YouTube 2018 - Present
Sibling Bond
I’ve always been really close with my younger brother, Alex. Despite being 20 years apart, we always managed to have fun together, understand each other’s humor, and play video games and watch YouTube videos with one another. On one such occasion, in July 2018, I came to his room and saw him watching yet another bunch of random videos for kids; this time, it was about the Thomas & Friends franchise, which revolves around Thomas and his pals talking trains. Funny enough, I remember watching this TV show during my childhood and being a fan of those trains. It turned out that Alex was a huge fan of Thomas, and I couldn’t help but think about how I could develop something similar with my own spin. After all, I had the tools and video editing experience, especially after my years on YouTube running my Spider-Man channel.
Childhood Nostalgia
As an 8-year-old, Alex used to play Roblox a lot, too, a unique video game that consists primarily of user-generated games that are absolutely random in nature. So, the following week, I decided to make a video for Alex… a one-time funny gig. However, instead of creating my own Roblox account, I decided to use Alex’s character. I found a bunch of very early Thomas & Friends games in Roblox, but I wanted my character to look somewhat unique in the video, so I started browsing clothing options and came across a ‘Doge’ mask, a popular Internet meme revolving around the Shiba Inu dog. Little did I know that this random dog mask would become iconic among the Roblox community a couple of years later.
KidsPlayParadise Journey
I then recorded a bunch of Roblox footage, mostly of me crashing Thomas trains and making funny faces. In order to upload the video, I had to make a brand-new YouTube channel, and since that very first video was meant for Alex, I knew its name should have been somewhat related to kids' content. I came up with ‘KidsPlayParadise,’ and after uploading some random YouTube headers and avatars with cartoon characters, my first video was live. Alex, being my first audience member, really enjoyed watching me play Roblox, and it made me happy. Since the video was public, it started to gain more and more views during the subsequent weeks, so I came up with the idea to make a Roblox series. The series was called ‘Thomas & Friends: Accidents & Crashes,’ all of which became incredibly popular. Despite the similarity of the content, a character with a dog mask running around and crashing trains, I’ve always made sure to make each episode unique, playing only the brand-new games in brand-new locations, wearing different clothing, and riding different trains.
Million-View Milestone
As weeks and months went by, all the videos had over 1 million views, and I gained thousands of subscribers and gathered somewhat of a dedicated fanbase. I thus decided to upload more games, be it a racing game or a Disney adventure of Mickey Mouse, all of which also garnered a lot of views. Having the experience from my years with ‘SevenWebHeads’ on YouTube, I knew exactly how to optimize those videos, whether with colorful, high-quality thumbnails, captivating video descriptions, or effective video tags and playlists. Having my own channel in the past helped me tremendously with this new project for Alex. My sense of humor and good timing for jokes made editing the kid's videos even more engaging. Despite many different games, Roblox videos have always been the most popular ones.
100K Subscribers Milestone in 2019
By 2019, ‘KidsPlayParadise’ reached over 100 thousand subscribers, and I was happy with the channel’s performance and its ability to make kids laugh. Unfortunately, 2019 was also a year of massive YouTube changes, which greatly affected my channel. In January 2019, the channel, among thousands of other gaming channels, was demonetized, which meant that any revenue that I was able to make from my videos would be suspended permanently; that, and also the ability for people to comment on my videos, which for me has always been a vital driving force, inspired me and my creativity.
Feedback Matters
As I’ve previously mentioned, feedback is everything, whether from one person or a dozen. Reading comments about how I’ve made people laugh or how much they enjoy my editing is the most important part of my YouTube life (even negative comments can be productive!). The reason for such a decision on YouTube’s part is quite simple: despite extensive editing of my gaming footage, which was pretty unique in my channel’s case, you would mostly see a lot of people uploading raw gameplay footage, except this wasn’t the case with ‘KidsPlayParadise’, where I would come up with scripts and unique effects, sometimes spending a week creating a 5-minute short movie in a game called Garry’s Mod; however, it still didn’t have the author’s ‘presence,’ AKA my voice or my face. This particular part became crucial starting in 2019 if you wanted to monetize your channel. Like thousands of similar gaming channels, it was essentially a dead end regarding any potential growth, comments, and the ability to make some revenue. So, after months of inactivity and losing interest in creating more unique content, during the summer of 2018, I decided on a clean slate. A clean slate, starting from zero, meant only one thing: I had to delete every video I’ve created on YouTube, every piece of gaming footage, and months of editing. Not only that, but making such a bold move also meant I had to re-brand my channel, give it a new name, and add a new type of content.
The Name Change Decision
Having lived abroad and traveling in the past, there’s always been this joke about people not remembering my name or having a tough time pronouncing it, so instead of Arsenijs, I’ve always introduced myself as Sam, especially during my years in the United Kingdom. Since I’ve spent years working in my room and editing videos there, I’ve decided to come up with a new name for my channel: Sam’s Room. Deleting every single video was one of the toughest decisions I had to make in my entire life because I was the only one who knew all the effort put into it. But it had to be done.
The 4.4 Million View Journey
So, there I was, in August of 2019, sitting in my room and looking at a channel with 100 thousand subscribers, zero videos, a dusty old microphone that I used to make Spider-Man videos, and zero footage to work with. “I can do it,” I said to myself before launching the Roblox game and starting to record my voice to create my very first Thomas & Friends voiced video. I was having a blast recording that video, but I was also incredibly nervous about uploading it. None of the subscribers were ready for this new type of content, and I also knew I would lose a lot of them, perhaps due to the nature of new videos, my unique accent, or my personality. Still, I was also aware of the potential new audience too. The video is called ‘Roblox Thomas & Friends Accidents & Crashes!’
and is the first on the Sam’s Room channel. Being a little bit uncertain if my voice fit this type of content, I slightly edited the audio and raised the pitch quite a bit, making it a little bit funnier. Surprisingly, it worked! This video was a fresh start for me, and thankfully, it became quite popular. However, some things I was anxious about turned out to be true: I did lose a couple of thousand subscribers (though I gained them back in the following weeks), and I also had to give a small explanation and, funny enough, introduce myself to my 100-thousand-member audience. As of today, the video has gained 4.4 million views and over 18,000 likes.
Playing with New Games
As the channel started to become even more popular, I decided to mix things up and add more features to my videos, be it more advanced editing with some explosions or lasers done in Adobe After Effects or a talking dog avatar that recognizes my face pattern and expresses my emotions and reactions in videos. I also tried to avoid some repetition, so while Roblox videos have been incredibly popular, with the most popular video having over 19 million views, I started playing more games, such as ‘Brick Rigs’ and ‘Blocksworld.’ You can see this even today. Despite the popularity of the Roblox series, I would knowingly upload something new or unrelated, being aware of the potential decline of views simply because I have this new, stubborn idea that I simply have to share with my audience. By then, YouTube had been overpopulated with GTA 5 videos, an incredibly popular game intended for older audiences. The game offers fantastic graphics, models, mods, and even a built-in video editor, allowing you to create any content despite the game’s original nature. After doing some research and analyzing most of such videos intended for kids, all of them were pretty bland; they had no plot or author’s personality embedded, so when it was my turn to create something using GTA 5’s game engine, I made sure the video was unique and colorful and would feature a popular character. In my case, it was Sonic the Hedgehog. The video turned out to be amazing and eventually reached over 2.5 million views. At that time, you would start to see more Roblox players wearing ‘Doge’ masks, an increase in popularity of the ‘Blocksworld’ game, which until then was a significantly lesser-known builder game, and way more videos about Thomas train on YouTube. I knew Sam’s Room had an impact on many things related to the Thomas & Friends franchise, like players copying me in Roblox, creating games with my name in them, the increasing popularity of ‘Blocksworld,’ popular kids’ themed channels starting to play Thomas games using my very own format in Roblox, or just thousands of comments about people loving my content.
Storytelling for Young Audiences
I’m always trying to make unique content, something with my own style, whether a simple gaming montage or a scripted, meticulously crafted scene. Most videos on YouTube intended for younger audiences are pretty simple in their nature-- there’s a character running around laughing, a train riding on the tracks with happy music, or many unrelated characters thrown together in chaotic clips that have no substance or meaning. But in the case of Sam’s Room, there’s always the proper presentation, introduction, explanation, some narrative, and a conclusion. A great example of this would be some of my movies created in Garry’s Mod, still during the ‘KidsPlayParadise’ years. Reactions to those videos are available on the Sam’s Room channel. This short series was incredibly hard to pull off due to the limitations of the game’s engine and the fact that I had some scenes in mind I knew were nearly impossible to record (you couldn’t simply make a character move; it required using many unrelated tools and creating somewhat convincing animations). The series’ movies also had stories with proper openings and conclusions, written scripts, and characters with their own unique personalities. I was never afraid to make everything a bit more original and even include a bit of sarcasm. I firmly believe that content for kids doesn’t have to be dull and dense, and we shouldn’t treat younger audiences meaninglessly. Hence, you will see a lot of memes and satirical or ironic remarks in many of my videos because I know my audience will get it.
