"It's different expectations" — Beast Games creator MrBeast differentiates between his show and YouTube videos

Beast Games premiered on Amazon Prime Video on December 19, 2024, with creator MrBeast setting up a competition for 1,000 people, who go through challenges and eliminations to win an ultimate prize of $5 million. On the YouTube podcast, The Colin and Samir Show, MrBeat, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, has shared a few interesting thoughts about Beast Games.

In a segment of the podcast, Samir asked Jimmy to differentiate between his work on a series versus the videos he is known to make on YouTube. The Beast Game creator said Prime Video gave him the liberty to go slower on the show, but the luxury of time is something he does not often get on YouTube.

On the episode, he also spoke of viewers' perspectives. With YouTube, they are not looking forward to consuming longer content, for example, a 5-hour show. However, if they are on Prime Video, it makes a difference because it contains longer content.

Samir noted Jimmy's contention that the Beast Games allowed him to "go slow." In contrast to his work on YouTube, Jimmy had shot the intro of Beast Games over 12 seconds, Samir pointed out, though he would never shoot for 12 seconds straight for YouTube. To this, MrBeast replied:

"On YouTube, it's just different man, it's different expectations. A big problem with my YouTube videos is that people just don't think that it's real. So I have to show so much at the start and I have this 10-second window to convince someone that I did this, I did this. I did this. I promise I did this. Here's proof I did it."

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Beast Games creator MrBeast talks about his work on YouTube

MrBeast, on the podcast, differentiated Beast Games from his work on YouTube. He claimed that viewers on YouTube have a hard time accepting that the thumbnail is real, and if they click on one of his videos, he just has a 10-second window to convince them it is, indeed, real.

However, he had creative liberty without a time limit on Beast Games because he did not have to convince anyone and thus, took to filming longer shots. Talking about the difference, Jimmy explained:

"People will give you at least a couple of minutes on a show before they give up on it. It's not like 10 seconds out, you know what I mean. I can't think of a time I've ever clicked on a show and then 10 seconds later, clicked off. It takes a little bit of time to know what's going on and so on YouTube, you have to do it in 20 seconds and in streaming you can do it in 3 minutes. That's a huge difference."

The conversation then navigated towards the use of CGI. Colin pointed out that if Jimmy uses CGI in his YouTube videos, wouldn't that give "ammo" to people who already claim that his videos are fake?

MrBeast explained that was not the case, saying he just used CGI to expand sets in the videos and not to edit anything. Given that this software was expensive, according to him, they have collectively used it in around 0.1% of all his YouTube videos.

Jimmy said he never wants anyone to ever "doubt the authenticity" of his YouTube videos, adding that he is proud of the sets the big-budget YouTube videos they create.

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Beast Games is streaming on Amazon Prime Video and releases a new episode every Thursday.