Listen up, I'm the new boss of the Offy D Corp, and let me tell you, there's gonna be some changes around here. Changes of a semi-arbitrary nature, but in the great sea of youtube, that's as non-arbitrary as it gets!
This move comes after I accidentally checked the analytics this month. In October 2018 I checked them too, and found that the channel was having a bad time. My two takeaway points from the analysis were that I should a) stop This is Content, and b) make more things like Last of the Lamplight i.e. shorter fully narrative videos.
Well I did that, and here we are in October 2019, where we see that last year's declining trend has just continued on merrily.
Therefore, it's about time I tried to get some views and subscribers. How? Looking at my stuff over the last year or two, it's been the abridged commentaries that have been most successful. Even the less popular ones generate more views per real-life work-unit than my narrative videos. And of course, that means I intend to scale back the narrative projects in the near future.
Here is the new plan: go from 2 abridged commentries and 2 narratives per week, to 4 abridged commentaries and 1 narrative. I guess that's all there is to it really. What I hope to achieve is a large increase in views and comments with the abridged videos, and by running 2 different series at once (with 2 eps per week) I can cover more bases. These series' are also shorter, so I can cover more games and create more potential gateways to be discovered over time.
The only consolation for narrative fans is that I may be able to make the one narrative a week better, depending on the how the scheduling works out. My weekly production schedule is divided into 10 'sessions', which currently get divided as such:
2 - Abridged commentaries
1 - Game Dev
2 - Kings and Generals
2.5 - Writing Narratives
2.5 - Recording and Editing Narratives
Where the GameDev slot can be used as overflow for any of the others (mainly K&G). The new system could be:
4 - Abridged commentaries
1 - GameDev
2 - Kings and Generals
1.5 - Writing Narrtives
1.5 - Recording and Editing Narratives
Which would would result, in theory, in the one narrative episode being better. Or at least the over-schedule pace I've been doing recently will be more manageable.
So yeah, that's pretty much it. Going to fulfil a prophecy I think I mentioned in a blog ages ago, where the narrative projects would eventually fail. Instead, the focus of the channel will be making 'good' let's plays, and the narrative things will primarily be things that I personally want to do, rather than attempts at a main draw.
This whole thing will likely begin once Honour Amoung Kings reaches some kind of ending, which I dread because I know how anti-climactic the game is, and broadly speaking I don't really care about writing that stuff, so I don't have any bright ideas to make it good. That means of course that the Fire Margin will continue, at least until I've explored the whole map and saved the world.
Once that is done, what other narrative things are on the horizon? Up until a few weeks ago the answer would have been 'nothing at all', but with this new angle of doing what I want, rather than something I think would be popular, I have some inspiration.
One project is to play Stellaris and create something like a history book, written like non-fiction, covering the advent of interstellar travel. I have minimal experience with the game, but from what I've played there are enough little tidbits of 'things happening' even in the largely mechanical and spreadsheety gameplay that you could plausibly invent actual dramas around stuff. For example, discovering life in another solar system, while just a text box in the game, presents plenty of scope for writing an account of what the response to this was.
This same idea, by the was, was what I wanted to do with a Civilization game sometime.
Another project I've conjured up recently is to play The Forest VR. It's a VR port of a game where you survive a plane crash in some Candanian tundra, and find there are cannibal tribes and mysterious mysteries afoot. I wanted to write something from the perspective of some kind of detective, using the game's scant clues to try and work out what's going on. Using the VR perspective, the idea of investigating details works quite well I think. The game is based around trying to survive on your own in the wildnerness, so that makes it suit a introspective single-character narrative well. For some reason I imagine I would write the main character to be like Max Payne, since his little internal monologues are the sort of thing I'd like to accompany the gameplay.
All this hinges on being able to smoothly capture VR, which I haven't tried, but basically this is a project I saw inspired to do, and while it might not be what people expect, it's just what I want. After all, that's what that Frostpunk narrative was, and that went well I think.
As for the abridged things, I plan to have 2 series as I mentioned, and one will always be the 'what I think people want' slot. For example I will play rome 2 divide et impera after xcom. But the other will be the more experimental slot to try and create gateways. For example I might play something slightly different, such as XCOM-likes, city builders, or really just anything where you have some choices about what to do and can commentate on them. This should be a much better way to 'diversify' than doing narratives on niche games. Maybe.
The other thing floating around is the possibilty of livestreaming. The thing is, I'm so much of an outsider to livestreaming that I can't imagine myself doing it. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong here, but aren't livestreams a) low views b) absolute minimum possible content quality c) stressful to create? I can't shake the feeling that livestreaming being a good idea is a meme. Besides, what would I livestream? All I can plausibly do is to livestream the stuff I'm filming for abridged commentaries, which is about an hour 4 or 5 days a week. I'm not really against the idea as much as it seems, simply because it would be so easy to do that i don't mind trying it, but I do wonder if it's any good. To me, the only draw to streaming is the parasocial aspect, and I'm a horrible misanthrope who isn't terribly suited to that. Probably. I could do it if viewers let me ban them for trying to talk to me. That's a good way, right?
Oh, and some people were suggesting saving the channel with more This is Content, but like the narratives, it's just too much effort for too little return. Sounds very clinical, but that's just how it is. I would make only This if Content, and the odd narrative, if some kind of 'universal basic viewership' policy existed to prevent me caring about what works with the algo. Come on youtube, create a content utopia! Tax views from the biggest channels... somehow...
For anyone wandering, the Game Dev project is nearing beta state. It's currently alpha v9, and v10 is going to be the beta. Big changes are happening right now as the UI is overhauled. I think it's got too purple, but the lead art director tells me it's still not purple enough, so we'll just have to see how people react to it in the beta. I'll try to recruit some patrons for said beta ''''''''soon'''''''''.
Is the game good? I don't even know at this point, so beta is desperately needed to determine the way forward.
Now, for unrelated rants, in...
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WHAT I PLAYED THIS MONTH
I still haven't finished Watchdogs 2, and I can't really be bothered now. Needs more gameplay! Can't be bothered to explain, but all the missions are very samey. It has an interesting epidemic of good old LUDONARRATIVE DISSONANCE(TM). That is to say, the story portrays the protagonists as heroes, but the gameplay involves murder by the boatload, and lots of general mass destruction that seems to present a bigger problem for the city than the corporate rule you are fighting against. It's especially weird when you kill your way through security guards to get some random collectable like a new pair of jeans. Heroes of the city!
I've also been playing Beatsaber! That's the one where you hit cubes with a sword. It's pretty good. It has provided me not only with some horrible exercise, but has allowed me to finally achieve something in my useless life.
I've got loads of UK number ones 1, particularly in the arena of kpop girl bands. I will not be taking questions at this time.
The game is interesting in that the base product is almost nothing at all, and then it relies 99% on mods for its content. Isn't that kinda shady? The game is packed to the brim with stuff the devs definitely don't have the rights to, but because everything is 'user created' or what have you, I guess they get away with charging for it. Incredibly cheeky.
I also just started playing an indy VR strategy game called Final Assult last night. Can't tell if it's secretly terrible yet, but it looks good at least!
Oh, I also started playing Surviving Mars, but I'm only halfway through the tutorial. Too much damn XCOM to film to actually play something with depth.
ALSO ALSO I finally completed Dark Souls 3! Was going for the Lord of Hollows ending, got the Age of Darkness ending, which I quite like because of how comically literal it is presented - everything just goes pitch black, but the characters still talk to each other. Oh. Well, we made it dark guys. Guess this is better? Did we make a mistake?
AND THAT'S WHAT I PLAYED THIS MONTH
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Thank for read. Now return to your own world.
