THE VIDEO SHELF · youtube creator economy
Game Theory: How PewDiePie Conquered YouTube
The Game Theorists analyze how PewDiePie rose to become the most subscribed channel on YouTube. The video looks at why let's plays and gaming channels thrive on the platform.
Why HN readers recommended it
HN commenters cite it as an analysis of PewDiePie's popularity and of how YouTube's recommendations favored gaming content.
This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.
Video & recommendation details
- Creator / channel
- The Game Theorists
- Topic
- youtube creator economy
- Format
- commentary
- Level
- general
- HN recommenders in dataset
- 2
- HN mentions in dataset
- 4
- Recommendation years in dataset
- 2014–2017
These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.
From the original HN conversations
Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.
There is an interesting theory on how that happened: [VIDEO] Basically Google changed their algorithm to recommend videos based on time watched instead of just views. Which massively favored let's plays because they are so long. They also promote channels based on geographical location. Pewdiepie …
Houshalter on Hacker News · 2014-05
In Check your Google historyHere's a video with some interesting theories about how PewDiePie, and other gaming channels, are so popular because they're effectively hyper-tuned for Youtube's promotion algorithms: [VIDEO]
Kronopath on Hacker News · 2014-06
In YouTube's Biggest Draw Plays Games, Earns $4 Million a Year
Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.