Alexander Emenheiser- Totally Good At Games (YouTube Channel) (October 2021)

Issue Twelve- October 2021:

By Mercedes Barreto

Gaming might seem like a casual pass-time. However, the concept of gaming is an entire and complete booming industry. To witness this phenomenon, we inform ourselves about Totally Good At Games, and its recent successes in this industry, within this guided yet informative article.

What initiated the beginning for Totally Good At Games? What was the concept initially, and how has this progressed over time?

“Ten years ago, I was inspired to make YouTube videos by British Minecraft, with players like The Yogscast and EditZP. My best friend Aaron and I would play Minecraft and record us goofing off in the game. We were about 14 years old at the time, so the videos were not good, of course. The show was called LTPVG, short for Let’s Try to Play a Video Game—rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it? I opened every video with an annoying catchphrase. Our squeaky, pubescent voices did us no favors. It was edited in Windows 7 Movie Maker. No one is ever good at what they do the first time they try it. But it was fun for my friend and I and it gave me my first experience in video editing!

In 2012, the YouTube let’s play show Game Grumps started as a collaboration between animator Arin “Egoraptor” Hanson and video game reviewer Jon “JonTron” Jafari. I was hooked instantly! Every day, I would come home from school, sit down in front of the family computer with a lightly microwaved sweet bologna-pepper jack cheese-thousand island dressing sandwich, and watch Game Grumps until my parents came home an hour or so later. Watching Jon and Arin crack jokes unadulterated and have fun together made it feel like I was watching two genuine friends have a good time. That kind of entertainment really stuck with me.

Totally Good at Games started out as a collaboration between myself and my newly made friend Darren Leeds in early 2015. I asked him in our high school speech & creative writing class if he wanted to be part of a let’s play channel together. He said yes! The first games we played were Mega Man X and Mega Man 2 and they were released on February 25th, 2015. There are some redeeming qualities about our early episodes, especially compared to the even earlier stuff, but these days I find it all very cringey. They say that finding your old stuff as cringey is a sign of progress!

From February 2015 to March 2019, we recorded the show on the closed-in porch of my farmhouse and there was no climate control. This made the winter very difficult to record in, but we bundled up and stuck it out! It probably would have been a better idea to simply record inside the house now that I think about it, but on good days it felt refreshing being exposed to nature.

At first, we didn’t have a title for the show. I eventually came up with The Attempters, implying that we attempt to play video games well, and we used that for a while until another YouTube channel also called The Attempters asked us to change our name. After some brainstorming, Darren and I agreed to Totally Good at Games, which we liked better anyway! As the channel progressed, I became less and less interested in doing just let’s plays and wanted to expand into making other kinds of videos. To reflect this change and with the help of my friend MatterBoar, I simplified the branding to TotallyGood and now we are in the process of making live-action videos, movie reactions, and video essays, in addition, to let’s plays.”

What are some amazing achievements or advancements you could share about your company to the world for this year 2021? What is in store for 2022?

“Nothing notable has happened with TotallyGood this year, but I have been very active collaborating with MatterBoar on his channel! We primarily do a movie and show reactions with MatterBoar, myself, Calvin Infinity, and DoodleDemon as hosts. Our reactions on that channel have been getting a lot of positive reception with lovely comments and around 4,000 views per video. I’m very grateful that MatterBoar has given us this opportunity! We’re projected to only grow in the coming months.”

What has measured success for you and your company so far? What defines true success for you, if you could describe it in detail?

“There was a time when I was super concerned about the performance of the channel, measuring viewer retention, seeing which videos brought in more subscribers, trying to get videos to appear on the recommended section, etc. These are all things that I learned from YouTube growth guru YouTubers whose lessons would hopefully bring in more viewers and subscribers. But doing that brought with it a lot of self-doubt and stress. After many repeated attempts to grow an audience their way, running a YouTube channel became a numbers game that I couldn’t win. It didn’t help that the current sample pool was too small to make any confident decisions about where to take the YouTube channel; we were lucky to break 100 views on a video which is crumbs compared to even mildly successful YouTubers. Who is to say that a video that got 50 views was truly a failure and that our strategy needed changing if the most successful, outlier videos maxed out at 100?

It was clear that strategizing like this was outside our abilities. The only way that the numbers mindset would have been beneficial is if I was already successful or if tons of money was already rolling in. That strategy could be used to sustain that success rather than to create it. Now, I still consider analytics to a degree, but the primary focus is on having fun! If we’re having fun, the viewer is having fun.

Right now, true success to me is living a fruitful life made from the labor of doing something I enjoy. For example, making music for a living and making enough money from making music that I can live somewhat leisurely and without financial stress. That, in my opinion, is true success. With TotallyGood, I envision true success would be sustaining at least 1,000 dedicated fans who watch our videos regularly, buy merchandise and donate to our Patreon, and genuinely enjoy what we make. That is a far way away right now, but I hope to reach it one day! We’ve been at this since 2015 and we don’t intend on stopping anytime soon!“