Channel Update #40 (Nov)

Hello,

I have returned from the land of the rising sun but I have not brought a new video with me. Anyway, the trip was good but it’s the new video part I am going to talk about today. As of writing this I am in video limbo so to speak, so I thought this might be a good time to give an update while I walk you through my current thought process. To summarize however: I’m not sure what the next video will be but I’m hoping to decide between four different options in the next day or two. To explain more I need to talk about the options:

1. A big Final Fantasy Spinoffs video. The premise was meant to be quick reviews of every single spinoff, while exploring the broader topics of preserving a franchise and what makes a good or bad spinoff. Final Fantasy is rich in bad spinoffs, but it also has some really weird entries, and even some good games, meaning there is lots to talk about. Maybe too much, and that is the real problem. There are just so many spinoffs that covering all of them is really difficult, even with shortcuts like not completing every game. Shortcuts do make sense as I‘ve completed some games before and some just really aren’t that important, but even still there is just so much to cover.

Anyway this is what I started on after getting back from Japan but after about 9 days of playing final fantasy spinoffs I sort of lost confidence in the project. I started to think this is just too much work and that, just like the mainline final fantasy video, it will take longer than I expect, and that the world doesn’t need or care about some big youtube video talking about every single final fantasy spinoff, and that this is a topic that only interests me and the time required just won’t be worth the end result etc. So I temporarily stopped playing FF spinoffs to consider other options….

2. Warhammer 40k Rogue Trader, leading into a bigger Warhammer 40k video. I’ll talk about the bigger video first. I like 40k; it’s a great setting and I have some history with it, but the world of 40k video games is kind of a mess. On the one hand, that means creating a big video on the subject is difficult, but on the other hand, that might also be why a big video could be good. Here’s the premise:

The video explains why 40k is such an interesting setting (it is!), then explains the confusing state of 40k games (lots of very different games, mixed quality, connection to other media/tabletop game), then the video would claim that 40k video games are actually quite a good way to get into 40k or just something that doesn’t require any other knowledge, then finally it would cover what I think are the 10 best 40k games in short reviews. Overall its quite a big topic and involves quite a lot of work, but I think it would be worth it overall and this is a video I’ve been thinking about for a while that I figured I’d try to make around the release of either Rogue Trader or Space Marine 2.

Things get more complicated however as after pausing my final fantasy spinoff playing I noticed that I had an offer relating to Rogue Trader in my emails about a sponsored dedicated video. Usually I wouldn’t even consider dedicated videos (and recently I haven’t been paying attention to sponsor offers anyway) but if there was ever a game worth considering it would be this. Rogue Trader is a crpg from Owlcat, developer of Pathfinder Kingmaker etc., so it’s a ‘video worthy’ game for me, but sponsored videos are still weird. It’s different to just a 90sec sponsor segment. A sponsored video is always going to be at least partly biased and I’m not sure how most people view the subject. But dedicated videos are also (supposedly) meant to pay a lot more than normal sponsor segments, and part of me thinks that if I was going to play and talk about this game already in a short review, then maybe taking that work I would already be doing and separating it into its own video, that could act almost as a prologue for the big 40k video, maybe isn’t the worst idea.

So I sent an email asking for more details on the fine print… while I consider my options. I’d then also need to negotiate a fee, of which they might try to low ball me (it’s a third party marketer, not Owlcat themselves), and I never accept less than market rate for sponsorships out of principle anyway. So this is a complicated option. I also have no idea what the market rate actually is for a dedicated video. I barely understood what it was for normal sponsorships for that matter, but there is a number that would make me say yes. I don’t like sponsorships but money is valuable; it provides me with more creative freedom and less stress in the long term. So I'll see what they say when they get back to me.

3. The Obsession with Bad Games (working title). This is a video I do want to make, but originally I was thinking it would work well at the end of the year (so the video after next, although the end of year is rapidly approaching). Anyway the premise is this:

2023 has been a good year for video games by objective metrics, and yet there also seems to have been more claims of gaming dying or declining than ever before while bad games and negative stories seem to dominate the media. This makes for an interesting dichotomy that’s worth talking about. Then I’d look at 2023 in bad games, and the two types of bad games, i.e. really bad games that get loads of attention (Gollum) and not objectively terrible games that still manage to disappoint people (Diablo 4, starfield, ff16). Then look at the relationship between the internet/media creation with both negativity and video games. Then look at a history of bad games: worst games of all time, famous examples, controversies, changes over time etc., going all the way back to the 70s and 80s. And then finally some conclusion about everything/what I’ve learned.

I’ll be honest, I don’t know what the conclusion will be yet because I haven’t done the research, but I feel confident I’ll have something good to say. This is a topic with depth, and it feels very ‘me’. The internet really is obsessed with bad video games, going all the way back to the early days of the angry video game nerd and people he inspired, and bad video games really do have an interesting history, going all the way back to at least pacman and ET on Atari and the collapse of the entire American gaming industry. And if this all feels interesting to me, surely it will make for an interesting video. That’s how making videos works… I think. Anyway I was thinking this would be the video after next but it could be bumped up a spot, and this video wouldn’t require lengthy game playing before starting.

4. Baldur’s Gate (1, 2 and then 3). I’ll be honest. This is the sensible option, but for some reason I’m not really feeling it right now. That might be because I can’t visualize exactly what I would say to make a video feel really worthwhile and I’m not sure what I have to say which hasn’t already been said. The thing is though, it makes sense that I’d be unsure of that stuff because I haven’t sat down to play the games/make notes/write the script yet. I find good ideas tend to come to you after you start working, not before, and that applies to making gaming videos and other things. Despite that however, I’m still not really feeling Baldurs Gate right now and passion is important. BG1 and 2 are really important games to me, so I’m sure I’ll cover them eventually, but maybe not now.

So in conclusion… I’m not sure what I’m doing. I’ll make a decision soon though because I want to get started on something at least. I dislike having free time and not being able to enjoy it because I feel I should be working, so these days where I’m not doing much just end up feeling wasted.

Japan was nice though. I’ll probably go back next year. If I didn’t own a cat I really would be tempted to buy a laptop and move their temporarily, just for a month or two, or three, to just live there for a bit while working with some traveling on the side. I even found an apartment already and that plan just feels right right now. Still, I do own a cat… which is strange. Why do I have a cat?