Through various combinations of circumstances, I found myself on a Reddit threat discussing why Game Grumps don't use their old "cartoon-style" heads on their thumbnails any more, instead using actual photographs of themselves combined with imagery from the games they're playing.
The answer, as anyone who has spent any time watching YouTube will know, is, of course, "the algorithm". Supposedly thumbnails with actual faces in them get more views — or at least get pushed in front of more people than more straightforward thumbnails do — which is why we end up with pages and pages of people doing Macaulay Culkin impressions on their videos, even if they're clearly uncomfortable doing so. I mean, not to pick on the guy, but all you have to do is look at RGT 85's videos to see someone who really doesn't seem to want to be plastering his face over everything he does. Can you spot the ones where he copy-pastes stock photos of himself?
Trouble is, as frustrating as it is to see this sort of thing at times stifling creativity, it obviously works, otherwise people wouldn't be doing it. And you can actually see it in the viewing figures on the Grumps' videos; the videos with their actual faces are often pushing a million views or more, while the ones without tend to be 500k and under.
Annoyingly, I've even noticed this on a channel as small as my own. Anything I've done where my own face is the thumbnail — such as the Q&A videos and the recent channel update — has had about double the usual viewing figures I get for a typical video. Which, naturally, makes me wonder if I should be doing something like that a bit more often.
Trouble is, I rather like the consistency of presentation the Atari A to Z videos and other series have on the channel right now, and to suddenly start adding my gurning fizzog to them would feel a bit strange. I can't deny that it's tempting to try an experiment with some video thumbnails, though. We shall see.
Anyway, just thought I'd ramble briefly on that subject as I found it vaguely interesting. Hope you've had a good weekend and any mothers among you have had a pleasant Mothering Sunday (in the UK). Back to the grindstone again tomorrow!
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