YouTube video statistics

And we’re back to English. As announced on Mastodon two weeks ago, I’d like to share a few statistics about my videos on YouTube. First, the numbers (sorted by the publishing date, which is given in the German format dd.mm.yyyy):

Now for some observations (not all of which can be inferred from the table):

• The least successful video was Shorts: Goldrunner with 29 views. The most successful was Focus on: The Wizardry Series with 8118 views. (Runners-up: Shorts: Plok with 6286 views, Shorts: Ghostbusters with 1711.)
• The least popular video was Shorts: Globulus with 4 likes, and the most popular was Shorts: Plok with 361 likes.
• The most controversial was Shorts: Parallax with a thumbs up/down ratio of 80% and 24 likes. Only 22 out of my 71 videos had a ratio of less than 100%, and only 9 had less than 90%.
• The “Bit für Bit” (or “bit by bit”) series that I cancelled after two instalments, only gathered a total of 97 views and no comments. It was supposed to become a series of videos that would explain how to emulate old computer or console systems and play games on those emulations. Due to their low popularity and the fact that I was not very happy with them myself, I haven’t included these videos in my PeerTube channel.
• There was no correlation between the number of comments and any other value. Shorts: Tetris had zero comments but 1473 views, while Im Fokus: Defender of the Crown (my very first video) had 5 comments and 242 views. The only two videos with more than 10 comments, however, were also the most successful, see above. The number of comments includes my replies to other people’s input, so this is all a bit vague.
• Similarly, there is no strong indicator that my videos were viewed more often or regarded more favourably after I switched to English.
• Interestingly, YouTube miscategorised 6 of the “Shorts” videos as normal videos, even though I fulfilled all prerequisites (less than a minute in length, hashtag “#shorts” in the title or description, portrait orientation). These videos were: Delta, Ghosts ‘n Goblins, Kirby’s Dream Land, Lionheart, Populous, and The Way of the Exploding Fist. Ghosts ‘n Goblins still became one of my most popular videos, so I’m really not sure if and how my adherence to the “Shorts” format helped my success.
• Some of my personal favourite games were among the least successful “Shorts” videos: The Way of the Exploding Fist (50 views), Boulder Dash (58), Seven Cities of Gold (75), International Karate + (83). Along the same lines, the meticulously researched “Focus on” video for Breakout was only viewed 56 times – but at least it had 13 likes and a 100% like ratio.
• People never stopped subscribing to the channel, even almost three years after the last video was published, though there was some fluctuation, of course. At the end I had 231 subscribers compared to 121 on the day I ended the commercial Vintrospektiv phase.
• The Farewell video (not included in the table) only had 20 views over the course of 12 days, and only 7 people unsubscribed during that time. It’s the only video that gathered no likes.