The Singleplayer Squad

Merry Christmas to Everyone! As amazing as the last couple months (or the whole year actually) has been in the Indie-scene, lets not forget to reserve some precious time to spend with the people that matter most in our lives.

And if you are lonely, feel free to join our Discord server, its quite lonely for us in there sometimes too, we could definitely use some new folks showing up there :)

discord.gg/9gfc7JDrtq

3 weeks ago | [YT] | 109

The Singleplayer Squad

Hi guys, this is personal but since you guys occasionally listend to her talking, I thought you deserve knowing it too.

Me and the girlfriend are no longer together. Its been a splendid 4 years but now its time we went our separate ways. We will stay friends in the future and theres no permanent damage to our "connection" but you will not hear her talking anymore on the channel. So yes, keeping this short, you will be stuck with me here :)

2 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 327

The Singleplayer Squad

I still remember having 3 subscribers like it was yesterday. 2-ish years ago that was, oh do I remember that time when it took 2 weeks just to get from 47 subscribers to 49. I have a dedicated folder on my phone about that progress stuff lol. The beginning really is that challenging its no wonder there are so many abandoned unmonetized channels under 1000 subscribers. Now, about 150 new people are subscribing to this channel daily here.

Starting out as "Nabkro" which actually was an in-game name in an MMORPG of a once dear friend of mine, I initially started with things as simple as gaming benchmarks. Stuff got like 5 views (of which 2 are probably from me) but I was enjoying it.

My first talking video ever was a video about Hogwarts Legacy. Watch them, I sound SO different than today even though it was just 2 years ago. The positive feedback I received from these hogwarts legacy videos actually confirmed to me that I dont want to just drop uncommented gameplays and benchmarks. Plus I had anxiety when just thinking about talking in a video, so naturally I accepted the challenge!

Atfer about 1 year of uploading as "Nabkro" I made a really big rebranding to the channel, new name (to better reflect what the channel is about), content switch (from my 8 min videos to shorter videos), a bit more restricted genres (basically cut out racing games, horror games and of course multiplayer games to have at least some structure) and of course a new logo. Thats actually when the channel took off quite a bit, and when I started getting so many positive comments about respecting their time, it was clear that I will double down on the short format and pretty much exclusively make 3-Minute content.

A bold decision btw! Algorithm-wise its a decision that may look like its a bad choice, Youtubes algorithm has always favored longer videos. A 20 or 30 minute long video can easily serve you like 7-8 ads with front, bumper and mid-roll ads. Some even put way more ads in there. I knew this decision was massive and it would make or break the channel

We dont have that here, mid-roll ads are like the most annoying and they are only eligible for videos over 8 minutes. Missing out on that completely can be a huge revenue-loss for the creator, but respecting your viewers time also has benefits for you like more engagement, subscriber influx because you are doing something that not many are doing in this format, and a higher CTR because people are more likely to click on a 3 minutes first impressions with a dedicated script, rather than an unedited 50 mins first impressions recording. At least thats my thought-process

Well I still consider myself a "Newtuber" even after 400 videos. Im sure when I reach 800 videos I will look back to this present time right now and laugh about some stuff. Priority #1 for me right now is to improve my talking skills. That does not mean hiding my accent btw, I mean more like sounding more engaging, less monotone, more exciting and authentic, which I think I did make some decent improvements compared to 1 year ago.

Right now its Summer Time and channel views are down a bit - completely normal. Definitely not freaking out over it like last year, its totally expected for most gaming Youtubers. Less games coming out, people are more outside. Am really looking forward to October - December, Q4 is definitely where its at, theres a huge list of amazing games coming out that I cant wait to cover. November itself is ridiculously packed with great indie titles.

Thanks for making it possible for me to continue this!

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6 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 124

The Singleplayer Squad

This was a pretty cool moment for me actually that I wanted to share here. Someone on Youtube told me that penguinz0 aka MoistCritical showed / watched a video of mine in one of his streams.

I know it was purely coincidental but it was cool to see him type the name of the game into the search bar and my video was at the very top. Showed me that despite being a relatively small channel still, how far we have come already.

Its also nice to see that Youtube does not completely bury videos just because they are short. For quite a while I was under the impression that 20 or 30 minutes videos will always be ranked much higher and short videos have no chance. I found that as long as there is interest and people click and engage, a short video can rank higher than longer videos, simply because people are more likely to click on a promising 3 minute video than a 50 minutes First Impressions. Nothing against those who do watch these btw, they can be very educational if done right.

6 months ago | [YT] | 191

The Singleplayer Squad

Hi guys,

I have developed a really bad sleeping disorder lately. The past few weeks I can barely sleep, usually I get my good and much needed 7-8 hours but now I have to be lucky to get 2h of good sleep.

Unfortunately this has a probably noticeable effect on my script quality, in todays video thats coming in a few hours it is especially prominent that I have no energy for talking at all. Especially no eneergy to repeat every sentence like 15 times, I quite frankly didnt give a crap today how I sound so I honestly just talked and got it done, not paying much attention to "perfection". We are all human arent we (except for the AI automated channels lol)

I am confident it will return to normal if I change my evening routine and stuff a bit and reduce mental and physical stress.

So I apologize in advance if there is a visible lack of enthusiasm in some videos..
Thank god that my girlfriend is occasionally helping out now with talking!

6 months ago | [YT] | 159

The Singleplayer Squad

Excellent news my friends!

From now on, all scripts will be spoken by this adorable yellow bird, accent-free of course. Internal discussions and tests have proven this to be the most beneficial option for all parties here.

Due to the increased charm factor and tremendous bump of quality in the voice recordings, I do expect an average of 6000 new subscribers daily. Rumor has it the higher ups are speculating right now about fully replacing my presence on this channel in turn for this plush. My hands are tied but for now I support the decision fully.

More info check out my pinned comment.

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7 months ago | [YT] | 105

The Singleplayer Squad

I am getting sick af of the hundreds of comments I get a week wrongly accusing me of using an AI voice & spamming me for my accent. From now on, all words that could remotely indicate that a comment is about my voice are immediately blocked as I have added them to the blacklist. If you have genuine feedback feel free to join our discord server and write it in my suggestions channel. Dont join for trolling, you will be banned.

Sorry but I cant deal with this no longer, for 2 years now I am dealing with these comments on a daily basis and you reach a point where you simply. cannot. hear it anymore.

With this said thank you so much for all the "normal" people out there who provide genuine feedback and of course the ones who support me all the way through! I know I shouldnt give these unnecessary comments too much attention and clearly my videos can provide value to you guys, at least judging by the overwhelming amount of likes and positive comments I receive from most of you. The bad ones are easily the minority but the noise is getting a bit too loud for me rn.

7 months ago | [YT] | 316

The Singleplayer Squad

Not part of this channel's Discord server yet?
You're missing out on a chill, non-toxic & discrimination-free space full of singleplayer fans — and starting this month, chances for occasional monthly free Steam keys too.

While Patreon supporters get first dibs, there will always be some keys left to share with the Discord community. These are extras sent to me by publishers as a thank-you for covering their games, and I want to pass that on to you, what am I doing with hundreds of Steam-Keys? :D It's a small way I can give back, and many devs are happy to support it.

The server is growing quickly, and right now it's just me and one Community Manager keeping things running. So we’ll soon be looking for moderators to help out, since we’re not online 24/7.

discord.gg/9gfc7JDrtq

8 months ago | [YT] | 27

The Singleplayer Squad

Guys, we gotta talk.

Or rather, I have to talk because I just need to communicate this somehow to give myself some emotional relief rn lol. Feel free to read this or skip this, its a bit long:

2ish years ago I started this channel, willingly and purposely in English because I thought "I am a human being, and human beings tend to get better at stuff they frequently do, right?"

Well, 2 years later and it STILL sometimes takes my Austrian tongue 2 hours to talk a f*cking 3-Minute script. It is maddening.

The thing is, and this is what's maddening, that when I read the script without the mic infront of me, I can read most of the stuff in one go. Takes me maybe 10 minutes.

As soon as I turn on the mic, a kind of barrier in my brain kicks in, maybe it is trying to be too perfect or something, and I have to record every single damned sentence 20 times.

But this is not always the case. I upload (and therefore record) daily, lets say out of the 7 weekly uploads 2 voice overs of that will be really fast and good, the rest is utter garbage for producing.

What you hear in my vids sounds acceptable at most, but that is only because I do so many takes, after the 2 hours recording I then also have to cut out all the pauses since I record sentence per sentence. This eats up so much time that I could use more efficiently. My videos are 3 minutes long but they take me 8+ hours to make if you include the footage recording, voice recording, editing, thumbnail designs, music selection, script writing etc

Do you know that "We'll do it live" meme with Bill O Reilly? Yeah thats me, sometimes it infuriates me how bad the talking is and the amount of ridiculous takes

I asked here a while ago (I think at around 15,000 subs) if you would prefer me talking (since some dont understand my accent anyway) or high quality AI narration. The results were crystal clear about 98% voted for me talking.

So I kept going but honestly when you are sitting 2 hours for such a short script you really sometimes think what a disservice you are doing yourself and your audience when you could just hire a high quality elevenlabs Voice to do the talking, it would ensure 100% of my watchers understand every single word and the production process would of course also speed up drastically giving me time to focus on more important things than reading the sentence "The visuals have a really nice atmospheric style that captures the abandoned city feeling very well." 38 times and still sounding like crap.

I enjoy what I am doing with this channel, really, but Jesus I have to find a solution in the foreseeable future for this problem. LMK what you think about my vent.

9 months ago | [YT] | 203

The Singleplayer Squad

Hey all! Gained quite a lot of new subs these past 1-2 weeks so I wanted to quickly take the opportunity & introduce our Discord server, a cozy & friendly non-toxic place for Single-Player & Indie lovers. Its still growing, so a bit quiet atm, but I make sure to stop by at least a couple times daily, in the future I am also looking for community & chat managers etc. Also making special roles for my top commenters and patrons etc :) discord.gg/9gfc7JDrtq

10 months ago | [YT] | 96