bassiter

Take Me Home, Country Roads by John Denver except it’s playing from your neighbor’s radio that you can hear from your back porch, which you sit out on to relax in spite of the loud buzzing from the lightbulb and the hoards of moths that flock to it on summer evenings like this.

vampireapologist

This is just literally what it’s like to sit on my porch

thicc-waifu

is this asmr

famicom

blue-paint-splatters

YES BITCH

samanthaauburn

A Grumpy Observation

Recently the Game Grumps mentioned online that they were going to do a new schedule of video uploads that they felt was more appropriate for their time constraints and because they need to make sure they get consistent views in order to pay their employees from their fast growing companies.

Not long ago too, Dan mentioned on Reddit that they don’t frequently do long series anymore because they simply don’t get the view counts that short series and one-offs do, and without views, they don’t make the money they need to in order to maintain their businesses.

A lot of fans were outraged, claiming they were just “lazy” and “didn’t follow fans wishes,” prompting Dan to delete his response.

But were they correct? Let’s look into the data.

In the last few weeks, the Grumps have been doing nothing but long series. Ace Attorney, Twilight Princess, and Undertale in streams. Outside of that, we have the normal 10MPHs, Game Grumps Compilations, and Game Grumps Animateds.

So how has this affected the view count? Let’s take a look.

Overall, view counts for one-offs and short series are pretty high.

I have a handful of old ones and new ones to show the trend.

But when you get to full on series, they dwindle a LOT.

They started strong.

But now they’ve been doing almost exclusively long series for a full month and the views are often less than half that they were in early parts of these series.

So… Dan was right. The long series generally don’t do as well, even if fans seem to be demanding it.

So what does do well for them? Four major things.

GAME GRUMPS ANIMATED

GAME GRUMPS COMPILATIONS AND BEST OFS

Especially if it involves a meme like Arin with Wendy’s, or something with rage or laughter.

GUEST GRUMPS

The playlist speaks for itself. This is where a lot of their million viewed videos are from.

And finally…

THE 10 MINUTE POWER HOUR

These videos frequently hit between 800k and 1 million+ views EACH. This is where the big videos are now.

So the next time the Grumps choose to get away from the long series, change up how they present content, start new content, or generally go against what they’ve been doing for ages… There’s a reason.

Gaijin Goombah recently said on Twitter that with ad revenue, 1000 views roughly translates to $1. That’s assuming that everyone watching isn’t using an ad blocker, which is more and more common these days. That’s a big stretch when you’re trying to pay employees from literally FOUR COMPANIES (Game Grumps, Game producing, Real Good Touring, and music production). Especially when they work hard to make sure their tour shows and concerts are cheap so as many fans can go as possible. When was the last time you paid only 35 dollars to see your favorite band or comedian?

Entertainment, and especially digital entertainment like YouTube, is a super fast, super crazy, super stressful job. Trends change, people change, fans come and go, and it’s not easy to stay on top.

One of the things that will keep the Grumps going is the fact that they’re branching out. Trying new videos, producing games, doing new tours like Scribble Showdown, running a touring company, and relying on other sources of income such as their music careers.

if you don’t like the changes, that’s fine! You’re free not to and go look for something else.

But remember they aren’t changing things up because they hate their fans or want to lose people who have been following them since the beginning. They’re trying to keep afloat in this crazy, ever changing world that they’ve chosen as careers.

Thank you for listening to my TEDTalk. And I definitely spent way too much time compiling this, but it was WORTH IT.