This post was actually written in April 2026. I just backdated it to keep the milestone timeline accurate and in step with when they actually happened.
I have a little guilty pleasure that brings me joy on YouTube. If I discover a channel that I really enjoy and is very well abolished with tons of subscribers I’ll just go and dig back to their earliest uploads from when they were fresh and had very few subscribers. See how the content has evolved over time.
I did this for Let’s Game it Out at some point and found a video celebrating 100 subscribers. At the time of writing this that channel is sitting at 6.4 million subscribers.
In the grand scheme of things 100 subs on YouTube isn’t all that much. But what also took me by surprise about the LGIO 100 subscriber video is that there are 194 videos posted before it.
I hit the 100 sub mark on August 2nd, 2023. Between channel launch and 100 subs I reuploaded half a dozen old red dead videos I had made before starting this channel, and one single new high effort video started with the channel ideology in mind that I mentioned in the Zero Subscriber post. Along with one low effort video that I’ll talk about later.
Now please don’t take this as a statement of ego. I’m not trying to be “I got there quicker. I’m better!.” Not at all.
It is fascinating to me that LGIO was able to grind so hard before even achieving such a minor milestone. If I personally was getting up to 100 videos and still was in the two digits I probably would have given up. But if there is anything that LGIO has proven to be good at in the years since, it is grinding at something for an exceptional period of time.
I see a large chunk of the target audience for this blog to be other people on the YouTube grind looking for insight & inspiration. I also can’t stop rubbernecking the new creator subreddits like r/newtubers which is FULL of people who just want to quit immediately because their first video didn’t take off and go viral. Truth is, you aren’t owed anything. Yesterday's success doesn’t guarantee tomorrow's. And a lengthy struggle doesn’t mean big things aren’t possible if you stick with it.
But back to the subject at hand; the first video I created before hitting 100 subs.
I had just started playing Medieval Dynasty on my PS5 when I decided to finally launch a dedicated gaming channel and as it was on the top of my mind, I figured it would be a great game to create my first epic video from.
Coming up with the rules was easy.
- I must only build on one small island
- I’m not allowed to buy goods
I started this playthrough on the Playstation at first, but the first time I tried to transfer the recording to my PC I knew that would drive me absolutely batshit, so I bought a second copy on PC and started over. And thanks to the magic of Google Doc’s version history, I see that this was on May 4th, 2023. Before I even set up the channel!
I had my rules, and nothing else. I would have to figure out a process on the fly. So I got playing my challenge while keeping a document open to make notes of the in-game date when anything interesting or possibly significant happened.
I didn’t even have a goal to achieve when I started that playthrough, but per the version history I see I added GOAL: Quark production halfway through my play session the next day.
hardtry
So I had a goal, but I still wasn’t sure about what tone the video would take. I initially imaged just doing the challenge, and discussing the hardships that the rules caused with a few jokes thrown in here and there.
But once again my true nature took over and before I knew it I was adding notes for absurdist plot beats.
Somewhere along the way I realized if I drop my quark one at a time, once I leave the inventory screen they all explode to the heavens. So whatever ending I had in sight I knew I had to ramp up and made the end goal to be excessive. 10,000 quark to play with this mechanic!
So the playthrough started on May 4th. When I punched a pigeon out of the sky during the finale it was June 6th.
A full month to achieve the goal. I don’t know what I was expecting in terms of a time line, but I don’t think it was that. And oh yeah, I still had a script to write! And a video to edit!
The edit
I’m guessing I wrote the script and edited the video concurrantly as the final revision in the script doc was a mere three days before I published the video on July 22nd.
That's right, July 22nd, not June. It took me another month and a half to script and edit my first high effort video. And this one was only a mere 25 minutes long.
But this introduced me to a lot of things that would become staples of the process. Like going back into the game a hundred times trying to capture the perfect b-roll cinematic for a quick scene. Along with coming up with some crackpot story* to lead the video and establish a roleplay theme for the challenge.
The tally
So I don't know what I expected going in, but what I experienced was a playthrough that took like 50 hours. Then several more days of letting my factory churn out quark all day while I was at work. And I don’t know, at least another 40 to script and edit the video because I had never done this before. Oof.
But it was done and I eagerly posted the video on July 22nd. In the next seven days it netted me 929 views. Wooo!
Then the next week I thought it would be fun to show off the island I created and uploaded an absolute low effort, no edit video that took me all of 30 minutes from record to upload. And in the years since, that sumbitch has triple the number of views of my high effort darling. Jesus.
If you ever spent time in the aforementioned newtubers subreddits, you’ll know that a lot of people have succumbed to the belief that if they want to make it, then they have to be shitting out videos every day. After pouring everything into a video for nearly two months, only to see some slop shit out in an afternoon do much bigger numbers, I could see how one could be enticed to just lean into dumping lower effort content as quickly as possible to rack up numbers.
But even with the lower metrics, it was so obvious to me that the high effort video that might take months was the one that I held dear. I wasn't sure what that first video was going to look like, but what slid out of the creator tube and quivered on the ground in front of me was something I was proud of. It was a satisfying artistic journey and would become the prototype of many videos to follow.
Yesterday's success doesn’t guarantee tomorrow's. And a lengthy struggle doesn’t mean big things aren’t possible if you stick with it.
*In this case the intro bit about pierogi was based on an actual horrifying life experience.