The Best Way to Share Your Gaming Videos

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Gaming today is a more social experience than it’s ever been before

Faster internet speeds, streaming tech, and social platforms have enabled players to not only connect with each other, but also compete against and share in-game experiences with other players all across the world.

The trouble, as the founders of Clutch.win identified, is that the current media platforms don’t actually address the needs of the vast majority of gamers, who mainly want to show off cool stuff they’ve done or experienced in-game. In addition, deciding the best way to share these moments can be confusing and frustrating.

Sony’s and Xbox’s built-in platforms make sharing highlights with your immediate circles of friends relatively easy, but they’re not that helpful when it comes to promoting your videos to newcomers. Furthermore, both services are designed to keep your content on their platform exclusively.

Although Twitch and YouTube are now the biggest platforms for gaming video content, they cater to “celebrity” streamers and content producers who are already popular.

In the latter half of 2019, YouTube announced plans to revoke account verification (and the coveted checkmark that comes along with it) from all but the most popular content creators. Their plans were ultimately backtracked, but the message the original announcement sent to many creators was loud and clear: YouTube isn’t really interested in helping you find your audience unless you’re already making them money.

It’s a sentiment that seems to be echoed by the other major platforms, too. Mixer, for example, seemed to provide a landscape for newcomers to enter and find an audience without needing an existing name or brand to bolster their viewer numbers. However, even though the platform has seen significant growth, it’s done so as a result of Microsoft investing millions into finding celebrity streamers willing to defect from its competitors.

Clutch may seem like a similar platform to YouTube on the surface, but at its foundation is a markedly different design philosophy. With it, users can upload and edit their video clips; afterward, Clutch’s engine automatically connects that content to other interested gamers.

Like YouTube, Clutch is platform-agnostic, so it doesn’t matter if you’re playing on PlayStation, PC, Switch, or Xbox. But Clutch content creators aren’t competing with long-form “lets plays” or highly produced critical deconstructions or reviews. It’s a clip sharing service made by and for everyday gamers.

Once you start using Clutch, its gaming DNA becomes almost immediately apparent. The service itself echoes many of the modern gaming user experience elements we’ve come to take for granted. Take a look at the home page:

In addition to showcasing trending and popular uploads, Clutch organizes clips by game, allowing viewers and uploaders alike to connect with other folks who have the same interests as they do.

Additionally, users can create teams within the app to supplement the clans and groups they may belong to in their favorite games. Teams can easily upload content together and share their clips among members.

Teams are a great way to share your gaming experiences with friends, but Clutch is designed to take that concept to the next level. Interested teams can grow as they attract new members with their content.

Clutch isn’t just a content-sharing platform. It’s designed to connect viewers to content and, more importantly, players to one another.

One of the ways that Clutch connects users is through daily challenges. These challenges provide an exciting metagame layer to the platform, and they open up opportunities for players with specific, sometimes niche, gaming interests to get some exposure.

The rules for these challenges are simple. Each user is allowed to submit a single, brief (typically 60 seconds or less) clip from one or more games that match the challenge’s unique theme.

Users then vote on their favorite clips by reviewing up to ten of them and ranking them on a scale of 1 to 5 stars. The clips are presented without captions or descriptions.

The winning submissions are then featured in both the daily challenge section and at the top of the related games’ specific pages.

The result is a ton of exposure to users and content that would most likely be buried on other platforms. Users see the clips as they review them, and the cream of the crop rises to find exposure with a much larger audience.

You can check out current and future challenges at any time, so you can begin preparing for a specific challenge well in advance of the submission date. Past submissions can be perused at will, too, and the top clips for the submission are just a click or tap away.

The daily challenges are one of the more proactive ways Clutch users can grow their audiences, but they’re really just a fraction of what the platform is doing to connect players to one another.

Under the hood, Clutch’s proprietary algorithm is actively serving up content to users based on their preferences, their own game content, and their unique interests.

Conceptually, Clutch feels familiar to those of us who have uploaded content to other platforms. But in practice, remarkable is precisely how I’d describe the experience of actually using it. Clutch feels like a place gamers can hang out, share their experiences--their triumphs and their losses--and pat one another on the back.

It’s difficult to describe, or maybe just difficult to believe (at least that was my experience) without creating your own account and seeing it firsthand.

Head to Clutch, download the app, create an account, and upload your first video clip. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised with the result.