8 years on YouTube
8 years ago today I uploaded my first TF2 video to the Casperr YouTube channel. The channel itself is actually over 15 years old, but the videos back then of a 13 year old Casperr and friends doing very tame jackass inspired bush jumping and - only by the most generous descriptions - something like parkour have long since been lost to the annals of time.
The first video
At the time, 8 years ago, I had no "YouTuber" related thoughts in my mind. My first video, and the two that followed, were highlander Spy "clip dumps" set to whatever song I had in my library that was closest in length to the random assortment of frags I had stitched together.
Around 6 months later I had started to gain a small community around my channel (I was never anywhere near the best, but I was still a pretty good highlander Spy in my time) which inspired me to upload some tips and tricks, meme edits, actual edited frag movies, stream highlights and even a channel trailer. And that was just in April 2014.
I ultimately went on to publish 47 videos in 2014 including my first video with voice over - "5 Things You (Maybe) Didn't Know About Spy" - which, despite being pretty amateurish by my current standards, I am actually proudly surprised by its quality watching it back today. I may even do a remake. However, more importantly, before even a year of experimenting on YouTube I had started to release some facts and trivia style videos which make up my core content to this day 8 years on. Again, the videos are very amateurish but pretty respectable (if I do say so myself) for what were my first attempts in their respective genres.
The good years
Through 2015 and 2016 I uploaded over 200 videos, averaging over 4 per week. It's worth mentioning that even at the start of 2015 I made a video committing to not just making TF2 content. It seems that even with a couple hundred subscribers, the difference in views between your "main" game and your other videos can be enough to force your hand.
But at the time I loved Team Fortress 2 and was playing it daily anyway, so creating and releasing hundreds of videos on the game was an honour and a thrill (including a handful about Splatoon, Overwatch, a Let's Play of Super Mario Sunshine and even some LawBreakers, most of which are now privated). By the end of 2016 I had just reached 20,000 subscribers and looked back and my time until then in a video not unlike this blog post (ironically, I even say in that video about planning to remake the aforementioned "5 Things You (Maybe) Didn't Know About Spy" so if that isn't a great foreshadowing of what's to come in this post, I don't know what is).
The not-as-good years
2017 and 2018 I posted 48 and 31 videos respectively. Not even 1 per week; a stark contrast to nearly 4 per week the two years prior. 2019 and 2020 were even worse, with just 24 total videos combined meaning I just about scraped together 1 video per month. I'm on track for even fewer in 2021 and that's with 3 low-effort FACEIT informational videos coming out at the start of the year. Despite this, out of the 6 times I have gained over 2,000 subscribers in a single month, all 6 of those months happened in these low-volume years.
I think that just illustrates how the big get bigger on YouTube - even though I was posting (what I would say are) comparable quality videos 4x to 16x more often in past years, YouTube is still pushing my channel to more people now because of my subscriber base. I often wonder where my channel would be right now if I had kept up the pace of uploads. There's a lot of channels out there who upload, let's say, "low quality" videos, but do so at a very high rate and many those channels have leap-frogged my channel in terms of subscribers as a result. It's by no means a hard and fast rule that uploading lots of low effort videos will "beat" a channel making fewer, but higher effort videos. Indeed there are many channels out there with very infrequent uploads proving that it's possible to upload only a few times a month or even a year and be wildly successful. There are also plenty of examples of channels pumping out some pretty rudimentary content at a high pace and also being very successful. Maybe I am not giving myself enough credit and my more recent videos are in fact notably better and deserving of better performance, but maybe on the flip side I am being too arrogant and the reason these apparent "low quality" channels are leap-frogging me is because, actually, my content is even lower quality.
The present
So that brings us to today - 8 years from the first TF2 video - and I'm still going. Even though my last upload from 2 months ago (and the one before 2 months before that) might suggest otherwise. Since that last upload I have moved home, gotten a kitten and - just like everyone else - have continued to live in a corona-affected world. I work my day job from home and sit at the same desk, at the same screens, in the same room pretty much 16 hours a day. In the plainest terms I just don't have much energy work on "Casperr" at the moment.
The script of the video I am currently working on was started in January and finished in June. I've spent over a month in edit and am less than 2 minutes into what will be a roughly 12 minute video. This is partly due to the fairly lofty aesthetics goal I've set myself and the software (Vegas Pro 16) I am doing it in being less than ideal, partly due to awful audio quality in my new home meaning every moment in edit I am reminded of my need to re-record all the audio, and largely due to the lack of energy already mentioned.
It's easy to say "ignore the view count" and is indeed the advice that I give out myself, but simultaneously it's hard to do, especially when you've invested 100s of hours across several months into a project. I spent a lot of time on my latest video which I felt ticked all the boxes for a successful Casperr video: interesting topic about rare TF2 items, engaging visual editing, and an eye-catching thumbnail (thanks Tobiased). It performed average at best. My two videos from the start of this year however far exceeded my expectations despite both hitting the same 3 points in a similar way. Sometimes it's hard not to take the (purely number-based) response to a video personally. I guess what I am saying is that another factor in the slow production pace of my current video is that the longer it takes to produce, the more time I worry has been wasted, which in turn makes me want to spend more time to make it better, which in turn makes me worry that more time has been wasted which... I think you probably get my point.
The future
I don't know how I'll feel once this video is finally out there. What I do know is that my channel is tantalisingly close to 100,000 subscribers. At current pace (of a channel with 2 months of no videos) I am years away from that milestone. But I know from lingering in the corridors of YouTube as long as I have that a couple of good videos can completely change that pace. Part of me is a little embarrassed that I have been doing this for 8 years and I still haven't reached 100,000, but pretty much all of me still wants to reach it even if it takes a few more years.
I have two - what I feel are - very exciting TF2 series ideas that I really want to make. I've been sitting on the plans for these series for a long time, waiting for all the other WIP videos I have to be completed before I get properly stuck in. Before I quit TF2 videos or even YouTube altogether, I want to leave a (and I couldn't think of a less dramatic word, so this will have to do) legacy. I want people to know about a series I made. I want to be able to say Casperr has an equivalent of Stereotypes or How It Feels or 10 Stages. Just like with 100,000 subscribers, I'm honestly a bit embarrassed that I've put out 300 videos about this game over 8 years and haven't managed to do this already.
'Nuff said
I started this post with no specific conclusion in mind. I think the same applies to this as much as any other personal based writing I've ever done insomuch as my semi-subconscious was telling me to cathart my brains out. I long to be in a position with a clear head and a clear schedule where I can create videos and streams on a much more regular basis. For now at least I do have some pretty clear short-to-medium term goals in mind: finish the video I'm currently working on, action the two series ideas I'm excited about, and reach 100,000 subscribers.
oh, and maybe remake the that first voice over video.