The fact of the matter is that I think that making Youtube videos is really rewarding, and being able to talk about games how I've always wanted to talk about them is really amazing. Thank you all for that.
I also really love the game of it, with the thumbnails and the analytics, the click-through-rate, the retention charts. To me, just like reading comments, all of that is just more information about whether people enjoyed what I made, in what ways they enjoyed it, and how good of a job I did at getting what's in my head into your head, which is the whole point. On that: here are all the thumbnails I made for the recent Fallout 3 video.
The top one is the one I currently have it set to. You can look between that one and the other similar one-- I just sort of cleaned it up and made it easier to look at, brightened up the building and darkened the ground. I haven't decided if I like that best or not; sometimes I like when thumbnails look a little more rough and ready, but I also do like when more people see my videos so whatever.
Initially it was set to the brown one with the extra icons in the back. I liked that one because I thought it communicated what the video was actually about a little better, but it also didn't scream "Fallout 3" to me as much so I changed it.
Anyway, tl;dr--- If you were going to pick one, which would you pick? Why? Do you have any better ideas? Do you think I'm wasting my time? Talk to me about thumbnails.
As always, thank you all very much! I hope you're doing well, and if you're not, feel free to reach out and tell me about it. I'll reply when I can.