"The sad yet growing trend of Wargaming on Youtube" Topic

"There is this thing called "Fast Forward." I find it quite useful and I find you can actually skip to the point of the narration. Quite a useful tool."

YouTube's Roku app finally added playback speeds, so sometimes I watch a video at 1.5x to 2x speed, depending how fast/slow the person talks. As a Southerner, I tend to talk slowly. I often can't understand Northerners at 1x speed! LoL!

There are a number of gaming videos that I enjoy watching; like most video entertainment, while I'm trimming figures or other such handwork.

Little Wars TV are superbly edited and succinct.

DBNWargaming is rambly and unedited, but with the playback turned up to 1.25x of 1.5x that makes up for the shortcomings. With a shortage of face to face gametime of late, I've greatly appreciated the chance to watch these gameplay vids to pick up more of the nuances of the rules whilst getting armies ready.

The playback speed trick works well for quite a few gaming vids, and espeically unboxing ones. Sometimes it even works the other way — slowing down playback speed a bit allows me to follow French language videos better!

It's pretty rare that I'll read a blog AAR all the way through. It has to be a game that I enjoy and good writing.

Agreed. I can read faster than having to go through a long winded video.

Videos are great. Blogs are great.
Opinions vary. Don't like videos? Don't watch them. Easy enough.

Mister Tibbles 14 Aug 2021 8:25 a.m. PST
"There is this thing called "Fast Forward." I find it quite useful and I find you can actually skip to the point of the narration. Quite a useful tool

Yep that's still too long. Watching a 1.0 hour video in 45 minutes is still more time consuming than reading a 5-10 minute article with exactly same information (minus pointless gaff).

As I mentioned my brother would send me 10 minute videos whose content could be condensed into a single A4 page and read in a minute.

Any content that speaks about our hobby is worth having. if the shoe dont fit go barefoot. The videos Little Wars TV are doing are great background for painting night and alot of fun to watch.

I have never watched a Utube vid on wargaming. I have never seen any point. I have to agree that formal writing seems less popular. Even on TMP ther seems to be less erudide discussion than ther used to be.

I do watch videos but mainly on walking and camping and the best of them is really about stunning views of places I may never visit. But some of the issue is thate Wargames is Dumming down, as far as I can see there is no no equivalent of the Wargames Research Group and much of the Wargames discussion not devoted to figures or terrain (of little/no interest to me)is on mechanisms, and then with scant/no reference as to how they better sere the accuracy of the model.

My son a keen RPG player notes that many new RPG'S are being dummed down to tempt a mass market a turn off for the devoted. Like English Football its now about the money not the fans.

I've watched a few videos on Youtube. It was, in some cases literally, like watching paint dry. However I can understand the popularity of streaming over blogs with younger players because they simply can't be bothered to read, it's classed as 'boring' which seems to be code for "I'm a slow reader and haven't realised that reading more would actually help to speed up my reading ability, so I'll stick to my XBox and Instagram thanks".

Different media have different strangths and weaknesses. There are a number of communication modalities that are significantly more efficient (I am not discussion optimality or absolute capability, just efficiency) in one medium than in others.

Static media, e.g. print and pictures, are very good for communicating ideas where the audience is in control of the pace. A deep concept that the audience is supposed to pause and think about. A complex idea that would require reevaluation. A chain of information that is best explored with rapid random access.

Dynamic media, by their very nature, convey more information in a shorter period of time. This makes them efficient for concepts with multitude of details or communicating ideas with a broader context that has varying levels of importance. The deep detail in an intricate manual process (drybrushing, for example). Subtle emphasis. Showing detailed action and the big picture context simultaneously.

We're not discussing interactive media, but those and many other types of media all have their strengths.

For short, fast videos, they need to be on TikTok. And full of dancing… ;-)

As a dyslexic* person you may think I would be a utube devotee nothing could be further from the truth as someone who was totally illiterate by the age of 11 and a product of the British state school system a system that denied the reality of my condition resulting in me having only 3 years of education that was worth a dame. I had to teach my self to read and wright with comics and with ruleset's that helped with my comprehension and playing boardgames and reading out aloud cards.
If I grew up in this digital age I would probably still be illiterate.

*if you don't believe in dyslexia your intiteled to your point of view but please don't bother me with such a view cos it is hurtful to me thank you.

I suspect the answer to all this is more nuanced than video vs written. I think there are a number of elements in play and what it does do is reflect the greater diversity of the hobby. It also talks to the very good point made by etotheipi about the media best suited to the task.

I started a blog just over four years ago and page views have grown exponentially each year with the total number of page views about to hit 500,000. That strikes me as a fairly healthy sign that there is life in blogging yet. However a deeper analysis shows that certain types of posts are much more popular than others.

The 'what I painted this week' type of post, once the mainstay of blogging, draws very moderate interest and nearly all views come within 24 hours of posting. I think blogging has lost the big numbers of followers that would have come to blogs to see this to social media, with Facebook, Twitter etc doing a better job of fulfilling that role. It doesn't mean bloggers can't do it but I suspect it's the sort of traffic drop off that people like Yarkshire Gaming are referring to. That's not necessarily a bad thing, I think social media is fantastic for this and I see much more from a wider group of people in the hobby than I might have done otherwise.

Where as my posts about what I've done recently have low interest, my game reports and AARs have a lot of traffic, as do tutorials on making terrain; articles about game tactics and reviews. Not only are the number of page views considerably more (the most popular post about Chain of Command has over 20,000 page views) but the traffic remains consistent over a long period of time.

The most interesting are the game reports. What I find most relevant here in relation to the discussion about videos is the average time spent on each article by a viewer. In general the game reports don't vary much when it comes to this and most average 7-8 minutes. I can see how this would be attractive to someone who doesn't have time for a 2 hour video. While a video offers the option to fast forward or rewind it's not the same as scrolling back and forth through a web page, particularly if you are a speed reader. Perhaps best of all the reader does it as his or her own pace, I don't dictate the pace at which they are read, the reader does (which was exactly etotheipi's point).

Does that make it better than a video? No, just different. Clearly videos work for a lot of people and I'll happily watch some myself. That said, after working in the film industry for 25+ years I have a very low tolerance for poor production values, unedited pieces and wavy hand-held camera work (fine for the odd sequence, but not for two hours). I can see from other posts here that I'm not alone. But, to be honest, that's no different to my tolerance for poorly written blog AARs that make it near impossible to understand what is happening in a game because they are difficult to follow and poorly illustrated.

I think we naturally gravitate to those people whose work appeals to us and the others we leave aside, but as tastes and tolerances vary that leaves the field open to all comers.

The number of videos are certainly on the rise but I'm not sure the majority draw the same number of subscribers and viewers as blogging managed 10+ years ago. There are a few factors – quality of videos, as has been mentioned; length of videos (how many 2 hour videos can you watch in a day? a week?) and lastly, the suitability of video as a medium to convey information. From what I can see from viewing and subscriber numbers it's the 'how to' videos' that are most successful – how to paint, make terrain, play a rule set.

I'd be very interested to see analytics that show how many people started viewing some of these videos against how many stopped before watching before it finished. Google Analytics tells me what percentage of people exit my blog after viewing each article, it also tells me the average time spent reading each post. The latter is the most interesting to me, if the average reading time for an article is less than say 30 seconds then I know I must have lost most people very early on.

The good thing is that at the moment we have an embarrassment of riches where you can choose the media that suits you best.

What I've seen is their time and resources go into prodution and content tends to be a secondary consideration.