Welcome back everyone to this weeks edition of the Jestr Recap 🎉
September was filled with a lot of great events, some of which came to a close this past week, but it also kicked off October which already has so many things to be excited about.
If this is your first time here, the Jestr Recap is our way of keeping you up to date on all the cool things going on in the community without having you scrape through the discord to find it.
There’s a LOT to unpack, so lets dive in to what’s new in the community 🫡
Creator Roundtable
First off, huge shoutout to Alex for hosting this week’s Jestr Roundtable!
This week’s session was interesting because all four creators came in already making genuinely good content. So instead of fixing fundamentals, the conversation went somewhere more useful:
What should you actually be experimenting on?
Almost everyone who submitted this week was experimenting on their hook which is great. The hook is the highest-leverage part of your video and absolutely worth testing. But it’s not the only variable you’ve got, and the other ones are just as important.
In almost every video reviewed this week, the stayed to watch percentage was around the 60-70% range, which is actually pretty decent. What it needs is refining, not replacing. And while you’re dialing that in, there’s another piece that most creators never touch.
What happens after the hook is the second most important piece of the puzzle. This is where retention needs to be the forefront of your content strategy. Now that you’ve gotten them to stop scrolling, the next question to answer is “How do I keep them watching”? However, that answer is almost never the same. We wrote about his more in a blog we posted, if you want to learn more you can check it out here.
Use your analytics data to see at what point in the video viewers are dropping off. Note that exact moment, and rewatch your video. What did you say? What was on screen? Why do you think they left at that moment? Then try to answer that question in your next video.
If you’ve never been to a roundtable session before, this is an event where creators submit their content to be reviewed by the community, and get actionable feedback on what they can do to improve. If you want to be a part of the next creator roundtable, simply submit to this form and show up to the event on discord, Mondays 2pm EST!
However, everyone is welcome to join and listen in. The advice given to other creators are things you can apply to your own content.
What’s New in the Community?
We announced the Jestr’s Indie Choice 🏆
This is something we’re truly excited to announce. A few weeks ago, we threw out an idea about presenting to you guys a list of games that you can vote on, and the winner will get a fully funded Jestr campaign.
After seeing how supportive the community was to that idea, we decided to run the first ever “Jestr’s Indie Choice” poll for the Mobidictum Conference 2026 and it was a great success. So many of you voted and we’re super excited to announce the winner soon!
However, we’ve kicked off another Jestr’s Indie Choice for October! We’re currently taking applications for horror indie games until October 9th. Then, the best 24 games will be available for every Jestr creator to vote on.
So if you know any horror indies who might be able to make use of this opportunity, send them over to https://www.jestr.gg/polls and enter their game for a chance to make it through to the voting round!
The Theory of Intentional Editing 🥳
So this past Thursday, we ran a workshop with Biffmatic where he gave his insights on the theory of intentional editing, and it was SUPER valuable.
If you couldn’t make it to the event, no worries. We should have the recording posted for you guys shortly, but some of the more interesting things talked about in this workshop was how everything inside a video, needs to earn the attention of the viewer. The pacing, the cuts, the sounds and visuals you put into your edits all need to align with how you want the viewers journey to look like. And that all starts BEFORE you even open your editing softtware.
To close this out, thank you Biff for sharing your knowledge with all of us and shoutout to everyone who attended! Hopefully there were some insights that you found useful to start incorporating into your own processes, and stay tuned for future events!
Triple I Initiative Watch Party 🍿
We’re hosting a watch party for the Triple I Initiative showcase his Thursday!
This event is a pretty big deal for indie lovers because its a 45 minute showcase of high quality indie titles with no hosts, no ads, and no distractions. Just back to back announcements from game trailers, gameplay reveals, launch dates and even world premieres.
If you didn’t already know, Jestr has Partnered with the Triple I initiative bringing some really cool games to the Jestr website!
Join us in the event channel on discord this Thursday if you want to watch it with other members of the community 🍿
We Launched the Jestr Archives 🎬
Over the past year, one of the most common questions we’ve been getting is “Will the events be recorded and where can I watch them?”
The answer is yes, most events are recorded however, we wanted to first present it in a way that’s intuitive and had a proper place to house them. But that means, a couple things needed to happen first.
We launched the Creator Hub a little bit ago to serve as a place built FOR creators. Resources, updates, learning materials, etc. Well we’re excited to say, that we’ve been making updates to the creator hub to organize things a little better.
More recently, adding in the long awaited Jestr Archives! Where you can watch previous recordings of Roundtables and Events without feeling like you’ve missed out on value.
It’s already getting populated with videos too, so if you haven’t checked it out, head over to the Creator Hub to see it!
Jestr’s Choice Award: September 2026 Winners ✨
The winners of Septembers edition of Jestr’s Choice was announced on Saturday!
This edition was one of our favorites, because every creator on there has shown huge growth in their content. Some winners have an amazing editing style, some are talented scriptwriters, but all of them displayed their personality through making things they enjoy.
You can read the in-depth breakdown here!
If this is your first time hearing about it, Jestr’s Choice is our way of showing appreciation to creators who consistently shock us with the quality of their work, the personality they put into their craft, and are individuals that genuinely show their passion for content creation.
Congrats again to all the winners 🥳
The Finale of Subtember to Remember was Iconic 🏁
This past Wednesday wrapped up our month-long Subtember to Remember event, and we opened up the last day with the first ever Jestr Team Stream.
You can watch the full VOD here if you missed it!
First off, shoutout to Preacher and Eric for setting up this amazing event. They also helped us set-up our own stream which is when we realized how much work actually goes into streaming.
It’s not just the energy it takes to stream itself, but there is so much to manage and build behind the scenes.. We have so much respect to all streamers for the dedication you all have to the craft.
If this is your first time hearing about Subtember to Remember, this event was put together to support the streamers in the community, by collaborating on an organized raid train schedule that ran every Monday & Wednesday through the entire month of September.
Shoutout to all the creators that participated this past month! We love seeing the community support each other through events like this, and again HUGE shoutout to Preacher & MrEricAlmighty for making this all possible! :)
That’s it for this weeks Jestr Recap! We’ll see you again next week 🫡
PS: If you’re new here, we have an onboarding session coming up this Wednesday where a member of the Jestr team will give a rundown on how the platform works, and can answer any of your questions live! Feel free to join up in the Jestr Discord on Wednesday 2pm EST in the Events Voice Channel!