Colonel Failure, season 2 (Patreon)

So. Then. 2023.

I've been banging on about "changing it up" since forever. Okay, maybe 2 years. That's as near as forever as makes any difference. Using my alchemic skills in tandem with my somewhat fractured crystal ball, here's a look at what I'm working on. Obviously, I say "a look at" but you're going to be required to use your mind's eye in order to see any of it. Go with me on this, I know you tend to anyway, but if you can see what I can it looks pretty interesting.

Since we're in stream of conscious mode here, I should point out that I'm putting pen to paper at midnight and was planning to turn in early. Given the way my head disappears into rabbit holes, this was perhaps ill-advised to start now, but I know where I'm going with it, so rather than crastinate further, let's crack on.

Let's start with a history lesson.

Once upon a time I started a YouTube channel. You're looking at it.

To date it has been modestly successful in terms of traffic. Define modest success? Sure. That ole subscriber number there is, in 2023 terms, very hard to it. In 2014 terms it was significantly easier. In 2010 it would have been a breeze by comparison. As such, when I tell people about my site and mention the subscriber count they are moderately impressed. I too am moderately impressed. "Not bad!" says the score card in the back of my head, "but you can do better."

Now subscribers aren't the be-all and end-all of this caper, but they're a solid litmus test for overall appeal... or are they? After all, off 67,000 merry subscribers one should surely hope to hit double-digit thousand views on a regular basis. And yet, that's a rarity. Subscribers, you see, tend to be interested in watching more of what they subscribed for and for gaming channels on a let's play course that's the game. Sure, you may find some who like the style beyond the subject but for the most part the subject is the main draw.

As such, many of the merry campers who subscribed to watch Cities Skylines, Factorio, Train Sim World, Farming Sim, Soviet Resources Workers and Republic or any of a hundred other games I've covered and let drift off into the sunset... yeah, the majority of them aren't tuning in any more. 

So, the number serves what purpose then? It's a splendid bit of ego flare, certainly. but as a measure of ongoing success it's flimsy at best. Its main benefit, such as it is, is as a measure of progress, and that's where we pick up the thread of our conversation here because for the past 3 years the rate of growth has been ever slowing, and that's being reflected in the number of views videos are picking up, and then we're into a somewhat vicious cycle. The numnber of views a video gets on a mature channel strongly impacts the number of people to whom it is recommended, which impacts my ability to top up subscribers who without hitting the exit button have for all intents and purposes moved on.

Think of it this way, if you lose 1% of your viewership each month through natural causes - they start watching someone else, want something fresh, aren't interested in what you're showing - then you need to be adding more than 1% in order to stay even. If your reach for new viewers is in decline you can see how this can be problematic.

Wah wah waaaaaah.

Yes, I know, I have spun this record before but this is intended to be the grande finale. What we're aiming for here is a "why", and after that's been done we'll get to the "what". Back to why.

I have previously spoken of the routes to success on the Tubes. Get there first or get there best work across all of the following:

• 1. Inform - talk about latest updates, upcoming releases
• 2. Educate - tutorials, how-tos, guides, tips, reviews
• 3. Entertain - almost everything else

The humble let's play, of which I have been a practitioner is nine parts entertainment, one part inform or educate. Historically, let's plays have been a good way to evaluate whether a game is for you or not - find a channel that seems to have similar taste to your own and see what they make of a new title. This is still the case, but now you have demos on the scene like in the old days. Great for gamers, bad for those of us for whom gamers make up our constituents. After all, why watch some clown playing the game when you can grab the demo and experience it for yourself?

Add to this the problem of playing older games. Once a game is no longer "new" interest drops off. The test here is to look at the number of people playing the game. Fewer people playing? Fewer people wanting to watch videos. So you bounce to a new game and lose the people happily watching the old one.

So you look for evergreen videos. Primarily this means tutorials or sodding listicles - "10 ways to whatever". I've done tutorials in the past and yes, they have been successful, but here's the rub - I find them monumentally boring to make. I didn't get into this caper to find 50 ways of saying the same 5 things in a way that those who are using search will likely stumble across. As much as I'm chasing viewers, I want to do it on terms I find creatively interesting.

The problem however is that let's play in it's simplest form is incredibly easy to make. I make let's play in its simplest form - start the game, hit record, talk bollocks for 30 minutes while playing it, slap on an intro, cut out anything that shouldn't be there, upload, thumbnail, title, done. 

On a good day I can pump out 6 of these.

This was a good thing because the new-video-every-day treadmill worked really well for a while. That while terminating in around 2019. That ole pandemic changed the way in which we consume video entertainment, in part because there's just so much of it now. That's not just YouTube either. We're in competition with Netflix, Disney+, Amazon, Paramount... viewers only have so much time in the day, and they've a slew of things they want to wrap they eyeballs around. If they've time to watch 5 things and you're 6th on the list, you missed out. I've seen this effect in particular when trying one-and-dones. Historically they'd perform really well. In the last couple of years, it's been obvious that what I make falls short of "unmissable".

Now, "unmissable" is a very tough target to hit but reaching slightly-less-missable is surely within my reach? Can I move from #6 on the 5 things people want to watch to #4... or better? 

Now if you're reading this there's a solid chance I'm in your top 5 already. Awww yeah. Nice one! I'm not talking about you though, I can get you to watch any old tosh, in fact I'm relying on it. After all, if I'm sticking out something new I'm going to need at least a few views to get the ball rolling and that'll be you lot. You'll swing by with an air of "go on then, dazzle me" and some of you will be dazzled. Others will be nonplussed. I'm banking on there being more of you in group one than group two.

Here is the summary of the "why" :

• Let's play in the original sense doesn't cut it for growing a channel - especially an old channel
• Due to the natural decline in viewership this leads to a slow spiral into oblivion
• I've been watching this play out for 3 years

Doom and indeed gloom. 

Let's get into the "what". More precisely, "so what are you gonna do about it, cowboy?"

Many of you know the answer I'm going to give, so I'll be brief. Moreover, I'll let you in on some vague specifics.

Examine, if you will some of the channels who have clearly hit an "unmissable" seam from their claim in the mountains. Whether that's Biffa's fixing your broken cities, Let's Game It Out's taking things to chaotic extremes, Spiffing Brit's breaking games through exploits... you can name others, I'm sure. Beyond gaming however, the only channels I watch are those who are going beyond the run-of-the-mill with their videos. Something out of the ordinary, pushing the envelope. In a gaming sense, I like many others are drawn toward videos where the title yells "ooooh, that sounds intriguing".

"Starting with $0 in Farming Simulator" - yeah, okay I'll give it a look.

"Making a million from logging in Rimworld" - you have my attention.

"100 days with the Minecraft Create mod" - let's be having you.

What do all these have in common? They're all intriguing, high concept videos whereby everything is accomplished in a single video. No part two. Each video represents tens if not hundreds of hours of gameplay condensed to tell a story and live up to the promise of the video title. After all, if it didn't live up to that promise, it wouldn't hold viewers' attention which would lead to lower watch time, fewer recommendations and they wouldn't have landed on my front page.

Now, transitioning from a 60 minute turnaround per video to 6 hour, or 60 hour means fewer videos. You know what? I'm comfortable with this.

The last video I made I put over-the-norm time into was Police Simulator. Am I pleased with it? It's okaaaaay. The Robocop shtick mixed with overzealous policing is fun enough, but I made my normal mistake - having a deadline. Instead of recording 3-4 hours of the game and putting out 20 minutes of the cream of the crop, I recording 45 minutes and stuck out 30 of them. Had I done the former I'd have had a far more entertaining result. Would it have performed better? Maybe a little. Maybe a lot. We'll never know. The only thing I can say with any certainty is that I'd have been much happier with the end result.

I think, ultimately, I've spent 8 years learning how not to make great videos. The fundamental being that editing is critical and that in you always need more material than you think from which to edit.

Retreading old ground here, but Descenders showed me what happens when magic strikes and I'm just in the commentary zone. I've never since had such a hot streak of being on my A-game for pith in the moment continually. Genesis Alpha One showed what could be accomplished with more editing and a slightly higher concept. Shady Palms was the right idea badly executed. Train Sim World's passenger announcement demonstrated running audio gags and the benefits to surprising the viewer. Planet Coaster, with the boy Steggs showed the benefits of having a collaborative adversary. Cooking Simulator showed the joy to be had in making mistakes. Automation with Beam NG showed what I could do when taking the game beyond what it actually does. All of those car ads needed a second pass, but they all come close. Again, deadlines and being too willing to release something under "that'll do". 

There are gems all over the place, but it's so inconsistent and I clearly can't hit a commentary hot streak on demand. Pretty good? Absolutely. B+ or better the entire time? One time only.

Introspection done now. Here's the actual scheme. Here's the bit you might not have heard before.

The Saturday night stream will form the reliable bedrock of the channel. It'll be classic let's play with stream nonsense in a serialised fashion. On deck for the next series is Satisfactory. Then, in a couple of months it'll be the return of Clan Bongos in Bannerlord. My hope is to cover 4 different games over the course of the year, each of which will have enough time to find their own mojo.

Next, I'm hopping over to Electrosports and the completion of the We Are Football second season. 

Nothing new so far, but let's now get into the bigger stuff.

I've taken on the start-from-zero Farming Sim challenge and am 36 hours into the save game with key moments recorded along the way. I'll be starting the edit on that soon. No, it's not an original idea but I'm using it as a test of extreme editing, single video narrative and post-recording scripting. I've done a little of that in the past and it's always worked out quite well (check the intro for episode 2 of the original Metropolis series). Yes, there'll be some high speed stuff, but it'll mostly but cuts and pith. Confidence is high that I'll be pleased with the end result. More pleased still if it chalks up some views, but we'll see.

I've a new series planned where I'm running my own video game company. In fact, I've two series planned along those lines but I'll start with one and probably use the ideas I had for the other within it... or record the second series with all ideas generated from the results of the first. We'll see. Either way, I'm pretty sure this series will hit gold in a few places.

Next is what I'm calling my forever series. Or I am right now. I've often felt that for all the weaknesses inherent in a lengthy let's play there is also strength to be had in a series without end. I'm keeping the more precise details of this to myself for now, but this falls under the heading of Colonel Failure experiments in transmedia. I'm 100% certain I can hit "interesting!" but I need to hit "entertaining" and "must-watch" out of the park. Episode 1 must be 100% right. Not "close". Not "almost". It has to NAIL. IT.

Ones and dones won't be a thing of the past either. I've working on a new idea for a Train Sim World video that could form the backbone of an irregular series. 

At this point I'm going to jump ahead of you, my commenting friend, with regard to Transport Fever. "Hey Colonel, why not offer to fix up people's saves?" No thank you. Yes, it'd be quite successful. Maybe even solidly successful, but let me runs this scenario past you. I record one of these, spend time on it, make it wildly entertaining and because it's close to the interests of existing viewers it lands 50k view in its first month. It then attracts a dozen or more submissions for another part which, when I record it does even better still and the original gets even more recommendations. Before you know it I've done half a dozen and they're all doing GANGBUSTERS for views when they come out every other week. At what point do I stop? How many times can I fix all their problems with a roundabout before I'm sick of it? And then I've made an even bigger problem - all the people who signed up purely to see me fix traffic problems with roundabouts refuse to watch anything else, so I'm left with the same choice I have now. I want to take a breather from Transport Fever, probably until the next game (although if I land a particularly appealing idea...)

Let's bounce back to Electrosports and the next season of baseball. I'm going to try something a little different for the next season. Maybe it'll work, maybe it won't, but very few people are watching anyway so it's well worth experimenting. I've considered wrapping the baseball back into the main channel, but now is not the time for that. That's a decision to be made in a few months time when I'm ready for the next sports concept. Of which there are two. Fail Brigade folk will already be up to speed on what I'm planning for Blood Bowl (work is underway) while I'm also doing something else that's a little off-piste. The second idea is far more combative in nature, but I think I might wait until the game in question supports modding. Make no mistake, both of these series have a real shot at grabbing a whole fresh audience - which is why it belongs on its own channel, but could work within a high-concept idea I have for the channel as a whole. On the fence there. We'll see.

Crikey. This is a lot longer than I'd intended. Maybe I should edit it.

Let's talk Get Back To Work. Lots of fun to record. Really weird in execution. After all, it leaves those interested in the game with something utterly unrelated being discussed while anyone wanting a legitimate video on the topic at hand is shortchanged by the random nature of each video and that the answers are lengthy and off-the-cuff rather than succinct and fully thought through.

To round things off, collaborations.

There will be a debut podcast at some point in the next month or two. The concept is fun and I have a cohost. We just need to line ducks up.

I'll also be collaborating for the next baseball series. I haven't mailed the antipodean in question yet to see if he's interested, but I've a strong hunch he will be. That's before I introduce the main new feature for that season which could be absolute gold.

The forever series will have a ton of guest stars. 

Anyway, this feels like the moment for a big overarching summary. A short one. Here goes.

It's time for me to make videos that force me to work harder. I already know that the let's play format doesn't cut it for growth and I've too many Big Notions to just leave them all on the drawing board while I stay on the treadmill. Sure, I could go half and half, but that won't cut it. Every potentially big video needs another big video to follow it to build momentum, to keep traction. Regardless, I will be sort-of half and halfing with Transport Fever until the series ends, by which time I'll be good to go on something new.

I hope that many of you will really enjoy Colonel Failure Season 2. I'm looking forward to it.

-CF

(The C stands for "concise")