Overview
A very quick guide as to how to win at the Youtubers Life (YTL) Gamers track – and how not to.
Introduction
Youtubers Life (YTL) is a cunningly constructed trap for power gamers. Don’t get caught out!
The natural assumption is to keep heaping up all levels and experiences, every item from the Buy catalogue before moving on from one residence to the next. This is not the way you win YTL.
As you discover in the last (Mansion) residence, you win by having more Youtube subs than the competition. While you are piddling about for game-months buying up every last hat and tie in the Buy catalogue, the competition are using their Network connections to get a millions-strong head start on you. Too easy to get caught out like this – and very bored with video production grind in the process too.
Bear in mind this guide is for the Gamer track only, written while YTL is at an early beta stage of Early Access (7/12/2016). I include notes on beating the Music track too at the end, and will endevour to update until YTL comes into full release.
Obviously, this is always a work in progress, even after the final version of YTL has been released. I suspect ‘more than one road leads to Rome’ and am happy to amend or include alternatives as a result of your feedback in Comments.
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Update for version 0.9.0p1, the addition of the Cooking track, was made on 20/12/2016 and included a few additional notes for the Music track too.
Your Mum’s House
Study requirements here are a liability; you’re going to want to leave as quickly as possible whether you want to play along with them or not.
What you need to leave are (1) a decent number of initial views and subs, and (2) enough earnings–perhaps $400–to pay your way out.
Before getting into the video production grind, check Friends on your phone. The highest level one will become your Collaborator in the mid-level apartment (third residence), your key to winning the game, and you should take time out to chat with them to keep up as good a relationship as possible, maybe even attend a party and the cinema with them to get them on your phone’s Calendar.
As to the rest, clothing and furnishing options, etc, they’re not really important to winning the game and when forced by tutorialising to have anything to do with them, do the absolute minimum and swiftly move on.
Your next step should be to upgrade your computer as much as affordable, likely a new mouse, mic and keyboard costing $80 total. Video production is how you level up; these upgrades will help you immensely.
Rest and eat waiting the 4 game-hours for delivery and then make your first video using the rubbish old starter game on your bedroom shelf. You should always have at least one video bringing in the views/subs you need to progress running; never dead air!
After that, the game obliges you to go out and study (by clicking on your door) at least once and there’s frankly little else to do anyway while your first video uploads. Once back in, get whatever else you need doing done–chat to your future collaborator, in later stages order in fresh games for review and parts for your computer–then sleep and eat, unboxing deliveries as you do so.
Once fully rested and fed to maximise your action points, make your video for the day, at this stage likely a repeat gameplay video, and then head out. As soon as you’re given the option to work as well as study (by clicking on the door), do that instead, 2-3 times a day until you are near-exhausted. Study is basically irrelevant if you can leave before you get an ‘F’ grade and your mum confiscates your computer temporarily (and you get an achievement for this!). Income, however, is everything. It is how you buy fresh games to review for higher views/subs; it is how you upgrade your computer to the max as a second priority (useful in your student apartment later); it is how you promote your 4-5 thumbs up videos–which you should do as soon as possible and never stop doing, with one vital exception (see Mid-Level Apartment section below)–so you can progress out of there; and it is how you can afford to attend Gamescon and get your deposit for you student apartment, your second and third goals in moving out.
A typical day’s cycle, then, when fully realised by heavy-handed tutorialising should be (1) First Look at new game or Gameplay of best available if you don’t have this option; (2) work until near-exhaustion; (3) chatting to collaborator, ordering in next game and/or computer upgrades, promoting worthwhile video; (4) sleep and eat, unboxing and selling off unwanted old games; back to (1) again.
If you get the offer of free vids from friends, prioritise making broadcasts about these as they pay well. Don’t forget to habitually sell off old games no-one is interested in anymore as small income, to free up very limited shelf space, and as discipline in prioritising your best bets for increasing subscriptions.
Student Apartment
If you’ve followed my advice above, you should rapidly find yourself in the student apartment. Your goal to move on here is to get 50k subscribers. It can be a bit of a grind but don’t muck about. Get it over with ASAP, as you want to move on to the mid-level apartment, your key to winning the game.
The tutorial forces you to eat and buy sandwiches but–unless especially exhausted by chance cards–you can get by on bread and water. One initial stockpiling of sandwiches should see you through.
What I advised you to do at your Mum’s House in terms of daily grind? Well, do exactly the same here, though the emphasis should now be on banging out as many First Look (or, in face of real shortage, Gameplay and Review) videos as possible.
Work enough so you can (1) pay $80 monthly rent, no big deal as this only comes round monthly and daily income can be nearly that if you push yourself; (2) have a reserve of $150-200 if you need to replace your computer if it breaks down irrevocably; and (3) order in a new game to review and promote it wherever possible, even if it’s a bit substandard. You will almost certainly won’t be skilled enough to earn enough from videos to win back what you pay out in promotions. Don’t worry about it – your work subsidises increased subscriptions to get ahead of your competitors and get you onto the next apartment.
You will almost certainly be given opportunities by friends to post about games for non-PC platforms. It sounds obvious. but never accept these if you haven’t the platform available as it’ll damage your relationship with them and reduce prospects of future offers you can fulfil. It is your judgement call whether to take more time earning to buy any of the more popular (see market share in Buy mode) gaming platforms. On the plus side, (1) more First Look options, often otherwise limited, and (2) you’ll have to get them all eventually. On the downside, this is all time and money you could be spending on upgrading your PC, promotions and moving on.
A few incidentals worth noting: (1) despite YTL fussing out it, the only reason to waste time on studying and not working at this stage is to get an achievement, so generally don’t bother; and (2) your flatmate is 99% irrelevant despite daily spammy comments you’re forced to click away, so just push him or her out the way and choose the ‘nice’ option when you move out, or you’ll turn them into a hater, an achievement but also a guaranteed thumbs down on all future videos. (You can resolve this by chatting to the hater enough to assauge their anger later, but why make such trouble for yourself?)
Mid-Level Apartment
You’ve arrived – this is where you win the game, even if it’s a little tricky at first. Your move-on goal is supposedly to hire a collaborator and get a second computer, but it is much better to also complete the high-level apartment goal of getting 1 million subscribers here where rents are lower than there, where it is even easier to lose as a result of unpaid rent at the end of a month.
That old, highly skilled school friend you’ve been chatting to on a regular basis since then? Get them round ASAP and hire them as your collaborator as your first move on moving into the mid-level apartment. Their monthly wage is likely to be three times higher than your rent and that’ll rise as their skills do. Your whole focus should now be on you meeting these expenses (if you default on rent more than once/apartment, you have to start over there – frustrating!) and theirs should be cranking out First Looks on the best games until they’re paying for themselves, typically at around 70% skill level if using a basic computer.
For you, it is not about skilling up (helpful only as it makes better cards available to your collaborator, but they’ll have to work with what you’ve got), it’s about work, work and more work. Some jobs–sales rep, junior games engineer–pay much better/hour but you typically have to be well-rested to be eligible for their longer hours. You want to minimise all expenses; bread and water instead of spaghetti which will need restocking unless utterly starving.
That old habit of promoting your best videos? That’ll bust you in the mid-level apartment in the first few months. You should make sure you have at least that month’s rent + wages banked before considering promotions and–from seeing how much other vids have earned–whether to give basic or medium promotions to the best thereafter, though if your collaborator’s skill level is still averaging around 70%, a basic $60-ish promotion will eat anything you will earn from it.
Eventually, you’ll have been grinding long enough for you to have built up a decent enough sized subscriber base and skill level for your collaborator to see healthly profits on the first of the month. Invest in any of the best non-PC gaming platforms you haven’t already of necessity to broaden your options but prioritise computer upgrades as this will increase your formatting points and quality + profitability of your videos greatly, a benevolent feedback loop. Definitely buy in the most popular gaming platforms when you’ve upgraded your PC as much as possible for that leve l of accomadation and then promote as hard as possible, even the more rubbishy 3-thumbs up videos just to get your subs up to the needed 1 million. By this stage, they will all pay for themselves and your collaborator’s wages.
You can ease up on working and skill up yourself at this stage and/or upgrade a required second computer in the apartment, but neither is key to victory and both cost time. As you’ll see, winning is all about earning as much as you can as fast as you can to translate into promotions and computer upgrades needed to maximise subscriptions.
A footnote for this section: attending events, buying furnishings or skilling up your character all help leveling up (the latter, using the textbooks available in the apartment, is cheapest, slowest and best option) and this is marginally useful in giving your collaborator more editing cards to play with but is absolutely not a priority. Overenthusiasts are likely just to find themselves stuck at this accomadation level’s cap for months when resources might have been better spent on getting those 1 millions subs and moving on more quickly.
Top Apartment
The point of getting 1 million subscribers at the mid-level apartment before you arrive here is that rent is double what it was there, a waste of resources and an increased danger of failing by rent default and being thrown back to the start of the level.
You need spend absolutely zero time in the posh apartment; just join the best (1m subscriber) network and click on the door to move on up to the Mansion.
Getting a second collaborator–possible here–is not a good reason to stay. If they are sufficiently skilled, you will be assuming an extra monthly expenditure of maybe $3k for very little gain in extra income. You can be very strict about allocating particular collaborators to particular terminals and each reviewing particular games but I find they still get in each others way playing the consoles. I suppose you could specify one as consule-only and others to PC-only to stop such clashes, but you’d have to be incredibly disciplined and hyper to make this work in real-time. If the second collaborator is less skilled, it’ll take months of distracting training them to get them up to speed as well as the mucking about of recruiting them (presentation photocalls are simplest and cheapest for this, in my experience). It’s likely that by this stage even your own character will be more skilled as a result of his or her student apartment-level video production experience and can fill in making videos when not preoccupied with other, more routine activities like attending any events or doing any upgrades you incline too.
A second, better reason not to move on immediately is to upgrade your collaborator’s computer here as opposed to at the mansion, where rents will be more expensive. Again, it’s a judgement call for you as player to decide where it’s not better to leave your collaborator working at their terminal while you completely upgrade the second terminal imposed on you as a precondition for moving on from the mid-level apartment and then transferring them to that so you can–if you chose to invest further precious time and money in it–then upgrade Terminal #1 too. The cycles of ordering in new computer acessories and unboxing seem unweildy and irksome to me, but that’s just an aspect of YTL we’re all stuck with.
You will also find that the top-level apartment is your first opportunity to buy every available gaming console (except for specialist ones available at the Gamescon booths after a minigame, but you need these really only to fulfill a particularly demanding and obscure achievement). Again, rather up to you whether you want to order these now or later at the Mansion on demand.
Absolutely key in terms of upgrades is to get the best phone available, one that allows you Tier 3 promotions. Just keep upgrading and unboxing until the option comes up. Without this and best Network connections, you are unlikely to quickly become #1 YouTuber, a key victory condition.
And, just to re-emphasise, joining the best Network is a precondition for moving on to the Mansion. Because Network demands can be tough and can lead you to being thrown out, stalling your progress, make sure the very last thing you do on this level before leaving is to sign up. Otherwise you’ll have to muck about attending stupid presentations and making typically irritatingly finicky videos for them when you could just be doing that at the Mansion and working towards your next victory condition there instead.
Mansion
If you’ve done everything as quickly and efficiently as possible, you won’t have to spend a great deal of time at this residential level either. You will have hopefully ‘stolen the march’ on all but the top 3-5 Youtubers. I found I could keep pace with all of these through aggressive promotions even at mid-apartment level and without their Network connections, though obviously no-one is going to win the game staying at mid-apartment level!
If you haven’t already done so before leaving your last apartment, upgrade you collaborator’s computer to the max and maybe yours too if you think you can handle the logistical complexities of two people cranking out videos simultaneously. Better computers = better videos = more income and subscribers = more promotions and so on. Absolutely vital is to upgrade your phone to allow Tier 3 promotions if you haven’t done this already back at the Poshest apartment, pretty much an order of magnitude better at bringing in more subscribers and income.
By now, you will know the basics of most profitable and subscriber-rich video production. First Looks at popular 5-star games are best, especially if videos are made on best-quality computers and promoted at Tier 3 via the best (1m subscriber) Network. By now, you should have enough variety on consoles that you need never play a game more than once, for its First Look video, and then order in the next just to keep cranking up those subscriber numbers for a good 8k+ extra subs a pop. If you can exploit chance events or skills to increase percentage of subscribers each time, this is also massive; you should more plan around it than take it lightly. No YTL competition can long withstand this pressure. You should become #1 YouTuber in terms of having most subscriptions in under a month but, if not, just keep hammering away until the inevitable happens. This is the way the game has deliberately been balanced – other YouTubers simply aren’t as business-savvy as you if you do what is optimum.
Meeting your Network’s requirements gives a lot of people trouble – and if you can pull in enough subscribers to win in under a month, it doesn’t really matter anyway. You can cheat if you can’t fulful enough of their conditions of videos commissioned, views acheived and presentations attended by the end of the month simply by quitting on the 30th and rejoining again on the 1st at no penalty to you. If you decide to do it the hard way, attending presentations is easy, even if it diverts your character from profitable video production, but producing custom Network videos is often more of a pain. This is because (1) they often demand obscure preconditions like Collab or obscure platforms, (2) they are extremely time-limited, and (3) they demand a very high number of views on completion. On point (1), you just have to be very careful remembering exactly what it is they want as the only time you are given full details is in the initial pop-up (not the diary note afterwards) and get on with it ASAP, even if it means taking your collaborator off a First Look production to play co-op with you. On point (2), you can kind of cheat here too by not clicking on the Network’s finger-wagging ‘you failed us’ notice if you run out of time. Just leave it up until the video is finally loaded or whatever and they’ll be happy. On point (3), Tier 3 promotion should be routine on every video for you now and will certainly ensure the Network gets the required number of views for those they’ve commissioned from you. So, there is absolutely no reason why you should ever be booted out of the top Network, but if you are it’s only for a month and you can rejoin, and you can cut your losses by signing up to the #2 Network (500,000 subscribers being its entry condition) for that intervening month rather than going it entirely alone and going back to only earning $1k/video or whatever as a ‘lone wolf’ op.
So, you’re #1 Youtuber but still not off into orbit, the closing Space Mansion stage and ultimate win condition. For this you need to set aside $100k. You really should be making money hand over fist on each video, maybe $4k or more/day, with outgoings in terms of rent, promotions and your collaborator’s wages only 10% of that. So, don’t sweat it. Just keep plugging away and you’ll get there very quickly indeed. Just don’t get booted from your Network en route or you really will be struggling again.
Space Mansion
I’m including this just for completeness. When you’ve got the $100k you need to go into orbit and have clicked on the Mansion door, the closing cutscene triggers, credits roll, and then you see yourself walking in through the door and the bizarrest set dressing outside in the Mansion’s (now extraterrestrial) grounds.
This section really is just for those wanting to finalise achievements like 100m views and plays exactly like the Mansion–inc. friend ‘chat to me’ spam, etc–except that the rent is even higher.
Congratulations – you beat YTL and hopefully in record time!
Notes on the Music Track
At time of writing (7/12/2016), the Music career track has only just been released as a Beta and is still severely buggy and needs balancing compared to the much easier progression conditions and income generation of the Gamer track.
The techniques power players can use to beat this are almost exactly as with Gamer; progress as fast as possible to Mid-Level Apartment, then rely on your collaborator’s skills, best phone and Network connections to power you through rapidly to the end.
Some important specific difference you should know are that instead of being about reviewing games, the Music track is about performing with instruments and releasing videos of that. Initially, you can only do covers of other people’s tracks and this leads to a lot of problems: (1) there are a limited supply of these and they are often rubbish, (2) they cost a painful amount in early-game terms and free is always cheaper, and (3) you regularly get dinged by copyright violations that’ll force you to pay escalatingly expensive fines or they’ll take you videos down and you’ll then earn sweet FA from them.
So as soon as you can, level up and get the Song Writing skill first so you can generate original material, advantageous in every way expect that it costs you the (relatively short) time to write. You can reuse your own songs, but interest (and subs) is obviously higher if you compose afresh for each video. You can also improve your performance by checking other guides on the Steam forum for exact ratios to produce five-star songs (see Nikky Fox’s ‘5-Star Song Creation’) and which instruments best suit each musical genre (see Milena’s ‘Genres Instrument Chart’). You’ll be tutorially obliged to buy an acoustic guitar at Mum’s House level as a precondition to moving on – it’s not the best instrument available, but is better suited to Classical, Blues and Reggae genres (commercial tracks for Reggae are typically low-star and unpopular though). You do, however, have access to a non-obvious five-star instrument though, your karaoke mic, ideally suited to the Punk music genre. It is a very wise idea to cycle between genres–e.g. Punk to Classical to Blues to Regggae to Punk again–to sustain interest; subscribers aren’t dedicated music genre fans, preferring variety.
Whilst still at Mum’s House, you will be compelled to attend your first club gig, which unleashes a ‘Guitar Hero’-style series of scrolling button presses for you to perform. I found this impossible to excel at even on Easy and frustratingly it’s an ultimate victory condition at get to the Space Mansion on this career track. For those with better reflexes or a cheat to reduce scrolling speed to at least a quarter of what it currently is, such live performances are intended to be primary income, even over and above video production. You just click on your door to set a date and other complexities of your club gigs.
Different instruments are like different consoles in the Gamer track, though some–like Strings, Brass, Drums–are locked away behind skill sets. You can only access them–and need to in order to meet Network or friends requests, etc–by levelling up and unlocking the necessary skills. They also come in different qualities, a little like computer upgrades, and the best like concert-quality violins for Classical are eye-wateringly pricey so weigh the benefits of such expenditure cautiously.
Music-specific achievements were aded with version 0.9.0p1 (20/12/2016) for attending your first gig (regardless of how well you do and surprised congratulations if it is well..) and a couple of other obvious ones. Hidden, however, is one for owning the best (concert-quality) violin, which only unlocks when you re at a high level, likely in the mansion, and another for writing a five star song, achievable even in Mom’s House if you just follow Nikki Fox’s excellent guide referenced above.
Notes on the Cooking Track
The Cooking track was added with version 0.9.0p1 (30/12/2016) and though perhaps a little more complex than the Music track and as unprofitable, it is also a lot more achievable as the restaurant minigame is at least doable.
Instead of game discs or music tracks to perform, you have recipes and these recipes have to be composed by you beyond a first freebie on the shelf in Mum’s House for tutorial purposes. Initially, you will be given the choice of Vegetarian or Meat recipes, but with reading at the bookshelf in future accomadation you’ll unlock Pasta and Healthy (Dorm); Cupcakes (Loft); and Innovative (Luxury Apartment) and an achievement for completing the last of these too. Just make sure green lines connect all your ingredients and the hub and you’ll get a 3-4 star recipe (pepper is a good starting ingredient). With experience you’ll unlock more ingredients and it’s pretty difficult not to get a 5-star recipe every time and a hidden achievement for that too. Be careful that ingredients also have weight, so you can’t always fill all recipe slots (‘too filling’). There is theoretically a finite number of buyable ingredients and combinations thereof, but you have a cookbook to consult to prevent early repeat combos and even if you play the same character for years, this is not a realistic worry.
With your recipe prepared, you can then perform it for video; better culinary equipment or computer hardware is available and helpful, but be careful how you prioritise spending, as for instrument or console-buying on other career tracks.
When you reach Loft level, friends or corporate advertising requests will get a lot more specific about types of prep equipment or cooking equipment they want you to use, but this is the same as with their requests for obscure consoles on the Gamer track or whatever. The free recipes are nice, when you do eventually buy in this novel new kit. A word of caution though; some is not accessible unless you first upgrade your chef’s counter. By Mansion level, you should be able to buy the best sort–marble and very nice–and there’s a hidden achievement for that too.
You aren’t going to be earning a lot from videoing all these culinary exploits. As with the Musician track, you have to go to the minigame to really earn and can typically do this weekly (there’s a cooldown and upfront deposit, as for Music gigs) by clicking on your door at Dorm level and after. You are supposed to help out at a restuarant but in-game instructions are minimal and even on Easy it is too fast-paced to take in initially.
So, to explain it now, customers will come to the front desk and a thought bubble will come up. This will show the ingredient they want you to use, the symbol for the process they want you to do to it, and maybe a second ingredient to add afterwards. Customers are impatient fundaments that literally will not wait 5 seconds for you to serve them. Match the ingredient symbol, click on it to carry it to the work desk at the bottom–it’ll have a green outline if over the correct prep process–and hold it over until bar fills green. Then dip it in 2nd ingredient as required and deliver it to customer before their timer (in thought bubble) runs out. If too late, dump it in the green recycling bin instead to cut your losses.
Some customers will want a drink instead of a meal. The drinks machine is near the bottom right and needs to be clicked on until the bar fills, then delivered to the customer. It is highly possible even with these instructions that the first minigame will run too quickly for you to keep up with but–as an admitted older player with feeble reflexes–I assure you it is harsh but fair, beatable even by the likes of me, and not brokenly unfair like the liveshow minigame. A good way of learning is to create a Save file by copying from Documents > U-Play Online > Youtubers Life > Saves > and then duplicate the two files bearing your character’s name to desktop, so you can reload before the event if initially disappointed (thanks for Dan’s guide, ‘A Guide to All Achievements in Youtubers Life’ for this invaluable advice). And, yes, another achievement for first restuarant experience, win or lose.
How do you get to the Space Mansion? As usual (1) have the most subs at Mansion level. Then (2) win the restuarant minigame in competition with another chef, the Mister Chef contest (another achievement!), and finally (3) earn $100,000 moving fee. And, yes, achievements there too.