EVER SINCE I LEFT THE CITY YOU - GOT A SITUATION FOR YOURSELF NOW - STARTED CARING LESS AND GOING OUT MORE - SOMETHING SOMETHING SOMETHING SOMETHING DANCE FLOOR - HANGING WHIT SOME GIRLS I NEVER SEEN BEFORE - AND MORE!
Can't type as fast as the song goes, it turns out.
So what's been happening in the challenging world of short-work weeks, flexi-time, be-your-own-bossiness and constantly wondering if everything is about to collapse and render all efforts worthless, while being bitter that current efforts aren't enough? It's YouTube indeed! It's like a more chilled version of Wall Street.
Many creators, regardless of size, seem to regularly express that they don't really know what's happening and are just treading water in the battle for relevance amid the stormy seas of analytics, memes and capital letters. If that is the case, then I guess I am enjoying some peace and quiet on the sea bed while the sediment slowly falling down from the chaos above raises me up on a miniature continental shelf that I'm sculpting.
The point of this actually pretty god-damned good analogy is that, as noted in the previous two blog entries, my main design-level challenge to putting content together is deciding what kind of crappy filler content to make. And as mentioned last time, this is spurred on by the fact that crappy filler content can not only actually be good it's own way, but performs well enough to actually make time spent on it the most productive time in my week.
It's all just a sea of questions regarding what sorts of commentary to put into them, what sorts of gameplay (and in what sorts of games) would suit it, and most time-consumingly deciding what parts of the raw recordings to actually include in videos.
Last week I did two This Is Content firsts - the same first twice to be specific, which I know is an invalid statement but the thing about that is your waifu is trash so shut up. This first was to go back and re-cut an episode I'd made to remove inferior parts, resulting in 2 Skyrim videos being merged into 1 mini-best-of episode that skipped tonnes of gameplay, and a Faster Than Light video being cut down from 35 horrible minutes to a more engaging 25.
When originally editing them I had being questioning certain sequences that didn't seem all the interesting, but I remember distinctly deciding to ignore my own doubts because 'I need content', so leaving worse bits in was a way to get more videos from the same raw material. This was combined with the thought 'people don't really care', which is something a creator of anything needs to keep in mind at all times to some extent - other people care about and notice flaws much less than you do.
But then I ended up watching (or more accurately listening to while in the bath) those videos. Would people care that there were bits with 'normal' gameplay commentary in them? - i.e. not jokes. I should probably mention for context that when recording gameplay for TIC, roughly half the time I don't commentate at all, to save my voice and energy for interesting gameplay or riffable moments that will have a chance of making the cut in the video. Sometimes though I do commentary that I know I will almost certainly cut out; generally things like discussing my plan for what I'll do in the game, the merits of some weapon over another, my planned route to and from some location, that kinda thing. I do this just to keep my head in commentary mode really, and occasionally use the comments to ease the sudden cutting from one part the game to another. The problem with the videos in question here is that they had too much of that kind of commentary, and not enough of me going 'OOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHH' and the like.
As I listened to the videos, I cracked, and went back into the editor to cut shorter, more content-rich versions. It meant that a couple of extra hours were spent that I hadn't planned on, but the resulting videos were certainly better to me. To me - yes, at least I liked them now, so I was comfortable releasing them. I haven't released the FTL one yet, maybe this weekend, but I've put the new amazingly double-edited Skyrim episode out there.
So how does the story end? I dunno, uneventfully I guess. It got a few comments - a couple being the less-welcome-than-people-probably-think questions about making other videos. Generally did slightly worse than the previous video in the series, which is how all series-based things tend to do. Nothing to report really. MY MIND, IT EXPLODES NOW wondering whether I should have just left it all as it was and had TWO generic episodes with 'some' views and a few misc. comments that don't talk about the video specifically.
'Tis a mystery that surely has vexed many an editor over the years. The youtube meta is to release as much passable trash as possible, and hope that people are lazy enough to not stop watching it. So yes, I should have gone with the spam-content method, but WWWAAAAAAHHHHHH. Can't it be different? Can't I go for likes rather than views? Pleeasse? And then when I do, can I have a magic ball that tells me what exactly it is that people like? Or shall I just ask for likes and see if anyone is feeling generous? YOUTUBE YOU ARE SUCH A SILLY.
Earlier I heard another youtuber in the tens-of-thousands of subs range talking about what he thought about his position in the channel ladder. He made content that was generally more finely edited and written than his competitors, as far as I could tell, but had mixed success. He said something I could relate to, as someone trying to do this youtube thing with a similar philosophy to him: that having the audience he had already was extremely satisfying and he was very grateful for it, but that didn't stop him feeling down when didn't get 'good comments' (i.e. meaningful comments) or get good exposure in return for his work. I was all like 'yeah man, I guess that sucks huh?'. To myself of course - wouldn't want to leave a meaningful comment.
But ya know, that's how this platform works. It's the curse of 'cult success' - it's way better than no success, but forces you to compare yourself to 'real success' which makes it seem like you've done badly. It's the same reason people in the upper class economically speaking will self-identify as middle class, just because they see that there are still rungs above them of even greater wealth, so THEY must be the upper class. I ONLY HAVE TWO PROPERTIES AND 3 MAIDS, WHILE SUPER RICH HAVE LIKE 10 TIMES MORE! DAMN FAT CATS! It's basically that which I'm absentmindedly complaining about here, but in views-and-subs currency.
Alright, I really need to edit something or something. And better keep practicing my speed typing.
SMOKE, SMOKE WEWEWEED EVERY DAY DAY, SMOKE EVERY DAY SMOKE - WE ARE NUMBER ONE, HA HA HA, NOW LOOK AT THIS NET, THAT I JUST FOUND, WHEN I SAY GO BE READY TO THROW!
