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Jacob Bailey Gaming (JBG)

Jacob Bailey Gaming was my primary project for nearly three years. I started uploading in December 2020, with my last upload landing on the 31st May 2023. I did, however, continue trying to promote it until August of the same year. My channel had 696 subscribers when I decided to move on from it, and I had a total of 180,639 views (combining views from shorts and long-form videos). I had 332 videos uploaded.

Every fibre of my being adored working on the videos, recording with my mates, and spending hours curating it to my liking. I still adore it, and I will always have a soft spot for it. It was an incredibly important project to me.

From a young age, I have had a dream to be a YouTuber. A dream that many people have nowadays, true, but it was a dream I was focused on achieving. Jacob Bailey Gaming was an attempt for me to do what I loved to do, with the hopes of earning an income from it someday. It’s something that the majority of people on this planet don’t have the privilege to do, but at 16, I wanted to try anyway.

I am an avid gamer. However, sometimes, you just need to know when to let go of the rope, and move on. I gave it a go, and just like thousands of others out there attempting to become YouTubers, it didn’t work. I’m not ashamed to have tried, and I’m while I’m sad that I have to let it go, I’m proud of the chances, and the opportunities, and the lessons I learnt from it. Not every venture I try will work, and that’s okay.

When I started the channel in 2020, I was new to videography. I was a beginner in video editing and production, and through this project, I was able to further my skills much more than I ever thought possible. I have reached the point in that development, however, where I cannot learn anything new from it. Not through JBG anyway.

The main channel (YouTube), and the Instagram and TikTok accounts tied to it will stay up as an archive of my work, but I no longer upload or operate under the name or persona of ‘Jacob Bailey Gaming’. I will be redirecting my focus and moving onto other projects, and this channel will stand as a demonstration of how far I came in just short of three years.

The rest of this page will go on to explain some of the features, facts, and details about JBG that I was (and still am), very proud of. I have learnt a lot by doing JBG.

If you subscribed to JBG during the past three years, thank you so much for the support. I truly do appreciate it, and the entire experience, the memories, and the channel itself will always mean the world to me.

Jacob Bailey

Finding a Niche

When doing YouTube, it is frequently recommended that you find a specific topic to focus on. Finding your ‘niche’ makes it easier for YouTube to push your channel, and it becomes easier to find people who will connect with your content and (hopefully), subscribe to your channel. Most channels find it easy to do this. You like travelling? Here’s a channel dedicated to travelling the world. You’re intrested in DIY? Here’s a channel that has all the DIY you could ever need.

Doing that with a gaming channel can be trickier. ‘Gaming’ is a topic and genre on its own, but it’s still too vague, so what many YouTubers Gamers have done over the years is either pick a specific game, or pick a specific type of game, to keep their channels concise. Like Stampy being known for Minecraft, or Markiplier being known for Horror/Thriller Gameplays, or AliA being known for his Fortnite gameplays/tips.

In the early days of JBG, I didn’t have a niche. I played, recorded, and uploaded whichever game my mates and I were playing at that particular time. I played various Call of Duty games, GTA V, Fortnite, Rainbow Six Siege, Minecraft Dungeons, and Among Us (there were a lot more than that, but it would be annoying to list them all). It was a fun way to play, and definitely gave me a lot of varied content, but it was damaging to my channel in the long-run.

After ages of trying out the pros and cons of each game I loved to play, I eventually landed on a genre. Car/racing/vehicle games. I adore cars, racing games, and simulators (especially Forza), and as long as some kind of vehicle was involved, I played it. After finding my niche, curating my channel as a ‘Car Gamer’ helped my channel progress massively.

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Other Social Media

Like all social media creators, I had accounts on other platforms, most notably Instagram and TikTok.

TikTok was the main way in which I would promote my YT channel. When I would collaborate with others, I would post the video on there too, in an attempt to get more people to see my content.

Instagram was dedicated to the photography I did in Forza Horizon games, usually doing photoshoots and collab with others. I enjoy photography, so that was always fun to take part in. I wasn’t using Instagram for very long, but I had 71 followers.

I also have a Discord server. I’m currently unsure whether I will keep that going for my mates and I to use, or if I will archive it too. In its heyday, it was used as a way to chat about various games, interact with subscribers, and promote my channel and vids to people who enjoyed my content.

I had a twitch account, and I used it regularly in the early days of my channel. As time passed, I used it less and less, preferring to only go live on YouTube, since paying attention to two chats while gaming became too much.

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Making Friends and Doing Collaborations

Something that became frequent with my videos, was doing collaborations with other people/channels. My channel thrived on content where I was gaming and having fun with other people, usually regardless of the game. When JBG was still young, I spent a lot of time gaming with my friends and uploading the videos that came out of that. My friends were usually up for joining in on a video, and I have loads of fond memories of those days.

As my friends and I grew up, playing and recording together became difficult, so I adapted and decided to start doing cruises and car meets with random people I met while gaming live. I have encountered a few nasty people in my time doing this, but it was expected. I did, though, make some great friends during this stage of my channel.

As my video editing skills got better, my video style changed. I slowly stopped doing regular gaming videos, and started doing more videos that took the form of show-reels, compilations, and montages. Once I got the feel for doing fun, choppy editing along to music, I ran with it.

From there, the collaborations I was initiating and taking part in changed again. I started talking to groups and individuals and offering to create them a cool montage. I used it as a chance to progress my skills even further, and some of the videos I have created in this stage are some of my favourite videos I have ever made.

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Friend Series Showcase

Over the three years, I had a lot of friends join me in my videos. I have lost contact with a few, but regardless of where they are now, my channel wouldn’t be the same without their contributions. I knew and recognised that from early on in doing my channel.

To show them my appreciation, I decided that I was to start a series on my channel specifically dedicated to giving my friends the spotlight, one montage at a time. I created the videos by collecting as many of their gaming clips as possible.

A few of them had channels of their own, and while grateful of the video I’d made, were used to seeing their clips in video-form. Plenty of them didn’t though, and seeing the reactions to their clips in a cool compilation (their words, not mine), was amazing. I’m glad that I could use my channel to promote my friends a little bit.

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Forza Designs and Photography

Over the years, I have come to enjoy photography. I take a lot of photos of cars when I’m out and about with my family, and it’s safe to say that I found a way to incorporate that into my gaming.

I have created many designs and liveries over the course of my channel’s life, and I have a lot of favourites. There are quite a few that took on the visage of JBG’s signature colours; orange, grey, and black. However, there are an overwhelming amount of them that have been designed with the car in mind.

Those cars were usually cars I would do photoshoots with, and I incorporated my friends into a lot of them. My photography skills and general design skills definitely improved with this mini subproject, and it definitely helped to fan the creative flame that took the form of my real world photography.

Below are some of my favourites, and there are more on JBG’s Instagram.