Why don't I actually write a little about the actual work I've been doing this month? Because no one cares you say? Well... I...
Okay I'm done crying now. Let's get into the meat of things. This month I've been preparing the first releases for my new Shogun 2 Total War NLP, Barbarian Masters, as announced a couple of blogs back. I wanted to experiment with a slightly different style, one that draws a little from the Nariko's Treasure style in the form of heads and words appearing during narrative bits. But more novelly, having some of the narrative be less of a cut-away, with gameplay footage actually continuing during the narrative. Hopefully this will make it seem like the episode flows better.
That said, the actual examples of this in the first episode are actually quite bad imo, mainly because I read them weirdly for some reason. Doesn't sound all that good, but its YT, so WHO CARES RITE?! I think it will be a better style to go with overall though.
Also this month I made this 5 year retrospective podcast thing, which will be out in 2 days. Since it isn't out yet, I can't tell you whether it really has anything good in it - I can't judge it much myself, since I already know the story of the channel, making it seem rather less interesting to me! But you never know, maybe someone will find it enlightening. I realised I forgot to do some classic radio EQ on the voiceover, which would have made it easier to listen for an hour +. Spoiler: Just increase the bass spectrum by like 3 decibels. No idea why all radio stations seem to do this. Makes you sound a bit more manly, hooray!
Now, with Nariko's Treasure now behind me, I have had lots of extra time, in which I'm starting this new series that I have taken to calling 'Abridged Gameplay & Commentary'. It's basically an NLP with no N, so a post-commentary edited LP. Or more simply, the 'good' version of the generic LP style, which is still mysteriously quite rare. So that started yesterday, and people seemed to like it, so I hope to put a couple out a week. Along with TIC, which could allow for daily releases, the much recommended practice for YT.
I hope that this, combined with the new NLP, will usher in a glorious second half for 2017, which has been bad so far, as previously ranted about. Already just this week things week to have mysteriously picked up, even before I really started with the new stuff - I think Nariko's Treasure was just cursed, so it being over is bringing back my good fortune from last year. Possibly making the channel be more focused on TW in the eyes of the algorithm helps? So many mysteries that we cannot solve. Summer holidays start this week, so the younglings might get more on board now, although as I might have mentioned before, YT audiences tend to secretly be 20s or above despite the widespread assumption they are children. Same thing with games where its actually 40s+ women dominating the markets and people just ignore it. Kids are loud I guess. I'm sure 90% of comments actually come from the lower end of the age range, so they have a loud YT presence at least.
So yes, we're going to be optimistic for at least the next month as we see if we can get this thing back on track. And I use 'we' in the scientific tradition of referring to yourself as a pural entity. Sounds somehow more authoritative if you pretend that your view is actually the view of multiple people, right?
I don't really need to blog this month since I did a news video, right?! Can't you just let me off? Hopefully things will crash again and I can do a nice long sad rant next month.
Ooo one rant I can do is about something I noticed going on earlier - big YTer Angry Joe got mad at his audience for constantly requesting that he focus on his higher-production value reviews, rather than vlogs or live reviews etc. I sympathised with his argument that people just didn't understand how hard it was to make produced videos rather than generic trash ones, since that's basically the same defence for This Is Content!
He may also, like me, have the problem of wanting to please audiences. This makes constant requests for things that you can't deliver quite depressing over time, as it feels like you're always letting people down. And of course there's that classic psychological effect that plagues small arty business types, which is that a single negative comment has orders of magnitude more impact than a buttload of positive ones, and kind of ruins everything. That's probably what riled Joe up over the years, and I feel like I can empathise there.
Really I think people were annoyed at him for going on a mad rant against his viewers, despite most not being involved in the requests. All I can say about that is that his channel is called 'Angry Joe' and he is famous for going on mad rants, so I don't know what people expected.
Anyway, let's leave it at that for now. More videos come soon, so I'll see you there, desu nee? ^_^
