Getting It Together (How I Built HFG)
This isn’t going to be a how-to, its going to be a how-I-did. Because how-to’s don’t make any sense sometimes (because everyone can take a different approach). This is a rough sketch of how I built a brand (Half Fast Gaming) on the internet (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Twitch).
The Beginning
So, it started while myself and a few friends were playing Destiny, of all games. I knew what Twitch was, as I’d watched many folks stream before; and not just Destiny streamers, but simulation games and variety streamers as well. I decided, why not stream while I was playing? I’m playing anyways, maybe someone will watch. Sure enough I had a few folks watch me play Destiny for a while, but it got intensely boring, and the community, I found, to be quite toxic. I needed to do something I wanted to do. So I tried Train Simulator, Euro Truck Simulator 2 and Assetto Corsa.
At this point I didn’t know what I wanted out of the whole thing. Simulation games are a very niche market, and trying to get people to watch someone other than Squirrel, is mostly impossible. I decided I’d do a rotation of whatever felt right that night.
Next thing you know, I bought halffastgaming.com and threw a Wordpress website up there. Still, I wasn’t entirely sure where to go. My friends that helped me get started branched off to do their own thing, so I was left to my devices. The streaming schedule had become tiring, and I had thought that writing for the website would be fun, but without games to write about, it made it hard. I just didn’t have the funds to be buying another game every week and writing about it. Vendors don’t cater to new websites without history, even if you had been writing reviews for a few years elsewhere. I had to figure out what to do next.
Somewhere in the Middle
I had teamed up with a few guys on Facebook after opening an account (something I swore I would never do!), and started learning how to modify ETS2 (Euro Truck Simulator 2). I really enjoyed the game and loved adding mods to it, so why not learn to do it myself? There began the venture into YouTube.
Decided I would make mods for the game and create how-to’s once I learned how to do it. The first mod (fix) I made for the game that I created a video for is pushing 7200 views, with one of the gameplay videos I made reaching over 30k views! In a little over one year, I was pushing 1000 subscribers, and almost 150,000 views on the channel in total.
In the one year and two months after that original how-to video, I’ve since created hundreds of mods for ATS (American Truck Simulator), and have been a regular contributor to the Steam Workshop for ATS. I have 22 how-to videos in a playlist on YouTube, from text file editing, to 3D model manipulation, it’s in there. I’ve poured thousands of hours of free time into learning tools like Notepad++, Blender and Zmodeler in order to make or fix mods in ATS. I’ve made many friends along the way, who have become testers, and even partners, and promote my channel as much or more than I do.
What Did I Do Differently?
First, this was done with a massive amount of help from my wife. If I didn’t have her there to push me to do and learn the things that kept me excited about the game and mods, I wouldn’t be writing this.
As my good friend Lyndon informed me, you can’t just take a megaphone and yell into the crowd and expect them all to want to hear what you say. You have to find the people that want to hear what you say before you start yelling. If making a YouTube channel is your goal, that’s easy, click create. If you want to make one where people are informed and excited about what you have to say, you have to find the groups that those folks frequent and build from there. Facebook and Google Plus are good places to start, as they have communities that allow you to share your works with them.
I came from nothing, with a little help from some re-tweets and sharing, I’m about to crest the 1000 subscriber mark in YouTube. It’s been a long battle, but doing it myself, without taking a partner, has made it more worthwhile.