Analysis Of A Personality Based YouTube Channel

Why the videos from this channel are interesting to watch.

We'll be taking a look at Tim Cain's YT channel today, as it's a great example of someone who made a personality based channel. I started watching Tim's channel about a year ago when YT recommended one of his videos. He had about 20K subs at the time and in the past four months, his growth skyrocketed, as a few of his videos got a lot of attention. He uploads 5 times per week, and a lot of his videos are a response to a question someone has, where he'll weave in a story from something he's done.

Tim's channel is focused around game development. He was a developer for the original Fallout game in the 90's and has worked on other popular RPGs such as Outer Worlds. Once in a while, he'll talk about other topics, such as self development and chocolate (which he's a big fan of, he made a blog dedicated to the topic). One of my favorite videos of his is "The Decline Of Generalists." If you watch only one video from his channel, I strongly recommend that one.

Something you'll find often in his comment section is people saying something about "Grandpa Tim" and how they like to watch his videos. I've seen some people mention they don't care about game development, they like to watch just because of Tim. I'm also in the same boat. When you notice that, it's because someone has a great personality.

Thumbnails from Tim’s channel.

Tim's channel is one of the rare ones where it works well to let YT use a preselected frame from the video. The thumbnails are entertaining in themselves, since they're always in the middle of Tim making an expression. This is also one of the extremely rare times where it works great for him to not make a separate thumbnail.

I've mentioned in previous case studies that a thumbnail should give the viewer a good expectation of what the video's going to be about. When someone sees Tim's thumbnails, they can tell they're in for a good story and a guy that's going to be in front of a camera, and not something with a bunch of B-roll footage or dramatic music. Even though they're auto generated by YT, his thumbnails accomplish that perfectly. If you don't have a personality focused channel, it's still best to make separate thumbnails.

Tim does a great job at storytelling, and it's the thing that sets his channel apart from most others I've seen. Storytelling itself is a hard skill to develop. It's something that's missing from most channels, mine included. It requires a person to have done a lot of interesting things to have stories to tell in the first place. I've seen several videos of people discussing how everyone has interesting stories to tell. I agree with the statement, but most people aren't going to be able to talk about 5 interesting things every week for long before they run out of material. Visits to the local Burger King don't make for good stories to tell to people. If you don't have a story you can weave in, that's okay though, as you can still deliver whatever information you want to.

As far as the technical details of Tim's videos, the camera looks to be something like a ZVE-10 with the included kit lens. It may even be a webcam. The video quality isn't the focal point of his videos. The microphone is a Blue Yeti with a standard pop filter. His videos are probably recorded with OBS Studio. This is standard equipment for many people making videos. Tim's channel is an example of one where having high level equipment wouldn't help his videos and could even hurt the performance of them.

I've seen some people on YT who'll have two cameras with high quality lenses and will switch between them every minute or two. A lot of other channels will also add in stock B-roll footage every 10 seconds, as it's something recommended for "retention editing." If Tim did this, it would detract from his videos and the storytelling. On personality focused channels, increasing the production of the video can hurt the delivery.

Wrapping Up

I hope you got some good information from this. I'll be giving examples of other personality based channels in the future, as some of them do things much differently than Tim, and still get great results. I hope you have a good weekend and I'll see you next Saturday! 🍻