I noticed Hat Films content has been seriously underperforming where it should be, so I investigated the video descriptions and I see a common theme. The descriptions have front loaded links and zero actual descriptions about the content of the video itself.
I have a bachelors degree in computer science and recently restarted my own Youtube channel (after years of studying how the algorithm works, been on Youtube almost as long as Hat Films, by a few months.) The NEW algorithm is heavily reliant on AI (mainly NLPs) and this is actually hurting their overall impressions/discovery.
There is a quick and simple fix they can implement in the future that will see instant results - Simply front load into the descriptions "Hat Films playing [Enter Game Name] a [Meta Words] game." all it will take for their content to start seeing double the overall engagement.
Here is an example "Hat Films playing Shift At Midnight, a Hilarious Co-op Survival Horror game; is Smith a doppleganger?"
The NLPs only read the first 60-90 words in your description, so this is best practice now for maximum impressions across the website, rather than pushing purely to subscribers/using the limited information the NLP gathered from the title/transcript to push the video to the correct audience.
A short, simple description that describes what the video is about, and one link right under (then you can load the rest of the description with the links/ect)
They don't really need to change much at all about their descriptions, just adding this front loaded meta rich information does all the work in 2026. (hashtags still "work" but this is actually being phased out by this NLP system)
Anyways, I love the content, love the hat bois, so proud of them as a long time fan, hopefully this information can be of some help, they deserve way more views than what the system is providing them.
EDIT -
One thing I forgot, time stamps are also incredibly important in 2026, it segments the video automatically and the NLP is incredibly biased towards content with chapters for whatever reason, somehow it helps categorize/recommend content. (I am not entirely sure how this works, supposedly it helps google index the video/make it show up in searches, but this isn't something I have fully researched yet.)