Gaming on YouTubeFind the community of your dreams!Do you love watching videos, with gaming as one of your main interests? Would you like to engage more on what you’re passionate about, but feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of diverse content?Relax, you are in the right place. Hop on board, and let’s discover helpful insights to guide you toward the content and community of your dreams!

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Your Mission

By the end of this adventure, you should have a better comprehension of gaming content, how it is influenced, and how its contributors shape it. You’ll also discover which aspects resonate most with you.

But you won’t be only a passive observer, we’ll test your knowledge with simple checkpoints. These short quizzes are designed to help you understand the data and the insights we’ll provide you. Let’s try with our first quiz on the right!

As you probably know, YouTube is the world’s largest video sharing platform. It is bursting with content of all kinds, but do you know what part gaming represents in this?

Quiz Time!

What percentage does gaming represent on YouTube ?

11%

19%

26%

54%

Quiz Time!

What does the 10-minute peak represent?

Min. duration for algorithm recommendation

Best attention span for users

Min. duration for more monetization control

Min. duration for automatic subtitles

The Gaming World

Here, no more ear-shattering music or boring maths lessons, everything surrounding us is just gaming. Sounds like a dream, doesn’t it? More than just watching someone else play, it’s about discovering trends, connecting with communities, and finding content that speaks to you.

Gaming occupies a large part of YouTube videos, but what does this represents in terms of video length? To tackle this question, we analyzed the distribution of gaming videos durations. We noticed an interesting shape displayed below.

Let’s test your intuition on the reason for this with a new question!

Tags Overview

Another important metadata we should care about is tags. They are a double-edged sword, since they can help viewers discover interesting videos or receive accurate recommendations aligned with their preferences, but tend to be overused by some creatorfpàcs to attract more views.

Amongst all tags, which ones bridge the gap between communities? Let's have a look at the most frequently used.

Quiz Time!

What do you think is the most frequenly used tag under gaming videos ?

funny

reaction

commentary

gameplay

Top Games

How to talk about gaming on YouTube without evocating them?

In this section, you are about to discover the most represented games on the platform. Even if they are not personal favourites, their impact is undeniable, and they are essential to comprehend the dynamics of the YouTube gaming world. Their influence goes far beyond their own fan bases and can be felt across all genres and communities. Indeed, even if you prefer more niche games, chances are the community you are the closest to intersects with those of these top games.

Here is the weekly evolution of the ten games with the highest cumulative views from 2016 to 2019. When you are ready, feel free to dive into the three reigning on YouTube gaming!

Call of Duty

Release DateOctober 2003 - Now

GenreShooter

StudioActivision

Dedication Rate39.79%

Ratio likes/dislikes25.27

Posting Rate5.43%

Each game of the emblematic franchise has been a success. With a posting rate of more than 5%, 1 out of 20 gaming videos on YouTube shows CoD. This cornerstone of war games acts as a unifier for the broader shooter community. Whether your main game is Overwatch, Battlefield, or Doom, you have likely seen Call of Duty content in your feed.

The dedication rate, defined as the proportion of channels that have the game as their primary focus (highest number of videos published by a channel) compared to all channels that have posted at least one video about the game, is about 40%. This illustrates the diversity of its audience: even if CoD isn’t the primary game for many creators, its gravitational pull ensures that almost everyone in the shooter community engages with it at some point.

Fortnite

Release DateJuly 2017

GenreAdventure

StudioEpic Games

Dedication Rate56.1%

Ratio likes/dislikes23.16

Posting Rate5.51%

While CoD is a long-standing franchise originating from the early 2000s, Fortnite is a standalone phenomenon. Released in July 2017, it marked a turning point for gaming on YouTube, revolutionizing how communities form and interact. Unlike CoD’s steady presence, Fortnite experienced a huge rise that reshaped the platform’s landscape.

At its peak, it seemed like every content creator was uploading Fortnite videos, so much that it has become the main game for more than half the channels playing it (56.1%). This explosive growth clustered a variety of communities around the same game, creating an unprecedented level of cross-viewers interactions. This does not totally mean that the game was adopted by everyone, as the likes to dislikes ratio is satisfying but not the best.

Minecraft

Release DateNovember 2011

GenreSandbox

StudioMojang

Dedication Rate51.43%

Ratio likes/dislikes31.46

Posting Rate11.24%

The most popular video game of all time claims the crown. Its unmatched versatility appeals to those seeking creativity, exploration, survival, or combat to only name a few. It's impossible to draw up a profile of the typical Minecraft player or viewer, because they simply don't exist.

More than 10% of gaming videos on YouTube feature Minecraft, and for half of the channels uploading Minecraft content, it stands as their primary focus. This timeless and polyvalent game captivates a massive audience on the platform. To top it off, its popularity is further validated by the great appreciation reflected in viewers' likes.

Impact of real-world events

One of the key ways gamers connect with their favourite communities and games is through their dynamics, the excitement and new experiences that break the routine. How many promising games have we seen fail because they lacked regular updates or a sense of evolution. A powerful tool for games to keep their communities engaged is through real-life events, and when it comes to this, fresh releases are among the most impactful.

Show us you are warmed-up with this new quizz!

Quiz Time!

Which game license is the most impacted by new game releases ?

FIFA

Just Cause

Battlefield

NBA 2K

We observe that every new game of the franchise leads to a huge yearly views peak, while older versions tend to fade. This demonstrates that communities around a fast-evolving game keep loyal to the franchise while expecting regular updates.

Let's see if we can generalize this. Firstly, on another game with regular updates. Then, we'll try to catch the impact of e-sport tournaments rather than releases on the same metrics.

How interesting is this! The game with the most well-known tournaments, League of Legends, shows the same peaks in views after those events than during our previous experiments. This makes sense: much more than just competitions, esport tournaments act as celebrations of the gaming world. After all, what is more thrilling than watching the best of the best compete in the game and atmosphere you love? These events gather people and represent the spirit of gaming communities.

Until now, we've pretty much focused on individual video games. What about taking a step back, and considering genres instead? Indeed, a genre describes the main gameplay mechanics and themes that define the game. The exciting part? Most games don’t fit perfectly into a single genre. Instead, they often span multiple genres, allowing us to find interesting connections.

Genres occupying YouTube

Let’s start by examining which genres dominate the YouTube landscape. Adventure genre is the most represented on YouTube by far. This is no surprise, this general category encompasses diverse gameplay styles and appeals to a wide audience.

However, RPG (Role-Playing Games) and Shooter genres are also very present on the platform. This suggests that a significant portion of YouTube content features intense or violent gameplay, which might not resonate with everyone. If you're not a fan of such themes, you may feel excluded from a large segment of the platform's offerings.

More interesting would be to see the links between these genres, because as we said, several of them can suit a unique game.

Genres relationships

Some genres regularly appear together, while others are rarely or never paired. This tells us about the potential connections between games and communities. For example, if you're passionate about Adventure games, you will often find that these games are linked to genres like RPG, Platform, or Shooter. Thus, as an Adventure gamer, you are likely to be part of a broad community that spans multiple genres, offering diverse experiences and interactions.

On the contrary, genres like Sport or MOBA tend to stay within their own circles. They are less likely to be paired with others, which means that players of these games may find themselves more isolated, focusing on their specific niche. MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) genre, despite hosting massive games like League of Legends or Dota 2, illustrates an intriguing case. While these games still attract vast communities, their genre probably limits them compared to more frequent crossovers. This underscores how genre clustering can restrict a game’s reach.

Interactions between communities

Now that we have seen that some genres connect way more with some than others, we may come back to our games. The following heatmap links the 21 most popular games, taking into account the numbers of viewers commenting under a certain game that have also interacted with another one. This gives us, for each game, a partition of the 20 other games, ranging from the "furthest" to the "closest" one in terms of community.

But remember, we won't let you discover the answer this easily, right? You should first take a test in the following quizz.

Quiz Time!

Which of these pairs of games has the highest probability of players transitioning between them ?

The Sims => Grand Theft Auto

Mortal Kombat => Street Fighters

Roblox => Minecraft

Fortnite => Call of Duty

You haven't seen the time fly? Neither have we. Sadly, this introductory adventure in the gaming world has almost come to an end.

We have provided you with the essentials to understand how YouTube gaming is shaped, the communities it hosts, how its dynamics can be influenced by external factors, and how games can be categorized to appeal to specific groups.

Most importantly, we are now going to let you with the general interactions of these games and communities. This overview should give you a better understanding of how this landscape operates, what might interest you, and what interests others who share your interests. It’s time for us to thank you for making it this far, we can’t wait to see you again in this marvellous world of gaming on YouTube. Enjoy the show!

The following graph illustrates the connections between games based on the overlap of their viewers’ comments. While games of the same genre may cluster together, popularity is also expected to play a significant role in these interactions. As we can see, Minecraft occupies a central position in the graph, strongly connected to a variety of games, highlighting its universal appeal and cross-genre influence.

Your Mission

The Gaming World

Tags Overview

Top Games

Impact of real-world events

Genres occupying YouTube

Genres relationships

Interactions between communities

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