Everything I’ve learnt from being a cosy gaming content creator
Making the decision to become a content creator is not the easiest thing to do, but it can be a lot of fun. There’s a charm and magic which comes from making things for yourself and doing something a little different from the norm. However, it isn’t without it’s challenges, and there’s a lot you can learn from being a content creator.
I’ve been making content for the last 3 years across different platforms and I have had a lot of successes and failures which have taught me a lot about myself and fundamentally changed how I go about creating content.
If you’ve ever thought about dipping your toe into the water or you have already started on your own journey and are feeling a little lost, here are some of the things I’ve learnt in my content creation journey which I wish I had known when I first started.
Replace the word algorithm with audience
It’s the biggest thing that I hear newer content creators complain about: “The algorithm hates me and my channel. It’s not recommending my videos so that’s why no one is watching.” I’ve made the same complaint myself, but the reality is, it’s not the algorithm which is resulting in low views.
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Algorithms are designed for one thing - serving the audience what they want to watch, when they want to watch it. Recommendations are incredibly powerful and when they are introduced, there are remarkable results.
Notice the bold words there, it’s about what your viewer wants, not what you want. The way you build success on any platform is to focus on what your audience wants and making sure that they have a great experience on your channel.
The bottom line is simple, if your content isn’t what viewers want to see, they aren’t going to click it. In turn, that leads to fewer recommendations in the algorithm and fewer views overall.
The way I changed my mindset on this was to intentionally replace the word “algorithm” with the word “audience” whenever I found myself complaining about my content not doing well. Rather than “why is the algorithm not showing my videos?” my question became “Why are my audience not clicking on this?” It’s a subtle shift, but it’s one which can make the biggest difference when you are trying to grow a channel.
Your content is not perfect, and that’s okay
As creators, we strive to make the best content possible and for a lot of people, it is a very rewarding thing to do. You stand back from a video you’ve finished and you feel like it’s the best thing ever, and then you don’t get the views you want.
The one thing that you may start doing, which I am also guilty of, is saying that your videos are amazing and they are better than everyone else’s version, but complaining that people aren’t seeing how perfect your content is.
There’s quite a lot to unpack within this type of thinking, but the one thing that has stuck with me is that your content is never perfect.
There’s always going to be something with what you make that you aren’t happy with. You’re human, you will make mistakes and you will not always make content you are happy with. It’s a normal part of the learning process.
Most creators don’t learn about how to make content for platforms when they are at school. You have to learn the ins and outs as you make content. That can be a steep learning curve, but there are ways to learn the skills you need.
The focus should be on learning something new from each piece of content you make. Maybe you tried an edit and you aren’t entirely sure if it works out or not, upload the video anyway and see how it goes down with your viewers. They will quickly be able to tell you either in the comments of the video or in your analytics if it worked out or not.
The other thing which I like to do, and it helps me out massively even now is to watch my content as if I were a viewer and make notes on the things which need fixing.
It can be hard to take yourself out of a creator head and step into a viewer head space, but if you can do this, you will learn so much about your content before you even press publish.
By doing this, you get to pick up on the things which are working out, but also the things which aren’t. That in and of itself is a huge learning opportunity for you as a creator to make better content overall. As long as you approach each piece with the mindset of there always being something which you can improve on, that will in turn lead you to success.
The numbers really don’t matter
This was a tough thing to learn in the beginning of my YouTube journey, but the numbers really don’t matter as much as you think they do.
Stats and numbers are amazing and they are a valid way of measuring how well your content and your channel is doing, but there’s one massive problem which all creators have fallen foul to at some point in the process of making cosy gaming content and that is thinking that they are everything.
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What really doesn’t help is that YouTube puts these numbers front and centre on the back end of your channel so you can always see whether your last upload was a 1 out of 10 or covered in the dreaded grey arrows.
It’s all too easy as a new content creator to hinge all of your happiness on these numbers. If the numbers are green, it’s a good day. However, if you start doing that, you may find yourself in the position that your content is not performing as well and you feel really dejected about the whole process of making content.
What I suggest, particularly if you are new to making content is to not look at the numbers at all. It is incredibly hard to avoid it on some platforms which put the analytics right in front of your face as a creator, but if you can separate yourself from the numbers, you give yourself the freedom to create and play around with content to find something which works for you.
Instead of looking at the numbers and using this to define how you feel about your channel, focus instead on how you feel during the process of making content. If you are loving everything you are doing and having a lot of fun with it, that matters more than what you are seeing in the numbers.
As you post more content and grow your audience, you will slowly start to see patterns and trends in what works for you and what doesn’t and this is where the numbers become more important. Don’t take the numbers too seriously until you have more more of a consistent viewership and then you will be able to use the data more effectively.
You have to be yourself
So many people fall into a trap when they start uploading content onto social media. You see all of these aesthetic, comfy and cosy gaming setups and cute creators making the perfect cosy gaming content and you are super inspired to try it.
You sit at your desk to start recording and then you realise that your desk looks nothing like that. You don’t sound like that, and you certainly don’t act like the popular creators do.
You may think this shouldn’t be a barrier for you and the best way to make your profile or channel stand out is to copy what everyone else is doing. However, before you go ahead and pick up that camera and start acting like all the other creators, let me give you a piece of advice: don’t do it.
One thing that I had to learn the hard way is that you can’t be a carbon copy of someone else in terms of style, presentation or content type. You can only shine when you are genuinely you.
When you are first getting started with creating content for YouTube or any other social media platform, it is natural to take elements from your favourite creators, but try to instead use this as inspiration for the things that you want to do and not straight out copy what they are doing.
The reason to use it as inspiration is that it’s sometimes fun to play around a bit and find out what you like and don’t like. As you start becoming more comfortable in front of a camera or microphone, you will naturally find what you enjoy doing and that is when your most authentic self shines through. As the old saying goes: “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
Networking is not that important
Something that I hear which comes up time and time again within YouTube education spaces, and particularly within streaming spaces, is that you have to network to grow.
This comes from old advice back from the pandemic when everyone was stuck inside and for a lot of people the only options were to either make content or watch content. As a result, there were suddenly a lot more content creators putting themselves out there, meeting people and talking about content with their fellow creators.
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However, if you are more introverted like me, the thought of doing something social may make you internally cringe and send you scurrying back to your little hidey hole in the corner of your living room to get tucked up with a cosy blanket and your Nintendo Switch so that you can play a cosy game and forget the world exists.
Fortunately for you, something you can keep in mind is that networking with other creators is not as important as you think it is. Can it help you grow? It can, but from my own experience, the growth that you get from networking with creators is pretty limited.
Remember when we were talking about making content the audience wants to watch? Well, this is why. Your audience is looking to connect with you, not the creator you are collaborating with.
The same is also true for the other creator. Even if there are crossovers in your respective content, like you play the same game, the audiences are reflective of the communities you are building separately.
Word of mouth is an amazing tool to get some growth, and it can work to get a boost in your numbers. But, even if you are networking with a larger creator and they recommend your content to their audience, you may only see one or two more people popping into your space. This is because that creator’s audience is there for them, not for you.
If you are using networking as a means of growing, it’s not the best strategy. Instead you are better off just focusing on making the best content you possibly can in your own style. However, networking with other creators can be useful for one thing - connection.
It can be pretty lonely being a content creator. You film, edit, make thumbnails, draft out titles and tags and upload what you make. But, you are doing all of that on your own. Sometimes it’s nice to just connect with other creators who are in a similar position to yourself and are looking to grow their audiences. But, you don’t have to do that if you don’t feel comfortable.
As I like to say: your channel, your rules. If you don’t want to network or collaborate with other creators, you don’t have to. It won’t hold you back when you are just starting out, but as you grow you may find that you want to reach out to other creators to just say “Hi” and have a friendly conversation about content, and there’s nothing wrong with just leaving it like that.
It only takes one video, but not always
You hear all the time in YouTube education channels that it takes just one video in order for you to make it and it’s certainly true that channels can suddenly find success out of nowhere and that video they just uploaded suddenly hits 1 million views, but in most cases, it doesn’t happen that way.
Before I had my first video go semi-viral I had uploaded 75 long form videos. Yes, you read that number correctly, and that’s not including the number of shorts I posted.
You have to be prepared that overnight success may not happen for you. It doesn’t mean that you are doing anything wrong at all. You can upload one video, see that it doesn’t do well and move onto the next video only to realise that the first video you uploaded started gaining traction out of nowhere.
Whatever you do, you have to keep focusing on what you want to achieve in your content. Focus on the message you are delivering to your audience and on driving the value for your community. In time, this will pay off in bucketloads and you will find that you learn more from each piece of content you upload which in turn makes your content better.
You have to be consistent
I’m going to take a massive pause on this one right now! Whenever I see this advice come up, every creator including you right now instantly thinks that when you are told “Be consistent” it means that you need to maintain a consistent upload schedule. It does mean that, but that’s not the only thing which needs to be consistent.
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Everything related to your content needs to be kept to a consistent standard so that your audience and community knows what to expect from you. For example, let’s say you normally play Animal Crossing, but suddenly you decided to play a first person shooter like Call of Duty or a horror game. Sure, there will be a small part of your audience which will watch you play anything because they enjoy your style, but the majority of your community is going to suddenly see you playing a shooter and wonder where Animal Crossing went. This may lead to lower engagement in your content because it’s not what people expect to see on your channel.
For all of your social media platforms, you are also going to want to keep your branding consistent so that when someone goes looking for you, that person knows they are in the right place. This includes banners, profile pictures, any graphics you are making for photo based platforms and, if you are streaming, your overlays should also be reflective of your branding if you are planning on using them. If you are struggling to find the right branding for your social media, I totally get it. It can be a while before you find something that works, but when you do find it, you have to be prepared to keep your branding the same for a long time so that your audience knows what to look for.
Your personality and presentation style also need to be brought into the mix as well as part of this. It doesn’t look too appealing for a viewer who is expecting a cosy vibe on your channel to suddenly hear shouting and screaming the moment they walk in because you happen to be playing a game which causes you to rage.
Likewise, if a person follows your social media because they love your tips and tricks videos but you suddenly decide that you are going to swap to do comedy shorts or reels, it may not be what they want to watch because they prefer long form content.
You need to be prepared to keep what you are doing consistent across your social media. This doesn’t mean you have to post the same thing everywhere, but if you post within a similar vein to your brand’s niche, you will find much bigger success across your social media than if you keep chopping and changing over. Yes, you need to maintain a consistent upload schedule, but as you can see, that’s not the only thing you need to think about if you are wanting to maintain an audience over the long term.
Have an avatar for each of your platforms
What’s the first thing you think about when you hear an avatar? Maybe a big, blue alien on another planet? Possibly even having an in game character from your favourite cosy game to represent you across your social media? Both of these things are versions of avatars, but when it comes to content creation, that’s not what we’re talking about.
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If you’ve heard of a user or customer profile before, then you may know what a brand avatar is already. It’s an outline of who our target audience is and what they expect to get from your content.
There are different tools you can use to create one including one hosted within vidIQ, but you don’t need to use any tools like this to create one. The way to think of your avatar is to think about who you want to attract to your videos, what they like and don’t like, how they spend their time.
You want to think about their gender, their age, what they get up to in their spare time, what their income is and what their job may be like. All of that information combined together is what makes your avatar and the clearer you can make them in your mind, the easier it is for you to make content which is dedicated to that avatar.
Whilst you are putting the profile together of who that avatar is, I would also recommend giving them a name as this makes them feel more real whilst you are planning and creating content.
When you know who your avatar is and what they want from your platform, you want to ask yourself what does whatever your avatar’s name is want from what I’m about to put on my channel? If they have watched one of your videos before, what questions are they going to ask next? Where would they go based on what you’ve already put out on your social media?
As you start this process, you flesh out a content strategy for your social media and that will make it easier for you to create not just one video or reel for your channel but a topic cluster which can generate several different ideas for you to try on your cosy gaming social media.
It’s this which made a massive difference to my style of content and I would highly recommend really thinking about who your avatar is and getting them clear in your mind to make your whole process of making content way more fun and enjoyable for both you and your audience.
Stop researching and start creating content
There’s one big rule which has permeated through my life: just do it!
When it comes to making any form of content for any social media platform, you will find hundreds if not thousands of videos going over everything you could ever want to lear about a platform. From how to grow on YouTube to how do the algorithms work on each platform and how to make videos and edit them.
All of those videos and blog posts covering those topics are incredibly helpful and can really make a difference when you are first starting out with making content, but there is a point where researching what you need to do next to grow your presence online becomes redundant.
Spending hours and hours looking up all of the YouTube education or help for TikTok videos doesn’t make up for the experience you would gain from just creating content. So, when I give the advice of just do it. You really need to put down the videos and blog posts where you are looking for an answer on why you aren’t growing and just make something.
More often than not, you will learn what works and what doesn’t from the process of creating content. Every upload will teach you something new that you learn about yourself, your style of content and your audience. Use this information to help you grow and keep momentum going on your social media above those advice videos.
If you do need some extra help like if there’s a setting which you need to toggle on or off because the quality of your post has somehow gone downhill, spend some time looking into it, but try to limit yourself on the number of videos or posts you read about that setting so that you can get back to getting practical experience of making content.
Titles, thumbnails and cover photos matter
I’ll let you into a little known secret that will make the world of difference to your content. The content itself is less important than the packaging you put it in. Think of your titles, thumbnails and cover photos like a book cover. There’s a reason why the ugly books get left on the shelf! You have to make your content stand out so people will click on it.
If you want to think of this another way, the next time you use any social media platform, take a look at all of the content you get served and ask yourself why you stopped or clicked on the one you are looking at now. Something would have caught your eye about it, right? That’s the power of good packaging on videos.
But how do you tap into that? The key thing here is that you want your title and thumbnail to be enticing for your audience. What you think is right for your audience may not be what they will click on. The most important thing to do is to try different things to find a style that works for you.
Here’s how I learnt to make good thumbnails and titles: Think about what is the most important message from your content. This is your hook to bring people into your channel. When you make a thumbnail or a cover photo, make the key message the largest focus. From there, everything you need to do on your thumbnail emphasises that point.
Your title then becomes the story of the video in as few words as possible. On YouTube, the titles cut off after 50 characters so you want to keep these as short as possible to make your point and to keep the whole title on the screen so your viewer knows what to expect.
It has to be as clear and easy to understand as possible. This means that you need to cut length and long words. Something that really helped me with titles is to remember that the average reading age of adults now is somewhere between 6-9 years old. If your title cannot be understood by a child, it’s too long.
The other thing you want to do is convey curiosity or intrigue with your title. This means tapping into something special within your content which is important for the viewer.
For arguments sake, I’ve looked up two YouTube videos about the same topic and you can tell me which one you are more likely to click on based on their titles:
A) Tiny Glade Gameplay: Cozy Building in a Relaxing World (2025)
OR
B) Why Tiny Glade is the Best Game You'll Play All Year... (Gameplay Guide & Review)
If we’re on the same page right now, you would pick option B. Why? It’s clear what the point of the video is, and the word best implies that Tiny Glade is going to be one of the most important cosy games you will ever play.
Does it matter that they are both gameplay videos? Not really, what matters is the energy you get from the two titles is very different and you want to make sure that you are conveying the right message to your viewers from both your titles and your thumbnails.
The way I approach titles and thumbnails is to decide on both of these ahead of time and before I start making the video. This helps me solidify what the story is I’m going to be telling in my content before I go into making it.
There are occasions when this doesn’t always work out and you won’t know what the story is until you film the video, but you can at least make a start on preparing your title and thumbnail ahead of time so that you know roughly what it’s going to look like. This will save you loads of time later when you are done with the video and just need to make a few tweaks to something you’ve already made before you publish the content.
How you use your time is so important
I’ll say this now because you may need to hear this. Being a content creator is a lot harder than you think. I’m not saying this to start a pity party! It is hard and, more importantly, it takes a lot more time to make content than you think it does.
If you’ve ever undertaken any type of larger project be that coursework or a master thesis or taking extra work, you will probably realise that you are in for the long haul, and you may get discouraged at times, particularly when you realise that it is going to take you a lot longer to finish the project than you had originally anticipated.
As a result and particularly as a part time creator, how you use your time is incredibly important and you don’t want to waste time doing something which is not going to make you happy in some way.
Seriously, if you are filming for hours and hours and you get to the end of it and hate everything you’ve done or have no idea how to make your way through the mounting of editing, you aren’t going to finish making your content, or you are going to do what I did and experience burnout from making content.
My biggest tip for you is to focus on one project at a time and chip away at it until you are done. If you are not happy with your content at any point, that’s fine. Ditch it or come back to it later when you feel better about it.
The biggest progress you make in creating content is not from doing 15 hours of editing on a Saturday to launch a video on a Sunday. It comes from spending short periods of time each day taking yourself one step closer to creating content.
Having a plan in place to work on content in small chunks throughout the week and keep these achievable for you is going to make the world of difference to keep you motivated and prevent the dreaded overwhelm from setting in.
Creating content is supposed to be fun, and if you aren’t having fun, that means you need to revisit everything you are doing right now on your content and find ways to make it fun, or drop the idea and take a break to care for yourself and think through if it’s something you want to continue.
As with anything in life, there are a lot of pros and cons to being a content creator. It is incredibly rewarding to see something you’ve worked on for hours suddenly pay off with increasing view counts and comments on a piece of content, but it may not happen straight away.
No matter what happens, with these lessons in mind, it will make the biggest difference to you when you take steps towards making your content the best it can possibly be.
What is one big thing you’ve learnt from making content? Has that shaped the way you view yourself and how you work? Let’s talk about it in the comments below, and I’ll see you in the next one.
