August Update (Patreon)

Hello you exceptionally exceptional Patreon People!

I hope that all of you are doing wonderful, that a lot of good things will happen to you next week and that all traffic lights will immediately turn green as soon as you get close to them for the rest of your life!

The “The Thousand Year Door” video is out and I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.

The third chapter of the video had me a bit nervous but apparently we managed to discuss those topics without making anyone extremely mad which is good! Unexpected but good!

The views on the video however, have been pretty slow, which has me worried.

The last couple of videos on the channel all have been reaching less and less people which is especially worrisome since the videos were about Zelda or Mario and not some little known Indie games.

The channel just hasn’t seen any kind of significant growth for months now - if anything I’m losing reach.

The way I’m currently approaching those videos just isn’t working for the algorithm and I have to react to this in some way.

Basically if what I’m doing isn’t working I have to change my approach!

So as I see it the major problem that the channel faces on YouTube is that it takes me too long to produce those videos.

The channel just regularly goes for too long without a new video, which means every bit of momentum that a good performing video may build is already lost by the time the next video comes out.

To make matters even worse a single bad performing video can completely kill all momentum the channel has and basically set me back to zero.

I really need to get more content out there to feed the all devouring big algorithmical maw.

Here’s the problem - I just can’t produce videos of this quality and length any quicker.

I do however also not want to completely abandon the current format, because I really like it and I think there are certain things that can only be discussed by taking the time and by taking a look at a game in its entirety.

So how to solve this little mess?
Well, the answer is kind of obvious isn’t it.

It is to do smaller videos in between the big ones.

I think the long videos focusing on a single game work best when we are mainly exploring what a game is thematically about but when discussing game design or other trends in games it’s probably possible to switch to a smaller format without losing anything.

So here’s roughly what I intend on doing.

Going forward I plan on doing one or two smaller videos in between the big videos we’ve been doing so far.

The large videos will be reserved for games that are either thematically or for another reason really interesting. 

In between those videos we will do one of two things.

We will either do smaller videos about newer games that discuss a couple of interesting aspects of the game without dissecting the game in its entirety. (Something like: “Three thoughts on Princess Peach Showtime.”)

Or we will discuss more abstract trends that are going on in the wild world of gaming and maybe even a bit beyond. 

Here’s an incomplete list of some of the things that I’d like to tackle in no particular order - just to give you an idea on what to expect.

• a meta-analysis of why every big game release is overshadowed by some drama, 

• a meta-analysis of the academization of game design and how it may actually be hurting triple A games,

• a big analysis of the state of the gaming industry as a whole,

• a deep dive in how the gaming industry historically evolved in comparison to the movie industry,

• a deep dive into the YouTube algorithm and how algorithms and by extension AI are shaping our discourses in the gaming space (and beyond).

I should be able to produce such videos in roughly three weeks which should allow me to get more videos out while still being able to do long form analysis for the most interesting games.

Switching to a smaller format every once in a while also allows me to circumvent a couple of other problems that the current format has.

First, people are much more likely to check out a twenty minute video by a channel they are not familiar with than a video the length of a feature film.

Second, those long retrospectives are notoriously difficult to package into a nice and clickable thumbnail and title. You know, it’s much easier to find an interesting angle for a video that asks a single question than for “Paper Mario in its entirety.”

Third, the long form content also has the problem of spoiling the entire game, something that we don’t have to do if we just discuss a single question.

Fourth and final - it also makes a lot of sense for some topics to be their own videos.
You know, the third chapter of the Paper Mario video is essentially its own thing hidden within a Paper Mario video. Just imagine someone wants to share this part of the video with someone else. They somehow have to explain why a discussion about feminist media critique that leads to a point about how the age rating boards got more conservative is hidden in a crime case within a Paper Mario video.

Which, while admittedly hilarious, isn’t optimal.

With all of this being said it’s not all doom and gloom.

The good news is that the long videos tend to have really long legs even if they may not have been that successful at release.

The Outer Wilds and the Elden Ring video both recovered somewhat and will probably crack the 100k view mark at some point in the future, the Majora’s Mask video and the Wind Waker video are still pulling a good amount of traffic and the Bloodborne video somehow sneakily became one of my more successful videos by just continuously getting a bit of traffic.

I think what had happened with those videos is that the communities of those games just picked the videos up after a while - which is great and certainly reason enough not to completely drop the format.

Finally: the sidequest videos and patreon only content.

I sadly have to hit the pause button on the sidequest videos for a bit.

Getting this whole YouTube mess sorted out is priority number one until all of this is sustainable - for the moment I just need to focus my time and energy on getting as much content out there as possible.

With that being said I still plan to let you wonderful people vote on which topics we are going to discuss - the videos will just be on the perspective channel instead of exclusively on patreon (and they’ll have significantly better editing).

I do however hope to return back to the format as soon as things have settled a bit. For the time being I have some different form of patreon only content planned - more information on that soon!

Finally - while things may be a bit frustrating at times I’m honestly still pretty optimistic.

The videos themselves are great (in my totally unbiased onion) and I’m sure there is a broader audience out there that would be interested in them. 

It’s just a matter of showing up every week and putting in the hours - eventually the algorithm will pick them up.

I just have to grind it out.

Awesome!

The next video will be about Celeste and I’m cautiously optimistic that the wait for it will be shorter than for the Paper Mario video (that is if I don’t break my switch in desperation trying to make it past 7C-3) and afterwards we will give the new format a try.

Finally-finally, a huge and gigantic thank you for your generous support.
Your support is unironically the main thing that is currently keeping the candle burning.

A gigantic thank you for this!