Is Minecraft Dying? What Games Should Etho Play? And How Does He Compare to Other Minecraft YouTubers?

This blog post will be a general analysis of Minecraft YouTubers' viewership and subscriber gain and also how Etho compares to the average YouTuber in his genre. So, first of all, I recently watched this video:

I won't be going on about any of the points made in that video, so I recommend that you watch it before continuing. Done that? So, Minecraft is losing popularity, seeming at a rapid pace. Now, I might not have been thoroughly invested in Minecraft since I was eight, but unless if he's died or something, I'm still fairly certain that Sethbling is one of the most popular redstone YouTubers. Let's take a look at his SocialBlade and compare it to Etho's.

The first thing I notice is that SethBling has more subscribers than Etho. When did that happen? Again, Etho's the only Minecraft YouTuber I've watched (apart from that SSundee video above which I just watched out of curiosity just now) for years, but back when I was invested in the game and community, SethBling had less subscribers than Etho. Interesting.

 

All right, so let's check out their subscriber/view gain/loss.

Hmm... Interesting. Etho appears to be doing better in terms of subscriber gain and view gain. In fact, Sethbling seems to be losing an alarming amount of subscribers. I'll check out his channel to make sure he hasn't done something outrageous or whatever.

All right, so it seems that he's inactive. Understandable. But Etho's not inactive; he uploads daily. So let's look at a more active Minecraft YouTuber and see how they're getting on.

Yep, he's active.

What did it show for Etho, again?

Well, it seems like Dan's doing better than Etho. Let's look at their channels then.

Let's note immediate differences which we can spot. Thumbnails is the first thing which I notice. Now, while I love the uniqueness of Etho not doing custom thumbnails, they can really bring in views and make videos look a lot more professional.

The second thing I notice is that Etho posts all Minecraft. Dan posts more games than that, and, believe it or not, his Minecraft videos actually seem to get less views than non-Minecraft videos, even though he's literally a Minecraft channel. So should Etho start playing other games? Indeed. But what games?

One way to see what people are watching and enjoying is looking at the trends on gaming.youtube.com. What's popular? Right now, Overwatch, Hearthstone, Battlefield 1—I could go on. Mind you, Etho did do a Hearthstone video once. Let's check the statistics on that.

So here are his two Hearthstone videos. Note the views. I'll now check videos uploaded at a similar time by him.

Both uploaded early May 2015. Interestingly, the Minecraft one has more views and a better like:dislike ratio, but Hearthstone a higher like:view ratio.

So, what can we conclude from this gargantuan of a post?

• Minecraft is a dying game and for Minecraft YouTubers to grow, their best bet would be to play other games
• Upload regularly
• Use thumbnails
• Play a variety of games, but stay on-brand (i.e. still play mostly Minecraft, just incorporating other games)