A Post-Mortem of the EVE Online Release

It has now been a week since the release of the new Down the Rabbit Hole on EVE Online, and since then, it has accrued nearly two million views. The only video that has accrued more views in the same amount of time in the channel's history is the video on WingsofRedemption, and not by much, but the watch time has a much wider gulf, as is perhaps to be expected, with the EVE video having 1.3x the watch time.

But what is more meaningful to me is the reception by the EVE community. EVE players are notoriously critical, but the wide consensus that I have received from veteran players, both in the comments and in DMs, is overwhelming positivity. Obviously there are small errors, as is perhaps to be expected with such a behemoth, but the feedback I've received is that none of them are terribly egregious and don't harm the video as a whole to any great degree. Some EVE vets mentioned in the video also messaged me to thank me for it.

Viewers unfamiliar with the topic also seem largely taken by it. Of course, some people find the topic uninteresting or the presentation too dry, but I have no intention of appealing to everyone. Along with this, the video has apparently had a positive effect on player numbers; according to information given to me by my contacts at CCP, new player signups are up significantly, and according to "MMO Populations"'s numbers, daily players after the video release jumped by 100,000, from 180,000 to 280,000, and this number has held over the past week. Usually, I seek to have as little impact on my subject as possible, but in this case, I'm happy that people are discovering the game.

Strangely enough, despite airing out a massive amount of CCP's dirty laundry, they also are extremely happy with the video, and even went so far as to feature a link to the video in EVE's launcher. Their positive attitude isn't terribly surprising to me, though, given that they're a company who has historically taken criticism on the chin.

While both I and my team are ecstatic at the reception, there's one thing on which we all agree: none of us want to do something this massive again, at least not for some time and only after we've refined our work pipeline. Rather, we want to cover smaller topics and keep the video length to less than two hours long. While I'm flattered at the kindness people have shown after the release, this is not a release cycle that we wish to maintain.

While I, Ryan, and Arcaxon will be sitting down together to review what went wrong next week with the benefit of hindsight and will be writing a document going over what we did wrong, one of the major problems that I experienced was burnout. I'll be taking another week to rest and catch up on other work and self-care that has fallen by the wayside, but when I return, I'll be establishing a healthier work schedule that includes days off and cutoff times for work; historically, I've only taken days off sporadically and worked until I went to sleep. The first four years of production on the series were characterized by having few things in my life outside of working on Down the Rabbit Hole, and work even during burnout followed a similar pattern. This isn't sustainable, and I want to keep making Down the Rabbit Hole into the foreseeable future.

For now, though, I'm going to rest; the stress of the last two years finally fell off of me on Sunday, and I'm exhausted. But you'll be hearing from me and the rest of the team soon, and deliberation about the next topic has already begun.

-Fredrik