YouTube Analysis: Let's Play (Achievement Hunter)
- Matthew S
- Feb 7, 2017
- 3 min read
I have been a long time fan of Rooster Teeth and the Achievement Hunter team. I decided to do an analysis of there Let's Play channel.
Straight away I will note two things; The first is that I am fully aware that Achievement Hunter previously uploaded their let's play videos on the Achievement Hunter channel. This analysis does not take this into consideration. Secondly I am fully aware that the older videos on the page will have more views as they have had more time for people to view. However most of the Let's Play videos get 90% of there views in the first week of release so long term trends over years, I believe, are still very valid.
To produce the following analysis I used the YouTube API and R to extract the YouTube analytics of the channel, this is all publicly available data (if you know how to get it). At the time of this analysis the channel had a total of 1,584 videos, 3.7 million subscribers and over 1.4 billion views.
The first thing I wanted to look at was the likes vs. comments, the graph below includes all videos from April 2013 until February 2017 (now).
It appears that as the number of likes increase the comments (somewhat) grow at a faster rate. The most commented video is the 'Let's Play - Fuel' video with over 21,000 comments. Generally there videos average 2,355 comments, so this is quite impressive. The most liked video was 'Let's Play Minecraft – Episode 100' with over 89,500 likes. Generally the likes average 14,043 per video.
Next I wanted to look at two of there most popular series, that is Grand Theft Auto (GTA) and Minecraft. For this analysis I have taken into consideration both the GTA V and GTA IV videos. The below graph summarizes the views over the life span of the channel. It first appears that Minecraft was a lot more popular than GTA but with the introduction of GTA V the popularity began to shift.
At this point I feel as though the Achievement Hunters are stretching for new Minecraft ideas or avoiding that by revisiting old ones. On the other hand in GTA the community is generally happy if they just mess around at the airport on GTA V.
Whether it is because of the new GTA being an entertaining game to watch or the boundless nature of the Minecraft series wearing off, GTA is definitely becoming the front running series.
Note that I have also highlighted some of there highest viewed videos which all released around 2014 and no later.
The last graph shows all videos views over time. Other than a couple of outliers, it would appear the Let's play channel is declining. Again I will emphasis my awareness that the older videos have been up longer and will therefore gain more views, however the fact that this graph spans 4 (and a bit) years, would still indicate it is receding.
Are the Achievement Hunters becoming too busy? They seem to always be traveling or doing other things within the Rooster Teeth family. Is it possibly this is reducing the quality of videos? Is it the emphasize and encouragement to become FIRST members? with FIRST members increasing we see fewer views occurring on YouTube due to the early access feature? Or is it more so an over arching sign that gaming channels have passed there pivotal point?
Regardless I love the Let's Play channel and will always support them.
Let me know what you think?
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