Production update 2023-02-06

Hello everyone!

Like I said I would, I took last week a bit lighter. Today though, I have many different things to talk about!

Minecraft video

First of all, the elephant in the room: the Minecraft video!

After a really great first day and an oddly slow next 36 hours, it's now popping off like I've rarely ever seen!

As of right now, it's looking like it's slowing back down after being relatively steady for a few days, but it's still at a healthy 2,000 views/hour. It's well on pace to crack 1,000,000 views by the time two weeks have passed. Click-through rate is still above 5%, which is quite high compared to my average, but watch time has gone down dramatically since it reached the wide Minecraft audience.

I also received dozens of comments complaining about "padding" and "stretching" the video with useless information everybody knows just so I could reach 20 minutes with it. It's frustrating to see them miss the point that no, in fact, not everyone is intimately familiar with all the mechanics of a Minecraft speedrun, but what can you do. 

I don't normally care for misplaced criticism, but it does bother me to have the one thing I really care about, which is to be as thorough and concise as possible, being questioned so much like that. I guess there are some things that I really took from an absolute base level that I could have been slightly more direct with. Starting with "What is the goal of Minecraft?" and the whole bit about how yes, Minecraft does have an ending, was probably overkill and I understand why it would put off hardcore fans of the game. 

Overall though, I am not backing down on my stance that it is a good idea to approach speedrun explanations from a casual perspective and not assume prior knowledge beyond some very base level stuff. Many of you guys have agreed with me and I am sure it is the right way to go about almost any game, except a select few outliers (Super Mario Bros., for instance).

Generally speaking, I am elated with how well the video is doing. That one criticism aside, all the comments are very positive, especially noting the clarity of explanations and editing, the finish with the satisfying final note, and the RuneTunes™ tickling the nostalgia nerves. It's exactly what I had hoped: Minecraft really does bring in the views and I gained about 5,000 subscribers in a week. A few new patrons as well! Welcome!

High school conference project

I spent some time last week thinking about this idea I had to visit high schools around my area and give a short conference to teenagers around age 14-17 about being a YouTuber and working with social media in general. I drafted a document of notes on the topic and wrote about two and a half pages. I'd aim for about 30-45 minutes + questions. I'm pretty satisfied with the direction I took things, and how it's shaping up. I haven't yet directly contacted any school, but I'm feeling more and more ready to pitch the idea.

I want to start with the good: how fun creating something you're passionate about can be, how and why you get paid, how to have success, the creative process and useful fields of study. Then I get into the serious stuff: the pitfalls and challenges of working entirely independently, and some risks involved with the job. I don't want to bore you with the details, but that's the rough outline of how I want to structure it.

Minecraft and RuneScape music

I also decided to switch up what I was doing for music releases and stagger them a bit instead of throwing them all out in a bunch around the time I released the next video. So I put out an announcement with a schedule of releases. Two per week, on Mondays and Thursdays. If you missed it, here's the schedule.

There's a good chance that this is how I do it from now on.

Next video

And now, the question on everybody's minds: what's the next video about?

Last week I said I didn't know and I needed to think about it. Well, I thought about it. I initially gathered about 12 runs, not too sure which one I wanted to do among them. I must say I went to bed that night feeling unmotivated, like none of them was really appealing to me. The next day though, that changed really quickly - I narrowed it down to a handful, and suddenly, I sort of wanted to do all of them at once. I eventually picked Super Mario World 11 Exit in 9:42.983 by Tsuake!

Tsuake is a Japanese runner who isn't very comfortable in English, but he did already know me and is happy I'm making a video on the run. He gave me some helpful notes, and I gathered a stacked team of SMW experts to help me out with the technical explanations, the fact checking, the small mistakes and possible improvements, all that stuff. I went a little harder on the help team than usual, mostly because I'm not very familiar with SMW to begin with, and I'm going pretty deep in some corners like explaining the cloud glitch.

In that process of finding people to help me out, I gained a whole lot of excitement for this project. I am now feeling very motivated to get this going! I also found out about a sweet coincidence that I hope will be a nice surprise for fans of technical explanations. Maybe I'll reveal what it is later down the line!

Progression and schedule

Now, as far as progress and a production schedule goes, I'm not quite at that point yet. Today was my first real day at work on the script: I made a full outline (a list of talking points) last week and wrote some weak intro, but today I really dug in and got into the thick of the cloud glitch explanation. I'm not entirely satisfied with it as I think I could cut down a little bit on the details, but I'm gonna give it a fresh read on another day to decide on that.

I'm not quite at the point where I can make a production schedule that I know will be accurate, simply because so little of the script has been written. I've gone through 3/25 talking points, but two of those are by far the most complex two in the whole script. It's not really useful information yet, but here's how the progress is looking:

The length and completion date are complete shots in the dark that are essentially just placeholders for now, so basically we're just looking at "I wrote 1500 words so far". Like I said, I'm hoping to cut that part down to maybe 1200, but we'll see how I feel about it in a few days. I am generally aiming at 25-30 minutes (5k-6k words) + the length of the run, so a 35-40 minute video. I'm also generally aiming at a mid-March release.

Even though I'm not ready to make a proper schedule, my goal this week is very clear, and perhaps ambitious: I want to write the full script by the end of the week, and fully polish the first couple of pages so I can be ready to start recording by Friday. It's especially ambitious given that tomorrow (technically today as I write this!) is my 30th birthday, and I am taking the day off! This leaves me three days to finish and polish the script. I'm confident I can do it.

Sponsorships and agency

In other news, in recent months, I have been more and more convinced that I should give in and accept sponsorship deals in my videos. While I do pride myself on the quality of my work and I put a lot of value on my videos being "pure" of sponsors and all the other YouTuber™ stuff like "Like and subscribe! Check out my Patreon! Join the Bismuth club!", I weighed the pros and the cons and I think the pros outweigh the cons. 

The truth is very simple: sponsorships are a very good deal. They can nearly double the income that YouTube provides. People understand that it's a big chunk of what keeps their favourite YouTuber well fed, and so the public sort of expects videos to be sponsored and they don't care. At the same time, people might simply not notice that a particular YouTuber never has any sponsors, because it's not always easy to pick up that something is missing when you don't pay a whole lot of attention to it in the first place. In the end, I'm sure a large portion of my viewer base never really noticed that my videos had no sponsorships, and I'm sure some portion won't notice if they start being sponsored either. And those who do notice, won't care either way for the most part.

All this to say: it's worth it. Doubling the YouTube income for a very minor impact on the video itself, that is a very good deal that is hard to pass up. I've said it a few times over the years: I am aiming to provide a financially sound and stable life for my girlfriend and myself. We want to own our own home, and our current income doesn't allow for it. 

So, I contacted a talent agency and after some back and forth last week, they are taking me on! It's Clover Talent, they are mostly geared towards Rocket League - they have some pro players under their wing and many YouTubers, but they also have OSRS YouTubers and speedrunners. In fact, Summoning Salt recommended that agency to me.

I am so thankful that I get to do this full time at all, and I'm so glad I'm actually able to seriously aim for this goal by making videos about speedrunning games I love. I'm very hopeful that 2023 is the year that brings this dream to reality. So far, things are looking up, and that motivates me to work harder and better than ever. So, I'll see you next week, hopefully with more great news!