Tutorial content for Youtube

About four weeks ago I launched a new Youtube series about making games in GameMaker: Studio. It’s very creatively called ‘Making Games’.

Since noticing that my strongest performing Youtube video was an ancient tutorial on making stairs work properly in the source engine I’ve begun to see a real value in creating tutorial content. There’s pretty much guaranteed traffic coming to these kinds of videos just from people who are searching for problem solutions or guides through Google or Youtube itself. I’ve often had people I know come to me for GameMaker advice when they’re just getting started, so I figured having been a big fan and user of the software for a really long time – and having basically used it to secure an award followed by my first graduate job – I was in a pretty good position to provide valuable content.

There is already an enormous amount of GameMaker knowledge available on the internet, which combined with a healthy dose of self learning and motivation is how I came to learn the program in the first place. But much of the content on youtube specifically is poorly produced, hard to follow, or contains just straight up bad or out of date information. I figured with so much competing material it would be hard to find discovery, but with just a post on Facebook, Twitter and most importantly the Game Maker Community forums; my first video hit 1000 views in less than 30 days. And each tutorial video since manages to average anywhere between 20 and 50 views per day.

This is compared to my Megaman playthrough, the last episode of which is still sitting at around 17 views total. Huge difference.

It’s generally pretty cool to know I’m helping people out too. There’s been a lot of positive feedback on these videos so far and I’m doing my best to respond to criticism too. I’m really glad that this is taking off and seems to be worth the time I’m investing in it. If you’ve watched or are watching then thank you! Please let me know what you think.

-S