How to play FREE GAMES on YOUTUBE!

Have you seen YouTube app now has free games?! Will this harm YouTube Shorts (in the way YouTube Shorts harmed long form videos watch time???)

I walk you through how to play free games on the YouTube app and desktop. YouTube calls these free games PLAYABLES.

Will this HARM YouTube Shorts? FREE GAMES on YOUTUBE PLAYABLES!



TRANSCRIPT: (CLICK PLAY ON THE VIDEO ABOVE)

THIS IS THE TRANSCRIPT - CLICK PLAY ON THE VIDEO ABOVE!

I know the title seems a bit much but hear me out, could this be the end of YouTube shorts? Are you smiling at that thought? Shame on you. 

YouTube shorts are amazing. The YouTube gurus tell us - they bring in millions of views and can get you hundreds or even thousands of subscribers but zero watch time, if you're trying to get 4,000 hours in one year to get monetized... and 0 dollars if you are monetized. 

 I, you could probably tell, I am not the biggest fan of YouTube shorts but I dislike the YouTube gurus gushing about them because they treat YouTube shorts like they’re mini trailers for our long form videos and they're not. 

You can keep trying and now linking shorts to long form videos but they do not work like trailers because shorts are for a completely different audience. 

If they work for you please say hi in the comments, let me know your experiences down below. But for me, I think YouTube shorts work brilliantly for YouTube in keeping people on the YouTube app on their phones and this is where things might be about to change.

Maybe even in a huge way and maybe for the better, if you don't like shorts! 

I saw this by accident on Friday and then I just lost my weekend. 

This could really change the mobile experience on the YouTube app forever but it's not available yet on my other YouTube accounts so it's only being rolled out now. You're watching this in the future, what happened next? 

We can now play games on YouTube. 

YouTube calls these playables and they're also available on desktop. 

On the left-hand side right at the bottom of all the things that you can browse on but they're basically mobile games. 

There are under 40 games available right now. 

I want to show you a couple I got hooked on and then I'll show you all of them and I'll try to share why I think this could eat into YouTube shorts viewing more than anything else. 

The place at the moment to find YouTube playables on the YouTube app is... if you scroll down it just offers them amongst your feed so if I keep scrolling down here we go it's about five shelves down at the moment. 

You're watching this in the future they'll change this until it's right for the algorithm. 

We can see here it's it's labelled quite clearly playables on YouTube instant games no downloads. I'm going to put my glasses on so I can see, let's click on view all and these are all the playables that are available at the time of recording.

I'm sure when you're watching this there will be hundreds more, but it's about 40 games at the moment, and we have two tabs. 

There's a Home tab where I can continue playing. 

I'm going to show you these games in a moment, and popular, uh, so it's quite a clean interface at the moment. 

If I click on browse just to give you a sense of what kind of games there are, look, block drop, I'm guessing we'll look at it in a moment, but I'm thinking that's a Tetris knockoff, cut the rope, crossword, solitaire... Let me show you the game that I'm absolutely addicted to at the moment. 

So I click on home and then I'll click on continue playing. Now what's interesting about this, I can't find a way of resetting it. 

As you move along you get coins that you can spend on how many units that you start with, so you can click that one, or how fast that the units are produced. 

I'm going to do that. I'll just give you one round just to show you the kind of games on playables at the moment. 

This is State io and what you do is you drag you... you're this team down here the blue team and I'm going to drag these two up here and attack the other colour States. 

So we're going for greens here and then I can join them up and attack the Reds at the top there. 

And you can take over the neutral States as well so if I attack this - your number obviously needs to be bigger than the number of the states you're attacking - and as you can see I didn't have enough there so the neutral state is going to rack back up to 80 again. 

What I'll do is... I'll join both States together and then I'll Attack that 60 with everything... let’s put everything I've got on onto them.  

Oops I missed! 

You take over state by state until you are the last colour on the map. 

I'm going to attack with everything I've got - take that red! 

You've won! 

Now I've been I've been doing this for hours it's just... it's pure dopamine 

Oh look I've got to... I've got to do it again... 

This is just the purest dopamine delivery device! 

Hours disappear! 

If I click on the X it says “Are you sure you want to exit the game?” 

I was worried that I'd lose my progress but it seems to save it in your YouTube account as you go along which is fantastic! 

If we go over to playables on the YouTube desktop it can be found at youtube.com/playables - But if your account isn't enabled for this yet it will show an error message. 

And like I said before, the playables is on the left-hand bar all the way down at the moment it's under podcasts... 

And when we go to the homepage I can see State.IO here. 

So this is the same game I'm playing, and if I click on open and then it's pretty much exactly where we left off. 

And you can play in the same way so if you have a touch screen you can play the game like that or I'm using a mouse and keyboard. 

I'm so addicted to this. 

I've got to... I've got to stop! 

I'm pretending that this is a useful video but actually it's just a chance for me to play more playables! 

Take that green! 

Let's get rid of the other greens here. 

It's almost like a seamless experience between the mobile and the desktop apps. 

The other game I have been completely glued to is words of Wonders. 

It's... it's like what's that game? 

Is it Boggle? 

Where you've got to make words from the from the letters uh so we got pest um we've got steps... 

Play along with me! 

We've got pet... I've got pets... 

If you get stuck like I am right now you can hit the hint button - that spends 100 gems and that's given me a “T” there well that's... that's oh how about set? 

Yeah! We can also reveal a letter with this Hammer icon here. 

If I tap on that 200 - I'm spending 200 gems just for you. 

I can tap any tile.  

Let's tap that one - oh that's not really helpful. 

We've got step, how about step... oh well that's easy... sets... let's try that yay! 

And then you work up through the levels and you unlock different uh buildings and it's easy to exit the game as well, just pick it up where... where you left off. 

I know let's keep the games playing. 

I'll just scroll through different games on the side here, you know just to up the distraction and dopamine value. 

Here is why I think this is going to have a huge impact. 

The first thing is I was playing on this for like 3 hours. 

It was just pure unadulterated dopamine hit, before I realized there are no ads and how many times do you or your family download sus free games that drain your battery? 

And do who knows what with your data? 

But it's the ads that are just a killer, and of course I'm very sure YouTube will bring ads into playables, but for now it's a really weird experience playing non-stop free games with no having to wait 20 seconds all the way through.

I'm sure the ads are going to appear shortly, but for now they're not, and it's a good experience. 

And then it hit me: the time that you and I are spending on playing YouTube playables will be time that we're not scrolling through YouTube shorts videos! 

I'm sure YouTube shorts will cope; they'll continue. 

But it does feel funny that these YouTube games will eat into that YouTube shorts watch time, in probably the same way that YouTube shorts eat into the long-form videos' watch time. 

And we've seen a clear split now between the videos that you could watch on TV and the stuff that you can just scroll on your phone to kill some time. 

I wonder how much watch time playables will cannibalize from YouTube shorts. 

It's not going to affect creators because many of us get so little from shorts anyway. 

I think my biggest objection to shorts is this: the biggest reaction you can ever get from a YouTube short is this. 

It's just not the same experience as a long-form video. 

And this split between just swiping on your phone or sitting down and chromecasting or streaming long-form YouTube videos on a smart TV, those two experiences are going to become even further apart now which is fascinating. 

But what are you thinking? 

Do you have playables yet? 

Do you think this will affect anything for you as a YouTube Creator? 

Are YouTube shorts working for you financially, creatively, community building-ly? 

Say hi in the comments below; it would be great to hear from you. And thank you for hitting the thumbs up or the Subscribe button; it really helps me to keep this thing going. And right here is what YouTube knows you want to watch next after playing some more playables, probably.

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