Channel Update #34 (Apr)

Hello,

Just a quick update I guess. There’s a new video on the main channel, which is the first of four videos on gaming history and will be about 6 hours long in total. This is a topic I’ve thought about covering for a while and it seemed a good time. I particularly wanted to connect the past with the present, as most attempts at covering the topic tend to only focus on early history, or take an incredibly positive and optimistic stance on modern stuff, as if the gaming industry is the most amazing thing ever and games have, and will, continue to get better and better every year. So instead I wanted to cover everything in an interconnected way, and with a more realistic tone. I also wanted to put more focus on games and game design, and less focus on technology and people, because those usually seem to be the most focused on and least interesting parts to me. Anyway it’s been an enjoyable project to work on.

Progress has already started on the other three videos as I wrote the script of all of them consecutively. I’ve basically been working continuously since the pathfinder video and I’ve got an impressive amount done. It might be the most productive period I’ve had since the channel began actually, as usually I’m slowed by the need to play certain games.

Unfortunately the new video is so far doing terribly, which does somewhat sour things a bit. Low views, bad click through rate, bad watch time, all of which does suggest I might have fucked up somehow. It’s strange, the quality of the video seemed really good to me, but maybe I’m missing something, or maybe it’s just a bad subject. It’s still early, so maybe it will perform better over time, and regardless I’m already part way done with the next videos so there’s not much I can do but continue forward and finish them. If all of them perform badly I guess I can try to figure out why afterwards and try to learn from the experience, but beyond that I’m not sure what else there is to do about it. 

It does feel a little like I’ve spent the last year moving from one failure to the next, with the size of the failure gradually increasing as I go. And that’s not a great feeling, but oh well. The irony is there was one period in the last year when the channel did really well, which was last January; a month where I did nothing yet had by far the highest views/subs/money. Still maybe things will turn around… some day. Regardless there’s not much I can do outside of working hard, and as I’m already doing that, I guess I just keep moving forward. I do think I’m getting better at accepting failure as a result of all this, learning through experience and so on. So hey, that’s nice.