YouTube has flourished in its relatively short period of time and has come far from the original dating website it was designing for, it is the third most visited website, falling behind Facebook and Google. Collectively it is estimated it has three billion hits a day and forty eight hours of videos every two minutes.
A popular channel that i like to watch is Inside Gaming (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaDFEed7JBxC2lnP5I2AktQ) What makes this channel popular is down to a couple of areas. These are:
- The Presenters
- The Content
- Production Value
The presenters are all male and are interested in similar content to me, this makes them instantly identifiable and interesting, by sharing interests with their audience the audience is more likely to take an interest in what they have to say and do. Because the cast is all male the humor is definitely male orientated, woman may still find it amusing and interesting but a male fan base is more likely to respond to the videos. In the mix of presenters, all of them have their own attributes, for example, one is sporty, one is considered cool, one is considered geeky and so on, this allows a wider audience to get involved, widening the fan base instead of being for a select few.
The content is games primarily. They play games and have a webcam set up so you can watch along and join in the humor, they interact with their audience by having Q&A videos from viewers, they play drinking games while playing games, Podcast and so on, this wide variety keeps things fresh allowing their audience to engage repeatedly without being bored and unsubscribing. One major selling point for me and i can imagine most people who watch YouTube videos, because the presenters express their own opinions and ideas they become more reliable and trustworthy source of information, not becoming a corporate member who has to watch what he says on TV. at least true for most YouTube vlogs. One huge advantage for the channel is its content, the games industry is by far the biggest media platform, surpassing TV, film and music, this means that a potential larger audience will watch but do also open the door to competition.
Production Value is fairly good. Camera quality is good and edits are concise, mainly due to the fact the company behind the videos are a production company within the games industry so have to budgets, knowledge and skill to create regular content to a high standard. In some episodes they bring in basic Photoshop and after effect skills to add to the humor, however, despite having a low quality, in the context of the joke it enhances it and makes it even funnier.
As for a future, i cant imagine the channel will last forever, but I do think it will be around for quite a while longer, as long as new games come out and they can keep ideas fresh by doing new things or bringing new faces into the show.
Craig Turner – Media Production BA (Hons) - 2nd 