High Score: YouTube Gaming Space Draws Massive Views

In anticipation of E3, we used our technology to analyze the gaming space on YouTube to discover what gets gamers excited. This passionate community is among the most engaged online, and consumes a wide variety of video content on YouTube, from trailers and game reviews, to Let’s Play and machinima videos. Pixability’s analysis coincides with a special gaming edition of YouTube’s Ads Leaderboard, featuring top-performing trailers from major video game publishers.
Pixability’s research revealed that:
Game Trailers Draw Views & Engagement
Gamers on YouTube flock to publishers’ channels to watch trailers for upcoming releases. These previews generate 2.3B views and 25M engagements, far outperforming other content types.

Parodies Generate the Most Views
While comedic parody videos draw the most views of the top 100 gaming videos, Let’s Play videos — personality-driven gameplay footage with commentary — garner the most engagements.

Top Games & Creators
Minecraft is the most popular game on YouTube, with 158B views related to the game. Gaming channels with Minecraft-related content are exploding, with creator channels growing their subscriber base by as much as 3138% year-over-year. While PewDiePie rules the gaming space on YouTube with nearly 2X more views than the second-most popular gaming channel, other creators still draw tremendous viewership —  TheDiamondMinecart has generated 6.6B+ views, and the Machinima network has drawn 5.6B+ views.
Creators Amplify the Conversation Post-Release
In advance of a game release, gamers turn to publishers’ channels for trailers and other video content. After the release of a game trailer, our data shows that relative search interest surpasses publisher channel views, which indicates that viewers are hungry for more video content. After a game is launched, creators amplify the conversation — the top 10 creators in the gaming space draw eight percent of all gaming views.

And that’s game over. To see how this year’s top gaming trailers rank, check out YouTube’s Ads Leaderboard here. To learn more about how Pixability’s powerful technology unlocks video advertising insights on YouTube and other platforms, click here.