How to write a good title

Most titles should communicate the video’s value proposition in a clear and intriguing way in a few words (whenever possible). At GDQuest, we try to use legit bait: titles that really make you want to watch the video, but with content that lives up to the users’ expectations. Let’s look at some titles to understand what makes an effective one.

Case study: Godot 3.5 release video

A new version of Godot just came out, and we made a video to showcase the new features.

The first title idea is “New features in Godot 3.5” It’s clear and straightforward but not very interesting. Some weak alternatives:

• Godot 3.5 is out: too plain and doesn’t communicate that we’ll cover new features.

• Godot 3.5 is great! Slightly better than above as it suggests that there’s something great we’re going to cover, but it could still be more precise.

Here’s one good enough: “Godot 3.5 is Out, and it’s SICK! Real-time pathfinding, new tween animations, and more.”It’s a bit long, perhaps, but it shows excitement and examples of features people can expect the video to cover.

Case study: presentation on improving Godot tutorials

The idea behind this video was to make a presentation explaining how we could make better learning resources for Godot.

The angle was to start from the user’s perspective and build an appropriate solution based on their problems. A major issue in the community at the time was the lack of a course for beginners to learn how to program games with absolutely no prior experience required. So the idea is something like “an essay on how we can make better learning resources for beginners in the Godot community.”Some weak title ideas would include:

• A critique of Godot learning material: the video may work with this title, but we can find something more appealing and something that suggests we’ll provide solutions, not just a critique.

• Making better learning material for Godot: same as above.

• How we can make better Godot tutorials: same as above.

Here are some more appealing alternatives:

• We should all stop making Godot “tutorials” already: this could be pretty thought-provoking and work well if the video’s angle was like “stop making step-by-step recipes; Start making actual courses with exercises, or people won’t learn.”

• Why you don’t learn anything from tutorials: directly relates to many persons’ feelings and experiences because they don’t know how to extract and apply what they learned in tutorials.

The title we went with was What’s wrong with most Godot tutorials (including ours). It’s a bit softer than some options above though still pretty striking.

Vague but effective titles

Titles can exceptionally be vague and rely perhaps more on the thumbnail. Like “How could THAT happen?!” with a thumbnail showing someone falling off a cliff, perhaps to tell the story of how they went base jumping for the first time.At GDQuest, we rarely have the opportunity to use such titles, though if we do someday, we should seize it.