BTS - Video Game G̷̩͈̥͑̽͌̒͝L̷͈̠̦̹̜͉̈́͑I̶̦͙̋̌T̴͖̘̥̣̆C̷̰̺̥̱̪̗̯͛Ḩ̶̻̩̪̣̹̫͂E̷̹̖̮͕̘̳̞̘͐͊̓͋̔̓͝ͅS̴̲̖͔͝ (147) (Patreon)

G'day glitch gremlins, to kick off Patreon exclusive content in 2021, we're going to be taking a look at the making-of Video Game Glitches episode that concluded content last year! This is an episode I've wanted to make for the absolute longest time and now that's it's finally done... it might be a new favourite of mine. Too bad nobody saw it! 😅🙃

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How did this episode come to be?
My mindset when it comes to making videos has always been to save everything. I keep all the archives of every game I've ever played so that in the situation I need a clip from a game, I can simply pull up my old gameplay and show whatever the subject may be. But recording so many play sessions over the years, I've accumulated a hefty chunk of a glitches along the way. So it was just inevitable that one day, I would be making this video! Suddenly during 'post Hawktober' break in November, I encountered major glitches in both Saints Row 2 and NES corruptions in the space of 2 hours... NOTHING WORKED CORRECTLY! And suddenly  I had more than enough material for the episode ahaaha!

Inspiration and Pre-production!
The clear inspiration to make a video on the topic comes from the all time classic AVGN episode on glitches, featuring the Glitch Gremlin. I always liked how that episode was a nice mix of unintentional bugs along with events you can trigger yourself. So the basic structure of the episode was to go down a similar path. First thing I did was go through and put every single glitch I could find into a single timeline, just so that I could see what I had to work with. I'd say about 75-85% of the content in my episode was pure circumstance, so a segment on the GTA IV swing glitch and The Sims were included to flesh out that other side of the spectrum.
However I didn't want to straight up rip off that video either. I was concerned about my lengthy NES corruption speech in the beginning of the episode may have been too similar to Cinemassacre's video but without it, the video wouldn't have felt complete for me. Plus it's such an effortless introduction to the topic and led to a lot of really fun moments! The entire script was thrown together incredibly quick in a single sitting, maybe 4 hours tops if my memory is correct. I tried to pace everything well so that there was a nice mix of longer segments separated by random one off moments.

Shooting the episode!
Videos are always so much fun when I've got simple skits and gags in live action. Even just episodes like Skylanders where I have something else to film, I think those videos always turn out as some of my best. So for the glitch video, blowing dust off an old system was definitely a trick I wanted to play. I simply put some washing powder on top of my system and blew it everywhere... ALL OVER my fucking floor and TV setup, was not happy with how it looked and so did it AGAIN! So yeah that was fun.
But the big one was blowing into the cartridge and just flooding that thing with watery spit. This is nothing new for the channel. I spit a bunch of vom into a bucket in my Rocket Robot on Wheels episode way back in 2017 (damn...) and yeah, I dunno. I just think unexected spit is funny I guess. 🤤🤤🤤

The expendable game as Stealth ATF which all you hardcore peeps might recall... was the FIRST GAME of Game Testing WAAAAYYY back in 2015 when I first got my NES. Literally never touched the damn thing since then. I opened it up and dried everything out when I was done so I'm sure it still works fine. Not interested in playing it to find out though! Again... everything got sprayed with water so it was a fun day cleaning up.
I started the day filming not in the best of spirits but thanks to all the fun stuff in the episode, my mood thankfully shifted and I knew that things were going to turn out well.

Additional Glitches!
Despite having a strong library of glitch content, there is a lot in there that just isn't all the interesting. Just weird shit I've stumbled across. However for some of my greater segments in the episode like Spyro Enter the Dragonfly, CTR on PS1 and The Sims, I somehow didn't have enough clips to show. So I ended up with a huge stack of games I had to go in and capture additional glitches for. I had to beat ALL of CTR just to capture the boss heads glitching (which ironically led to other glitches that didn't make it into the episode) and then for Spyro ETD, I had to revisit certain locations and trigger certain glitches just to capture them in high quality. Usually if for example... I'm complaining about a difficult level in a game. I NEVER go back in to collect for footage simply because it's just not authentic. So this was a weird break of that rule.

Cut Closing Monologue and Missed Opportunities!
The original end of the video was going to feature me giving out about how despite how fun these glitches can be, not to let them become the new norm and 'excusable' just for the sake of memes in the modern industry. It seemed quite preachy and off tone to the rest of the video, which was just light hearted fun. Plus not playing a lot of modern games, I couldn't actually name any majorly broken games... well it turns out Cyberpunk 2077 was the perfect example, but it was too late to include it in the video unfortunately! Really disappointed that I wasn't able to mention it.

Presentation and Marketing!
I'm no stranger to the glitchy sort of effects in videos but I really wanted to take my abilities to the next level for this episode, to make something really cool. I've always seen this technique done but I never had a term associated with it, so I dug some digging and learned a Datamoshing. That basically refers to the video encoder sort of blending 2 images into each other to create foreign artifacts on the video. Once I learned what this was and started researching, I found some primitive tools to help me create the effect without the use of filter effects. So this is legit done with an old encoder from the original clips, then blasted with some of my other more common glitchy types of effects.

I did my best not to go overboard but the video intro and outro were the key locations I wanted to use these effects and I'm just super happy with the end result. It's always fun learning new techniques to mess about with for future projects!
For the thumbnail, I was kind of stumped. These broader topic videos never seem to perform as well on my channel compared to others, so I needed it to be as clickable as possible. I ultimately went with the fucked face of a Sim because that's an easy target and Petronious actually helped me to complete the thumbnail with additional corrupted looking visuals. So big thanks to Pete as always, cheers mate!

Finally the video title, again it had to be eye catching. Initial plan was to replicate those fucking bullshit Tik Tok compilation titles that get millions of views 'Video Game Glitches that Cause my Depression' and other variants along those lines. I think that would have worked, however the depression word might have been flagged by YouTube... because they're cunts. Talking with a different Pete, Peter who is known online as minimme is the king of marketable titles and thumbnails, so we discussed using the much more eye catching ĝ̸̮̳̭̐̒̈́l̵̜̣̎̓̽͆ḭ̵̻̐̅̍͠t̸̠̩̟̀ͅc̶̖͈̯̈͑̓̑ͅh̶͎̩̱͛̐̐ ̶̦̝̽ẗ̸͚̟̯͈́͗̏̄e̷̺̠̒x̸̞̫͖̏̋t̷̛̝̻̓  (glitch text) in the hopes it would stand out in recommended videos. It definitely did do that and I think a lot of people really liked it. However it KILLED searchability which was a risk we decided to take, that ultimately wasn't worth it given the viewership on the episode suffered incredibly. The title was quickly changed back to a much less interesting 'Video Game Glitches' which is lame as fuck, but at least it shows up in search results now for that generic and common video search.

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That's a WRAP!
Well that's everything that went into this episode. Given it really turned out to be a major favourite of mine, I am of course devastated to see it completely dead on arrival. Not a nice way to end such a stellar year for the channel bit I do find solace in the fact that everyone who did see the video, had raving reviews! So thank you all so much!

Anyway I hope you got something out of that, always here to answer further questions if you have any. So until next time, thanks for reading and I hope you have a great fucking day. Cheers guys! 👍