More ways to increase game virality

all right so about a month back I did a video on um gaming retention and how to increase the virality of a game by using retention strategies um I think that's probably still the most important thing when it comes to going viral or at least probably 50% of the battle um been meaning to get around to doing a video covering the rest of this whole virality topic um at least you know again the other main things there's always random little stuff that I don't remember or don't get to or that I don't know at all

but I'm going to get into basically in this video a bunch of additional random things that are going to impact the virality of a game so we got a couple of different sections here to go through we're going to be talking about click-through rates we're going to be talking about uh interaction rates a little bit um as well as optimizing for specific content types we've got a handful of different key content types that are popular right now being live streaming short form and long form um what else we're going to go over oh yeah monetization

uh we're going to talk a little bit about the monetization and restrictions and policies on different platforms so different kinds of content that you should avoid putting in your game to avoid um getting creators banned or like uh age restricted for playing your games because obviously that's no good um those those are kind of the main things here so uh first thing we're going to go over clickthrough rate so while I was doing the retention study I also pulled the data of I guess probably like a thousand maybe more thumbnails with their clickthrough rates and

the titles let me see how many were in here and let me also show this okay so this is the spreadsheet I'll probably try and make a link to it I'm going to be honest I pulled all this data I looked through it and I could not find patterns I could not find anything obvious um how many do we have here keeps going looks like we've got yeah just over 2,000 um ranging from clickthrough rates of6 to clickthrough rates of as high as 11.4 which is pretty solid um you know there's some weird ones in

here like I mean Indiana Jones we got like a bendy fan game we got this one here where there's like a hand guy so I mean there's a handful of maybe basic things Spider-Man hey I guess people like uh established IP um or like the blob Opera one like what's what's going on here um I could not honestly find any like really really easily discernable patterns through studying that so most of what I'm going to be talking about in relation to click-through rate is going to be off of stuff that I've learned just by doing

YouTube on my main Channel figuring out what works on there figuring out what other creators are doing and just the stuff that I know Works in that context so uh a quick summary of why this is important um on YouTube YouTube is the main platform that's going to be using click-through rates to determine what videos are worth promoting and basically the the higher percentage of people that click on your video or a video about your game the more likely YouTube is to say oh people really like this people are really interested in it it's keeping

them on the platform longer so we can serve more ads and so we will push this video to more people because other people will probably like it too um if you have awful click-through rates even with great retention an awful clickthrough rate will tank your videos so it's is it's very important to have good click-throughs so the the basic process like okay what is it that's going to get people to click on a video okay step one it's basically a two-step process first thing they need to physically turn their attention towards your thumbnail so when

somebody hops onto YouTube when if they're on desktop and they've got 30 different options for 30 different videos that they could watch yours needs to stand out yours needs to be like a bright light um it needs to stand out so they actually bring their attention to it there are a lot of thumbnails that just get overlooked due to dull colors no interesting objects no faces things like that um so that's the first step physically turning your attention to the thumbnail so the way that you're going to do that is kind of like I was

mentioning uh main ways are color contrast and faces okay color contrast faces those are the main things that are going to get people's physical attention um just the way that human pattern recognition works we are way way way we're like hyper tuned to recognize faces so if you have a game with humanoid or animalistic characters which is stuff that we've talked about in branding so if if you've just got good branding practices then you're probably going to be pretty well set um we've also talked about color a bit um also in like The Branding sections

and uh if you've got good complimentary colors a interesting color scheme good contrast in your lighting then all those things are going to greatly in increase the rate at which people recognize um thumbnails about your game okay and then the next step is that your thumbnail needs to create an interesting scenario or conflict it must tell the um the beginning of a story in order to make people intrigued enough to actually want to find an answer to it you need to bring up a question that only watching the video can answer if you just have

a thumbnail where it's like hey look here is a thing then people are going to go oh hey look there's a thing but if it's like oh what is this thing doing if there's some implication of conflict then people are going to want to see how that conflict ends again this is tapping into the essentially the same stuff as we talked about in the retention videos we want to see conflicts resolved we want to see patterns evolve um and so we're doing the same thing that we're doing with retention in a static visual form here

how can you do this this is a little bit difficult I mean I'll just give an obvious example um with Cho Chu Charles if you take a a screenshot of just fighting Charles there's obvious conflict right there's okay there's a big enemy character he's all spooky he's chasing you down oh my gosh what is this it's you know there's a face um decent color contrast it could probably be a little a little bit better and there's implication of conflict obviously since he's a monster um and this is also why horror games generally get more attention

this is generally why it's easier to make a horror game go viral um is because they've got enemies they've got characters they've got faces and there's implied conflict very very easily just by taking a screenshot of your enemy character but the problem with that and the problem with uh horror games in general and why they don't go viral as long is it's difficult to to make very many um different thumbnails out of them and so this is where it gets a little bit more complicated obviously you can get an easy bump if you just have

interesting characters but ideally people should be able to create multiple kinds of intriguing thumbnails out of your game and they're probably the the easiest way to be able to do that is through gameplay mechanics so if you have interesting gameplay mechanics that people who are become familiar with your game will recognize then you can get a lot more repeat viewership you can get more repeat coverage because creators are you know capable of creating different combinations of thumbnails so this is a a thumbnail that you could use for a Minecraft video people who are familiar with

Minecraft they know what the Enderman is they know that the Enderman can pick up blocks you've got a player standing on one single block a above a bunch of lava people who are familiar with the game they know they can see the conflict here oh this Enderman might uh pick up the block and then kill the player there's an implication of uh of conflict here some other ones these are uh thumbnails from popular creators this is a Mr Beast thumbnail you got Mr Beast running away from from enemy character and then I don't know what

the title is here it's probably some challenge video or something day two I don't know I guess that's that worked in this scenario implication of conflict uh similar thing here this is again a lot of Minecraft examples but um hey it's the most viral game pretty much so uh it's pretty relevant this is a dream thumbnail we've got one single player surrounded by uh what is it five other players who all have better armor again if you're familiar with the game then this context makes sense and it makes um it gives you gives creators the

potential to create more interesting more creative thumbnails and create content about your game for longer um and that is a massive massive multiplier okay so that's kind of the main stuff around clickthrough rate again main things are good characters for faces um good colors to get people's attention interesting mechanics that can be portrayed in a way that makes people interested all right so now we're going to talk more about um optimizing for specific content types so each category follows you know it's a lot of the same basic principles but there are some slight differences in

the way that um certain content is displayed and and watched so um first thing is long form content so this is just going to be mostly YouTube videos if you've got like emergent gameplay that um kind of creates and tells a unique story that promotes creativity and that creates essentially different potential storylines that creators can work off of um then that's going to you know kind of like we were talking about that's going to increase the longevity of uh of the virality and also it's the main platform where you need to be worried about rate

the other big one is that YouTubers and this also goes for live streaming usually YouTube creators are going to have a face cam down in the corner of their screen somewhere it's going to look something like this or like this or like that or that or something like that right um so ideally so what I do is I keep all of the corners of my screen like my my UI in my game I keep them clear of important information that way a YouTuber can put their face cam anywhere on the screen and they don't need

to edit it and move it around and do a bunch of random stuff in order to make sure that you know people who are watching can see all of the relevant information um for most indie games you can probably contain at the very least at the very least you should be able to keep one corner of the screen clear of information but ideally if you had more corners clear that would be good as well again it just makes uh YouTuber and streamer jobs easier and it makes the viewing experience better because players always have all

the relevant information it's never being blocked by a FaceCam next one is uh short form content so short form does not clickthrough rate doesn't really matter this is uh going to be Tik Tok reals YouTube shorts stuff like that where you're just scrolling through a vertical feed most important thing here is is just watch time and interaction rate also seems pretty important but main thing obviously pretty much always is retention what kind of one of the interesting aspects of short form content is that it doesn't require quite as advanced of a retention strategy to go

viral um you can have because like if you want to keep people interested in a piece of content for 10 minutes you need to have an actual retention strategy you actually need to have a formula that you're working off of but for short form if you're trying to keep people entertained for 10 seconds all you might need is something kind of funny something kind of goofy uh something just moderately interesting you don't necessarily need a super Advanced long form strategy for short form content so if you've got like something that I've done in in cuff

bust is in addition to all the the long form strategy that I'm implementing I've also got a lot of just random small things in the game small jokes um small Easter eggs um and just kind of funny mechanics that I think people could make interesting short form content out of basically if you're familiar with the concept of clip farming I'm basically adding uh clip farming to the game clip farming as a feature that's that's a good thing to to consider and then the other big one is that your game should still look good and be

readable in a vertical portrait orientation if you are watching short form content usually what people are going to do when they're cutting down gameplay videos is they're either going to crop out like the the left and right 30% of the screen or they're going to scale the footage down to to fit vertically which is going to be really really small if it's getting scaled down and obviously you're cutting off a bunch of information if it's uh if you're cutting out the left and right side of the screen so this is another reason why it's good

to keep the corners of your screen clear um what I do for cuff bust is all of the UI is centered all the UI is centered at least all the important stuff there's a couple menus here and there that have stuff on the side but it's not information that would be relevant to a viewer that way people can cut down crop down your content and all the information is still there it's really simple sometimes for some games like uh fortnite sometimes you'll see people who do you know fortnite clips and they have to like cut

out the kill count and edit that over here and cut out their face cam and edit it over here and cut out the the map or their their inventory and put it down somewhere else and that's just complicated so if you just have all the information right in the center then it makes everybody's job easier next one is live streaming so for live streaming the key thing is that you want to be able to retain viewers for a very very long time not just a few hours but like months you know most games most indie

games um even like Chuchu Charles you can beat it in one streaming session very easily um you know for a streamer that might just be a warm up if they're doing you know 10hour streams 5 days a week so ideally again this is kind of similar to the points made for long form content if you have emergent gameplay that tells unique stories um every time that the game is played or that has potential for Unique stories to be told then it's going to increase the longevity because there's only so many times that you can watch

the same movie over and over and over again before it gets kind of boring and it's the same thing with a game right you need the game to tell different stories there need to be different conflicts there need to be um different twists that kind of get thrown in Via again emergent gameplay and so that'll give um streamers a lot more longevity in playing any particular game since uh it allows them more creativity when they're creating content they can make more content about it you know as long as they're getting views they can keep playing

it next point is retaining monetization so if you have content in your game that is going to get people either age restricted copyrighted uh it's going to get videos delisted anything like that that is not good don't don't do that if you're trying to go viral you know Tik Tok will often times they'll delete entire channels for violating Community Policy YouTube often will um do age restrictions which completely kill the views of of a video and I think it it might disable monetization as well but either way it's not good so you want to make

sure you're not imposing risk on creators for making content about your game make your game as riskless as possible first one big one uh don't use flagged words in your game's title now this usually probably won't be an issue um hopefully I don't get banned just for putting this list in here this is a list that I found yeah jeez I I should probably well all right I'm just not even going to show this list just in case there's weird stuff in here um but this is a list that I'll probably put a link to

and it's got a whole bunch of different words and and perhaps short phrases um and it shows the likelihood of that word getting a video banned or flagged or age restricted or anything like that um there are what is it 16,000 different word combinations not all of these are bandw most of these are green words that are uh completely they're green listed they're fine but there are some that do potentially have uh impose some risk so in your game's title you shouldn't use these words so uh you can take a look at that list and

just just you know might as well make sure because I'd be uh quite the blunder if uh if you happened to have something that was flagged in in your name um next one excessive Gore and I mean I say excessive but it very it doesn't take much Gore it doesn't take much blood to get videos um age restricted so in Chuchu Charles if you're familiar with the scene where Eugene dies that scene got a lot of people age restricted um another scene from Chu Charles I got a lot of people age restricted was the the

final boss fight where Charles falls down on the spike and gets impaled it doesn't take much it doesn't need to be human Gore right a spider train getting his face uh implanted with a uh metal wood stick that's enough to get you age restricted so large blood splatters um detached limbs decapitation is another big one um or anything else gory um even just grotesque characters like zombies and mutants that are just kind of inherently gory um especially if it's in a realistic context if it's like super stylized then you're probably fine but anything that's moderately

realistic and gory is imposing some risk next one is copyrighted music when you're getting ready to release your game or anytime that you're looking for music for your game you should take all of the music um put it in a like a video file just in a you know let's say you've got a half an hour's worth of Music put a half an hour's worth of Music in a video file upload it to YouTube as an unlisted video and see if YouTube Flags any of the music in it it is very very common that you

will go to stock music sites download music that's copyright free royalty free all that good stuff you might have even paid for a license for it but it might still be in the YouTube copyright system for some reason whether it's some random person who's just basically just a a leech that's just like stole this music and put it in the YouTube copyright system so they could make money off of it or sometimes maybe it's the the Creator of the music for some reason will put it in the YouTube copyright system and that will cause uh

videos to be either demonetized or not demonetized but it'll redirect the revenue to the person who created or who owns um the copyrighted music or it'll like cut down the the rate at which you're you're getting money from it so just make sure that none of the music in your game is in the YouTube copyright system um another thing that you should avoid is you should avoid putting music in your game that sounds copyrighted and this is not for monetization purposes this is just uh for more for user experience and um for ease of use

for YouTubers and streamers if you have music es basically just any music with vocals a YouTuber is going to automatically assume that it's copyrighted and they will mute the audio for that section of the game so let's say there's like a really important scene in your game and you had some custommade music that's got some great vocals and you own all the rights to it it's not copyrighted it's not in the copyright system but those vocals are going to it immediately triggers a flag in in a YouTuber's mind they're like oh okay I better mute

this and they might be muting stuff that would be good for for players to see so or to to hear so ideally avoid anything that sounds copyrighted basically anything with vocals okay next one profan ity ideally don't use profanity again it depends on the game and the style of the game but it's one of these things that increases risk that will also open up your content to a broader audience there's a lot of channels that make content for children most of them honestly just avoid putting stuff like that in your game then it makes the

YouTubers job easier they don't need to bleep stuff out or mute different parts of the game um and it decreases Dem monetization risk which increases the amount of coverage you'll get uh sexual content sexual content this is why so in the last video on um retention there was one mention of how sexualized female characters increase retention by a couple percent and I was saying probably not the best strategy obviously for for various reasons but also because um sexual content will get you banned um not banned but you know demonetized if you're making NSFW games you're

not going to go viral um so you know I've heard some people asking about that in the comments like hey what are your thoughts on NSFW wouldn't work with any of my strategies because it can't go viral at least not you know on social media uh it'd have to go viral you'd have to get your Marketing in some other way okay and then the other one is don't cover intense topics so especially espcially especially topics like suicide um this is fairly common in horror games um there are a lot of horror games that'll have like

nooses um hanging from a ceiling or people hanging from a ceiling cuz it's spooky that'll get you demonetized very very easily YouTube especially is incredibly strict when it comes to anything that is related to self harm so if you're making a more mature game that's covering more uh intense topics that's going to be very very very difficult to um to keep that monetized if you're showing you know stuff like that um other things as well anything relating to like terrorism is also you know it's probably uh risky again it's like these are all things where

depending on the kind of game that you're making you have to take each of them depending on how much value it would add to the game itself self um and the story you're trying to tell or the gameplay that you're trying to have or the the demographic you're trying to reach and all that but when it comes to Pure like okay reduce risk as much as possible to increase YouTube and social media coverage those are all kind of the the main things that uh that I see you know and obviously this doesn't mean that you

need to make like a kids game you know this doesn't need to be like Webkins Club Penguin or or something um but you know just avoiding these like intense things that are going to specifically flag a game um or a video is is kind of the the main thing you can still have a game that appeals to a wide demographic to all ages um that doesn't use these like specifically um mature visuals and and topics and words and and things like that that's about it