New Video! The weird game design of this cheese drum kit (ad/sponsor-free!) (Patreon)

Hey everyone!

Just letting you know that the new video is now available! Some sponsor stuff is keeping the video from going up on YouTube for a day or two but I figured I'd give you all access to the ad-free version now as a lil Christmas treat.

This one might seem like a bit of a left turn for sure. My channel normally focuses on video game design and narrative. Today, I want to talk to you about Dutch drummer Han Bennink giving it his all on a kit made of cheese, improvisers being made to turn against each other by avant-garde saxophonist John Zorn and people hitting blocks of wood for several minutes at the behest of minimalist juggernaut Steve Reich. What do these weird and wild events have in common? Well, let me take this time to explain why they are all games in their own right—and how one might go about creating a game out of performing music.

So yeah, told you this one would be weird, haha. I know some might look at this thumbnail/title and think "wow selling out much" but I've had it in my head for ages that I wanted the video tackling the most stupidly obscure subjects to have the baitiest setup—for some reason that idea has always been hilarious to me, haha.

Hopefully the way I discuss this stuff is interesting to you even if the music being discussed isn't to everyone's taste—it's acquired, for sure. Let me be upfront though in saying that this is absolutely the most fun I've had writing a piece in ages—it's the final product of an idea I've had rattling around in my head for well over a year now. The editing was a little tough with all the music and live footage and everything (as well as said live footage being extremely grainy... thanks early YouTube), but... I think I like the final product, as scrappy as it is.

That said, I am extremely nervous to put this video out there. For one, I have no idea how people are going to react to me trying something new like this—they might bounce off it completely, which given how I have some more ideas for slightly leftfield topics I want to cover (without sacrificing the more straight up pieces on games to be clear, I still enjoy making those) could make justifying the *substantial* time investment in terms of research, writing, and editing all the harder.

What's really scaring me though is the idea of copyright strikes and the like—upload checks revealed nothing untoward (reflecting the wild effort I had to go to to edit footage and music so it wouldn't be picked up by content ID), and anything I'm using is credited/definitely falls under the educational/commentary side of fair use, but as we all know, YouTube can be a terrifyingly fickle thing. Who knows if someone will pop up out of the woodwork and claim it. Again, this is maybe the hardest I've worked on a video in a while—in the most profitable month of the video maker's year in terms of ads, no less—and so getting a strike/not being able to make money off of that hard work would be truly, truly devastating. Who knows how that's going to play out though.

It's why your support is honestly so crucial. I want to experiment more after over six years of the channel being a thing. I want to take things to the next level, while continuing to make videos that truly invigorate me and hopefully do something for you too. I really, really hope YouTube signifies with this video that there's a place for that. That said, your support is *the* thing that allows me to try—without it, I could in no way justify these videos. Without you, there is no channel.

All that to say, thank you so much for allowing me to try. Here's hoping it goes well.

Outside of that, we'll have the Game of the Year podcast going up before Christmas (which came to about 10-11 hours across two days this year, holy moly), as well as hopefully my own annual GotY video (although this might be after Christmas/before New Year because damn I need to chill for a bit haha), the long awaited Q&A vid, and potentially an article of some description. This time can be tough for people for a lot of reasons, so I like to try and get as much content out there as possible. Hope it helps!

Anyway, thank you all so much. I should hopefully have something else to post here before Christmas, but on the off chance the schedule shifts slightly, I hope you're all doing OK right now and that you have a happy, safe holiday. You deserve it!

Thanks again,

Hamish