**The Art of Shorts: A Lesson from YouTube Gaming Content Creators**

As a gamer and content creator, I've always been fascinated by the rise of shorts on YouTube and other platforms. Recently, I stumbled upon a gaming channel that posted a short video showcasing a pack opening of shiny fakes in Pokémon cards. While it was an entertaining watch, I couldn't help but think that this was an example of how not to handle shorts. In this article, I'll share my thoughts on the art of creating effective shorts and provide some suggestions for gaming content creators looking to improve their short-form content.

**The Problem with Long-Form Introduction**

One of the biggest mistakes in this video is the 11-second intro that sets up the entire opening. While YouTube videos often build up to a big reveal, shorts are meant to be fast-paced and to-the-point. Spending time setting up an intro or building anticipation can make the content feel slow and drawn out. In contrast, a well-crafted short should deliver on its promise from the very beginning.

**The Power of Delivery**

For me, the key to creating effective shorts is delivery. Instead of focusing on setup and build-up, I believe that creators should focus on delivering the content in a concise and engaging way. This means chopping out unnecessary elements and getting straight to the point. In the case of this video, a shorter intro would have made the content feel more exciting and dynamic.

**Utilizing Reaction Shorts**

Another idea that came to me while watching this video is to create reaction shorts around Pokémon card openings. These could be used as standalone shorts or paired with longer-form videos to boost engagement. By highlighting exciting pulls or reactions, creators can create short-form content that resonates with their audience and encourages them to watch more.

**Improving Short-Form Content**

As a gamer who's created content for years, I've struggled with the format of shorter-form content on platforms like TikTok. However, I've learned to adapt and think outside the box when it comes to creating engaging shorts. By incorporating elements of live streaming and interactive chat, creators can make their short-form content feel more dynamic and immersive.

**The Importance of Hosting**

While hosting is a crucial aspect of YouTube gaming content, many creators struggle with this area. In my opinion, effective hosting involves not just playing the game but also interacting with the audience through chat. By incorporating elements of discussion and conversation, creators can build a stronger connection with their viewers and make their content feel more engaging.

**Tips for Improving Short-Form Content**

Based on my experience and observations, here are some tips for improving short-form gaming content:

* Focus on delivery: Chop out unnecessary elements and get straight to the point.

* Utilize reaction shorts: Highlight exciting pulls or reactions to create engaging short-form content.

* Improve hosting: Interact with your audience through chat to build a stronger connection.

* Leverage creative potential: Don't be afraid to experiment and try new things in your short-form content.

By following these tips and staying focused on the art of delivery, creators can produce high-quality shorts that engage and entertain their audience. Whether it's a reaction to a big pull or a showcase of gaming prowess, every big release should have a corresponding short-form video that highlights the best moments.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enin this week's stream critique we're actually doing two we're reviewing two streamers uh and they have similar similar layouts and similar ideas and i think that's really cool but they execute them fairly differently and so i'm gonna have fairly different things to say about each of them and i think there's something to take away but i think both of them are doing some things very very right let's review some streams shall we first and foremost we have retro engine duo now they specifically did not give me a whole lot to work with in terms of like their strengths or weaknesses like they left their application mostly blank so i'm just going to review them you know on the surface based on what their channel says and the things that i have to give as feedback so we have classic and modern gaming hosted by joss and julian every monday and thursday at 7 p.m eastern perfect their branding's on point they're going with you know retro console design you can see here in some of their streams yeah yeah yeah we are we are over 18 years of old 18 years of old 18 years of age slash years old anyway they have this awesome little like retro themed layout here that looks like kind of like a game boy or a pc engine duo they got a view here that's their intro they got you know their chat and their sub integrations into it i really like how this is presented overall the branding here is super on point i am i am a fan of this they have some quality issues though now i'm not gonna harp on it too harshly because i think they're working with what they've got because what they got because actually if we go in here to the uh stats for nerds the video stats you can see they're streaming at about two megabits per second sometimes it gets a little bit under uh three megabits per second and they're streaming at 720p 60. so clearly they're bandwidth limited which is fine if that's what you got you work with it um and so the quality is going to be a little bit crunchy for that now they have working in their favor the fact that most of the screen stays static for the majority of the stream so you got your layout that doesn't move you got your text that only updates every so often and then you got your chat text which updates but it's fairly slow so the bits only really need to go to the game and their faces now the green screen quality isn't amazing but it's serviceable it's fine my problem with their presentation here is that the camera angle is a little bit it's a little bit awkward uh it's it's kind of like they're on a couch i think and the camera angle is set on like a coffee table in front of the couch and so it's pointed up at them from the couch level which is kind of like a crotch cam it gets pointed kind of up up their nose up their face which is not a flattering angle and then it gets regularly blocked by their knees and their hands and i i just find it unpleasing i kind of get it from a like hey you're chilling with us perspective but the there's a lot of psychology that goes into camera angles with uh in terms of height and when you have a camera angle super below the person's face that gives the presenter this kind of like feeling of authority or dominance over the viewer which works if you're trying to like play the voice of god or like a super you know i'm thor looking down on you viewer character or something but when you're in a like chill with us stream kind of perspective it doesn't really it it doesn't really work the same and the same thing with looking up above that then minimizes you to your audience and makes your audience have kind of the authority over you and this is kind of a poor like it's not super low but it's still like a poor angle to choose um and i i honestly don't think anyone looks super flattering at that angle i don't know what stand or tripod or whatever they're using but i would recommend getting that up a little bit and pointed more eye level at them getting that a little bit more even to where the legs and the the waist level is kind of cropped off um i think that would be a little bit more flattering it would make their overall view look a little bit better and probably allow them to focus on on their face a little bit more as well and honestly again i don't know what camera they're working with but i would kind of recommend them getting a wider angle lens or if they're using a webcam getting one of the potentially trying out uh one of those smartphone lens adapters that gives you a wider angle on their webcam because weirdly enough getting that more fisheye view like our side angle here in their particular instance the wide-angle fisheye view and you don't got to go superfisheye but the wide-angle fisheye view actually shrinks down the people in the frame which allows them when they're in a two-person setup like that to focus in more on them so for example if i'm doing a game stream and i have we'll switch over to my main cam this actually is still considered a wide angle but you know if i'm right up on the camera it becomes a little bit more awkward to kind of frame me properly whereas if we have a super wide angle view like this i can crop off a ton of the extra space around me to just focus on me now this applies to them specifically because there's two of them and they're on a couch and they presumably don't want to be like all snuggled up against each other and this one keeps leaning off a frame which is kind of awkward they keep leaning out of the camera view and things like that and so by getting a wider angle view getting that angle up and getting them kind of shrunk into the frame they can crop off more of the sides you know they could still crop off where their green screen isn't or whatever but kind of squish them a little bit more into the pot spot that they're supposed to be on the video and i think that would work a little bit better and help avoid this awkward scenario where he keeps leaning out of frame again i don't know what their space looks like or anything like that they gave me a little to work with but i think that would be a pretty substantial change for them to implement generally their video quality isn't amazing like the scaling quality of whatever retro consoles they're using is pretty poor i'm not a huge fan of their like title here that's a little awkward i would love some more custom fonts there to make it look a little bit better but their scaling quality isn't super great if they're using a a decent quality scaler and stuff and it's just blurry in obs make sure you're using the area scaling filter in obs that is the best one for most retro games especially when you're doing kind of fitting it into a frame that may not be a perfect even even crop that should look a little bit better and if you're looking for hardware choices get a little bit higher quality scaling option look to the retro tink line of capture device or not capture devices scalars so i have here the retro tank 2x mini and the retro tink 2x pro and this is the multi-format and they take your composite s video or component inputs this one's composite ns video only and spits it out via hdmi at 480p and does a clean integer scale which makes things look a lot better and a lot smoother um and then you can scale that up to 1080p or 720p or whatever with the area scaling filter in obs or you can use you know more expensive frame meisters and open source skin converters and the retro tank 5x and all of that but you don't need to the the cheaper retro tanks are frankly good enough but yeah retro team 5x is apparently coming in stock next month so there's that in terms of like presentation and everything else um it's kind of okay they whenever they die in a lot of these platformer games when they're in between lives uh they stop and respond to chat and otherwise they kind of just reference chat messages as they go and that's something i've been preaching a lot especially for multiplayer shooter players is whenever you're in between matches don't just keep queuing up instantly switch camera angles and engage with your stream and provide some entertainment and some connection and then queue up a match don't just keep going match to match to match however what they don't do right while they're doing that part right what they don't do right is they are still doing the same camera angle for the entire duration of the stream there's no cut to them there's no break scene it's just the same gameplay scene for hours and hours and hours which is boring to viewers it doesn't work super well and when you already have multiple sources set up you could easily set up a secondary you know retro layout focused on their webcam or things like that now it seems like they experiment with their layout sometimes so i did want to note they have a different layout where it's presented where their camera has a frame around it i don't know if they've ditched this or if that's what they normally do my issue with the frame specifically uh is that they still have no background so it's a frame around their camera but then their background is still keyed out so i would recommend creating or you know finding some sort of retro looking background to include that uh you then blur out don't make it sharper than your camera but blur out and give it make it seem like you're sitting in an environment but this could just be an odor layout it seems like they were switching back and forth a little bit so i wasn't sure so you know that's the way to go so that means that it's time for this streamer to get to their streamer professor's report card so first and foremost in terms of video quality i am giving them a b minus they are running at a super low bitrate it gets kind of crunchy sometimes the green screen isn't great it doesn't mean it's like anything they necessarily can or need to do anything about i offered some suggestions in terms of scalar options and scaling filters and camera angles and things like that that they can improve it but ultimately if your bit rate limited your bit rate limited and i'm not going to hold that against you even if it does affect your grade you could you can make a career on not having the best video quality you can so not not a huge deal there for audio quality i'm giving them a b it's honestly not great uh we can actually go and play a sample here real quick i guess i should have done that where they have a microphone i believe sitting like right between them yeah if i go up there but it's like super echoey the game sounds too loud honestly i i don't think in the other streams i was looking at their game sound wasn't quite this loud uh so this one from yesterday funny enough is a little bit too loud um so oh my ears guys okay yeah so i i would honestly give them a lower score based on this vod than the vods i was looking at but regardless i'm giving them a because overall their audio quality is okay but it's not great not super stellar in terms of hosting giving them a b they do a fairly decent job this is more of a hangout with us while we play games kind of stream rather than a super hyper entertaining or educational stream which is fine uh they have the personalities for that they have two people which makes it so much easier to play off of each other uh and you know have to keep the conversation going doing things as a co-op pair is always the way to go and they generally respond to chat and things like that so they're they're regularly talking they're they're reacting the game metadata wise i'm giving them an a usually they have something associated with the game i would recommend taking out the follower goal uh out of their titles that just is always bad to me please don't put followers up goals i just yeah you can this this is a personal preference but i'm always against it personally i think i think it devalues your content in a major way and devalues your followers or your subscribers in a major way in terms of graphics i'm giving them a b plus they made their own custom they found or made their own custom layouts that matches their their literal channel branding their branding is on point my only complaint had to do with the webcam frame and sometimes their font choices are kind of mismatched and out of place and then finally their presentation i am course giving them a d plus because they never change scenes throughout the entire stream which is something i'm going to continue to harp on over and over and over if you want to apply for stream critique yourself you can head on over to streamguides.gg slash stream critique that is an application if that doesn't work for you i also posted a google form please try to use the website one though because i don't really check the google form much that's the one from last season uh but i will it is there as a backup because sometimes the website one just doesn't kind of work for some reason wait what's nebula excuse me nebula is my own streaming service i have built with my creator friends i guess i'm running a nebula ad as well here we go nebula is my own streaming service i have built with my creator friends here here my videos are higher quality because they don't have crazy youtube compression they are ad free and they are often extended from the youtube version so like a lot of the mic reviews i think i forgot to mark that one as extended but a lot of the micro views have extra mic samples that aren't included in the youtube one or they otherwise have extra content that aren't included in the youtube versions because retention and youtube algorithms and all of that jazz it's harder to get longer form content really going on youtube so a lot of that stuff gets put over here and then things like my how to build a stream show i just put that all in the same like video with all the extended stuff i cut out of the individual episodes and then i do have an interview show series coming i'm doing the first episode of that i'm recording it on thursday of this week and i'm super stoked for it and the extended cut of those interviews will go up here as well just like the giant like two hour interview i did with mr gregel's was and an extended kind of my youtube studio tour all of that and so it's my own streaming size site built with people that do awesome educational youtube stuff we'll also have podcasts coming on it as well and yeah and if you want to sign up i'd actually recommend going instead to curiositystream if i can com epos as curiosity stream is a separate streaming site i know that's a little confusing um but it's a separate streaming site focused on educational content and documentary content who wanted to partner up with nebula form a youtube alliance or something and so if you sign up with my link for curiosity stream which is only 15 a year you get nebula and curiosity stream for the price of one for 15 for a whole year pretty awesome all right we're getting on to streamer number two here we have the game looters this is a youtube channel that is effectively achieving my youtube dreams that i had with my wife back in like 2012 and 2013 because those of you who don't know my youtube channel originally started out as a gaming channel and in fact one of the main pivots that we had for a while was it was a co-op gaming channel we called it let's play together and it was a co-op let's play channel with me and my now wife and this was before co-op let's plays were a common thing so this was before the game grumps were huge or any of those where you had a bunch of groups of people doing cobb let's plays that wasn't really a common thing so we were like ahead of the curve but i didn't know how to do a whole lot of the marketing or anything for it so it didn't end up going very well and frankly we don't have the let's the the lifestyle to stick with long-form let's plays and stuff anyway but you know that that was what we thought we were gonna do on youtube here for things like that stuff like that and this is a married couple effectively doing that they are a husband and wife couple that are doing gaming videos news videos tips tricks as well as streams doing co-op stuff about various video games so for example if we go over here to this stream they have a stream going where they're both playing animal crossing and talking to chat and things like that which is pulling at my heartstrings really close to home super stoked on that aspect excuse me on its own we do have some improvements to make as well as we always do always got some feedback there so they stream every friday saturday and sunday they post guides tips and tricks and of course their streams they're fairly consistent about the games that they stream but something that they say they struggle with is their actual in terms of like overall consistency with just getting streams going together because i think they have a kid they mentioned in one of the streams you know lifestyle stuff kind of gets in the way um so they but something that they also struggle with is balancing streaming with their existing like youtube content because they're focused on building youtube content to go with you know building subscribers and things like that so this is going to be the first episode of stream critique that's also kind of a youtube critique and by the way if you didn't know my job used to actually be being a youtube consultant i worked for a youtube mcn for a very long time and that was kind of eventually my overall goal was i was their youtube expert or whatever and i got certified and this and that and the other and was doing consultations and helping people grow their channels and that was before i decided to grow my own um and so it's kind of something that is technically a specialty of mine even if i don't i help people behind the scenes but i don't do a lot of it publicly so we are we are combining that with stream critique here since we pivoted to streaming a bit um so we're gonna do a little bit of both here we got we got some cool stuff to go so obviously they post videos alongside their streams and they say that they're having trouble balancing it and frankly i think they're doing a good job because they stream on weekends and then they tend to post videos during the weekday which i think is a pretty fine balance in terms of consistency that's the balance that i have mostly found i have this tuesday show every other week and then i have a friday show on the alternating weeks um and having that consistent day means viewers know what to expect and that you can mostly pull it off while uh you know doing other things on your channel and it's fairly easy to implement content and you know strategies around that because you know what days you have available for all that stuff so going through their channel here i will say you know their branding overall is completely on point like i absolutely love this from the the game looters as they name is pretty neat they got their artwork going they got a consistent thumbnail style they have either character faces or their own reaction faces on the thumbnails and if you pop into one of their streams then you will see that they have a freaking awesome stream layout based on the game that they're playing so they have one for animal crossing they have one for pokemon sword and shield they got their chat frames and then they have an awesome backdrop with all their funko pops and their pokemon plushes and things like that which is freaking awesome and then if we can we find their shiny hunting stream yeah then their pokemon shiny hunty stream they have a separate layout built specifically for pokemon sword and shield which is awesome like branding is completely on point here they are killing it overall their backdrop is awesome their chat integration is clever this is a channel with style and character first and foremost looking at one of their streams they are committing a cardinal sin just right up front i'm gonna see if you can spot it because i point it out all the time that cardinal sin is with the face cam right here they are looking out of frame i wish i had an app where i could just like draw on the screen but they're they're framed right here and they're looking out of frame and for any amount of basic like photography and cinematography 101 having the person look off page out of frame whatever you know away from where your viewers eyes are supposed to go is considered like the number one big bad thing you're never supposed to do now in this particular case you could argue that it's better because if you're looking in the non-theater view chat is over here so like they could be directing viewers eyes over to chat you could make that argument but looking at the content itself especially since chat is on screen and so you don't need to have youtube's chat up overall they are looking away from chat and they are looking away from the gameplay which means as a viewer your eyes are naturally going to be pushed where their eyes are because that's how human face psychology works and you're gonna look for their eyes and then you're gonna follow their eyes off frame and you're not going to be looking at the gameplay or the chat now obviously eventually you're going to bring yourself to look at those things but like that that's a disconnect with the viewer's brain where they're being directed elsewhere from where they're supposed to look now with their specific layout i don't think the option is just like flipping the camera because that could look weird with things mirrored because then they're still not looking right like i think it would require a complete overhaul of their layout to really make work but just keep that in mind that that is considered one of the biggest no-no's when it comes to framing and composition and things like that secondly they never change scenes i know we just talked about that with the previous streamer but for for the entire hour and 48 minutes now it's a shorter stream but they never change to another view and this is frustrating to me because there is so much potential here and in fact i'm going to be like self congratulatory here or something and i'm going to pull up a super old video of mine to illustrate what i mean the reason i find it so frustrating is because when you have like they put in the effort here they put in the effort which is a ton of effort and i greatly like appreciate that they did this but when they put in the effort to actually have capture cards for both persons perspectives they've got the face cam they've got three effectively three sources plus the screen elements so they have their face cam they have the camera views and then they have the um the two individual perspectives of their gameplay they have so many sources and so much potential for how they can present their stream because they have so many angles to work with and instead of using any of that in a creative way it is just the same scene over and over and i'm really trying to find an example of where i did this with our pokemon let's play because i had a lot of fun with that so keep in mind this is 2012 this is cringy old content it's not content i really want anyone to necessarily like watch or anything and it's not up to today's standards but keep in mind this is what i was doing back in 2012 so we had our main perspective then i switched to granted we weren't doing face cam stuff at the time but then i switched to a split screen view when we were battling the same people at the same time and then i would alternate and i would have i had like editing templates set up to where i would alternate between our two perspectives as we were playing or if one of us was just walking around the world and the other was battling i would have that shown as well i was doing this in 2012 because the creative potential not that i need to flex or anything because again this is really cringy content i can't can't express that enough but the creative potential that i saw by having multiple perspectives and multiple things going on is so huge that there's a lot that they're leaving on the table with a singular camera angle here they could be switching to full screen perspectives of individual perspectives uh they they could they need it they absolutely need a just chatting like full face cam view they can swap the angles around they can you know just switch to one dedicated view while the other one's not doing anything important and yada yada the issue i think is for them especially given that they are kind of rushed into their streaming setup due to the life stuff which i completely get i often am is that juggling a lot of that is probably pretty difficult for which i would recommend and i have a video planned on this i've had it planned for like a year it's still coming but for this i would recommend either obviously a stream deck and i have multiple stream decks mounted here on arms so i can juggle everything i need to juggle either that or a combination of that and foot pedals you can get usb foot pedals that you can then assign hotkeys to to switch scenes so if you're playing a game and you don't want to like put the game down to keep the stream going you can get little foot pedals that you can then use to quickly switch scenes to different perspectives and things like that and you can keep it snappy you can keep it like constantly changing and really interesting and once you do it for a few streams like if you do it for like a month or two months straight it will become intuitive to you the practice will just sink in and that will become the natural thing you want to do especially if you have a preview view of your stream because i think they have three monitors and so the ideal scenario of that would be person one preview person two and then you get the foot pedal going and both of you can have them as long as you're not fighting each other um you can both have pedals to like change scenes and if you notice one hasn't been changing for a while then you can switch you know you can change when it's not necessarily your turn or whatever and you can keep that stream just super snappy and interesting especially since honestly like shiny hunting and pokemon and hunting for specific villagers and animal crossing while it's a cool hangout with your content concept it's not necessarily the most action-packed thing ever and so keeping that more interesting and dynamic would be huge and there's so much potential there by having the different angles and everything else so i think that is a big thing to go with secondly i don't i i'm not a huge fan of their mic quality or digimon or something like that i started watching on four kids too and even back there i hated it now the four kids version is very like it's terrible but it wasn't it i am where am i they're both using sm7bs which are obviously incredible microphones but they feel uh i need to do is convince my principal one piece as a history book they feel really like boomy and flat by while also being like overwhelmed so compared to the first streamer we looked at which had one microphone in the middle and there was so much reverb and room sound and it was just really crunchy and harsh they have two microphones and microphones that are going to reject each other which is great and much better than we were doing in my pokemon videos when i only had one microphone back in 2012. so they're they're off on the right foot but i don't think they have any eq applied and so they just have it really over compressed and as is being pointed out in the chat there's way too much mids so i'd recommend a sharp v curve cutting out those mids and probably a high pass filter as well to roll off some of those low ends and maybe tweak the compressor if they want to reach out privately i can help them more specifically because without seeing settings or whatever i can only offer so much but conceptually the their mids are just way too in there and i'm i'm i i don't like it they have really good microphones but the quality is not necessarily great coming out of them in terms of talking about consistency to me consistency means like in terms of them struggling with their schedule consistency means that they really need to stick to the time in the day that they're streaming they said that they always play or stream on the same days but then when i was tuning in to some of their streams and i guess i'll switch to a different one since we've been looking at the same one for a while and it's all about keeping it interesting ladies and gentlemen we'll switch to the pokemon one um one of the in one of their streams the one of them was mentioning that like they they were gonna stream like three hours earlier and then just didn't for like no real reason and they were like oh yeah i guess we should finally stream today that kind of not com like non-committal attitude towards your time and things like that makes it really difficult both for you and for your viewers to feel committed to the show like when i do these streams unless there's something that comes up at home that i need to shift my time for i stream at 3 pm eastern for streamer news and for stream theory i build my entire schedule for that day around that time if there are something you know whenever i'm renewing a season or we're having a life change a new year my wife starts up something if we need to change the time then i choose that time based around what we're doing and you know in life so that i know that i always have this time block associated i don't get to just show up and it's 3pm and everyone's waiting on the stream and be like maybe i'll stream in a couple hours i'm gonna go watch a tv show that's not professional that's not something that gives viewers confidence to show up and watch the stream and it's just going to burn viewers away and it also builds that attitude within yourself to not be committed to the time and things like that in general so you got to be like locked in on where you're going to stream now there is flexibility if something comes up if you have to go do something if life gets in your way that's fine communicate that but just doing it because yeah you want to go do something else for a couple hours instead that's a problem to me in terms of content strategy real quick as we wrap up here for this stream review i think they're doing a good job with overall strategy they have reactions to events which is super smart on their streamed reaction events which they had one for the diamond and pearl review a couple weeks ago if i can find it uh yeah that one uh they put time codes on it after the fact which is super smart and actually on on their react streams they actually do go with the multiple camera angles so they got the facecam view here they had a full facecam view at the start and actually this appears to be me unless they just switched seats which is possible uh this view is actually mirrored compared to their other streams so i would recommend just mirroring their camera back on their normal streams but they're doing a good job in terms of reacting to stuff they provide tips and tricks they had a game review of an like nba game that just took off recently um i can't see my screen so it's it's here somewhere oh yeah nba2k22 like th this is super variety there's no like one type of game that they're really focused on so they're gonna they're gonna have a little bit of a slow grind in terms of that um as a smaller channel but i think they're doing a good job in terms of strategy i would recommend leveraging shorts a little bit more as they don't have a ton however also looking back they did used to focus a little bit more on a monster hunter game back when they were focusing on monster hunter it seems like their views were a little bit higher now of course these could have built up over time but it did seem like there was a significant drop off once they stopped covering monster hunter and i don't know if they got burned out if they just needed to stop you know it stopped being relevant or whatever but it does seem like they built up a lot of viewership over this one game and then they switched and lost some of that viewership now you can just cut it off like that but uh i would strongly recommend finding ways to what i always recommend is trying to bridge bridge your audience from game to game so if you're making content about like if you have a lot of viewers focused on one game give them reasons to care about the other games you're playing how does this game relate to monster hunter when monster hunter doesn't have a lot of new content why they should pick up this game when the new game comes out this one versus this one like find ways to bridge those audience and members and give them reasons to then trickle over to your other content rather than just cutting it off because they're effectively going to treat it as if they never watch your channel anymore because you're effectively a different channel than back when you posted those games now i did recommend they post shorts and they did post one i want to look at this one as an example because just as a one-off point i think this represents how not to handle shorts what's going on guys and welcome to the gamers youtube shorts in this short video we are going to be opening this pack right here shiny fakes as we search for our beautiful charizard let's get it so shorts as a content type especially since it comes from tiktok which you scroll through on your phone is supposed to be as snappy and as into it as possible so while youtube videos on longer form videos tend to build up to the point and while that annoys some people that's kind of the format like they give you the the hook and then what we're gonna do why we're gonna do it how we're gonna do it and then it's done shorts are meant to be as in and out as possible shorts for pokemon card openings should really just be highlights of your reactions to what you pull spending 11 seconds building up in a short is never the right move regardless of content type like you should just chop that out entirely just get into whatever it is deliver on it immediately and then maybe explain what you're doing at the end with with normal youtube videos you kind of you need that hook at the beginning but otherwise you kind of build it up and then deliver with shorts it should be delivery first and foremost like you could have entire shorts that are only 11 seconds like the reaction to pulling an awesome pool could be only 11 seconds but this comes from the mindset of someone who makes traditional youtube videos i struggled with this for years when it comes to shorter form content tick tock and things like that because i'm used to that old school format so all right as always all of that time spent building it up was effectively just wasted time and should have been spent just diving in and frankly one-off pack openings where you don't get anything cool is not necessarily worth posting because it's not exciting content whereas if you just highlight from longer form openings your big pulls those could perform really well and in terms of like i think they should do shorts with regards to like news reactions and things like that too which then trickle back into their streams or bots like they could pair basically every big release like they had two of these in one day so not with literally every video but every big release be it a reaction stream an individual stream or a big specific topical video you could pair that with a short and get those shorts views on it as well and feed back into the full video um and perform really well so just some suggestions there let's jump into their report card in terms of video quality i'm giving them an a overall their presentation and quality was pretty great not super stellar but youtube you know compresses things anyway so it's hard to judge anyway but overall like i had no significant complaints about their video quality their lighting was great their their game captures were high quality and everything my only complaint was of course the looking out of frame which has more to do with the presentation category than necessarily video quality audio quality i'm giving them a b i really think they need to work on their mic settings otherwise they have exactly what they need for this kind of co-op setup so solid there they just need to get rid of those mids in terms of posting i'm giving them an a minus and that's because they do a great job overall like they're responding in the chat they're keeping active there's two of them they're you know playing off of each other the the the negative being that they didn't change any scenes um and that they don't take a break from the game like i find their overall gaming presentation and obviously some of this goes the presentation but their overall hosting is so focused on just kind of playing what they're doing in the game that there's not a lot of hosting spent on just like stopping and talking with chat or like more personal interactions as i would say but overall they're doing a great job there meta data i'm giving them an a their titles overall seem to be pretty solid seo friendly all of that jazz no complaints their graphics i'm giving them a b plus again i think they should do more with them and i have a complaint about the webcam being pointed out of frame and then presentation is their weakest grade at a c again they're not changing scenes they're not you leveraging the massive creative potential that they have in front of them and really like integrating chat in any significant way and i think some of this comes down to the ability to prepare ahead of time i think some of it comes down to just maybe not having thought of it but i think there's a lot they could do to really make their content just pop that much more and i would love to see them live up to itin this week's stream critique we're actually doing two we're reviewing two streamers uh and they have similar similar layouts and similar ideas and i think that's really cool but they execute them fairly differently and so i'm gonna have fairly different things to say about each of them and i think there's something to take away but i think both of them are doing some things very very right let's review some streams shall we first and foremost we have retro engine duo now they specifically did not give me a whole lot to work with in terms of like their strengths or weaknesses like they left their application mostly blank so i'm just going to review them you know on the surface based on what their channel says and the things that i have to give as feedback so we have classic and modern gaming hosted by joss and julian every monday and thursday at 7 p.m eastern perfect their branding's on point they're going with you know retro console design you can see here in some of their streams yeah yeah yeah we are we are over 18 years of old 18 years of old 18 years of age slash years old anyway they have this awesome little like retro themed layout here that looks like kind of like a game boy or a pc engine duo they got a view here that's their intro they got you know their chat and their sub integrations into it i really like how this is presented overall the branding here is super on point i am i am a fan of this they have some quality issues though now i'm not gonna harp on it too harshly because i think they're working with what they've got because what they got because actually if we go in here to the uh stats for nerds the video stats you can see they're streaming at about two megabits per second sometimes it gets a little bit under uh three megabits per second and they're streaming at 720p 60. so clearly they're bandwidth limited which is fine if that's what you got you work with it um and so the quality is going to be a little bit crunchy for that now they have working in their favor the fact that most of the screen stays static for the majority of the stream so you got your layout that doesn't move you got your text that only updates every so often and then you got your chat text which updates but it's fairly slow so the bits only really need to go to the game and their faces now the green screen quality isn't amazing but it's serviceable it's fine my problem with their presentation here is that the camera angle is a little bit it's a little bit awkward uh it's it's kind of like they're on a couch i think and the camera angle is set on like a coffee table in front of the couch and so it's pointed up at them from the couch level which is kind of like a crotch cam it gets pointed kind of up up their nose up their face which is not a flattering angle and then it gets regularly blocked by their knees and their hands and i i just find it unpleasing i kind of get it from a like hey you're chilling with us perspective but the there's a lot of psychology that goes into camera angles with uh in terms of height and when you have a camera angle super below the person's face that gives the presenter this kind of like feeling of authority or dominance over the viewer which works if you're trying to like play the voice of god or like a super you know i'm thor looking down on you viewer character or something but when you're in a like chill with us stream kind of perspective it doesn't really it it doesn't really work the same and the same thing with looking up above that then minimizes you to your audience and makes your audience have kind of the authority over you and this is kind of a poor like it's not super low but it's still like a poor angle to choose um and i i honestly don't think anyone looks super flattering at that angle i don't know what stand or tripod or whatever they're using but i would recommend getting that up a little bit and pointed more eye level at them getting that a little bit more even to where the legs and the the waist level is kind of cropped off um i think that would be a little bit more flattering it would make their overall view look a little bit better and probably allow them to focus on on their face a little bit more as well and honestly again i don't know what camera they're working with but i would kind of recommend them getting a wider angle lens or if they're using a webcam getting one of the potentially trying out uh one of those smartphone lens adapters that gives you a wider angle on their webcam because weirdly enough getting that more fisheye view like our side angle here in their particular instance the wide-angle fisheye view and you don't got to go superfisheye but the wide-angle fisheye view actually shrinks down the people in the frame which allows them when they're in a two-person setup like that to focus in more on them so for example if i'm doing a game stream and i have we'll switch over to my main cam this actually is still considered a wide angle but you know if i'm right up on the camera it becomes a little bit more awkward to kind of frame me properly whereas if we have a super wide angle view like this i can crop off a ton of the extra space around me to just focus on me now this applies to them specifically because there's two of them and they're on a couch and they presumably don't want to be like all snuggled up against each other and this one keeps leaning off a frame which is kind of awkward they keep leaning out of the camera view and things like that and so by getting a wider angle view getting that angle up and getting them kind of shrunk into the frame they can crop off more of the sides you know they could still crop off where their green screen isn't or whatever but kind of squish them a little bit more into the pot spot that they're supposed to be on the video and i think that would work a little bit better and help avoid this awkward scenario where he keeps leaning out of frame again i don't know what their space looks like or anything like that they gave me a little to work with but i think that would be a pretty substantial change for them to implement generally their video quality isn't amazing like the scaling quality of whatever retro consoles they're using is pretty poor i'm not a huge fan of their like title here that's a little awkward i would love some more custom fonts there to make it look a little bit better but their scaling quality isn't super great if they're using a a decent quality scaler and stuff and it's just blurry in obs make sure you're using the area scaling filter in obs that is the best one for most retro games especially when you're doing kind of fitting it into a frame that may not be a perfect even even crop that should look a little bit better and if you're looking for hardware choices get a little bit higher quality scaling option look to the retro tink line of capture device or not capture devices scalars so i have here the retro tank 2x mini and the retro tink 2x pro and this is the multi-format and they take your composite s video or component inputs this one's composite ns video only and spits it out via hdmi at 480p and does a clean integer scale which makes things look a lot better and a lot smoother um and then you can scale that up to 1080p or 720p or whatever with the area scaling filter in obs or you can use you know more expensive frame meisters and open source skin converters and the retro tank 5x and all of that but you don't need to the the cheaper retro tanks are frankly good enough but yeah retro team 5x is apparently coming in stock next month so there's that in terms of like presentation and everything else um it's kind of okay they whenever they die in a lot of these platformer games when they're in between lives uh they stop and respond to chat and otherwise they kind of just reference chat messages as they go and that's something i've been preaching a lot especially for multiplayer shooter players is whenever you're in between matches don't just keep queuing up instantly switch camera angles and engage with your stream and provide some entertainment and some connection and then queue up a match don't just keep going match to match to match however what they don't do right while they're doing that part right what they don't do right is they are still doing the same camera angle for the entire duration of the stream there's no cut to them there's no break scene it's just the same gameplay scene for hours and hours and hours which is boring to viewers it doesn't work super well and when you already have multiple sources set up you could easily set up a secondary you know retro layout focused on their webcam or things like that now it seems like they experiment with their layout sometimes so i did want to note they have a different layout where it's presented where their camera has a frame around it i don't know if they've ditched this or if that's what they normally do my issue with the frame specifically uh is that they still have no background so it's a frame around their camera but then their background is still keyed out so i would recommend creating or you know finding some sort of retro looking background to include that uh you then blur out don't make it sharper than your camera but blur out and give it make it seem like you're sitting in an environment but this could just be an odor layout it seems like they were switching back and forth a little bit so i wasn't sure so you know that's the way to go so that means that it's time for this streamer to get to their streamer professor's report card so first and foremost in terms of video quality i am giving them a b minus they are running at a super low bitrate it gets kind of crunchy sometimes the green screen isn't great it doesn't mean it's like anything they necessarily can or need to do anything about i offered some suggestions in terms of scalar options and scaling filters and camera angles and things like that that they can improve it but ultimately if your bit rate limited your bit rate limited and i'm not going to hold that against you even if it does affect your grade you could you can make a career on not having the best video quality you can so not not a huge deal there for audio quality i'm giving them a b it's honestly not great uh we can actually go and play a sample here real quick i guess i should have done that where they have a microphone i believe sitting like right between them yeah if i go up there but it's like super echoey the game sounds too loud honestly i i don't think in the other streams i was looking at their game sound wasn't quite this loud uh so this one from yesterday funny enough is a little bit too loud um so oh my ears guys okay yeah so i i would honestly give them a lower score based on this vod than the vods i was looking at but regardless i'm giving them a because overall their audio quality is okay but it's not great not super stellar in terms of hosting giving them a b they do a fairly decent job this is more of a hangout with us while we play games kind of stream rather than a super hyper entertaining or educational stream which is fine uh they have the personalities for that they have two people which makes it so much easier to play off of each other uh and you know have to keep the conversation going doing things as a co-op pair is always the way to go and they generally respond to chat and things like that so they're they're regularly talking they're they're reacting the game metadata wise i'm giving them an a usually they have something associated with the game i would recommend taking out the follower goal uh out of their titles that just is always bad to me please don't put followers up goals i just yeah you can this this is a personal preference but i'm always against it personally i think i think it devalues your content in a major way and devalues your followers or your subscribers in a major way in terms of graphics i'm giving them a b plus they made their own custom they found or made their own custom layouts that matches their their literal channel branding their branding is on point my only complaint had to do with the webcam frame and sometimes their font choices are kind of mismatched and out of place and then finally their presentation i am course giving them a d plus because they never change scenes throughout the entire stream which is something i'm going to continue to harp on over and over and over if you want to apply for stream critique yourself you can head on over to streamguides.gg slash stream critique that is an application if that doesn't work for you i also posted a google form please try to use the website one though because i don't really check the google form much that's the one from last season uh but i will it is there as a backup because sometimes the website one just doesn't kind of work for some reason wait what's nebula excuse me nebula is my own streaming service i have built with my creator friends i guess i'm running a nebula ad as well here we go nebula is my own streaming service i have built with my creator friends here here my videos are higher quality because they don't have crazy youtube compression they are ad free and they are often extended from the youtube version so like a lot of the mic reviews i think i forgot to mark that one as extended but a lot of the micro views have extra mic samples that aren't included in the youtube one or they otherwise have extra content that aren't included in the youtube versions because retention and youtube algorithms and all of that jazz it's harder to get longer form content really going on youtube so a lot of that stuff gets put over here and then things like my how to build a stream show i just put that all in the same like video with all the extended stuff i cut out of the individual episodes and then i do have an interview show series coming i'm doing the first episode of that i'm recording it on thursday of this week and i'm super stoked for it and the extended cut of those interviews will go up here as well just like the giant like two hour interview i did with mr gregel's was and an extended kind of my youtube studio tour all of that and so it's my own streaming size site built with people that do awesome educational youtube stuff we'll also have podcasts coming on it as well and yeah and if you want to sign up i'd actually recommend going instead to curiositystream if i can com epos as curiosity stream is a separate streaming site i know that's a little confusing um but it's a separate streaming site focused on educational content and documentary content who wanted to partner up with nebula form a youtube alliance or something and so if you sign up with my link for curiosity stream which is only 15 a year you get nebula and curiosity stream for the price of one for 15 for a whole year pretty awesome all right we're getting on to streamer number two here we have the game looters this is a youtube channel that is effectively achieving my youtube dreams that i had with my wife back in like 2012 and 2013 because those of you who don't know my youtube channel originally started out as a gaming channel and in fact one of the main pivots that we had for a while was it was a co-op gaming channel we called it let's play together and it was a co-op let's play channel with me and my now wife and this was before co-op let's plays were a common thing so this was before the game grumps were huge or any of those where you had a bunch of groups of people doing cobb let's plays that wasn't really a common thing so we were like ahead of the curve but i didn't know how to do a whole lot of the marketing or anything for it so it didn't end up going very well and frankly we don't have the let's the the lifestyle to stick with long-form let's plays and stuff anyway but you know that that was what we thought we were gonna do on youtube here for things like that stuff like that and this is a married couple effectively doing that they are a husband and wife couple that are doing gaming videos news videos tips tricks as well as streams doing co-op stuff about various video games so for example if we go over here to this stream they have a stream going where they're both playing animal crossing and talking to chat and things like that which is pulling at my heartstrings really close to home super stoked on that aspect excuse me on its own we do have some improvements to make as well as we always do always got some feedback there so they stream every friday saturday and sunday they post guides tips and tricks and of course their streams they're fairly consistent about the games that they stream but something that they say they struggle with is their actual in terms of like overall consistency with just getting streams going together because i think they have a kid they mentioned in one of the streams you know lifestyle stuff kind of gets in the way um so they but something that they also struggle with is balancing streaming with their existing like youtube content because they're focused on building youtube content to go with you know building subscribers and things like that so this is going to be the first episode of stream critique that's also kind of a youtube critique and by the way if you didn't know my job used to actually be being a youtube consultant i worked for a youtube mcn for a very long time and that was kind of eventually my overall goal was i was their youtube expert or whatever and i got certified and this and that and the other and was doing consultations and helping people grow their channels and that was before i decided to grow my own um and so it's kind of something that is technically a specialty of mine even if i don't i help people behind the scenes but i don't do a lot of it publicly so we are we are combining that with stream critique here since we pivoted to streaming a bit um so we're gonna do a little bit of both here we got we got some cool stuff to go so obviously they post videos alongside their streams and they say that they're having trouble balancing it and frankly i think they're doing a good job because they stream on weekends and then they tend to post videos during the weekday which i think is a pretty fine balance in terms of consistency that's the balance that i have mostly found i have this tuesday show every other week and then i have a friday show on the alternating weeks um and having that consistent day means viewers know what to expect and that you can mostly pull it off while uh you know doing other things on your channel and it's fairly easy to implement content and you know strategies around that because you know what days you have available for all that stuff so going through their channel here i will say you know their branding overall is completely on point like i absolutely love this from the the game looters as they name is pretty neat they got their artwork going they got a consistent thumbnail style they have either character faces or their own reaction faces on the thumbnails and if you pop into one of their streams then you will see that they have a freaking awesome stream layout based on the game that they're playing so they have one for animal crossing they have one for pokemon sword and shield they got their chat frames and then they have an awesome backdrop with all their funko pops and their pokemon plushes and things like that which is freaking awesome and then if we can we find their shiny hunting stream yeah then their pokemon shiny hunty stream they have a separate layout built specifically for pokemon sword and shield which is awesome like branding is completely on point here they are killing it overall their backdrop is awesome their chat integration is clever this is a channel with style and character first and foremost looking at one of their streams they are committing a cardinal sin just right up front i'm gonna see if you can spot it because i point it out all the time that cardinal sin is with the face cam right here they are looking out of frame i wish i had an app where i could just like draw on the screen but they're they're framed right here and they're looking out of frame and for any amount of basic like photography and cinematography 101 having the person look off page out of frame whatever you know away from where your viewers eyes are supposed to go is considered like the number one big bad thing you're never supposed to do now in this particular case you could argue that it's better because if you're looking in the non-theater view chat is over here so like they could be directing viewers eyes over to chat you could make that argument but looking at the content itself especially since chat is on screen and so you don't need to have youtube's chat up overall they are looking away from chat and they are looking away from the gameplay which means as a viewer your eyes are naturally going to be pushed where their eyes are because that's how human face psychology works and you're gonna look for their eyes and then you're gonna follow their eyes off frame and you're not going to be looking at the gameplay or the chat now obviously eventually you're going to bring yourself to look at those things but like that that's a disconnect with the viewer's brain where they're being directed elsewhere from where they're supposed to look now with their specific layout i don't think the option is just like flipping the camera because that could look weird with things mirrored because then they're still not looking right like i think it would require a complete overhaul of their layout to really make work but just keep that in mind that that is considered one of the biggest no-no's when it comes to framing and composition and things like that secondly they never change scenes i know we just talked about that with the previous streamer but for for the entire hour and 48 minutes now it's a shorter stream but they never change to another view and this is frustrating to me because there is so much potential here and in fact i'm going to be like self congratulatory here or something and i'm going to pull up a super old video of mine to illustrate what i mean the reason i find it so frustrating is because when you have like they put in the effort here they put in the effort which is a ton of effort and i greatly like appreciate that they did this but when they put in the effort to actually have capture cards for both persons perspectives they've got the face cam they've got three effectively three sources plus the screen elements so they have their face cam they have the camera views and then they have the um the two individual perspectives of their gameplay they have so many sources and so much potential for how they can present their stream because they have so many angles to work with and instead of using any of that in a creative way it is just the same scene over and over and i'm really trying to find an example of where i did this with our pokemon let's play because i had a lot of fun with that so keep in mind this is 2012 this is cringy old content it's not content i really want anyone to necessarily like watch or anything and it's not up to today's standards but keep in mind this is what i was doing back in 2012 so we had our main perspective then i switched to granted we weren't doing face cam stuff at the time but then i switched to a split screen view when we were battling the same people at the same time and then i would alternate and i would have i had like editing templates set up to where i would alternate between our two perspectives as we were playing or if one of us was just walking around the world and the other was battling i would have that shown as well i was doing this in 2012 because the creative potential not that i need to flex or anything because again this is really cringy content i can't can't express that enough but the creative potential that i saw by having multiple perspectives and multiple things going on is so huge that there's a lot that they're leaving on the table with a singular camera angle here they could be switching to full screen perspectives of individual perspectives uh they they could they need it they absolutely need a just chatting like full face cam view they can swap the angles around they can you know just switch to one dedicated view while the other one's not doing anything important and yada yada the issue i think is for them especially given that they are kind of rushed into their streaming setup due to the life stuff which i completely get i often am is that juggling a lot of that is probably pretty difficult for which i would recommend and i have a video planned on this i've had it planned for like a year it's still coming but for this i would recommend either obviously a stream deck and i have multiple stream decks mounted here on arms so i can juggle everything i need to juggle either that or a combination of that and foot pedals you can get usb foot pedals that you can then assign hotkeys to to switch scenes so if you're playing a game and you don't want to like put the game down to keep the stream going you can get little foot pedals that you can then use to quickly switch scenes to different perspectives and things like that and you can keep it snappy you can keep it like constantly changing and really interesting and once you do it for a few streams like if you do it for like a month or two months straight it will become intuitive to you the practice will just sink in and that will become the natural thing you want to do especially if you have a preview view of your stream because i think they have three monitors and so the ideal scenario of that would be person one preview person two and then you get the foot pedal going and both of you can have them as long as you're not fighting each other um you can both have pedals to like change scenes and if you notice one hasn't been changing for a while then you can switch you know you can change when it's not necessarily your turn or whatever and you can keep that stream just super snappy and interesting especially since honestly like shiny hunting and pokemon and hunting for specific villagers and animal crossing while it's a cool hangout with your content concept it's not necessarily the most action-packed thing ever and so keeping that more interesting and dynamic would be huge and there's so much potential there by having the different angles and everything else so i think that is a big thing to go with secondly i don't i i'm not a huge fan of their mic quality or digimon or something like that i started watching on four kids too and even back there i hated it now the four kids version is very like it's terrible but it wasn't it i am where am i they're both using sm7bs which are obviously incredible microphones but they feel uh i need to do is convince my principal one piece as a history book they feel really like boomy and flat by while also being like overwhelmed so compared to the first streamer we looked at which had one microphone in the middle and there was so much reverb and room sound and it was just really crunchy and harsh they have two microphones and microphones that are going to reject each other which is great and much better than we were doing in my pokemon videos when i only had one microphone back in 2012. so they're they're off on the right foot but i don't think they have any eq applied and so they just have it really over compressed and as is being pointed out in the chat there's way too much mids so i'd recommend a sharp v curve cutting out those mids and probably a high pass filter as well to roll off some of those low ends and maybe tweak the compressor if they want to reach out privately i can help them more specifically because without seeing settings or whatever i can only offer so much but conceptually the their mids are just way too in there and i'm i'm i i don't like it they have really good microphones but the quality is not necessarily great coming out of them in terms of talking about consistency to me consistency means like in terms of them struggling with their schedule consistency means that they really need to stick to the time in the day that they're streaming they said that they always play or stream on the same days but then when i was tuning in to some of their streams and i guess i'll switch to a different one since we've been looking at the same one for a while and it's all about keeping it interesting ladies and gentlemen we'll switch to the pokemon one um one of the in one of their streams the one of them was mentioning that like they they were gonna stream like three hours earlier and then just didn't for like no real reason and they were like oh yeah i guess we should finally stream today that kind of not com like non-committal attitude towards your time and things like that makes it really difficult both for you and for your viewers to feel committed to the show like when i do these streams unless there's something that comes up at home that i need to shift my time for i stream at 3 pm eastern for streamer news and for stream theory i build my entire schedule for that day around that time if there are something you know whenever i'm renewing a season or we're having a life change a new year my wife starts up something if we need to change the time then i choose that time based around what we're doing and you know in life so that i know that i always have this time block associated i don't get to just show up and it's 3pm and everyone's waiting on the stream and be like maybe i'll stream in a couple hours i'm gonna go watch a tv show that's not professional that's not something that gives viewers confidence to show up and watch the stream and it's just going to burn viewers away and it also builds that attitude within yourself to not be committed to the time and things like that in general so you got to be like locked in on where you're going to stream now there is flexibility if something comes up if you have to go do something if life gets in your way that's fine communicate that but just doing it because yeah you want to go do something else for a couple hours instead that's a problem to me in terms of content strategy real quick as we wrap up here for this stream review i think they're doing a good job with overall strategy they have reactions to events which is super smart on their streamed reaction events which they had one for the diamond and pearl review a couple weeks ago if i can find it uh yeah that one uh they put time codes on it after the fact which is super smart and actually on on their react streams they actually do go with the multiple camera angles so they got the facecam view here they had a full facecam view at the start and actually this appears to be me unless they just switched seats which is possible uh this view is actually mirrored compared to their other streams so i would recommend just mirroring their camera back on their normal streams but they're doing a good job in terms of reacting to stuff they provide tips and tricks they had a game review of an like nba game that just took off recently um i can't see my screen so it's it's here somewhere oh yeah nba2k22 like th this is super variety there's no like one type of game that they're really focused on so they're gonna they're gonna have a little bit of a slow grind in terms of that um as a smaller channel but i think they're doing a good job in terms of strategy i would recommend leveraging shorts a little bit more as they don't have a ton however also looking back they did used to focus a little bit more on a monster hunter game back when they were focusing on monster hunter it seems like their views were a little bit higher now of course these could have built up over time but it did seem like there was a significant drop off once they stopped covering monster hunter and i don't know if they got burned out if they just needed to stop you know it stopped being relevant or whatever but it does seem like they built up a lot of viewership over this one game and then they switched and lost some of that viewership now you can just cut it off like that but uh i would strongly recommend finding ways to what i always recommend is trying to bridge bridge your audience from game to game so if you're making content about like if you have a lot of viewers focused on one game give them reasons to care about the other games you're playing how does this game relate to monster hunter when monster hunter doesn't have a lot of new content why they should pick up this game when the new game comes out this one versus this one like find ways to bridge those audience and members and give them reasons to then trickle over to your other content rather than just cutting it off because they're effectively going to treat it as if they never watch your channel anymore because you're effectively a different channel than back when you posted those games now i did recommend they post shorts and they did post one i want to look at this one as an example because just as a one-off point i think this represents how not to handle shorts what's going on guys and welcome to the gamers youtube shorts in this short video we are going to be opening this pack right here shiny fakes as we search for our beautiful charizard let's get it so shorts as a content type especially since it comes from tiktok which you scroll through on your phone is supposed to be as snappy and as into it as possible so while youtube videos on longer form videos tend to build up to the point and while that annoys some people that's kind of the format like they give you the the hook and then what we're gonna do why we're gonna do it how we're gonna do it and then it's done shorts are meant to be as in and out as possible shorts for pokemon card openings should really just be highlights of your reactions to what you pull spending 11 seconds building up in a short is never the right move regardless of content type like you should just chop that out entirely just get into whatever it is deliver on it immediately and then maybe explain what you're doing at the end with with normal youtube videos you kind of you need that hook at the beginning but otherwise you kind of build it up and then deliver with shorts it should be delivery first and foremost like you could have entire shorts that are only 11 seconds like the reaction to pulling an awesome pool could be only 11 seconds but this comes from the mindset of someone who makes traditional youtube videos i struggled with this for years when it comes to shorter form content tick tock and things like that because i'm used to that old school format so all right as always all of that time spent building it up was effectively just wasted time and should have been spent just diving in and frankly one-off pack openings where you don't get anything cool is not necessarily worth posting because it's not exciting content whereas if you just highlight from longer form openings your big pulls those could perform really well and in terms of like i think they should do shorts with regards to like news reactions and things like that too which then trickle back into their streams or bots like they could pair basically every big release like they had two of these in one day so not with literally every video but every big release be it a reaction stream an individual stream or a big specific topical video you could pair that with a short and get those shorts views on it as well and feed back into the full video um and perform really well so just some suggestions there let's jump into their report card in terms of video quality i'm giving them an a overall their presentation and quality was pretty great not super stellar but youtube you know compresses things anyway so it's hard to judge anyway but overall like i had no significant complaints about their video quality their lighting was great their their game captures were high quality and everything my only complaint was of course the looking out of frame which has more to do with the presentation category than necessarily video quality audio quality i'm giving them a b i really think they need to work on their mic settings otherwise they have exactly what they need for this kind of co-op setup so solid there they just need to get rid of those mids in terms of posting i'm giving them an a minus and that's because they do a great job overall like they're responding in the chat they're keeping active there's two of them they're you know playing off of each other the the the negative being that they didn't change any scenes um and that they don't take a break from the game like i find their overall gaming presentation and obviously some of this goes the presentation but their overall hosting is so focused on just kind of playing what they're doing in the game that there's not a lot of hosting spent on just like stopping and talking with chat or like more personal interactions as i would say but overall they're doing a great job there meta data i'm giving them an a their titles overall seem to be pretty solid seo friendly all of that jazz no complaints their graphics i'm giving them a b plus again i think they should do more with them and i have a complaint about the webcam being pointed out of frame and then presentation is their weakest grade at a c again they're not changing scenes they're not you leveraging the massive creative potential that they have in front of them and really like integrating chat in any significant way and i think some of this comes down to the ability to prepare ahead of time i think some of it comes down to just maybe not having thought of it but i think there's a lot they could do to really make their content just pop that much more and i would love to see them live up to it\n"