[Ep549] How to use Youtube Shorts to market your indie game

a hook is just a question mark, okay? That's literally it. And so you need to just make it so that the person is is able to understand like what what the question is that they're being presented with in the first couple like three or four seconds. And they might just be in their own internal question of just what is happening, right? Yeah. And why do you think a question mark is shaped like that? Exactly. It's a hook. Hey everybody, welcome to episode 549 of coffee with butterscotch the weekly podcast for indie game developers. I'm Seth and I'm the games program. I'm not on the misglinis programmer. I'm saying brother and ass east. Yes. And we are butterscotch shenanigans. And today is November 21, 2025s. Let's continue our conversation about marketing. So if you missed last week's episode, we kind of laid the stage for why you should be integrating marketing into the development cycle of your indie game from day one with a specific eye toward short form video content and streamability and relatability and all that stuff. And so yeah, go watch that. And today we're going to talk about how though how you get how to think about shorts how to make them how to interpret them what we've seen so far. And then like stuff that we maybe are theorizing about, but we're not quite sure about, you know, because oftentimes these algorithms can be a bit of a black box. So we'll just kind of get into it. So as for context, we're old to the game of making and selling games. We've been doing this for more than a decade. We are new to the game of using short form video content to do it, but have already been seeing success with probably by the time people listen to this, we got a video with a million views on it or close to and a few with over 100,000. And so we're we're we're feel like we're finding something that works. And in between episodes, we just came up with another idea of the next short to make. So I mean, we're just going to keep pumping them out because well, they're actually they're really fun to make, honestly, but also they're super useful. So I think let's let's first talk about just how do you make these shorts? What's the what's the process? What are the tools that you use? We'll start there. Yeah, we'll start on like I think that just the nitty gritty stuff first. So one reason cap cut don't use fucking Adobe Premiere. I'm honest, I'm honest. Okay, I've been using that. Let's be honest, you know, for once, for once, you know, been using that for years for all of our trailers and stuff. And then it's it's not good for making short form stuff. And the reason is because cap cut on the plus side, Sam, it's expensive. Yeah, you're right. I don't think about that. And it don't be what harass you. Every month exists with emails. So it's pretty there's some upsides. There's some upside. Uh, cap cut is made by Biden. So it's the same kind of made TikTok. So it's made to be able to easily make short form stuff. Right. And so we use the desktop version. It's great. You can find sound effects. There's like, there's just stuff that you just grab and just chuck into your video. And this is actually administratively it's a shit show trying to like set up an account and figure out website. It's not work. The website is bad. It took me I was unable to log in for like a million. It's a mess to get in there. But what's in there? I'll let you figure that out. Getting to pay for this weird, but you get to get like a pro trial. This comes with. Just I think our main advice is don't try to have a team. They'll use the team's feature. Just get to. I think in our case, some of us were only able to get the pro subscription through PayPal. Yeah. Uh, because for whatever reason, it varies other pain on methods. It's just like, they just wouldn't work. So like, yeah, if you're struggling with that, maybe try using a PayPal account or something. It's a mess. But it's cheap. And once you get in there, it's very, very, very good. Yeah. Um, so get this tool. And I'm not going to go any details, but like how to use it because you could fucking figure that out. That's like just good. There must be plenty of good content about how to do. Um, so that's, but that's like, that's the most useful tool for it. Uh, it might be. And then in a big part of the reason for that is because it does like the auto captioning stuff that you see on most short form content. Since most people, there's a lot of people do watch that stuff without volume on, right? Then that's, and it's also just kind of engaging to have like the text, you know, I don't really like it. Yeah. It's useful. Um, and so that they have auto caption generation and also just templates you can drop on this. So those are like the major things we were thinking about. And it's been really, it's been very fun to use. It's like way more fun to use. And there's just one other thing. CapCut has overlays for the UIs for TikTok and YouTube shorts, because if you ever watch a YouTube shorter TikTok video, you know, it's like, there's a bunch of shit in the way actually. Like it's overlaid onto the video. It's like the name of the channel. It's like a bunch of icons for like discussions and descriptions or whatever. And if you make your video not realizing that there's a bunch of parts of the screen that are actually obscured, then you might actually make a crappy video that people can't see what's going on. And we've all experienced that if you watch that content where you'll be, you'll see a video and then the description on the video is overlinked that all the text that's on the screen. Yeah. Yeah. So you can really have CapCut has those overlays so you can tell where that is. Very easy to use. And again, part of this idea from last video of having this be part of your cycle, like your Dev cycle, when we were putting together some of the first shorts, we didn't have sound effects. We didn't have slow mo and some of these other things happening when like the final hit of an enemy happened in one of these matches, like the finale, like I won, you know, a bunch of gay guy, the kind of visual prototype of that actually came from having to make a short. And I was like, well, I need to make it add some more tension here, you know, in this moment of like the final punch of this battle. So so I, I just threw it into the slow mo basically. And then in the video, in CapCut ended through some of the generic sound effects that they let you just use, right, onto it to get the vibe. And then we took that we're like, Hey, we'll just do this to me. And he's like, Can you like do what I did in this video? But in the game, because I'll code up this effect that I made as just like, that's how battles end. Yeah. So it's also a prototyping tool as your stuff is super useful. So, um, so yeah, so using CapCut, it's really, really great. Step two, then of course, is like heaven. If you're, we're going to be talking about specific about YouTube channels. So TikTok is a whole other thing. Um, we have not cracked that one. Haven't cracked it at all. Uh, the content that tends to do well there is like, it just has a very different vibe to it. It's a little more, we described it as like the id. It's a little more brain rock. It's just like, kind of shortest of short form, yeah, thoughtless. We will, we will be tip to the event space a little bit now that we feel like we got a bit of a handle on the YouTube side, um, to see what we could figure out. But this is not about TikTok. This is about YouTube shorts, specifically. Uh, and the reason being that they have YouTube shorts has a bit more of like, uh, more of like authentic, like dev to, uh, community style vibe to the videos. A lot of the views have done really well. Uh, and also ones that we actually based some of ours on. If you look at the, uh, the megabunk creator, some of his shorts, um, and again, looking at some of those shorts from people who are referenced in genocide rollers interviews, just go look at their channels, go see their shorts. And that's probably the kind of the best initial piece of design advice, right? As go find other people who are doing it, who are making the kind of stuff that you think you would be able to kind of want to make and see one on their channels. Because you can just see the view counts right there. So you can see like what's performing well. Yeah, so quite literally what we did was we took essentially like, just looked at how those videos were structured and then just, just rip the structure. So in our case, uh, one of the best formats and like the easiest format I think to start with is something like lines of just saying, um, my game had a problem. What's it? You just say, my game had a problem. I had to game had a problem. And then state what the problem is, obviously while there's something cool looking happening to it and then reveal sort of like what the path to the solution was. And in the most ideal cases, there's a twist after that where you didn't realize something was going to happen because you solved this problem and now this other thing has happened. That was like a completely separate problem or that was like very, very funny. Yeah. So it's all about, so something that we kind of noticed as a comparison point is we, we make YouTube shorts out of our, out of some of our podcast clips, which don't really do that well because it doesn't have without format. Uh, it's basically, it's just us talking about a topic and in the format that works about the same as talking about it's essentially immediately open up a tension point, which is a question, which is something that needs to be resolved with the viewers like, Oh, I want to know what's, what's how this is going to work itself out. Yep. And then by the end of the video, it works itself out, right? The only time we had one of our YouTube shorts, uh, do well from the podcast is a joke. Yep. Yep. Where I, where it started with, uh, with the initial joke and then of course it ends with the punchline and like, that's exactly the same format and that's why jokes work is it creates this curiosity and tension about how this situation is going to resolve itself and people stick around. It was a knock knock joke, which means people knew it was a joke already because of the format. Oh no, it was, uh, it was the one about the QA test or walks into a box. I think it walks into a bar. But it's, but it's a feeling your joke first is because if, because if somebody, if we go to that clip of us joking, which is different from telling a joke, right? People don't know you're joking. People don't know that that a joke is happening until they get to the end and now it's too late. Yep. Right. So you need to hook, like you need something at the beginning that gets people engaged and invested in seeing how the thing is going to result. Yeah. And specifically, again, people, I think confused the idea of a hook, uh, like visually with what you, what you need to happen. A hook is just a question mark. Okay. That's literally it. And so you need to just make it so that the person is, is able to understand like what, what the question is that they're being presented with in the first, like three or four seconds. And then they're own internal question of just what What is happening? Right? Yeah. Exactly. It's a hook. It's a hook. So, so you open with that with basically some kind of question for your audience, right? And then it's again, it's not used to, you ask your question, it's just saying. I have to stay. It's you casting a question to their mind. So what you're trying to figure out is, what question do I want them to be asking and how do I make them ask that, right? And then you basically, you just structure the whole video around it and the ones that we've seen do better are over 30 seconds on YouTube. I think a lot of it comes down to, the ones that have done the best tend to be closer to like 45 to a minute. And a big part of that is because the algorithm is trying to balance essentially, how long do people stick or how many people stick on your video versus how long do they watch, right? And so, and it's a tension point, right? 'Cause they want people to just be engaging with engaging content. It's kind of the short of it, right? But that can be two different things. I can mean like nobody's swaped away 'cause this video's 15 seconds only. And it's like very intensely engaging the whole time. But then they don't watch it again. So it's only 15 seconds, right? Versus if you have like 80% of people stick around, but your video's like a minute. You know, that's actually a much better thing overall for the algorithm to care about in the context like you do. So what we found balanced wise then is yeah, about this like around like a 45 second duration and having that open hook at the front, typically in the form of just many game had a problem. And it would be clear, it could be a completely like, it's like a, it's not like a real problem. You're not like, I could figure out a code this. No, no, no, no, no, no. That's like it. We're talking about it has problems. It's a problem. Real or a player, right? Not for other deaths, but for a player. So you say like, I put this enemy in the game and like they're just, they completely fucked up the balance. And now we're on the story about like how you restored balance, you know, to your game. But it could also be just something that is inherently both relatable but unusual. So we were looking at, what was the fishing game? How to fish. How to fish? Yes, they're doing very well on TikTok. Which yeah, they've got some slightly informed. But yeah, but if it opens up with just like, I added knives to my fishing game, right? Yes, because I mean, they like, yeah, what? Like you beat it up. And then literally this video, which has like three million views is just like, he reels in a fish and then he just gets at a knife. Well, it's a first-person view. He whips the fish out of the ocean and then shoots it with a sniper rifle. Right, shoots with a sniper rifle. And then he gets at a knife and he's, he's just spinning it in his hand and never actually does anything with the knife. And it's like 15 seconds long, three million views. You know, yeah, and it's like that hook there of just like, not only like, it is open with this like, you know, I added knives to my fishing game. We immediately curious about that. But then right away, something fucking insane happens. It's so then, you're just like, okay, I'm in. Like, whatever's about to happen next, I gotta see you. Nice one. Yeah, so that's like TikTok again, like the format there can be is like a bit more on that. Just like really, like hook and emotion driven stuff where you're just like, what the fuck is happening? Like works great. On the YouTube side, you can, like you get away. When you see this, like a lot of devs who are doing who are doing bigger, like more RPG games, stuff that's a more slower burn stuff, you can actually still do pretty effectively. I think in that, like a short format, right? Because it lets you tell a story about like, how the dev process is going with regards to this feature. As long as you're keeping the lens on the widest would be interesting for a player, right? So then we just, we come up with ideas based on that then. So again, it's just like one format. The whole like, my game had a problem. Literally just one format. The other is something like kind of a sense of time when I was like, I added blah to my game. And then you show some like ridiculous shit. Because people are like, I wanna see blah. You don't show it right now. You say, I added this to my game. And then you show it later. And people are like, I wanna see it. But importantly, it's the like, I added X thing to Y game. And the X and the Y are surprising. Yeah, together, you know, that works way better. Yeah, if you're like, I added swords to my game, my like fighting game, that's swords. My medieval game. People are like, I mean, yeah, like that's what goes in that game. Yeah, next. (laughing) So there's some surprise in there. So if you're looking for these content ideas, like I really do think the people who are best suited for this kind of work are people who are making the game. Like if you're the programmer, if you're the artist, you're the designer, you're in the best spot to see these things. And I think the way to do it is to look at some of these examples from these teams where the content has worked, right? And just ask the question, like, okay, you know, how can we make something that feels like this, that structures, like this, that is a reference to this? And then just try some stuff, right? So we've tried to, like we've tried to just a bunch of performance so far. And we'll just keep on trying different formats. 'Cause the other one too, is 'cause you have those two formats. The other one is, I think there are two more to mention. One is, I got a comment on my last video that seems like it's representative of the vibe of how people are feeling about the video, right? And so you post that up and then create some kind of, yeah, you get into it in some way, right? It seems to be pretty effective. And then the other one, how did I lose it? - Oh, the breaking, yeah, game breaking stuff. So-- - Yeah, game breaking. - That's right, that's what I don't want. It's like, something happened and broke my game. So that's in the context either of, like in our game, and how many do's, there's synergies that you get, right? So that's like builds that break the game is part of the game idea, right? That's a very popular, just like category of people putting together, you run away synergies in like vampire survivors. - Should we talk about this idea that we just talked about and like, which one about the giant dude? - Yeah, so we'll probably put this short together in the next week or two, where one of the comments that we saw from the video that just went out this morning with someone basically saying, like, can you just put a horse-sized dude? - 'Cause it was a video about horse-sized ducks, which we have in the game. - Yeah, so like, what about like a horse-sized dude? And again, you could just be like, could you just just miss that, be like, well, we're not gonna put, it's not a game about horse-sized ducks. - Or you could make a horse-sized dude and go through the dev effort, right? - Or, in our case, we were like, well, we have something like a proximity horse-sized dude. And this is a funny comment. So we're like, well, how big can a dude get? - Yeah. - Which is now just a more fun question. We've already got stuff that does that. And so now we can start with that comment, put it up, 'cause that seems to be the format that works, right? And then, yeah, then we were wondering, how big can a dude get? - And then it's about the process, like slowly, all the stuff you can-- - Making the biggest dude possible. (laughing) - That's what's fun about them is they don't, because they're not so serious, like a trailer. There's nothing riding on them, right? In terms of like debuting them. - Then you just, like, you can do some weird shit. - Do it and send it, see what happens. - Yeah, and what we've seen is really variable outcomes, right, 'cause we're experimenting. And, but the idea is that if each investment and each video is a couple hours, right, then some do well, one did really well so far. Now, a bunch did fine, some did poorly, right? And for each one of those, we try to figure out, like, what does that mean? What can we learn if anything? - Right, and, but the, just the cost of, it's fine to have a variability. - Yeah, and so then we move, I think, from like, okay. So now you've seen some that you want to kind of parallel your structure off of. You've sat down with, I don't know, one of the personality team been like, well, it'd be like a funny way we could get at this idea. You put a video together and you fuck it, send it, right? So one is before you just send it, definitely just look a little bit on YouTube about how to title things and, like, put tags on things. - And thumbnails. - And thumbnails. The thumbnails are like a little less important for short form videos, but they still help in the form of search. And you can only make them through your phone. - Well, the thumbnails are more important for people using desktop. Because if somebody's just browsing through shorts on their phone, they just swipe and just the next short comes up on desktop. - They just like a home page on desktop, yeah. - That's also true on mobile. - So people will see the thumbnails. - Yeah, and mobile if you just pull up like YouTube home. If you're not, 'cause if you're in shorts, you're just swiping through shorts, you don't see thumbnails or just watching videos. - True. - But if you're on YouTube home page, you're seeing thumbnails for shorts that you could go launch into. - So they're a surface. - It does matter. - Yeah. - So usually the structure we use is we put the video up, we schedule it for like the next day, just to let YouTube chew on it, before putting it out as opposed to during. I then go in on my phone, 'cause you have to have the app on your phone, go to the channel, change the thumbnail, just based on whatever's in the video. And we're not getting extra fancy with that yet, 'cause it doesn't seem like we have to do, and that would be ideal. There's not more steps involved. And then make sure all that like metadata stuff is there. And again, there's like a bajillion tutorials already on how to think about that. We are still figuring it out. Just look around and put some stuff together and try something. It's not, just don't tag your, don't put a weird tags on it that like a person who is searching for that thing would be like, "Why the fuck is this in here?" You know what I mean? - Yeah. And that's kind of actually a good point. That's the common mistakes people make when it comes to stuff is, I want everybody to see it. And I want the numbers to be as big as possible. And that's the goal. - Like game is for everyone. - Yeah, I want to, I want to, I want to town it like trick it to like, I want to tag it 'cause this thing is popular right now. So I'm going to tag it with this so that that shows up to, right? - Yeah. This is like only if your game is an adjacent one. It's like we tag ours with tabs, totally like our battle simulator. Because that's a game that comes up a lot in the comments from new people watching. - It's like a 2D roguelike tabs. - Yeah. - Roguelike tabs in like the hashtags. - But also interestingly, it didn't occur to us to frame the game that way until people in the comments started talking about it. - Yes. - Yes. - So again, like how this all is cyclical with the dev process and helps inform how you're even learning how to talk about it, right? To interest someone who might be potentially interested. That's a big part of it. So yeah, you schedule your short, you get the metadata on whatever. And then it fucking, you know, it goes. So now the question is. Also scheduling it is important too, because you want to let it from what we've seen and then heard from other YouTubers talking about is, you want to let it sit on your channel for a bit, not published yet, so that YouTube can finish all of its processing, which usually that part's pretty fast, right? But YouTube seems to also do the other stuff to try and figure out like, is this, right? And if you launch the video without it having done that yet, it seems to do us well, or at least it does look a little lower or something. Yeah, so what we've seen is and YouTube shorts actually, they kind of go in like pulses and spikes. We'll get there. Yeah, we'll get there. We'll talk about that. What we kind of see is if we upload a video and just launch it right away, it'll just sit at like 50 views for like a whole day before anything happens. So yeah, just know that that that can happen. Yeah. Typically, you just get it for like a day later, ideally 24 hours ish, let YouTube chew on it. Okay. So then the thing goes live and now you have a completely different set of questions, which is one, is there anything to do once the thing goes live, right? And then two, what does it, what does these various bits of data come again mean? What's important? And so there's a, and then like, it basically downstream platform effects, so I want to cover those three things. So one is first things you want to do when the thing goes live is put a pinned comment on it from you, you know, some stupid shit that maybe says the name of the game, maybe not, but just like, you know, ask people busy, you're asking for engagement in some way with the video. It's kind of like a, you ever see that video of that one dude dancing on a hillside by himself and people like, is this fucking weirdo? And then eventually one person joins in and then a trillion people join, right? And it's like, if there's no comments on a video, it's weird to be the first person. But even if the poster of the video themselves has put a comment that that just like opens and breaks the seal, it's massive, yeah, so just get it's like, oh, it's weird, I'm commenting on my own videos, get over yourself, just do it, and everybody does. So you can try to name it a game there, just make a dumb joke or, you know, ask for, ask something of the audience related to the video that then would provoke some commentary. And the whole point is because like, if the thing is commented on more than YouTube, it's like, oh, people like talking about this and they send it for people. So you want to try to get some conversation going. You don't, you don't just like try super hard, you just be like, wish just the game on steam and the people will be like, cool, you know, that works too. And we'll be getting a ton of comments on our videos, just it's like a solid handful, right? Yeah. A hundred. But like, yeah, for the really popular ones, yeah. Yeah. So in a big part of it was like, we're not asking for it specifically, there's, you know, it's, I also don't know what exactly like the rates are, that would be good. I think shorts don't comment on as much and less there. Yeah, like, like, like, really popular, yeah, keep in mind that the shorts don't actually have hyperlinks. If you put like the whole link to your steam page, it doesn't really matter. I mean, like, I don't put it in the comments anymore because people can't actually like grab it, grab that piece specifically with their. What we found is, is what no matter what we do to promote the game through links in our shorts, when we go back to steam and look at our traffic, it's coming from Google searches. It's people figuring out what the name of the game is and then they go to school and then they search for how many dudes and then the steam page pops up there and then they just go through it that way. So we also found that that just content wise that it's been, we're still figuring out how exactly do it, but like, including in the video itself, a like, go wish to sit on steam, even that sounds like not a big deal to put like right at the end of the video. It like, it so thoroughly cuts off retention right at the end that we just stopped doing it and saw a big enough boost in the video's performance to still get the same number of wish list. If that makes sense, like without a collection, it's more right because like, I think our, I think it's more once the video rug really goes, yeah, yeah, yeah, right, yeah, it reduces the conversion rate by a lot, but it increases the view rate by more than that way. So it probably drops the conversion rate by at least 80%. I think you probably, I think you get double if you get somehow getting asked in the video itself. It's just very hard to do. I have seen some of the really successful videos, other people seem to have done it. And it's going to depend so much on the specifics of the video. But we do it because like, like in the mega-bunk video, he'll be like, in my, I was probably with my indie game. And then like, as he says that, it clips over to like him, like typing mega-bunk in the steam search and then like mouse over mega-bunk. So it's just like right there in the background, it's like two seconds and he never like stops the video to say, go to steam or it's on steam, whatever. I think that's the main thing. It's like when you're doing the verbal call to action and like that takes some time and stuff versus just like just literally showing that he's showing the title, showing the stupid something. Yeah. So we're still, we're still figuring out how to get like that overall conversion higher. But even so, like being able to just get the video showing like a million people, I mean, that's going to do something, you know, so, yeah, I mean, hopefully, hopefully. So content-wise, that's kind of like a little piece. But then we're looking for once we post a video, we've got to pin a comment up there and we're now just kind of like responding to comments as they come in, if they come in. Now we want to ask the question like, okay, how do we know how this is going to do early? Right? Can we tell? Is there any way it's hell if someone's going to work? And the answer is like kind of, kind of, which is, you look at two metrics on the back end. One is what they call it, like swipe away, rate, it's in the engagement little tab there. And that just tells you like on YouTube, this is only on YouTube shorts. I've looked on TikTok, TikTok has not had this. So retention numbers should look completely different because YouTube is doing this thing where they basically say, we're going to remove from the pool the people who swipe away in the first three seconds in terms of your like long-term engagement data on this thing because those people didn't want to watch it. So that's like a separate problem not related to how good the video is, right? In terms of like, once people are watching it, do they watch the whole thing? Two separate. So they call them engaged viewers versus just viewers, right? And so you end up having a swipe away, right? Which typically we're looking for there is something around, ideally it's around like 70% and above. So when you say swipe away where you mean the opposite, which is the stick, which is the stick around, right? It's like people who stay, right? We have a stick around, right? Yeah, yeah. So around 70% of people, if we get one of those for videos, it's like good, right? That means that depending on how good the, how long video is now, good engagement is all the way through, we could probably count on it getting like 50,000 or a thousand views like that. And we've been okay with like a high 60%, we've been okay, but we have none of those have done like really, really well, but the high 70s seem to always do pretty well. High 70s do well. And then once you crack the 80% stick rate, right? 80% of people who get who the thing just shows up in front of stick around for at least like three or four seconds, that's where you get into the territory of being able to have like a million views or something like that on the video. And so it starts like really kind of actually pumping that out. But also it's not guaranteed because like we have had videos that have cracked that that just like they hit like 20,000 views and then just suddenly stopped. But the thing is like, they might pick up again later for reasons we'll talk about. But it's so like don't be discouraged if you have those really high engagement numbers, then you're doing you're doing it right. And sometimes the algorithm just takes video weird or takes a while or whatever, but just aim for that. It's the thing to remember always about short for video content is it's never about one video. The effort, right? It's always about the whole library of videos that you've that you're constructing. It's about getting on average better results over time, but not better results each time. Yes, great. Yep. 100%. So what we're looking for then is like if we can, if when we first launch a video, it'll go out and YouTube does like it will test, so it'll send it like a thousand people typically sometimes less and just be like, what are the numbers look like? And you'll see the data basically immediately. You don't see the total retention graph for which it like shows you dips in like time, right? But you do see average view duration. So like did someone watch, do people typically watch like most of this thing? And you do see that stick rate right for the video pretty quick like within like an hour. And so when we see that if I see like the stick rate is already at 70% or above, then like good because it actually just goes, it actually goes up over time, which is interesting. I think YouTube sort of figures out who to forget it to, right? Yeah, which makes sense because if they, if they said it's basically like a thousand randoms, like we don't know who this is for, we'll just sample data. Once they figured it out, they start to show the video more to people who they think would like it. Yeah. So that means the stick around rate goes up, it'll go up around like 5%, I think it's like 5%, 6% in some of the views you've seen. And so the vampire one that we put out started at 8% or like 79.6% or something. It was like, it was very, it was right on the line of what we've been trying to hit. And then it crept up over, it's like 85, 84 or 5%, 5%, like that. Yeah. And this was nearly hit a million. Yes. And the one we just put out this morning, which is about the horse sized duck is starting at 80%. So by the time this video comes out, I'll know, you know, who did it? Did it manage to do the thing we need to do? And its average view duration is most of the videos, 85% is like that, the long video. So those are both really promising signs, at least that's basically where you know, like did you do a good job making a video? Okay. Like that's right. And the rest is now, it's kind of like the idea of like, you can make a game where you know the quality of the game is worth game of the year. Can you make a game of the year game? No. Because it depends on whether games are coming out and politics and all kinds of random stuff, right? So, but your job is to make it worthy of that, right? And so it's easy to do. Sure. Same deal. So your job is to make it so that it's going to hit those metrics. And then once you're doing that, you've done what you can. Right. Pray to the algorithms of God. Yeah. And one of the things that I couldn't find, which I do want to share as far as like, what the first, when would you expect things to happen? It was kind of the question, right? So you do have this initial YouTube, send the short out to like a thousand people or something like that. So you'll see that. And usually it'll just fucking park. I mean, it'll just literally the hose turns off, especially if you got, if you switch the graph, it'll be like, up, and it's like a reverse hockey stick, right? Well, like it'll go up and it's suddenly stop and then it's just flat. Like they just, they just literally stop showing it to people. Yeah. days or weeks at a time? Yeah. And what's happening during that window is typically that YouTube is then crunching it, right? And being like, okay, we got our thousand data points, what to be do with us now, right? And trying to answer those questions. So that's where you get your initial early metrics, so you can just say, based on that initial thing that happens, you'd be like, okay, I did a good job or not. After that, typically what we've seen is that the shorts that have done well for us typically do so in the first four days, but that, so if you got a shorts that you put out, even if it has engaged numbers, if it doesn't do anything in like four days, it's just, it's either just been ignored by the algorithm or it's just not, well, it's just not going to happen for at least. Yeah. Sometimes it does take, it's taken like an entire 24 hours before anything started to happen. Yes. And then it did well, right? Yeah. And so somebody's like that kind of crunching period has been longer. And so what we do see though is as far as like rates is usually the first pulse, there's like a little, little while it's figuring something out, you'll have a second pulse, which again, if the video's metrics in that first bit are good, the second pulse is bigger. So that's like under 10,000 views, 20,000 views, maybe if you're lucky. And then there's a freeze again where it's waiting. And then there'll be a third pulse, which oftentimes is a very fine large. Yeah. And that's like, it's suddenly getting 20,000 views an hour. That's the max we've seen so far is, I think, I think it's 20,000 views an hour or so like that. I'm pretty sure that it was like the- Yeah, I don't know. First thing in graph. It would have been a bit about that high to get as many views as we got. Yeah. And what we have that has this approaching a million, it didn't like just like get a million views. Correct. It happened over a couple of days after it just kind of like- And with different rates. Like if you're looking at the graph, you can see just changes in rates, right? And so that's basically, we don't know what's going on, right? But it's, we know that this is algorithmic stuff. This is the algorithm basically deciding, I've computed something about who is left to show this to or I want to change the audience. This is being shown to you, right? Each one of these marks some kind of a change with the algorithm has decided to do with that content. And sometimes like we've also seen with, with pretty successful videos in the past where it'll like be doing really well, then suddenly flat line. Right? And then it's just done now forever and never, nothing ever happens again, right? Trying to think about that is like, it's a zero-sum game, right? So when YouTube shows your video to somebody, there's a trillion other videos that it's choosing not to show, right? And so your video might be, might have pretty good, it might be like in the 60s or in the low 70s in terms of engagement and all that stuff, but it's still competing with all these other videos. So at some point, it's possible like it's going well, it's going well, maybe some other video comes along. It happens if you do it better at that point, you know? That happens. The YouTube is like, all right, well, you're out bringing the next one, right? We have seen too. Then a video that wasn't really doing anything, then like, because even for videos that we've made a long time ago, before we started like really trying to figure this out, we'll just suddenly see, we'll be like, what the hell, all of a sudden this thing out? Because it's like, because it's like there was an opening, yeah, and YouTube was like, oh, well, we got this. I'll just throw that in there, yeah. Yeah, so we had a level head video that did like, okay, and then literally 26 days after having published it, where it was just getting like three views a day, they got 26,000 views in a day. We were like, why? And then just something, something came up on some key algorithm and then it just slotted it in there. Yeah. So there is a lot of variability, but I think I do think the first four days, like if it's going to be a good video, I feel like typically it'll pop in the first four days, you know? At least this was it. But it is, but there's rentable shit happening. It is very random. And it's random in the sense that like, there's the metrics are doing stuff, right? Yes. But there's so many things that we don't have any access to, you know, black box things about how YouTube behaves that make it effectively random, right? There's just no way to know and what we're doing in order of value and the stuff is just trying to guess at some of those things to be like, okay, well, we've seen this pattern where like we're talking about these spikes or these little things, these bullesses that happen that are not always the same every time, but are a really similar shape and scale, right? So far. We've also seen that when we have something to do pretty well, like break 100,000 views, we see splash effects on the rest of the content, right? And I'm a, it's very likely that YouTube is also adjusting things based on your whole channel's performance, right? Yes. Over time. And using your channel's audience, right? And so you know, we split the podcast off of our normal channel because, again, like I've mentioned earlier, our podcast shorts don't do that well because they don't follow any of the, you know, we're just, we're just putting them out there, you know? This is the first, the first series of shorts we put out since we split the podcast channel off, right? It actually happened like mid, mid day on one of the, that was, they seem to be doing, they do better. They seem to be doing better because, uh, cause there's also, yeah, there's probably like some, some channel level thing where basically YouTube tries to figure out like, who is this channel for? Yeah. Because when you first launch a video, uh, if, if they just look at every video in a vacuum, then there's a lot more data that'll have to figure out a gather to try to figure out who to show it to or whatever, but if it's coming from a channel that always posts, you know, the sim, the same types of videos or videos on the same subject matter, then it builds up in the background, kind of like a pre-existing bias toward like, okay, lots of people watch videos from this channel, this channel is about this thing. Yeah. Yeah. And so we found that like by, by sort of bifurcating our audience between like podcast listeners and people interested in our games, which there's overlap, but it is a vent diagram. Well, but it's not a lot of, actually you can see this in the stats too, right? Because when we had the podcast on the main channel, then we would see that it would have a decent number of views like, you know, 500 or whatever, which is not a lot, but for for the podcast that we're just kind of bringing up the right, we see like, you know, 500 preps or whatever. Um, but if you look at the actual engagement rate, it's really low, right? It's basically because people were being shown, because we had 15,000 subscribers or whatever. So people were being shown the podcast and they'd be like, this isn't for me, right? Most subscribers basically came from our game trailers. Exactly. Yeah. So it was the wrong audience. Then we moved, we split over to this new channel for the podcast. And already it's brand new channel fresh, right? But we're already getting two to 300 videos with only like 160 subscribers, almost no subscribers, because and it's mostly going through discovery rather than like the viewers are coming from YouTube or broadly rather than from our subscriber pool and the next one on any video or way better and engagements, yeah, so the old things we're already getting. We went from having 15,000 subscribers to zero for the podcast on YouTube. So we're building back up and we're already getting more like we're already the the outcome is already better than it was where we were. And it looks like the outcome on her actual game content on the main channel seems to also be benefiting from not having this conflict of which is also time to say like if you're, if you're interested in doing like a developer log or something like that on your on your YouTube channel, but also then using that channel for like your big promotional things. Maybe don't do that, right? Because like your developer stuff is for a, it's for a different audience. It's and if it's like long form, you know, you'll see people like they'll do like a developer stream or something is like four hours long and they're just like chatting and programming or whatever. Most, most people are not going to watch that who are interested in your game. And so you might accidentally be harming the reach of your channel by mixing all these totally different. And we know this also because this is one of the biggest complaints from YouTubers who do YouTube for a living, right? Is they're like, Oh, I want to be able to talk about this. But every time I do, all my numbers start going down, right? Yeah. And anything is anything different from what you've been doing, you need to put on a different channel. Yeah. And you'll see that like all the all the professional YouTubers basically have like multiple channels for each of their kinds of content that they do different things for. Yeah. Yeah. So, so one of the things you'll see then is like you'll need to put out a couple of videos, right? To this point, a couple of shorts typically before you start seeing like really good results because like unless the thing just works, you know, magically for you because again, like YouTube is just figuring out what the fuck you're doing, right? What's the channel about? Um, basically, you know, we know within a couple of hours if we did a good enough job with the video itself. And that's the only piece of piece we get to have. And then we get the final question, right? Which is, let's say it's been four or five days, you've got like a 10, a couple of 10, thousand views, something like that. Does it translate into anything for you on whatever platform the game is on? This is the final question. And I feel like one that's like, you need to make sure this is looped in. This is happening for you because it is entirely possible to make a game that like does really well on YouTube shorts, does really well on TikTok or you know, you've seen these games in the past, like some indie games that do really well on Twitter, right? Hey, we put out tweets, like tons of tweets, but it sells like shit, right? Right. Because it's because the stuff that you're making is entertainment like good marketing material is entertainment content, right? Yes. And it's that first and foremost. And the question is, is it just entertainment or is it also a sales pitch that is people buy into, right? Is it translating well enough into actual like wish list data for you or activity somewhere for you? Right? And this was one of those, I think the most interesting from our experience so far is while we're doing these how many dude shorts, we also were like, oh shit, great. We could use this to sell, you know, crash into just a level head. And so we did, we did make some level head shorts, some crash into shorts. They did fine. Actually, there's like, like in that engagement rate, stick rate, whatever, nothing, no crazy numbers on them. But like, you know, we got a few of them, but we needed to few and we didn't do this level of investment that we're doing for how many dudes of like, okay, let's figure out exactly what's going on. You know, try to cope with something and it's harder to do for those two games by a mile than it is for how many. And the reason was because of how many dudes, you know, with that one that we just sort of slung up, we saw, we could see in the wishless data immediately, like two, I think the first video that we put up had like a 200 wishless bike. Yeah, right. And to be fair, our daily wish lists were really low. So it's easy to see a spike versus crash lands too, which has a solid baseline. line still even post launched a solid baseline wish list, right? So you need more getting over there to be able to see it up above just like even if you're getting 300 wishless a day passive, you would see a spike of 200 yeah, you know, yeah. So our, the numbers aren't, aren't so big that we shouldn't be able to see anything, right? If there is some translation from the short form video to the actual store. And so it was fascinating was that with level head and crash lanes, even though we did manage to put videos together that did comparatively well, a few of them even better this way than how many dude towards whenever we put one out we cannot see an impact. It does not bring traffic to steam. Yeah. And so in its case, there's a lot of possibilities there. One is that the games are, the games are out on a lot of platforms. So unlike how many dudes where it's like it's just honesty. So like, you know, if someone's going to get it, they can only go there. It's also you can only wishless, right? It's just like, yeah, and also the games are already out and we don't know how YouTube decides to show us up to people, right? Because we, because like when we, when we made those videos, we, we told YouTube, hey, this is a crash lands, because you can tell it like what game it's associated with. And so we're like, hey, this is a crash lanes video, right? So, or this is a level of video, like, does that mean that YouTube is like, cool, I'll show it to people who I already know were in the crash lanes. Yeah. Yeah. And which case, they're not going to wishless to theory have it or decide not to, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so we had, there's a bunch of questions about like what exactly it means. But because these are question of like, is it good to, because you have that option on your video to be like, Oh, this is how you do it. Right? Is it actually good? Because does that narrow your audience to all the people who've already seen it? If you're in the phase like we are right now, how many dudes, which is build, develop, build, we need people to know it exists so they can decide if they're into it, right? Yeah. I also mean, we experiment with that and we currently are not saying that it's part of a game. Yeah. Like in that little distinction box, for exactly the reason, because it's kind of very unclear if that would be limiting or it's feel, I guess, it's hard to imagine it being a positive because it's like, how would YouTube use that in a way that benefits us? Right? Yeah. And I face, right? Yeah. Um, yeah. So, so then what we saw with regards to crash and two and love it was no, no obvious pickup. And again, it might be just the spread problem where it's like, people did see it, but they're on iOS, Android, Switch and, uh, well, there was something else is tons of the comments on those videos from people talking about how they love that game. And they've already played it. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. That's why it's like showing it to people who already have it, I think, which is a challenge of like if your game is already out and has an audience and you're trying to use YouTube shorts to expand the audience, there's a decent chance that somehow or another Google YouTube knows whether people have played that game or not. And if they've played it, it'll show them videos about it. And if they haven't played it, it won't, right? Yeah. And so it just keeps going to the same people over and over again. Because the goal of these algorithms is to maximize engagement, right? And so who's more engaged in content about a game than the people who play games or into gaming? And so that's one of those traps that were being conscious of and trying to avoid, you know, we don't want to fall into that. We're just, oh, yeah, this person should introduce how many dudes, those videos about how many dudes, YouTube knows here's the. That's all sense to you. And that's it. Yeah. So it does seem like, because I know I do want to include or if we're going to put up some, you know, now that we've learned all this stuff, we're going to put us for news shorts about crashes too, even level head. When we see different outcomes than we did, we're using all that stuff. Yeah. And so I think it's like, so then that just goes back to the fact that like, you know, crashes who wasn't designed again, without this kind of like, with this kind of media in mind. So it's harder to make stuff for, right? It's easier. How many is just much easier to make things for in this context? These silly questions, right, that come up during death. And so basically, you need to, you need to be able to tell, put the short out, it got some views and those views translated into some kind of action for you. If it's broken along any part of that pipe. So once, once you're able to make an engaging video, but I think that's the first one was like, if you can't make an engaging video where you put a short up and like, it just can't get above like 50%. No one seems to give a shit about this. Okay. Very important piece of information for you to know. So you have to be either or your videos are bad, right? The first three seconds are bad. If the retention is really good, but the first three seconds are bad, that might just mean that like, it's something bad doesn't look the way people care about or your hooks aren't good, whatever. So you have to distinguish between information that's about the video and information that might be about the game, right? Yep. And this is kind of what we're trying to do by walking through these, these various analytics bits. So yeah, that's a nice thing too. When you get that eventually analytics stuff, like, here's people stopped watching and that kind of stuff, right? Yeah. It's really helpful feedback, inferred feedback of like, okay, well, when I did this in the video, people stopped watching. So maybe, why? Why do I think that might have happened. And you know, me that I won't do that anymore. But I did just think of that whole idea of like connecting a video to the game. Because so YouTube generates automatic, automatically generated channels for each game that a thing exists. Yeah. Like topics. Yeah. They don't tell you, so it's like, it's it's it's it's own channel managed by YouTube automatically. The YouTube doesn't tell you how it decides if a game exists, but I'm assuming it pulls from steam or, you know, whatever, because the copy it brings over is like the same as the steam short. Yeah, we have copyright. So so YouTube is just kind of doing this in the background once it thinks it came exists. And then it creates page for it. And it tries to then be like, here, like the popular videos about this thing. Right. So again, once once that exists for your game, then you can say, oh, this video's linked to that. There's this discovered problem, which I think is probably risky to do that for the reasons we talked about. However, once a video looks like it's done getting juiced, but if you didn't link that, then that basically makes it that page that you have that YouTube is all generated because that gets shown underneath your videos, right? Like on desktop, at least, they'll be a little thumbnail. It's like, hey, this is about this game. You can click over to it and go see that game, right? Go see other stuff related to it. Yeah. This would be a way, this would be a good way for you to curate what content goes on there. Because then you can take your best performing shorts, your best performing videos. Once YouTube seems to not give a shit about them anymore, then then basically pin them to that automated channels that now people click through it, then they get to see only the best stuff, right? Yeah. So let me definitely try. But as far as other analytics that we care about is in what we've seen. And I'm telling you this stuff because we don't have benchmarks for this. All we know is that again, in terms of like energy that we're putting in versus actual resulting wish lists and interests in the game that we're getting out. This has been the most performant we've ever gotten anything to be, right? In the history of our studio. That's why I'm already talking about it, but I want to share the benchmark data because we don't have any ourselves. I love to hear yours. And I think this also gives you a way to understand like, is my video doing well or is it doing well for me, right? So the other things we look for then are when we're getting those views, no matter how many views you get, how many subscribers are you gaining to your channel per 1000 views of a video, a short. So in our case, anything above one, I'm like, good, anything below one, I think I've videos probably dead in the water. There's like no way as even if the gates were tired of it or else, maybe people stick around and watch it, but they're like, I don't get fucked, right? Right. Yeah. Because the subscribe is people saying, I want more of this more, which means that's also the kind of person who wants the game. Yes. It oddly almost like reflects the wish list conversion rate. Yeah, it's actually, it's very, it's very close. And so, actually, once you have a bunch of videos, you can't remember because again, there's like splash damage like one video gets popular. All the other videos get watched. So you can't tell where people are coming from once they, you know, landed steam, right? So you can't do attribution of like, oh, this video did that, but I would bet if you could that that subscriber rate on your video probably is like on a per video basis, like whatever that rate is, it's probably just like literally the rate with some multiplier. It has, it actually has almost exactly mapped on to the wish list rate. Yeah, it's been about, I think about the different videos. Like if we get like 250 subscribers from our video, we probably got 250 wish list from that video. That's true. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, because I think it's pretty close. Actually, one in 500 to one in a thousand seems to be kind of the range. Yes. So if a, so if a video we put out for short, we put out, it does like around 1.5, that's like that's like great. And then the ones that we, that we put out that have those higher engagement numbers are they start closer to like basically above 1.5 or closer to new subscribers per 1,000 views. Right. So whatever I see that, when we're just like put a video out in the first, I don't know, a couple of thousand people come in. If I see, oh, we have four subscribers. I'm like, mm, this is going to, this might go, you know, it might, it might because it's looking promising. And then I also tell you too, is this, is this video being shown to people who have already been seeing my videos? Right. Yeah. Because it was only showing it to people who have, yeah, who are already mischievous subscribers in this, right? They do show you like an actual like percentage breakdown of that, that gets pretty accurate, you know, over time. So that's, that's useful. Um, yes, that, that rate is one of them. And then as far as like average view duration, we're looking for like, we're looking for like 85% to the much most of the video, right? The vast majority of it. And then retention, I mean, we like to see the very, for the very front of a video, just be up like, I think the vampire for its own is like 160% or something starts there because people rewatch it. Yeah, because yeah, as people, as the same person watches past the end of the video and loops. And they continue watching. In some cases, they watch the whole video twice. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And there's a lot of like cheesy shit that people do where it's like one of the weird things about shorts is because they loop like that. Then in some cases, you may like have something in the video that's purposely kind of like hard to tell what's happening or a little bit obscured or whatever. Uh, because if people watch it again, don't, okay, kill the seconds. Yeah. The ending is really abrupt. Yeah. Quite get enough time to see the final thing. Yeah, that's something else is, yeah, people or people will make a perfect loop where they'll end the video with half of a sentence that at a shot that perfectly lines back up with the rest of people. I think those are fun. Those are like fun version. I think ones that are knowing where they're, where again, you're opening a question and then you're giving an answer. but you gave the answer like a quarter of a second at the end so the people I have to be like god damn it. We watched this four times I was like, it's good to see you. Yeah. I always, but every time I see them, it's like cute because they're like they end it with and that's why and then it goes to beginning and then they tell you a fact, right? Like those ones, I'm just like, oh nice. Yeah, there's yeah, but you'll you'll see like sometimes you'll see like a viral video where it's like it'll be like, oh, here's one of these like oddly satisfying videos or some of these like, oh, I'm power washing this garage or something and they show this process in the whole time you're watching again, like back to you, like, oh, I can't wait to see what this thing looks like at the end. And then it'd be like, and it's done and you get a quarter of a second. Oh, like just a real quick shot. And then it goes right back and you're like, oh, man, I wanted to see I wanted to see more of that and you'll rewatch the whole video. We're not trying to do those because you know, I mean, they feel annoying, you know, but like the loop ones are cute. We haven't tried that. We haven't managed to get one of those work yet. I do want to try one of those and see how that how that works. Yeah, so there's like those are the main things we look for them. So it's like that subscriber preview counting thing. And then again, can you see it in your wishless data, right? And all these things should be they're all bits of information. And none of them by themselves is the thing that I really weren't like it's easy to obsess over like I'm going to use it to get a swipe away rate, whatever else, like even the video. The last ones we just put out had a much lower, but much lower like stick rate for people. Then the previous ones. And I was like, oh, there's probably a cap. I like 10 thousand views. I guess kind of dead. So got like 60,000 views in it because it's it's total duration was really, really good. People watched it. So again, it's a balance of all these things. And we got a lot of subscribers off it. So like, it's just a balance of all these things. And you can't know exactly what that's going to be until after the fact. Right. But also there's a question about like, are we because we had a video now that that like is pushing a million views about how many dudes and it's tagged a certain way and stuff like that. Then we'll future videos kind of get the benefit of the doubt from YouTube. I think it happens as you build up more. Yeah, yeah, a lot of people talk about it. I guess if you as you get like a dozen or two dozen of these things going, you know, the the channel. It gets more trusted. And then it's generally like how any algorithm that algorithmic discovery system works is. It's a fee. It's positive and negative feedback loops. Right. So as things are behaving the way that the system wants them to, then it will continue to build and amplify as things start to not do what it wants to do. They'll start to rapidly wind down the other way. Right. Yeah. And that's why these things are so fickle is like you'll have some that does amazing and they you make something that feels like I basically did the same thing. You know, and it'll do really poor. And then you might find yourself kind of digging out of a little bit of all, you know, is so you this is a process that is extremely fickle and you want to make sure you're not just like this one video performed terribly and then that's the only thing you could think of it folks, you know, you like do your best to take a less than out of each thing success and failure, right. And try to use the thing that you think is true the next time, right. But never assume that the way you think it works is the way it works because you know too little there's no way to know and it's changing all the time and it's changing all the time. So you just gotta keep it's a stick to it of this thing. You just gotta keep on doing it. We just say we're trying to make one a week, basically, you know, whenever we have an idea for one that sounds like it would be just sounds like it'd be funny or fun to make. So we throw the bio and then when it's that day, it's like, all right, let's try and figure out can we make two or three you can make one like, can we get a couple. And then I think having that little pause time in there is actually really useful because it lets you sit. Let's you see more of the actual result of a thing and typically after like a week. And then let's you kind of recalibrate as you go into the next one, but it's nice that it's also the nice to work in batches because you can do a couple different experiments with something and then that just lets you triangulate a little bit more on what to do next because like again things can randomly happen that will complete to rail. You're what you think is like the best video you've made. Maybe just tag it weird or it was the second one put up and YouTube is like well trust us channel focus. Yeah, and it's and it's also on the other side of this automation to forget like what's happening on steam when I do this right. But there's really easy to get confounding signals so you also to be careful about don't don't be overly sure about your interpretation of something that happens once it hits steam. Yeah, we ran into this just a couple weeks ago when we were we were attempting to do some ad driven stuff on our YouTube trail. The main main YouTube not shorts right and spent through some money at it and just used YouTube's back end for doing promos right instead of going through Google ads. So it's really easy but there's no options. Don't do it is our recommendation. Yeah, do not do that. And you know we're getting views on the video and it's like the numbers are going up and we're like cool let's go look at steam and see how that's doing great. And we're like holy shit. This is the first day like we got like I don't know we spent like 60 bucks and got 200 wish lists or something like that. Yeah, holy fuck. That's the best the ads have never generated anything for us like in a meaningful way. We're like holy crap, this is amazing. It's a little off about the timing but timing is confusing because like steams and the audience was mostly from now for this one. This was a different. This was this was taking versus the tweet. Yeah, the audience was coming from Twitter. Yeah, because then we were trying to figure out what's going on with like the timing seem a little off because the it looked like we were getting a spike. Yeah, the ads were not for like a one hour period, but the spike lasted for like two hours and like that's not how ads work on YouTube like people see it and then it's gone right. So we're like that's a little weird, but it's that's so easy to explain away confusing stuff when you don't have access all information. But they were digging through steam's traffic breakdown and it was like hey almost everybody visited the page that day came from Twitter. We're like the fact this wasn't this was it started searching around googling like digging through Twitter for how many dudes we found it. Yeah, just some random some random what do you call it? I was going to say channels. It's basically a trailer like how the trailers account. Yeah, just they just post like a few any games a day. It took it took our trailer and they're like hey, this seems cool. Yeah, that was it. That was basically the January to feel our wish list just on the same day that we were trying an ad expert. I think this also is also is a is a fun which is like kind of broadly then if you start seeing pickup from other sources. Right. So you put out the YouTube shorts for whatever reason like all this stuff has happened. There's been more sort of organic random bullshit happening during how many dudes development as far as getting attention on the game. Then ever happen with like crashes to stuff right. And they've got to be related because people are seeing the stuff more because of the shorts. Right. But we had this tweak go out that did really well for us in a wish list. And then importantly not our tweet. We wouldn't we looked at the account. We said, okay, there's another fun question for you. How well is that thing that tweet about how many dudes doing relative to other things that this person posts about right. And it was like one of the top ones in the last 30 days. It's in like the top tier category of like overall. Yeah, it was like top top 5% right. Right. Right. And so we look for the same thing then if the YouTuber covers it where else how well does this do on their channel relative to the other things that they post. We're going to Brazilian channel do a thing about how many dudes and it's the best performing video. It is now the performing video on that guy's channel and like of all time he's got been doing it like three or four years. So that's a very good signal. All those things are there's more signals for us where we're like, okay, okay, this is like this game's got legs resonating. We're talking about like doing this like they're talking about the last episode of like why why why do this during development why in a great development so on right is because. Getting these signals now means we can tell where the right path can adjust the path of things are going on. And also now with this game we're starting to see like what it can look like when things look like they're going well right. So now we have this as a benchmark for the next game where we can say, okay, we know what it looks like when. It seems like we hit on something that we can wait to market right. And now we have the reference point for the next thing when we start doing it if we if we can't get into this stuff to happen. If like we can't get into YouTube shorts and perform we can't do anything right. Then again, there's a lot of possible explanation for that one is we could just be worse than making content for that thing right. But the other one is is like, oh crap, we're just making the wrong thing right. Yeah, which means like giving yourself that willingness to just say, you know, I like our studio like we announced that we're working on this next game. We've put out a bunch of stuff about it. Nobody gave a shit scrap it. I don't care. Nobody cares if if you're like, but we said we're going to make it. We got to come like if nobody cares about the game, nobody's going to care that you canceled it. And then she decided to do something else. That's fine. Yeah, I think that's kind of like the nutshell things with benchmarks that had to do it kind of what we look for. I hope it's been useful. I hope we could do something with it. And if you have numbers you want to share with us, feel free to dump them in the comments honestly or send them to us directly. And I'm just curious, we don't have, we're not publishers, we don't have a lot of data on this again. It's like this also more of our first time really trying to do it. And we've only put out like 10 videos, 10 shorts for how many dudes are like that. It's not that many. I don't think even that many. Yeah, so it's like, yeah, we're still thinking that this isn't like exactly how you do it. Yeah, we wouldn't we wouldn't have made this at all if we were still figuring out and hadn't seen any success. Correct. But it's just that it's working. The surprising thing has been given all again, we've been doing this for more than a decade. It's been constantly, consistently the whole time. The worst most difficult part of the struggle of making games for a living has been getting people to care that you're doing that, right? And this is this is the first time with this like whatever two month period where we've made a handful of videos where we are getting to where we're getting to control it, we're getting to see people care, right? And we're getting to learn ways that actually seem to be effective to make people aware of the thing that we're making in a way that they care about. And so we're like, well, we can go and start talking about this now because it seems like this might be how many dudes specific and maybe we'll never pull this off again. That's all possible, right? But while we're doing it and finding some success, it's worth sharing and talking about, especially because like Sam was saying, we don't know what everybody else is doing. And if we tell you what we're seeing, then you can tell us I actually know I've been doing the same stuff and I get like one View each time, you know, like that's all information for us and for the broader like you guys like a one of a thousand wishes to do You wish you that's trash. Yeah, it might be fuck. Okay. Oh damn. Oh, okay. Wow. Yeah, your game. You're making Yeah, we could be doing better or worse than we should but we have no idea And so we end these you know in these together strong Yeah, so all right. Well, that's all it's time we have for this week. I hope that was all useful for everybody We'd like to thank our producers fat barred and some of the cost are for putting the podcast together and thanks to our community moderators to keep our Discord running get more involved in the butterscotch community just go to podcast.bscush.net where we have links to the discord A way for you to donate to support the podcast and links to the archives We'd also like to thank our recurring supporters who are donating over at money grab.bscush.net Thank you so much for supporting the podcast And if you'd like to support us in other ways, go ahead and you know like and subscribe on these videos We appreciate that and don't have already swiped away when we started this speaking a swipe away race. Are you still here? Are you still there? Hope so yeah, also head over to steam give how many dudes the wish list We've also got lots of other games crashlands - crashlands level head We got games on Google Play the app store Nintendo switch steam Xbox just there we were everywhere So pick up our games. We'd appreciate it. Thank y'all listening And we'll see you next week