MAY THE FORTH BE- damn, I missed it.
This last month I've preparing for a new NLP series, the thing intended to replace Fields of Mars - another total war series of course. It is a return to Shogun 2, the game I did my first NLP in, to do a semi-frequently requested campaign as the Otomo clan, unique because they are christian. In practice this makes everyone hate you, so basically it's a harder version of the usual game, with the added upside of getting access to those sweet, sweet western firearms. AND JEBUS OF COURSE.
I've nearly completed preparations, so will be able to get right into the series with no delay once something else finishes - will probably actually be Nariko's Treasure finishing next at the current rate. That reminds me - I'm going to start releasing NT weekly now, using the time I was using to prepare the new series, and previously was using to make tapestry of truth, to double up production and run this thing to a conclusion.
I would just make another small series in this time, but I'm very conscious that Nariko's Treasure is a very 'unprofitable' series, in that it doesn't get a very good reception for how long it takes to make an episode. So I should really close it out and move onto something more popular, basically - that's been the case for many months now really, but I wanted to actually finish the series without a drop in quality, and the end is now in sight.
On that topic, the channel has been doing notably poorly in general over the last few months, even with the boost from TIC videos. My growth rate (i.e. avg. subs gained per month - the source of all hope for a brighter future) seems to have slumped to roughly where it was about a year ago when the channel was many thousands of subs smaller and got way fewer views/watch minutes (pre TIC adding to the count). And thanks to the ad thing from the last post, we're 1 year back in terms of income too, despite double the views.
This totally sucks of course, and means that my 2017 target to reach 15000 subs at year end is now very unlikely - it will be a battle to get 13000 at current rates. I do, however, recall that in general the first half of a year is a worse time for gaming youtubers due to a sizable chunk of the audience being in higher education, or the tail end of school, meaning that exams and increased pressure at the end of the academic year distract them from their youtubing duties. FOOLS! So yeah, we may see an upturn later in the year, and hopefully going into a major new series will improve metrics as well.
Over the last couple of days I've been planning a one-shot parody NLP video - yes, that's right, I'm now parodying myself, sue me, old me. I won't say anything else about it since I might never make it, but suffice to say it will include opportunities to do the iconic voice of David Hayter as Snake.
Other news round-up: lots of new secret content being prepared for patrons, all the things we planted in to the allotment died but we've planted more things upon their corpses, and TIC is annoying me by sometimes being really funny and sometimes not (although it's probably net-funnier than it used to be so that's something).
Oh, and I've been doing a load of programming on my game project code-named 'Ice Emblem' recently. It's coming along very well and is approaching being a playable concept-demo for the basic mechanics and flow. Once that's ready I'll make a new video on it, then work on making it all actually work in a polished way, THEN try to make the thing into an actual game with content and stuff. Still a long journey, but it's been terribly educational, don't you know?
Also I wrote this blog post instead of going jogging today so I hope you appreciate the sacrifice I have made. Cya.
