The Battle Plan 3 March 2020 (Patreon)

Viewer: (hysterical) Well that's great! That's just flipping great, man.  Now what the phooey are we supposed to watch? I was enjoying the spaceship series!

The Colonel: Are you finished? (to Fail Brigader) You okay?

Fail Brigader: I guess the series is over, right?

The Colonel: I'm sorry, I blew myself up.

Fail Brigader:  You don't have to be sorry. It wasn't your fault.

Viewer: (listlessly flicking through videos) Just tell me what the fork we're supposed to watch now.  What're we gonna watch now?

The Colonel: (sarcastic) Maybe I could build a fire and sing songs. There's always baseball.

Fail Brigader:  You should get the schedule up, 'cause it'll be too late soon. Your schedules mostly come on Tuesdays. Mostly.

There is a tried and tested philosophy when it comes to, brace yourselves, "building an audience" on the YouTube. That philosophy is to find a niche topic and cover it thoroughly. That way, a viewer who turns up for one video is more likely to want another one that you do.

There's a good reason this methodology is tried and tested - it works. In a gaming sense, the more you bounce around between genres the less likely it is you'll maintain any audience you attract. Pretty obvious really. The majority of people who watch a particular channel will have originally found it because they were interested in [INSERT TOPIC]. The might also be interested in something closely aligned to that original topic, but are far less likely to watch a video that is wholly unrelated to their original area of interest...

...unless the way in which that video was delivered was especially entertaining.

The issue with staying in one niche from a bloke-who-makes-videos perspective is that you're forever tapping the same creative barrel, and once in a while you need to recharge your inspiration in that area.

To that end I've been running the baseball series on Sundays as an inspiration palate cleanser, a means to flex an area of creative commentary that no amount of train, simulation and management gaming will ever get close to. From my own subjective viewpoint as a series it has a far higher hit-ratio of chuckle-worthy one-liners than any other full-length series I've done (Planet Coaster is probably the nearest rival, or Founders Fortune).

The downside here is the Woodchipper. 

Capital W. 

Obey the Woodchipper.

I feed series into the Woodchipper if it fails to attract 1/10 the number of views as the channel has subscribers in a 7 day period. More simply - as a channel with 50k subscribers, I require a video series to hit 5k views in a week. If it fails to do so, I should have a really good reason for continuing it, or feed it to the Woodchipper.

Baseball gets nowhere near that number - and no, I'm not trying to persuade more of you to watch it, that's not the point - but it serves as a weekly battery recharge. It's an entirely different way to play and comment, and as such serves a worthwhile purpose.

I think I've spoken of this previously, but I'm now about to get to the point.

I'll be evolving my channel over the course of the year. I'll be a bit more experimental, and will be investing more time in the quality of individual videos. Transport Fever 2 has more polish applied to it than I did with the original game, and I think the videos are better for it. I still think the format needs to improve further, but I'm fairly happy with where it is now. Soviet Republic is the last vestige of the old way of doing things (hit record, play, hit stop, minimal edit) and while I really like the game, I'll end the series pretty soon to give it a rethink in terms of presentation. I'll continue with the save, maybe, in the future, but it's just not doing what I want it to right now.

When the baseball season finishes I hope to be ready with its replacement, which could be quite something if it looks how it appears in my head.

I'm also going to continue with a weekly slot of SPACE ADVENTURES and FARMING, because I'm really happy both with the games I've chosen and how well the final videos come out. Both series are among my best videos I've made.

The game might not be to your taste, but I'm focusing on finding the better conduits for better commentary. Other channels play games more effectively, efficiently and creatively than I do. That's fine. That is not my focus. I aim to entertain. To that end I need to find the right titles to act as a delivery mechanic for entertainment.

But but but... trains? They won't be leaving. Not unless something earth-shatteringly huge comes along that dwarfs the success I've found with these games. There's nothing on the radar right now, you can relax.

The intention here is to put a predictable week of video entertainment together for you, applying a ton more polish along the way, cutting some of the flabbier sections, making videos that are more memorable by far where you, like I, look forward to the change of pace that occurs in different series.

All being well, you've spotted some of this evolutionary plan being enacted already, but there's more to come.

**THIS WEEK'S SCHEDULE IS FLUID**

• Tue: Soviet Republic
• Wed: Captain Tyrone's Space Adventures In Space
• Thu: Transport Fever
• Fri: Train Sim World
• Sat: Farming Sim
• Sun: Baseball

Why the fluidity? Because I'm behind on editing. It won't take long to catch up, but I do need to catch up. Transport Fever is the most likely to move, and if it does it'll be on Wednesday.

There's a lot more to this plan than I've spelled out above, but I won't burden you will all of it at once. You may score further insight next week.

Activate your tractor beams now.

-CF