Real Life Highscore

ZiggyD here again for my favorite time of the month – my monthly YouTube Earnings and Strategy report. In these reports I share the hard numbers from Adsense and YouTube Analytics as well as the strategies I used to achieve those numbers. The whole purpose of this is to make a rather cloudy industry much more clear for other people interested in pursuing it as a hobby or career choice.

The Hard Numbers

Videos Uploaded

ZiggyDStarcraft – 38

RLZiggyD – 5

Which makes for a total of 43 new videos in 31 days. I feel like this is an excellent amount to maintain every month with the amounts of time I have to dedicate to content creation.

Views

ZiggyDStarcraft – 121,623

RLZiggyD – 3,756

Huge growth from last month’s total views of 90,000 across both channels!

Subscriber Growth

ZiggyDStarcraft – 316!

RLZiggyD – 43

Both channels but ZiggyDStarcraft especially experienced phenomenal growth in subscriber base. ZiggyDStarcraft’s growth in September was 100, for comparison. I explain the reason for this in more detail in the video but I mainly attribute it to a small series of really high effort videos that I made and promoted in various places.

Adsense Earnings from My YouTube Channels

$306.35 Australian Gross Earnings!

This is up 47% from last month’s total of $208.85!

I go into a bit more strategic detail in my video report such as the types of content I made, how well they worked, my partnership offers and my goals for next month. If you are interested in YouTube Success strategy beyond just the numbers then make sure to check it out! I also run a series called QnA on my channel RLZiggyD where you can ask any YouTube Success questions for me to answer in video format. If you want some personal advice then that is the best way to get it!

[Warning: this video contains mild language that may not be appropriate for minors]

Capcom attempted to continue their intellectual property cross-over success streak with Street Fighter X Tekken, but failed to capture the attention of the competitive fighting game community. In this video Tom talks us through all of the reasons that he thinks SFxT failed and what he thinks Capcom can do to solve this problem.

Although Street Fighter X Tekken is kind of a cold topic since the fighting game community (FGC) has collectively rejected it as a competitive fighting game, Capcom has recently announced a new patch, coming in 2013, to rebalance the game and possibly solve some of its problems. Unfortunately, they’re focusing more on the special effects of power ups on character and less on the fundamental flaws of a fighting game that is bogged down with too many bad mechanics.

SFxT has so many mechanics that it’s hard to factor in each variable that they represent and properly form strategies in a match. I propose that Capcom focus on two or three mechanics in SFxT and remove all of the rest, whether that means removing Pandora and Gems and focusing more on the Tag and Charge mechanics. Sadly, I don’t see Capcom doing this, because it would be a waste of money to remove gameplay mechanics that they invested time and money in.

What do you think about Street Fighter X Tekken? Do you think the 2013 patch will help fix SFxT’s problems? If you were the head of Capcom, what would you do to help solve the SFxT dilemma? Discuss.

RIFT: Storm Legion, among many other things, will be adding four new souls to the game; one for each of their callings. In this video, I discuss and explain what I know about each of the new souls and how they might be used when combined with each callings other souls.

To preface this video, I should explain that RIFT is a triple-A MMORPG that competes with games like Guild Wars 2 and World of Warcraft. One of the main mechanics that helps separate RIFT from their competition is the soul system. RIFT has four classes, called callings; the Warrior, the Mage, the Cleric and the Rogue. Each calling has multiple souls or talent trees that they can combine to gain passive and active abilities. RIFT’s first expansion pack, Storm Legion, adds four souls to the game, which includes the Harbinger, the Tactician, the Tempest and the Defiler.

The Harbinger is a melee DPS soul for the Mage, the Tactician is a ranger support, area of effect DPS soul for the Rogue, the Tempest is a ranged DPS soul for the Warrior and the Defiler is a ranged DPS and support role for the Cleric. If you want to find out more about RIFT or about its first expansion pack, Storm Legion, check out: http://www.riftgame.com/en/

Lately, the video game community has been plagued by the mentality that games are only worth playing if they are popular. The phrases “dying” and “dead” have no place in the video game community vernacular, even though they’re possibly the most popularly used words to describe games these days. 

A few months back I made a video about gamers jumping ship and abandoning games that they don’t think are popular enough to make their personal investments worth while. Sadly, this problem has not gone away and is, in some cases, even worse than before.

As I stated in my most recent blog, Stop Liking What I Don’t Like, a lot of the problems with the video game community revolve around the idea that gaming is an investment. Players validate their investments in games by focusing on how popular their game is, even though they fail to realize that popularity does not guarantee quality.

What I would suggest to any gamers who are worried about their game ‘dying’ is to find a game that they enjoy and then show their friends why they should like the game, too. If you play games with friends, then the general popularity of the game shouldn’t matter. Instead of pumping money into advertising campaigns and tournament funding, companies will actually have to put their money towards making good games that are worthy of their increasingly large mainstream audiences if we start actually basing our opinions of games on their gameplay. Promoting games based on their actual game play mechanics and quality over their mass appeal and popularity can only help to strengthen the video game community and promote innovation and quality assurance within the video game industry. The only way to accomplish this as a community is to encourage other games to form their own opinions rather than following the lowest common denominator dominated crowd.

As for myself, I’m constantly doing my best to promote good games and preach their value to other games through blogs like this, twitter and through my youtube channels. If you have friends who are looking for games to play, suggest they play with you and tell them why you like certain games. Support game companies that put hard work into their good games by buying them and promoting them as much as you can. Sadly, as gamers, we are limited in our influence over the rest of the video game community, but, hopefully, if we all work together, we may be able to sway the opinion of the masses through qualitative reasoning and community promotion.

Good luck and best wishes,

Tom

ArenaNet has recently announced it’s first major Guild Wars 2 game update which will include new jumping puzzles, new items in the gem store, ticket pvp tournaments and a week long Halloween event.

Tyria Decked Out in Halloween Decorations!

The first major piece of information in the announcement is that we will be seeing Tyria transformed with decorations, I’m looking forward to exploring all of the home cities with their new theme during the event.

New Events and Mini Games

Next up Anet’s post mentions that their will be new minigames, likely halloween themed, and dynamic events – most likely tying in with the story of the Mad Ghost King Thorn.

New Gem Store Items – Gem Prices Likely to Shoot Up

With a bunch of new Halloween content being released on the Gem store I would expect Gem prices (in gold) will start rising significantly before and during the event. It’s probably a good idea to exchange your gold for gems early on to get the best prices possible.

First Paid PvP Tournaments

The game update will also coincide with the start of the first ever paid PvP tournaments in SPvP. You will need a team of five and tourney tickets to enter these, which can be obtained through PvP play or through the Gem store.

Other New Content

Jumping puzzles, events, bosses, min-dungeons and even a costume Keg brawl! This is a really good sign for the longevity of Guild Wars 2 as this sounds like a pretty big game update considering that it is free.

Are you excited for the Guild Wars 2 Halloween celebrations? Will you be saving up your gems for costumes for the Keg brawl? let me know in the comments below.