Channel Update #19 (Oct) – excessive venting (Patreon)

Greetings,

Hope everyone is well this Hallows Eve. If it’s not obvious by the timing of this update, I don’t have much exciting news for everyone and progress on the next video has been difficult. But first a quick word on the last video...

So, porn games… kind of interesting, right? I think I might be overly drawn to subjects that are weird, taboo, or just rarely talked about. Hopefully this tendency won’t be my downfall one day, but at least I got away with it this time … mostly. The video was age restricted almost instantly, meaning zero ad revenue and no love from the algorithm, but considering what’s actually in the video I can’t really complain. An 18+ rating seems quite deserved; I just wish it didn’t have quite such a catastrophic impact on views but I accepted this would likely happen when I started the project.

Still the most important thing is that people don’t hate me, which is always a positive. Before its release I was very concerned about the final section of the video and the controversial subject matter it touches on. I spent a while editing the script for that part but I was never quite happy with it. It got to the point where I started considering scrapping the entire video and that idea basically persisted right up until I clicked the ‘publish video’ button and took the nuclear option away from myself.

In retrospect this seems like a bit of an overreaction on my part but making videos can be quite an isolated process. No one sees my scripts or hears any of my thoughts right up until the video is out there, in front of an audience on 100,000+ plus viewers, and I only get one chance to say my piece. That’s generally how youtube videos work: you speak and then everyone judges you on what you say without any chance for you to respond or defend yourself or even change your position. And that’s okay, usually, but this time I basically accidentally stumbled into one of the few subjects which I honestly don’t feel very comfortable speaking about publicly. In the end though it was all fine, and in other ways that video was a lot of fun to work on. Anyway, it’s done now and life goes on.

Not always smoothly though.

Work wise, this has been one of the most frustrating months I’ve had since starting my channel. I first began on the Gothic video, thinking it might end up being the next released, and while I have made some progress, I’ve also been plagued with technical issues that have really drained my energy. From crashes to recording problems to persistent graphical glitches, I’ve spent hour’s just trying different patches/fixes to get everything working correctly on my pc only to find that even if I fix one thing some other problem always pops up.

Anyway as the Gothic progress ended up being so slow I decided to switch to something else and then come back to it later. Most of my ‘entire series review’ videos have been made over a longer period of time anyway so this seemed like a good option to keep me productive and motivated. But the next video ended up being a bit of a disaster too. I’m currently in a position where I have several big chunks of script written, and lots of game footage recorded, but I just can’t quite seem to decide on an exact subject (and title) for the video that would work well and not be something all over the place and uninteresting to viewers. This is really my own fault. I charged head first into working on the video on the assumption that all important things I wasn’t sure on would just fall into place in the process and, so far, that has not happened at all.

The video subject was basically something about ‘hidden gems’ and the vast number of games released on steam (over 10,000 in 2020 for those curious), and what the average game that nobody pays attention to is like, and the relationship between art and attention/popularity and creativity and commercial viability and so on and so on… and right now I’m feeling like a bit of an idiot because things have not remotely ‘fallen into place’ and it certainly doesn’t sound like a good video topic anymore now I’m typing it out in front of you all several weeks later. The thing is, feeling like a bit of an idiot is a normal part of the creative process in my opinion, and it’s certainly not new territory for me, it’s just usually I find things really do just ‘fall into place’ as long as I keep working. Doesn’t seem to be happening this time though.

The issue is further complicated by the fact that I’ve agreed to a sponsor (for the first time in like 10 months) meaning I have a contractual obligation to do something in the near future, and I’m in a position where I don’t know whether to keep trying with this project or move on, and if I move on I have no idea what I’d move on to but it would need to not be overly long (which narrows my choices severally), and I was hoping the next video after this one would be on Final Fantasy 14 (I have history with that game and a new expansion is coming soon meaning I really need to finish the next video soon to not be behind on that video before I even start), and time seems to be moving really, unreasonably quickly these past weeks, which isn’t exactly helping matters, and part of me blames the youtube algorithm (which I seem to be blaming for every problem in my work life but maybe thats on it, not me) and to be honest at this point I’m feeling a little stressed and wouldn’t mind a small break, even though I just had a larger than usual break after the last video, but if I did take a break all of my problems would get worse so it would be much more helpful just to get back to work but what exactly is it I should be working on right now?

So, yeah, that’s where I’m at.

Keep in mind here, I’m fine. Honestly, these situations happen and I’ve probably been quite lucky to have had so few projects ‘go wrong’ in the past. And I usually make these channel updates either just before or just after finishing a video, precisely because I don’t want to end up venting all my problems at you guys every month. Problems are part of youtube (a part that I accept) and everything will turn out fine, just you wait. But it’s the last day of October and I said I’d do these updates monthly and this is the update right now, whether I want it to be or not. Also, as a general rule, try not to worry about me worrying about things. Worrying about things is a core part of my personality and it worries me when other people start worrying about me worrying.

Anyway, next, next video should be Final Fantasy 14.

Next, next, next video will probably be Gothic unless something really exciting (i.e. some new release) gets in the way.

And next video will either be me salvaging my current project (in which case it should be released mid November and probably won’t be as good as I want it to be) or it will be something else entirely (in which case I have absolutely no idea what it will be yet but it will be released before the end of November and probably won’t be as good as I want it to be).

Peace.