Please brutally critique my first faceless storytelling video — especially TTS & pacing

Moved this here for you, I have listened to about 5 mins of it. The video I couldnt watch at the same time properly as I wouldnt take in a word that was being said as find it distracting and bright (got eye strain at the moment though).

The narration is really good for AI, it reminds me of some audiobooks I have had off Audible, the voice sounds great. I would say the pacing was slightly fast, I am unsure if longer pauses would help with that for me. The pacing could be fine for others but it feels a bit fast for me to take in the story. The captions may be fine for others but for me I like when they stay on screen so I can read them for longer. I think as they are it will help keep peoples minds more engaged though. "I brought in something accounts Victoria" around the 1 min mark sounded a bit off if listen back to it. Think it is the way Victoria is said.

Are you keeping Minecraft gameplay in the background for the stories? Are you wanting to keep people engaged while listening or is this for them to sleep to?

I am curious who the target audience is, I havent really delved into the stories/books side of YT before.

Welcome to the community btw

Its good you know the niche quite well through watching it so you will know what you like and others may like too. My concern would be with monetising, if youre just making for the fun of it without expecting to monetise then you should be fine. If this was my own project id probably lean into people sleeping to it, the watch time etc is likely going to be a lot higher with people putting it on their phone and nodding off while it plays.

I will be honest it isnt something I would listen to myself but the third linked channel, the video seems to be on par with theirs so if their viewers are interested they are likely to enjoy these too.

Before launching would be good to think about your target audience, content pillars and what your launch plan is. I honestly recommend having a bank of videos made before launch and release a bunch in a short period so the algorithm gets an understanding of what your videos are about and then release slower over time falling into a schedule.

Be sure to introduce yourself too here - https://wemakevids.com/forum/index.php?thread-add/2/

Well I personally would click off the video pretty quick if I'd stumbled upon it for a few reasons. First, I can tell the voice is AI and I just don't do AI voiced channels, I need to feel the human on the other end, (I know that upsets some people who have nervous issues about talking) Secondly, I wish the text wouldn't fade in like that, it distracts me, the font is fine but I want it to just appear on the screen as soon as the phrase begins, not fade in slowly afterward. And 3rd, while I can handle some first person gameplay in the background, one continuous video of a minecraft person going in circles and moving all over has me getting dizzy. I think it's the same reason you don't wanna read while being a passenger in a vehicle you know? If I was focused on just the gameplay I'd be fine, but trying to read the text with that going on in the background is a bit unnerving.

Lastly, I kind of think some sort of contextual introduction would be helpful, having the AI voice jump right into the story makes me feel like I didn't start from the beginning. You could perhaps put a title screen up with no sound first that says something like "A conversation I had with my buddy the other day, narrated by AI" etc.

For someone like me? You aren't gonna be able to actually gain a viewer without telling the story yourself, but I'm sure not everyone is like that, so lets say you keep the AI voice, I'd splice up the bg footage. If it's all from your own personal gameplay, take different sessions and splice them together, doesn't have to be too time consuming but it should take about an hour to just get like 10 seconds of this clip, then 10 seconds of that, try to get some footage where you're just farming stationary in there so it's not always moving around so much, and see if you can get the text to appear quicker on the screen, if it faded in much faster, taking like a 2 10ths of a second or something, that would probably be acceptable.

I honestly didn't get far enough into the video to critique the actual story, but it sounded like it would have been at least somewhat interesting.

I dont have much time but listened to first minute and the pacing is a lot better than the first one, its easier to digest than before. The footage being dimmed is a lot better too. I am unsure if the thumb will be best with the character there but not appearing in the video. It looks like it will do well within your niche.

Yeah I watched about 4 minutes or so, and I'm surprised how much dimming the background helped me not get the dizzy feeling, captions are also easy to follow now. I like that the note you put at the beginning lets me know what I'm about to get into. It's definitely an improvement, but I do gotta say, this kind of video probably won't take off if you don't replace the gaming footage with relevant clips.

It's not hard to look at now, text is flowing well with the monologue, but when I find these kinds of stories on yt and actually find myself watching the whole thing or most of it? The person usually tells the story in the visuals too, be that with stock footage pictures, or ai generated clips, it doesn't have to be a clip for every line but you probably know the types of videos I mean, "Jeff said to me in the office one day.." (picture of businessman talking to other businessman) etc etc, however I understand that may not be possible, it would be a LOT more work.

The main thing is that for me the older version was genuinely hard to watch, this version isn't, and that's good. If you can find a way to tell the story visually that's probably gonna up your views by a good deal, but I'm in a similar boat myself, where my videos should probably be highly edited, combed through for the best clips and kept to around 10 to 15 minutes long but I just don't have the time/patience for that right now. So I totally understand having to do what you gotta do. Progress is progress.