If I can add anything to this I'd say that while our audience has grown massively the amount of budding content creators has as well there are literally millions of gaming channels on YouTube I don't have any way of counting how many of them are covering EldenRing but I'd wager that a very large portion of them are. My point is that I think the viewer base is more split between channels than ever before and this can hurt creators overall because even if I was subbed to 10 ER PvP channels that upload daily or even weekly I'll never as a husband with a kid and full time job have the time to watch all of their videos.
Another thing I'd like to propose is that YouTube is a MAJOR reason behind this phenomenon. Ever since they've started their "Shorts" section that's all they've been pushing on the recommendations page. When ER released I wasn't getting recommended 10 minute PvP videos from pvp channels I wasn't subbed to, I was getting recommend NOTHING BUT LOW EFFORT FUCKING SHORTS. I hate that YouTube did this to compete with TikTok but they are a business and they wanted a slice of TikTok's pie. For what it's worth the shorts thing is kinda abuse-able. Bsmiff started their channel way after mine and used to make nothing but low effort shorts. Those got 4 times the views my edited-voice-overed weapons showcases were getting at the time and that allowed them to grow their channel way past mine in a matter of a month or two. Now they do FUCKING EXCELLENT montages and those videos are definitely better than mine. Those views are deserved now.