How Did You Know Gaming has survived the terrors of YouTube for over a decade

For just over a decade, YouTube channel Did You Know Gaming has delivered easily accessible video game trivia to millions of fans across the world. With a brand-new board game, Do You Know Gaming?, now on the horizon, the iconic YouTube brand reveals why it’s so important for creators to branch out from the oppressive Google platform back into the physical world.

Starting as a Tumblr website in 2012, Did You Know Gaming was inspired by the growing slew of Facebook pages posting trivia to fans online. Created by Shane Gill, the website quickly garnered thousands of followers, all revelling in knowledge about classic games such as Super Mario, Sonic the Hedgehog, Pokémon (of course) and more. Soon after, Gill met VG Facts co-creator and VG Resource owner Daniel ‘Dazz’ Brown who helped the brand become the video giant it is today.

“I came on board to try and create some sort of system to source trivia,” Dazz told us. “It was the early days of video game information, so I was trying to come up with systems to make it so we could actually have a full-fledged script with information people didn’t [already] know.”

Dazz moved in with Greg Seago-Curl, a talented video editor, and the two quickly began making videos that collated minutes worth of lesser-known facts. The channel’s first still-available video, released on June 13, 2012, a collection of Pokémon facts, has informed four and a half million fans about a cut Professor Oak battle in Pokémon Red and Blue, the fact that there were 190 designed creatures for the original games and more.

Over time, Did You Know Gaming has teamed up with a variety of content creators, some stemming from the group’s partnership with YouTube gaming brand Normal Boots. Game Grumps’ Arin ‘Egoraptor’ Hanson voices videos on topics such as Kirby or Mario; infamous Zelda fan Austin ‘PeanutButterGamer’ Hargrave dubs the channel’s Zelda scripts.

Did You Know Gaming has become the channel to go to for video game facts, but delivering trivia to the channel’s two-and-a-half million subscribers has become increasingly difficult, with YouTube’s feature creep and constant algorithm tweaks. While never easy, the brand has seen numerous peaks and troughs, while trying to adapt to changes and riding its continous success.

As YouTube changed its algorithm with a preference for watch time, the channel created hours-long compilations of facts with new-YouTube-friendly titles such as “2 hours of GameCube facts to fall asleep to” on its second DYKG Clips channel. When YouTube followed TikTok’s reign of short-form vertical videos, Did You Know Gaming’s standard-length videos were pushed away from the algorithm, despite being the exact length YouTube used to like.

“You’ll see channels with millions of millions of subscribers and all they put out are shorts, but the engagement on their long form content is just terrible,” Greg explained. “Shorts don’t really lead to follows. For us, it wasn’t very conducive.”

“I’ve been speaking to a fair few other content creators who have tried to use shorts,” Dazz followed up. “The first month when they started they were like, ‘Oh my God, I’m getting millions of views, before I was getting a few thousand… this is incredible. And then they’ll put a video out, not a short, and it’ll tank, and it’ll fail harder because, comparatively, it did badly, so it won’t be pushed.”

Did You Know Gaming has dealt with the blows of YouTube’s frantic changes for over a decade now, alongside the too-frequent “Adpodcalypses” that crippled the entire platform’s revenue. This is why, multiple times, the channel has made moves outside of YouTube. Not only does the brand have a healthy presence on other social media platforms, but the team has also made multiple attempts to reach into the physical world.

Region Locked, a crowdfunded book based on the brand’s video series of the same name, was the first Did You Know Gaming product to launch physically. An encyclopaedia of games that never left their home countries, the Region Locked book was fully written by the time the team pushed its crowdfunding campaign onto Unbound, but book publishing issues caused the project to be delayed by three years.

“The book didn’t go so well because of the company we decided to work with,” Dazz told us. “They kind of took the piss a little bit.” A frustration shared by Greg,“we approached them with a fully finished manuscript for a book,” he explained. “Before we even launched the campaign, we’d written the whole thing. The articles were written.”

Finally released in 2021, Region Locked has sold thousands of copies, but that hasn’t resulted in much for Did You Know Gaming’s efforts. Last week, the team received their sixth statement for royalties of the book, paying them a grand total of £57 each for thousands of pages, images and years of stress.

That’s why for the team’s next project, the Do You Know Gaming? board game, the team is collaborating with indie magazine publisher Lost in Cult. Known for the stunning gaming journal Lock On, as well as books on Sable, handheld consoles and more, the board game has started its crowdfunding campaign with a prospective release date, brilliant artwork and a concrete plan to realise the project without interference from a company like Unbound.

Available to crowdfund here, the Do You Know Gaming? board game learns from the mistakes of the group’s Region Locked book, while also keeping its best ideas. For example, just like the book, the text and art is essentially finished at the time of crowdfunding, even creating two forms of lavish box art, one taking cues from the classic Wizardry series.

While Did You Know Gaming? is making waves with physical media, it’s not leaving its YouTube audience behind. While the stresses of YouTube and content creation in general can lead many to think about quitting, the Did You Know Gaming? team adore what they do, even if the pressures of the platform make appreciating that rather difficult.

“I’ve actually come close to saying I think I’m done a lot of times just because of the overwhelming stress,” Dazz told us. “We put all this work into something only for us to fail and we make no money off it, which is kind of fine as long as I can pay to eat. It’s very depressing, but then a week later I’m like, ‘Actually, someone said something nice’, so I’m happy now.”

Even with the stresses of content creation, the team still feel “blessed most of the time”. With the team’s work now not only uncovering lost games (such as a Pokémon: The Movie 2000 tie-in game) but also funding game preservation via video sponsorship, Did You Know Gaming? is not only more informative than ever, but also an important part of the games industry.