2010 In Review

Hey everyone it’s Mike!

First of all on behalf of everyone at Vigil Gaming I’d like to wish you all a Happy New Year! In this blog post I’d like to go over what 2010 has been like for Vigil Gaming, so if you’re interested feel free to read on.

Before I get in to that I quickly want to tell you about the new poll. Last week’s poll asked you all: “Who was the first person recruited to Vigil Gaming?” with 50% of you (1 vote) voting for Sgt. Pepper and Patar while no one voted for I R Black or Dyzix. The correct answer is Patar. Hopefully this week we get some more voters! This week’s poll asks you all: “If you remember, when did you subscribe to Vigil Gaming?” with all the months from May-December 2010 and January 2011 being an option. This poll ends on Friday, January 7, 2011. Now for an essay of what Vigil Gaming has accomplished in just over 7 months.

Vigil Gaming was started on May 4, 2010 after about 30 minutes of deciding on a name. The original 3 were Sw1tch, Mike and I R Black since he was part of the name making. Dyzix was the first person asked to join Vigil but he was offline when asked so it was Patar who was the first person to be recruited. He was recruited after he mentioned he wanted to post some Fear 2 walkthroughs on his channel. With some encouragement from Sw1tch and Mike he happily accepted his offer to join us. Dyzix joined shortly after.

For many of you Patar is a new name. The reason you may not have heard of Patar is because, for personal reasons, he had to leave Vigil Gaming. However, do not fret for he can still be viewed on the first half of the Portal walkthrough videos. And all is well since we all still talk and remain friends.

Over the course of just over 7 months Vigil Gaming has amounted 434 videos, 1170 subscribers, 358 444 total upload views, 24 327 channel views, numerous honours and many “YouTube firsts”. All of us at Vigil Gaming can safely say that this is the greatest channel we have ever been a part of as well as the fastest growing. When we started out we had 11 or 12 subscribers, over 50% of those being just me. It wasn’t until we hit up our other channels and told our subscribers to head over here to check us out that we started getting some new people. Overnight we found ourselves up to about 60 subscribers which is when we had to start working for our subscribers.

Very early on we were getting a lot of views on our videos. From the Left 4 Dead 2 mutation videos to StarCraft 2 Beta to Counter-Strike Source Beta. Our first video to crack 1000 views was, I believe, a video posted by myself on May 11 that went over ALL the Counter-Strike Source Beta achievements as well as the stats panel. Many people enjoyed that and just within a week we were getting a lot of views. In addition to this, Dyzix was helping out by providing StarCraft 2 Beta videos such as “Easy Win Strategy For New StarCraft 2 Players” and “Protoss Rush Tips For New StarCraft 2 Players” which both amounted to 1000 views respectively very quickly.
Our first “big” video that massed a lot of views quickly and I believe was our first view blocked video was a video by me posted for a contest Left 4 Dead 2 was holding for a Mutation. The video is called: “L4D2LastSurvivor Ellis’ Mind” which is a “Freeman’s Mind” kind of video that is a minute long and has 3 “events” that are narrated.

Though we didn’t get picked to win the contest off our 2 popular submissions both contest videos, to date, have accumulated 49 243 views collectively.
As we stepped in to June we finally hit 100 subscribers just a month and 2 days after starting our channel. June would prove to be one of the best months for Vigil Gaming. First of all, June is the month we launched the Win and Fail of the Day segments as well as started doing Vent Recordings which is just a fun fact. But on June 24, as we stood at around mid-100 subscribers I posted a video that REALLY helped us get some attention. The video is entitled: “CSS Doesn’t Suck After Update (ORIGINAL VIDEO)”. Initially, it didn't have the (ORIGINAL VIDEO) part at the end but this was the first video of ours that was being re-uploaded by other YouTubers. To my knowledge, 2 people have/had re-uploaded the video to their own channels.

This video was one that supported Valve in their changes to the Counter-Strike Source game after much of the community seemed to lash out on them for changing the game completely. With my sarcastic, asshole attitude I disproved much of everything I read about in about 5 minutes of the forums and from browsing YouTube videos. I posted this video on the Steam forums and that’s when it lifted off. Within an hour or so it was view blocked at 301 views and all of us were stoked. I remember the day before Dyzix had mentioned: “You know you’re big on YouTube when your video gets view blocked.” And here we were 24 hours later with Dyzix coming in Vent and praising me and the video. The comments on the video just wouldn’t stop, both positive and negative. This video helped us get like top 50 in most favourited, rated, commented and viewed charts. To this day at least one comment on that video is made. In about 24 hours the video updated its views to show around 1400, and by the end of the day I believe it was sitting at around 5000 views. To date the video has 44 688 views and remains our most popular video in all departments.

The following day we hit 200 subscribers and 6 days later hit 300. However, we didn’t take full advantage of the new audience we had just acquired and only posted a few CSS videos afterwards which may have caused some people to not subscribe or unsubscribe. In the subsequent months not much happened. We continued posting our videos, a lot of which was walkthroughs and requested videos from the audience. The next game that brought in some views was Alien Swarm which Vigil Gaming was the first to post full, HD with commentary gameplay of. The views remained in the low thousands but that’s better than nothing. Much of the views and subscribers were being obtained from the L4D2 mutation videos and the StarCraft 2 videos, especially once the game was released at the end of July.

In early August we announced our first ever contest which celebrated 500 subscribers. In this contest we asked the viewers to design an avatar and/or background for us which, if selected, we would display and give credit to. The winners were announced a month later. The avatar we have kept to this day and it is provided by the YouTuber “DeathnoteforL”. The background was nice while it lasted but we ended up switching it in a couple months to our current background which was done by Sw1tch.

At the end of August we recruited the newest member of Vigil Gaming, a friend of Sw1tch’s under the name of “Sgt. Pepper”. After a few weeks of getting to know and trust him it was decided that we’d make his biggest dream come true. :) He began by posting a Modern Warfare 2 gameplay on Vigil Gaming and soon became a consistent contributor and even helped us earn a handful of subscribers and views. In around mid-September came the release of Halo: Reach which Sgt. Pepper kindly posted walkthroughs for for the first two levels. The first video he posted quickly gained the attention of the Halo community and to this day has accounted for 13 112 views. The other 4 videos he posted as walkthroughs have all received over 2000 views each.

October was the next big month for us. As we were almost at 800 subscribers, the Medal of Honor Open Beta for PC came out. Both Dyzix and I posted gameplays for the game and both those videos have received 2800 views. A day after these videos were posted “The Sacrifice” DLC for Left 4 Dead 2 was released and we knew this was a big opportunity to get seen. We posted a walkthrough for the new campaign a few hours after it’s release. We weren’t the first to provide gameplay because another user beat us to it by a couple hours, HOWEVER, we were the first channel to provide an HD with commentary video for the campaign. Part two of that video to this day has audio problems after I had to delete it and re-upload it around 6-7 times. Collectively that video got around 10 000+ views. However, as the views stand now the 3 part walkthrough has provided 23 627 views. In addition to the new campaign, L4D2 got a L4D1 campaign called “No Mercy” for which Sgt. Pepper provided a 5 part walkthrough for. Each video has received over or almost 1000 views. This DLC helped us gain 100 subscribers in just 5 days, which is our current record for how quick we have obtained that amount of subscribers.

I feel like I haven’t discussed Sw1tch’s contributions to this channel enough, since he is an absolute genius. To begin he is the person who first suggested we do “requested setups” in Modern Warfare 2 which he began doing immediately. This concept has now been applied to all of our games so that you all can tell us what you want to see and we’ll do it. He is the fellow who suggested the Win/Fail of the Day series. He’s provided you with numerous montages that make you need to change your undergarments. He’s given you a few tutorials and reviews on certain things which have all amounted over 1000 views. In addition to this and more, without Sw1tch there would be no Vigil Gaming. He was the one who suggested it. And if that’s not a big enough contribution, I don’t know what is.

At Vigil Gaming we pride ourselves in being a viewer oriented gaming channel which, we believe, separates us from the incredibly big gaming channel crowd. We have so many outlets that we use to try to communicate with our viewers. We are one of, if not the only channel, who asks the viewers what they want to see and delivers the content for them, even if only one person wants to see that one request. We believe that if we post what you want to see in addition to what we want to see this will create a great balance and connection between us and the viewers which makes you all know that we’re not a regular gaming channel, we’re one here for you because we know that you’re watching and you’re supporting us and if you're not liking the content then that's only bad for us.

To date Vigil Gaming has posted 434 videos across 25 games across both Xbox 360 and computer. We have had an extraordinary 2010 and plan on continuing our success in to the new year of 2011. We have had the opportunity to turn one of our favourite past times in to something you all can enjoy as well. Thank you for sticking with us and thank you for watching, subscribing, commenting, rating and telling your friends if you do.