The Armchair Historian

I just want to give a heads up so it's not such a shock.

I am halting production of all new videos at the end of this year. I do not have any plans to release new content in 2026. I will never sell my channel, nor will I delete or unlist videos.

I will have a video made explaining the decision sometime in January.

It is not clickbait, and there is no crowdfunding effort. AHTV will also be closing down, and refunds will be issued to the remaining annual members. We will have emails going out this month to our members.

1 month ago | [YT] | 6,177

The Armchair Historian

In only 3 days, our new game Master of Command comes out! :)

We've worked super hard on this one. It's a smaller team and smaller budget than F&M but I think the game came out 3-4x better. We took a lot of lessons away from our previous release and I think you guys are going to have a lot of fun with this one.

I've also got a Seven Years' War documentary to go out on release day so you guys can learn more about the period!

3 months ago | [YT] | 2,198

The Armchair Historian

Would you like me to go back on-camera in our videos?
Benefit is that those scenes become more personal again.
Drawback is it means no more motion graphics to accompany those scenes. The new animated version of the "on-camera" scenes include little visual explanations, but this won't be possible to do with the on-camera.

*It's also one or the other; we can't do both.

5 months ago | [YT] | 1,761

The Armchair Historian

Would you guys rather have a 25 minute deep dive on the Spanish Civil War overall, or a speculative "What if? Spanish Civil War" where we go over several possible outcomes of different factions that could've won the war and how they would've shaped Spain (not really going into "would they have entered WW2?" which is a bit overdone, but instead focusing on how it could've impacted Spain internally)

5 months ago | [YT] | 2,050

The Armchair Historian

We've worked really hard on the last few videos to improve the quality and length of the content, making them much more reminiscent of how we used to do them a few years ago. However, the engagement was relatively similar (if not worse) to the smaller and less detailed content we created earlier this year. Why do you think that is? The only standout success has been our ISIS documentary, which was very long (45+ minutes) and in-depth.

I think the only strategies I see forward are potentially pursuing that 45+ minute plus format- doing in-depth documentaries, but it would be risky because the projects would be more expensive and less frequently released. The other option is to stop doing animations on YouTube altogether and switch to just fully on-camera videos with only a handful of visuals to make expenses absolutely minimal. *Our videos on our website, AHTV, have their costs covered, so they can keep animations.

During COVID, it made sense to spend a lot on detailed animations when everyone was stuck at home and advertisers were easily covering the costs. But now it's really hard to justify the content when it gets this expensive. For reference, sponsorships pay around 12% of what they used to just two to three years ago. Because of this, our format isn't really sustainable in the long term, so we need a good solution that can make sure the costs are covered sufficiently. To also be clear, this isn't a request for donations; I'm genuinely curious what you guys think should be done about this.

*As a side note. For those who don't know, we are also working on making our second video game, "Master of Command." When this project was undertaken in 2023, I did not predict that things would decline on the platform at this rate. Luckily, we are right at the finish line and will be done with the game in a matter of months. But it does put into question if we'll be able to do any kind of big projects going forward if we're unable to figure something out with YouTube soon.

5 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 3,585

The Armchair Historian

Hey everyone, I have some great news about the future of our content. Namely, documentaries!

Because we had such an overwhelmingly positive response to our latest documentary on ISIS, we will now be uploading a documentary every single month until the end of 2025. We're passionate about producing cinematic, in-depth documentaries, and I am glad this is the direction that our channel is taking.

I'm committed to making our documentaries FREE and accessible for everyone, and I'm thankful to our Armchair History TV subscribers, who are supporting our team's efforts on these projects that would otherwise be completely impossible.

On some of these documentaries, there will be an "uncensored" version that will remain exclusive to our website. It's unfortunate, but at least YouTube now flags the exact parts of the videos that are causing demonetization, so we can quickly blur them out and reupload like we did for the ISIS documentary.

We only have enough documentaries to last until the end of the year. So if you want to help us produce more for next year and make this a routine for our channel, please consider becoming a member to armchairhistory.tv. We also have lots of original, shorter content that we put out regularly.

You can get a full year for just $20 using the code COMMUNITY OR a free month using the code UNCENSORED. Thank you all so much for your support, I'm really excited to keep taking the channel in this direction!

-Griffin

6 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 3,834

The Armchair Historian

Hey everyone! Thanks so much for the support on our latest documentary, it's blowing up! I also wanted to say that I temporarily unlisted our game trailer just because I feel it's better suited to our other channel. If you didn't watch the trailer and wanted to see, and also check out our development logs about the game, I've left a link in the pinned comments below!

6 months ago | [YT] | 3,469

The Armchair Historian

Looking for 1 additional animator as we prepare to go back to 25 minute videos starting in July this year. If you're interested, send over a portfolio to armchairhistorianapplications@gmail.com. We work in Adobe After Effects, so that is recommended! Must be at least 18 years old and have a portfolio, those are the only two requirements.

7 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 2,192

The Armchair Historian

Just wanted to make our stance clear: I do not support the use of AI to replace actual human talent. I understand AI tools can help expedite certain tedious tasks like data entry but using it to generate art, voices, animation, etc from scratch is not something I support.

We do not use AI generated content in our videos or projects, nor will we.

7 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 6,049

The Armchair Historian

Vote for the next "What if" video. We'll explore other potential outcomes for one of these topics.

7 months ago | [YT] | 1,158