Back at it again, it's ya boi Offy-Big-D with an only somewhat schedule-missing blog post. Well, I was in Wales last week wasn't I? Not that anyone will have noticed due to my noble efforts to keep all video continuity going with all the smoothness you could ever ask for - and with a lifetime dedicated to asking, that would hypothetically be a lot.
So what's being going on at Offy-D corp recently? Well I've been making the new series Barbarian Masters, which has been going very well. It takes a bit longer to make than previous NLPs due to more edit-heavy narrative bits, but actually the main barrier to production is becoming the amount of footage it needs per episode.
In fact, that's becoming a barrier across all the current shows really. I'm making 4 concurrent total war campaigns right now - Shogun 2, Attila, Rome 2 and Medieval 2. Between all 4 I need about 10 hours of footage per week, which means playing the games for that long each week of course. And that's actually pretty annoying, since I don't like them enough to keep that up for long!
It's a unique thing to be forced to play a video game for business purposes - I'd heard from critics and the like that it really isn't as fun as you'd imagine, and I will confirm it too; being forced to play a game robs it of the fun element, to some degree anyway.
This pace of playing is the product of the pace of releases, which I've upped to the classic YouTube target of daily. I've definitely noticed an improvement in analytics coming from it: this last month has been doubly good compared to the previous one across all metrics. Cheers m8s!
The success came down a lot to the surprisingly good reception of the Medewi not-narrative campaign, which is very good since those are easier to edit, commentate and play, and take half or less of the time of something like Fields of Mars per episode. So we'll have to do more then. And I think that format - the post commentary LP or "Not terrible LP" - would apply just as well to lots of other games from other genres. There are plenty I'd like to have a go at if I ever feel brave enough to post something outside of the established genre base of the channel. Always got to have a dream!
Anyway, the real thing that matters at the end of the day is the money, unfortunately. Once that's stabilised I'll be free-er to do things for my own personal amusement. Right now I'm in the promising position of covering 75%+ of costs, which leaves the possibility that in the Christmas period I'll see my first month where the channel breaks even! (To be followed by the yearly post-christmas slump which takes away all the extra money made over christmas of course).
As mentioned, this progress is mostly down to Patreon, where more than half my income is from right now. It's a strange thing indeed, and I often wish it wasn't the case - there's something about relying on voluntary payments for something that is technically free that still feels wrong. Owing so much personally to an international band of mysterious benefactors is both cool and awkward at the same time. But that's just how it works I guess, and it is working well so I should be very far from complaining!
So, any future plans to mention? Will have to find something new for TIC soon as no idea what - working out what would be suitable for it is hard, since it needs to be something what constantly throws up new material for riffing. Total war isn't all that good in that regard, but total war things of course do well so I'll try to think of something. I'm going for a vague pattern of having 1 total war TIC series, and 1 anything-else series. Seems like a safe setup!
The other exciting news is the progress on the 'Project Ice Emblem' game, currently called 'Godless Tactics' awaiting an actual decision on naming it. It's currently in bug-fixing and polishing mode, where I play the game for a bit, find problems, and find things that would be easier if done a little differently from a user-experience perspective, and then go sort them out. Onto my fifth page of things to do so far, and plenty more will come I'm sure. But once it's all sorted, I can finally put a demo out there to show people how it works. I think it plays pretty well, and I hope others will agree!
I'll be very interested to see how it performs on other people's machines. I am a devout following of the xtreme programming mantra: "Never Optimise". I'm only 80% sure it will even run on another machine that's not mine due to various technical details of how it's programmed. Can't wait to find out!
Lots of cool new icons are being added to the game right now, courtesy of the world's greatest iconographer.
I'm tired of typing now. I need to go back to finding every species of tree on my home planet in No Man's Sky so I can get my Darwin's Expeditions fix. What, I have to eat food first? I HATE MY LIFE!!!!11111
