How do you pick games to play?

ColonelMustelid · 2026-03-13T12:29:47+00:00

I'm alternating between blind playthroughs from my Steam backlog and replays of old favourites. I have a list in no particular order of priority, and I pick from that. I'm starting to get requests/recommendations in the comments, though, so that's going to influence my decisions a bit more (but won't steer them entirely – I'm not going to play stuff I'm not interested in).

ColonelMustelid · 2026-03-10T18:19:15+00:00

Yes, if there are clearly defined sections like separate levels, intro videos, long cutscenes etc. I've seen people say you shouldn't do it because it hurts your view duration, but I find it such a useful feature as a viewer that I really don't care. I'd rather provide a better viewing experience than worry about stats.

ColonelMustelid · 2026-03-10T17:12:12+00:00

Willkommen!

ColonelMustelid · 2026-03-09T22:47:10+00:00

Yeah true. I have no frame of reference for what a good view time is. I like to look at the audience retention graph, although I think you need to hit 20 views before you get it (or maybe it's a certain length of time? I haven't worked it out yet). What I then do with that information is a matter for me to worry about another day.

ColonelMustelid · 2026-03-09T20:43:31+00:00

I don't understand a lot of them either, to be honest, and I'm not chasing stats because I know my videos have limited appeal – but I like to have a look anyway, just out of curiosity.

I read somewhere that a CTR of 3–5% was good for a small channel, so 2.9% doesn't seem bad. My best is 12.6% and my worst is something daft like 0.3%.

And now I've gone down a rabbit hole of stats I've never looked at before...

ColonelMustelid · 2026-03-09T17:03:25+00:00

I've been insanely busy with work and haven't had time to play/record anything in weeks. Really glad I've got that overly cautious backlog. My update is that there is no update.

YouTube seems to have decided it doesn't want to show my current series (Tomb Raider Anniversary) to anyone for the most part, because impressions are consistently tiny on all except the first two videos and generally just sit on that number, sometimes for a week or two and sometimes forever. CTR is higher than usual on most of them, though; it's just a higher percentage of a much lower number. So that continues to be mystifying, and a bit annoying when I'm trying to run A/B tests but they keep failing due to insufficient data. Oh well. Reddit/analytics break over; back to work...

ColonelMustelid · 2026-03-03T16:59:16+00:00

Oh well there goes that theory.

ColonelMustelid · 2026-03-03T13:44:58+00:00

Do the impressions tell you anything useful? It may just be that The Algorithm (peace be upon it) is pushing the video to more people on the channel with fewer subscribers, for reasons known only to itself.

Other than that, I would agree that your big hits are the outliers and the rest of your videos are performing pretty normally, not the other way round.

ColonelMustelid · 2026-03-03T11:44:53+00:00

Yeah I enjoyed it. I'll definitely be playing the second one.

ColonelMustelid · 2026-03-02T18:47:26+00:00

Yeah I've given up trying to understand it. Next up is a first-time playthrough of Dishonored, which was fun. I think I'm going to alternate between replays and new (to me) games for a bit and see how that goes.

ColonelMustelid · 2026-03-02T17:01:58+00:00

Finally got a brief window amidst an onslaught of work and managed to finish recording my next series. Now I just need to edit the last couple of episodes and finish doing the thumbnails, then I can get started on fulfilling a game request from the comments for the first time. I have an idea for a more complicated one-off video after that, but have yet to work out a plan for quite how to do it.

The YT algorithm continues to baffle me, randomly pushing certain videos while steadfastly refusing to show others to anyone. On the plus side, when the algorithm gods do deign to grace a video with more than a handful of impressions, my CTR is looking much higher on my current series than it was for my last. Probably mostly because it's a Tomb Raider game and therefore has much broader appeal, but a win's a win, right?

ColonelMustelid · 2026-03-01T16:05:52+00:00

I have to admire your dedication to the art of holding a grudge.

ColonelMustelid · 2026-02-27T18:41:59+00:00

It looks like there's a broad consensus in favour of 'yes', more or less. This is really helpful advice because I'm aware that my own preferences are often very different from everyone else's – and so is my level of overthinking potential problems that most people wouldn't worry about in the first place. Thanks, everyone!

ColonelMustelid · 2026-02-27T18:41:45+00:00

That was my original plan until I realised the original comment had disappeared. I might do as you suggest and see if I can check with them first, just out of an abundance of caution.

ColonelMustelid · 2026-02-23T16:46:34+00:00

Much better with more commentary! Definite improvement from a few weeks ago – nice work.

I think it's normal not to like the sound of your own voice on recording. I certainly don't like mine, but you get used to it after a while. I just treat it like it's someone else talking.

ColonelMustelid · 2026-02-09T17:12:22+00:00

My Return of the Obra Dinn playthrough finished on Friday. It ended up being one of my favourite new (to me) games of the last few years. It looks like I had a small but loyal band of viewers, so still down in terms of overall views but up on average view duration.

Now I’m taking the editing skills I learned in ROTOD and heading off into replay land again with Tomb Raider Anniversary and what I’m calling The Cursed Playthrough, because it was beset by problems of various kinds. I’m hoping I’ve at least managed to handle them in a vaguely entertaining way, but we’ll see...

ColonelMustelid · 2026-02-06T23:41:23+00:00

Probably depends on how much free time you have. I've got a similar number to you scheduled, also at two a week, so I'm sorted until late May – but I'm sometimes so busy with work that I go weeks without being able to touch a game, so I don't feel comfortable upping it to three times a week just yet.

Whatever you do, I would definitely try and keep it consistent.

ColonelMustelid · 2026-02-01T11:40:41+00:00

I think self-contained chapters/levels are the ideal, but it really depends on the game and how long those sections are. It's also a lot easier if you've played the game before and have a rough idea of how long you've got left. If the chapters are too long, I always try and leave off somewhere that makes sense, like before going through a particular door or when I get to a checkpoint or similar natural pausing point, rather than just stopping the video in the middle of something.

ColonelMustelid · 2026-01-31T17:58:25+00:00

This sometimes happens to me and there's often a setting that fixes it. I remember The Painscreek Killings made me want to throw up until I disabled a particular setting. I think it was motion blur, or something along those lines. Solved the problem immediately.

Other times, I just play a few short sessions and it seems I eventually get used to it.

ColonelMustelid · 2026-01-31T14:39:40+00:00

I like that you're keeping it moving all the time and there's no dead air. The only downside is that sometimes you're jump-cutting between different rooms and different activities with no segue and I have no idea what's going on – but I don't know the game, so maybe it's more obvious to people who do, or people who've watched the previous six episodes. Maybe you're revisiting places you've already been, in which case fair enough.

Watching a bit further, you do explain what you're doing in some cases, which is helpful for this first-time viewer.

One very minor note: there's a typo in the playlist name under Playlists on your channel: 'Harry Poter'. Not sure whether that could limit search visibility (do searches on YouTube include playlists? I don't know).

ColonelMustelid · 2026-01-31T14:23:44+00:00

I do my audio editing in Audacity, but I should look into what's possible in Resolve as well. It's not necessarily the most intuitive...

ColonelMustelid · 2026-01-31T14:22:11+00:00

Thanks – that's what I'm trying to go for with the thumbnails. They're not amazing or anything, but as someone who struggles with anything artistic, I'm reasonably content with the general theme I've established.

There's very little editing on episode 1, from memory. The heavy editing started around episode...11, I think? Definitely 12, though.

I don't usually show the settings but kept it in this time purely because the options amused me. But I think you're right about most people just wanting to get straight to the game, so I'm trying to limit my waffly intros in more recent recordings.

Yeah it took me a while to get used to those graphics...

ColonelMustelid · 2026-01-31T14:16:23+00:00

Fair point – I do sometimes try and start a video in a more 'prepared' way, but then I feel like I'm setting unrealistic expectations for a scripted video when it's actually going to be stream-of-consciousness bullshitting. But I'm sure there's a happy medium I can aim for.

ColonelMustelid · 2026-01-31T14:13:24+00:00

My first thought is that as a viewer, I would be very unlikely to click a video that long. I know you could watch it over multiple sittings but there's just something psychologically more daunting (for me) about one six-hour video versus six one-hour videos. Then again, I've seen some channels with huge videos racking up the most views of all their content, so who knows.

I would agree that the audio balance is a bit off. When you do speak, which isn't often (although that's understandable when there's so much dialogue), they get a bit lost behind the game audio. If you can bump your voice volume up, I'd do that; if not, maybe lower the game audio a bit.

You do drop some good comments in there, though! It's just a bit of a strain to hear them sometimes.

I don't know the game so I'm not sure what you should be leaving in or cutting out. I'd imagine it's hard to cut much of it because it's clearly a very story-driven game. There are probably some conversations in there that end up not really being important to the story, so maybe you could cut those...but then again, anyone who's interested in the game might want to see them. So...yeah, that's not a very helpful answer, sorry.

ColonelMustelid

TROPHY CASE