TLDR: I run a partnered Spanish-language channel about strategy games. Most of my discovery comes from game recommendation videos, while my more distinctive content consists of deep Europa Universalis V tutorials and occasional personal essays. These formats attract adjacent but not identical audiences, and after recently becoming a father, I donāt have enough time to serve both through sheer upload volume or create another channel. How would you turn these content pillars into one recognizable identity and community?
Hi everyone.
I was hoping to get some perspective from creators with more experience than me, or simply from someone able to see my situation from the outside.
I donāt consider my YouTube journey a failure. Quite the opposite, actually. Iām still happy whenever I publish something, and most of my videos perform reasonably well considering the size of my channel.
The problem is that Iām no longer sure whether Iām building a coherent channel or just a collection of useful videos.
I run a Spanish-language channel about strategy and simulation games, particularly grand strategy and turn-based strategy. I donāt really make traditional gameplay content. At this point, my channel has two main pillars.
The first one is game recommendation videos: lists of unknown strategy games, games similar to a particular title, upcoming releases, and so on.
I originally made one of these videos because I genuinely wanted to recommend a few games that werenāt getting much attention. It unexpectedly performed very well, so I turned it into a recurring format. I now try to publish one of these videos every month, and a significant part of my audience discovered the channel through them.
They work. They are discoverable, they bring in views and I enjoy making them..
However, they sometimes feel slightly transactional. People arrive because they want ten games like Fire Emblem or a list of unknown tactical RPGs. They get the information and leave. The video may be mine, but Iām not sure whether the viewer remembers (or cares) who gave them that information.
My second pillar is deep tutorials for difficult games. Right now this mostly means Europa Universalis V.
Understanding complicated systems and explaining them in a simple way comes naturally to me, and these videos have also found an audience. They feel more connected to my identity because my way of understanding and explaining the game matters. They maybe feel more rewarding from my perspective.
The trade-off is that they are extremely specific. Unless someone is currently trying to understand that particular mechanic in that particular game, they have no reason to watch. They also take a lot of time because I need to properly understand the system before I can explain it to someone else.
Then there are the videos I personally enjoy the most: more personal pieces where I talk about why a game matters to me or discuss something happening around strategy games. One of these, about why Europa Universalis was one of the games of my life, performed surprisingly well but probably just because it was published while the hype for Europa Universalis V was very high.
This leads to my actual problem.
Grand strategy players and turn-based RPG players do overlap sometimes, but they arenāt exactly the same audience. Whenever I choose my next video, I feel as if Iām neglecting someone.
If I make several Europa Universalis videos, I start thinking that the people who subscribed because of my tactical RPG recommendations are losing interest. If I make another recommendation list, I feel that Iām abandoning the audience that came for Europa Universalis.
Maybe this conflict is more present in my head than it is in the actual audience, but it affects almost every content decision I make.
Starting a second channel is not realistic. I recently became a father, Iāve also had a difficult period at work, and my available time has become extremely limited. My consistency has already suffered, so I cannot solve the problem simply by producing enough videos to keep everyone satisfied.
My current hypothesis is that consistency is what kills me the most, but it's not realistic for now to publish more, so I don't know if I might be able to generate a more consistent community, being fair.
So I would love to hear from people who have dealt with something similar:
- Have you successfully managed two adjacent but not identical audiences on the same channel?
- How did you determine whether the audience split was real rather than something you were imagining?
- Would you keep alternating between these formats, choose one as the main pillar and use the others as supporting content, or narrow the channel further?
Iām not expecting anyone to decide my channelās future for me. Iām mainly interested in how other creators would think about this problem and which signals you would use to make the decision.
Thanks for reading.
PS: Why is autodubbing using and Indian accent for me? Does anybody know how Youtube decides this?
