Actually make content

Additionally, he insisted that you are simply not allowed to be a variety content creator until you already have a strong community who supports you.

Now, I’m not saying that my channel hasn’t grown over the years but it’s not gaining momentum either. I’m thinking it’s because my attempts to be ‘variety’ might be coming off as ‘unfocussed’. I proceeded to skim through all my videos’ basic stats to see which ones actually got the views and likes. Turns out, besides my ‘Top 10’ lists which do exceedingly well, the rest is all retro content—Age of Empires 1, city-building, Battle Realms, Theme Hospital, Populous, and even abandonware. People have repeatedly asked me to return to older titles and often tell me that they subscribed to me in the first place because of those games. I should start listening to them.

It wasn’t just that—I enjoyed making that content more than exploring the newer stuff, so from now on, I’m going to try and focus a lot more on covering old games. Not just as is though! I also happen to pride myself on taking old gaming experiences and modernising them with mods, HD versions, and refined editing such as Fallout 2’s Restoration Project, Morrowind Overhaul, and Age of Empires 1 in widescreen.

Age of Empires 1 in HD widescreen

Exploring the occasional new game will still be happening through the Gamer Encounters format of first impressions, but aside from that and Top 10 list stuff, it’ll be more retro content from the 90s to early-2000s.

All in all, this refocussing on retro content should actually be what the community wants and newcomers who stumble across my channel will have a clearer idea on what I’m all about.

Perhaps someday in the future I’ll be able to get back to being more of a variety creator in a stronger way?

Either way, thanks for reading and I’ll see you in the next video!

No, this isn’t an April Fools’ post, I don’t really do those.

Just messaging to let you all know about some channel updates and what’s to come!

Live Streaming

Live streaming for me has been a slow and steady learning process, from offline experiments with Fallout 2 last year to my first live show on YouTube with Firewatch. They haven’t been perfect, so I’m currently using Stardew Valley to practice and figure out all the weird kinks that I encounter (like lip sync issues!).  Now that I’ve managed to kind of get into a weekly stream, I decided to up the consistency by fixing a time.

I’ve fixed a live stream time once a week, so you will know every week when I’ll be streaming. I know it’s not the best time for everyone, but I have to choose a time when I can guaranteed be free.

So the time is:

Saturday, 9AM (GMT +8)

Which is Friday evening if you’re in California (PST) or New York. Unfortunately, it’s not such a great time for the UK, which would be about 2AM. I would love to stream at a time when everyone is available but I’m going to stick to this for now as I’ve never actually done a scheduled live show before and I’m still working things out.

Community

Another reason why I’m pushing to get into streaming is regards to building a community. Uploading videos and responding to comments is awesome, but the real chats and interactions just can’t happen. Social media is an option, though my facebook and twitter isn’t really followed by that many and often I get told by people that they just don’t check that stuff. When I’m live and looking at chat, however, people ask questions and give opinions much more than they do otherwise, which I love and hope to foster because that’s how I really learn.

Variety

I know the channel has been a little overwhelmed with Stardew Valley recently. So, I’d like to let you know that more variety is returning, with a new game every week on Mondays through Gamer Encounters and retro gaming on the weekends. I’ll be getting back into city-building soon for Sundays but this first weekend is going to start up a new (but short) retro adventure with weekly uploads on Saturday. I’m also going to try work in a second stream of the week (not scheduled) to get back into Fallout 2, only live this time, as I know many have been asking for that.

So ideally, the week on my channel would look like this:

Saturday ► Retro gaming

Sunday ► City-building

Monday ► Gamer Encounters!

Mon-Fri ► Let’s Plays

That would mean 2 videos on Monday but live streaming creates a lot of videos right now.

And that’s about it for now.

Hope that keeps you in the know and clears up what’s going on with the channel.

Thank you so much for reading!

Take care!

Zakh