You probably thought I was dead, seeing as I forgot to blog for like 4 months. You were right, but now I'm back to write again about the thrilling tales of the OffyD corporation. Strap in as I try and remember if anything cool happened, and probably trail off to rant about things.
I can't remember where things were when I last wrote a blog, but I think it might have been before I split my channel into 2! The OffyD Corp continues its global expansion with the creation of the Game World Narratives channel, which is a spot I will dedicate to my audio fanfiction projects. I'd been considering making this split for a long time, years even, but I was finally pushed into doing it by two things.
First was the eternal battle with youtube analytics, in which I noticed that most of my narrative videos didn't get many 'impressions' e.g. youtube wasn't trying to distribute them. I wondered if this could be because my channel is more prominently just a gameplay commentary one, so the algo latches onto that more. Splitting the same content into two channels might improve the algo's focus on both seperately, I thought.
This was pushed futher by the second factor, which was a podcast, that I believe one of my patrons showed me, in which Arin Hanson of internet fame was talking to ProZD of internet fame. They happened to talk about ProZD considering making a channel for board game reviews, or something, and Arin seemed extremely sure that this would be much better than keeping them on an existing channel. Well, Arin's been on the internet a long time, and likely has more contact with youtube themselves thanks to his status, so I decided to consider his algorithm insights gospel.
Therefore, I now have two channels! This is actually part of the reason I haven't blogged recently, as I've been constantly overrunning my schedule due to sometimes making extra videos for the new channel. In fact I'm meant to be making one of those RIGHT NOW but I decided to finally actually add something to the blog just so I can forget about it again for a while. Annoying having all these auxiliary tasks waiting on the backburner!
Now let's do a conspiracy theory. On my main channel, I always wonder if the fact that it has a history of videos full of swearing and general demonitisation potential reflects poorly on newer videos; like the algo automatically weights them less because new videos are coming from a channel where older videos are also weighted less. A possible hint in that direction comes from Game World Narratives. I recently got enough watch-hours to be approved for monitisation on there, and strangely I found I had fewer rules to abide by.
To explain, normally when I upload to my main channel I have to go through a list of possible monitisation infractions and tick boxes to indicate which things my videos contain, or tick a thing promising it doesn't contain any. Usually this just means saying it contains 'violence' in the mild sense, which is allowed as long as you indicate it. On Game World Narratives though, which sometimes also contains violence, I am allowed to monitise without going through that extra process. This all makes me wonder if my main channel is on youtube's naughty list. Obviously there is no way to actually find out as youtube support works in ways as mysterious as the holy algorithm itself. Therefore, let's just say there's a conspiracy against me, and blame all the years of mediocrity on that. Huzzah!
On the topic of narratives, I have also finished my Fire Margin real life book edition! Can't remember if I already wrote about it, but it totally exists. Apparently I've actually sold 50 copies of it, which is about 5 times more than I expected! So there you go, there are 50 copies of this extremely rare legendary book out there in the world, and I imagine they will be worth far more than their considerable weight in gold by the end of this century. There's also a spelling mistake on one of the very first pages that because of how the self-publishing thing works would now be a massive hassle to correct, so it's staying in there. It's a character name too. First person to email me telling me what it was gets... err... a mention on an internet blog?
The next book, which is a combination of The Promised Crown and Last of the Lamplight, is in the works. Like this blog it is constantly not getting worked on due to other things overflowing. One big thing I have done in The Promised Crown is painstakingly change some character names so that fewer people are called William and Robert. For example, the main character, Robert, had a dad called William, a brother called William, a marshal called Robert, a vassal called William, and a son called Robert. Blame history, people used to think names were magic links to other people and stuff. I have almost certainly missed some instances or changed the wrong ones to the wrong things, but I tried. Implementing post-proof reading changes on Last of the Lamplight is the next job there, which at the current pace will probably be done... this year. Then I'll be creating a combination of Honour Among Kings and For Them, Forever, which will be a nice hefty tome!
Also the topic of merch, Godless Tactics recently passed 1700 sales, and seems to pretty reliably get 1 sale per day somehow. It will 'go gold' with one million sales in the year 4756, at this rate. Can't wait! One day I will make a campaign with it on my channel, maybe for its one year anniversary or something. Recently I have been craving another game making project, although I've nowhere near the time for it anymore.
I've actually spent an increasing amount of time on Kings of General projects, because of the gradual creep from 2 videos per week to 3, and the creep from 2000 words to 3000 words as the standard length. You would think that doing a 3000 word recording takes about 50% longer than a 2000 word one, but in reality it's more than that as I find I can only reliably talk loudly/clearly for about 1000 words before my voice starts weakening; the further into the script I get the more takes I do to get decent lines. It's probably because half the time when I'm not recording K&G I'm just recording something else. My poor vocal chords. It's lucky I refuse to talk to people in real life or they'd never get a break.
Oh, I also did the voiceover for the english tutorials in some online banking app that I forget the name of, and I am the voice of the 'Space Race' presentation in an estonian planetarium. Weird, I'd forgotten I did those things, just came back to me. Got another mysterious voiceover project in the works actually, might be able to talk about next time, it's a secret for now! Plus I may appear in even MORE K&G things later this year, so fans of both history and my voice are in for a superior 2021. If you're wondering, I have no idea how I ended up doing those side projects, people just asked me out of the blue after getting my email address from somewhere or other. So, if you want me to voice something for you, better email, I'll probably do it! If you want a clue about finding out how to email me, you're on the right website already. Good luck.
Anything else happen recently? Christmas stuff... I bought myself both Breath of the Wild and Hyrule Warriors Age of Calamity on the Switch. And I bought myself a TV to play them on. Might play them! I also played Death Stranding, and thought it was pretty good, and I'm currently playing Persona 5, and think it's pretty good.
Damn I forgot to rant about the youtube community posts bug things. Well I gotta go and actually do things now, so I'll write about it in the Godless tactics 1mil celebration post in just 2735 years. See you then!
By the way, following on from that new york times pic I posted earlier, here is my ff14 character. I'll let you know the results next time.
