How Much Do You Make For 15 Million Views?
15 Million Views.
What was the simple strategy?
Over 10,000 comments.
How did the script spark this much emotion?
Another 1M Views on Tiktok.
Why did our editing hook people for over a minute?
My name is Nishayne, and this is an in-depth breakdown on how we made $2000 from a single gaming video for a client of Arctic Studios.
I had a 48HR window to seize an opportunity, with 100s of videos already flooding social media.
So how did this viral idea form?
Why be first, when you can be better...
You see one of the biggest FPS communities (Call of Duty) was going through a drought in early 2023. Lackluster content and cheaters running rampant which led to frustrated players and a large drop in active users.
Our first key ingredient...
But a group of passionate players, who happened to know how to code games, was working on something to bring Call of Duty new life — something they’ve been working on for over 3 years.
Project SM2.
Another ingredient...
SM2 was a modded version of Call of Duty that combined aspects of multiple COD titles, to bring players the “Ultimate Call of Duty Experience”.
Something Activision, the publishers of Call of Duty, hasn’t yet delivered to it’s fans.
The SM2 fanbase was growing, the game was almost finished and when things were at their best, the hammer dropped.
In May 2023, Activision, the publisher of the official Call of Duty Franchise threatened the group of modders with lawsuits, forcing them to shutdown.
This sparked 100s of videos and articles.
We had a story with pain, hope, and now betrayal.
A recipe for millions of views.
Views my client and I missed, because we didn’t start working together till June of 2023 — one month after the whole fiasco. It was too late to throw up a video since interest had died down. Sadly, a missed opportunity…
…or was it?
3 months later, in August, something happened across the pond to another popular franchise.
Rockstar Games, the publisher behind Grand Theft Auto, was facing a situation that felt quite similar to what Activision faced.
They were dealing with a group of modders creating different versions of their game, just like Project SM2, which was also illegal.
However, Rockstar Games shocked the world with their solution to this problem.
They decided to bring the group of illegal modders onto the official Rockstar Team.
The exact opposite reaction Activision had.
This is when everything clicked.
My client’s audience was comprised mainly of Call of Duty fans.
So throwing up a piece covering just the Rockstar news would be risky, not to mention dozens of accounts have already made the same video.
Sometimes being first isn’t necessary when you can just be better.
Instead of creating a single video on the Rockstar situation, which would have had a shelf life of two weeks, I took a more evergreen route using a format almost any human being would enjoy.
I now had 48hrs to bring this idea to life before the market flooded with even more videos which would exhaust the entire potential audience.
The Beloved Format
Now what is that format everyone likes?
You see it in movies, sports and almost every TV show. Something even the Romans enjoyed over 2000 years ago.
It has stakes, emotion and deep connections with the characters.
Everyone loves a good battle!
In my case, I decided to put Activision against Rockstar. A fictitious battle to win the hearts of their players.
This meant I could bring back events from 3 months ago (SM2 Fiasco) which would bolt on more emotion to current events (Rockstar).
Turning that missed opportunity into a nice comeback.
We’d be able to maximize views by tapping into the Call of Duty market, GTA market and anybody interested in a good battle against gaming giants.
But telling the story in a linear fashion wasn’t going to cut it.
My client wasn’t a traditional news account, which meant we could tell the story a bit more dramatically while still maintaining the facts.
So I had to get creative.
Convincing Millions
8 words convinced 16 million people to continue watching, so let’s look at the hook.
“Call of Duty just got destroyed by GTA!”
8 simple words addressing two markets and sparking our natural intrigue towards fights and drama.
In less than 2s, the viewer is asking:
“What JUST happened?”
“How did Call of Duty get destroyed?”
“What was the fight about?”
“How did this fight occur?”
“Why did GTA win this fight?”
“Why is this man yelling at me?”
With this single line, the viewer can already picture the structure of the video. They know the characters in play and they know there’s a battle.
Making it easier for them to commit to the video since they know what they’re getting.
After the hook, we unfolded the SM2 story for necessary context and we only revealed Rockstar’s big decision at the 40s mark.
That meant that anyone that got past the hook would have to wait 40s to get their questions answered.
But it wasn’t your typical BS retention writing that brought them to the 40s mark.
Today you’ll see,
None of that garbage works in 2024, because people’s BS radar received a well needed software update.
Today, your story actually needs intriguing substance to fill the space. Yes, sometimes you’ll need to extend ideas to get past 1 minute without lowering the perception of value, but that’s when creativity has to kick in.
After the climax, I wanted to focus on the party with the most pain -- the Call of Duty community.
Showing them that “Yes, you got the short end of the stick.”, but a new official game is releasing at the end of the year that might solve things.
Making my client seem hopeful for the future instead of coming off too negative and whiny.
Now the script is only half of what the viewer actually consumes.
So how did the visuals play a part in this viral video?
Simple Yet Effective
Our client didn’t need over-the-top editing to sell this story.
However, we needed a simple style that would stand out from the 100s of videos already on the market.
We used a simple split-tone format.
The first half being more dark, while post-climax would be upbeat, making the contrast between the two decisions more noticeable.
We used in-game footage, popular clips and trailer footage to compile the main visuals you see.
The switch from captions to assets were used to change up the flow of information the viewer processes.
This means they won’t be looking at just captions for too long and vice-versa.
The entire video was edited using our Flow Presets for Premiere Pro, which I can almost guarantee will help any gaming video editor or creator.
The only “hard” effect we used was tracking logos onto the characters, to present the companies as actual humans battling instead of just business entities.
Results
This video got 15M views on YouTube Shorts, majority of which came in the first 30 days.
Tiktok also brought in 1.1M views.
Bringing total revenue to $2,161 USD.
I hope you enjoyed this breakdown and took a few things from it to help your content!
