2018 Year in Review and Plans Going Forward (Patreon)

Long post warning. 

TL;DR A lot happened this year, and I've got a framework for videos going forward at the bottom.

I can safely say I didn't expect so much to change so quickly in a few months. Compared to this time last year I'm now living somewhere else with a very different schedule and very different priorities. I don't think I could've foreseen. Saying "I didn't see this coming" would be putting it far too lightly, so now that the year is about to end I'll do a recap of what happened in slightly more detail behind the scenes, and also have a section talking about the upcoming plans. You can skip to that from the header.

Year in Review

My "video break" in the beginning of the year lasted longer than I thought it would. I had initially planned to just take January and part of February off, but Fire Warrior ended up taking much longer than I thought it would. I've harped on this before, but something that keeps surprising me is how constantly time put into game =/= length of the video. Playing Aurora 4x took well over a month simply because there was so god damn much to learn about it. I was constantly having to try and look things up to figure out how to do some of the most basic actions, and the depth the game was going to seemed endless. To top it off, the game looked horrible visually since it was resembling a database program over a video game, and I was worried that YouTube's bitrate would end up obscuring a lot of the text since so much of it was tiny. I made and scrapped about two different versions of that video, since it was starting to become a step by step guide in one version, but the other was too vague to give an accurate look at it, so the final version became a middle ground between both only clocking in at around 16 minutes. Fire Warrior was a game I played through almost twice to check how the aiming systems made a difference (the default autoaim was better as I eventually said), though I also had to consider that there were people watching the channel who didn't have a clue what the hell Warhammer 40K was. You would think that with the games I'd usually cover that'd be a non-issue, but I had a surprising amount of messages about other Warhammer games that said something to the likes of "maybe you'll help me finally understand what the fuck Warhammer 40K is". That segment ended up being a lot of fun to make, but it does take a while to get the direction I'm going to go in figured out. I've accepted that I'll never be able to predict how long a video will be based on the game, and I'm always trying to edit them down anyways to remain concise and avoid rambling too much (unlike this post).

A few months after that video and some others, I had to move for a variety of reasons. It was also important to note that the current place wasn't something I wanted to renew, and there were a lot other places being built that were both cheaper and better constructed to attract new tenants, so I might not have stayed regardless. At first I was looking at the location, since ideally I wanted to still be close to the freeway to commute to the city for work, but then I realized there was something else I could do with it. In 2017 YouTube videos had practically been a second job without the pay of one, as I was uploading about every 2-3 weeks on average while also juggling everything else. It was a blast, but I was actually in some of the worst possible conditions for doing it workspace wise. I didn't have any carpeting in the recording area, and anywhere in my place that did had far too much echo and was a pain in the ass to do when I tried it. My setup was essentially throwing blankets on the floor and myself, buying some cheap foam off of Amazon to shove in the corners, and upgrading audio equipment from used Ebay stuff throughout the year. The keyboard tray on the desk was also falling apart, along with my near decade old chair, and it got to the point where I was having to redo a lot of audio just from furniture creaking when I'd barely shift in my chair during a take. To add an extra layer of annoyance, I had been using a single 256GB SSD drive (I can hear fellow editors screaming) for the games, my regular documents, video recordings, project files, everything. I was usually having to juggle around a lot of stuff onto flash drives before rendering anything because I had so little free space. 

While I thought of getting external drives and other ways to expand media, I had seen some horror stories happen to the point where I didn't want to be upgrading anything or plugging anything new in from the fear it could zap whatever I already had. You really haven't lived until you've seen someone plug in a USB external drive that shorts out their main one for reasons I still don't understand. With uploading so frequently, I knew I couldn't really take time away to restructure all of that. I eventually took some time off at the end of 2017 to upgrade the motherboard, CPU, and finally get more space, and the result was a godsend even though the audio issues were still a constant hamper. So the move was an opportunity to finally "fix everything".

In a new place, I could have a room entirely dedicated to recording and editing work. It probably sounds silly, but just the idea of not having to work in the same room that I sleep sounded great. I was already doing that for college and "the real jobs" before, so having walls to separate it off was really appealing. Of course this would mean getting a place that had more bedrooms to convert one into being the office, which of course meant more money per month on rent and utilities for it. Ideally I would be able to cover this in YouTube Money™, but it's incredibly unreliable. I still have videos that Skittles rightfully doesn't want to advertise on, and I have no idea how a video will perform based on the title. For example, the latest video on Pathologic, an obscure Russian philosophy and suffering simulator, was the most attention a video of mine has ever gotten in such a short time period. I had predicted the exact opposite, so I'm not good at projections. 

Anyways, this was happening in May, only two months after I had been uploading again, and five months after I said I didn't want to open any crowdfunding avenues because I didn't think I had the time to justify it. It was one of the worst possible times to open it. It would've made a lot more sense to open it after a string of consistently uploading for a long time. I was already making a major life change by moving somewhere else, and had the opportunity to restructure a lot. This would mean making video stuff more of a focus, but the results of it were a ways off since I couldn't just shift job priorities and other aspects in a week or two. So now I was in the awful position of saying "You know how I just said I don't have time? Well now I can make time, but you won't see the results for a while because I have to see how this goes ahead of time". Leading up to the video announcing it was pretty damn stressful, and when I finally got it completed I hit the bottle pretty hard and then realized I hadn't made the thumbnail yet. A lot of people asked about that thumbnail since it was so . . . odd, and my rum brain had ordered it under the logic of "P for Patreon, P for Predator!".

I didn't think it'd go over that well.

Most of the successful Patreons I'd seen (and some I'd backed) over the months had lots to offer. Exclusive FAQs, special videos, secret streams, lots of goodies. There's nothing wrong with that, but I realized that most of what people were monetizing like "video suggestions and answering your emails" were already something I was doing for free and I sure as hell wasn't going to cut that off. I had, and still have, very little to offer in that department. What made sense to me was to give periodic frequent updates with what was happening since I figured that in the real world investors like having updates on what's being done with their money. This was also something I wasn't too thrilled with at first, since before I just had the freedom to say "things came up, no video this week" but now when something went wrong I'd need to be telling people what exactly screwed up and what the timeframe would be to get back on track. Still, I was going to be getting paid, so keeping people updated was really a bare minimum obligation in my eyes, and something that ended up not being hard to keep up with. I still had no idea at the time how things would go, and kept the "your name in the credits" tier high because as I said in the video "It might stop the credits from looking like a war memorial". 

I still didn't think it'd go over that well.

It ended up blowing me away.

For the first day or so I was convinced this was some kind of mistake, or something not being reported correctly. The amount Patreon was displaying had to be some kind of number before cuts, just something wrong. The amount of people who decided to be so damn generous after a lackluster schedule compared to before was incredibly humbling, and I'm still at a loss of words at how thankful I am for it. I still can't believe so many people pay to help me do this, or just send nice messages or suggestions for games etc. Thank you all again for that, it's really unbelievable. Maybe that's why I'm rambling about all this. I'm just so damn grateful. I had no idea what I was doing. I still don't for the most part. 

However at the same time this ended up complicating some things, as the credits section was now longer than I ever expected so I eventually started answering some of the questions I got a lot inside the video itself over them. Sure people email about a lot, but this would also be an avenue to clear some things up lots of people asked about and also do away with update videos entirely. At the time, it ended up making me feel incredibly guilty during the move since people had surpassed expectations to an insane degree, and I had near nothing to show for it due to all the hurdles that happened during the move. Those of you there for those times probably remember the exciting events like "the front door doesn't lock", "my desk is late because Swedish forests burned down", "I'm working off of the floor right now", and "a hurricane is about to knock out my power". 

In any case, at the time of writing this things are finally settled down and stable, and have been for a while now. 

The last few videos have certainly been on interesting games. I actually find it a lot harder to make videos about games I'm conflicted on, compared to when there's something very clear cut about it. I basically have to find a way to show "this part is REALLY awful, but it's made up for by this part" and hammering down how to express that is slow. The games themselves have also been slower, longer games, and Pathologic alone is something I had been recording for during the other projects because of how much of it there was. Cultist Simulator required a long time just figuring out how to play the game, and the more abstract presentation of it was giving me bad flashbacks to working on the Aurora video. To put it simply, the latest videos have been ones that need more time to work on. The upload pace isn't one I'm entirely happy with, since even though the workspace is ten times better the upload rate hasn't improved much. I'm going to try and do some games that don't fit those kinds of categories starting out next year, so to get to the point-

Plans Going Forward

As I mentioned in an earlier post in November, the Elite Dangerous video will be in early 2019 regardless of whatever update, expansion, DLC, FLC, or whatever they release even if they say it'll be three days away. Before that, I'm going to have a video or two on a game and its followup I really enjoy. It might end up being one combined video due to the nature of them, but I'm not sure yet. This will also be interesting since I'm going to be recording parts of the actual video making process, as after this video will be the "HOW TO MAKE A VIDEO: VIDEO". So this is the final call:

If you have any things you'd want answered or included in the "how to" video, now is the time to request it in the comments.

Most of my "how to" stuff has been on helping to get some games running, which is really just saving some people some time on Google, an .ini, or a hex editor, but I think it'll be fun to be working on something so different. It'll also be helpful to have a video url I can now send people who ask me about these kinds of things, since I get a ton of questions in emails about getting started. 

After this, I'll be starting on recording for Elite Dangerous. I have no idea when it'll come out in relation to some other videos, but I know for sure that Space Rangers 2/HD will be during this period. I also have lots of candidates for mod videos, which might not all be done during this period, but are definitely ones I'm interested in doing this year. Mechwarrior Living Legends and Sins of the Prophets will probably be the most imminent unless there's a drastic change. 

As for the regular games, I'm hoping to do some shorter ones like Commandos, or Dujanah since I wanted to squeeze in a video on it before the move but ended up not having time. There are several Warhammer games I want to be doing videos on, and I'm not sure whether to space them out or just blitz them at some point. I know that Space Marine and Eternal Crusade will be back to back, but games like Gladius and Mechanicus are two I'm interested in doing as well which are very different mechanically. I'm currently leaning towards spreading them out so I don't have a two month period of nothing but games in that setting. 

I've had a lot of feedback about Metro videos, with many suggesting to do videos on them after Exodus, which I'm alright with. In general I think I'll have a few more videos on RTS games in 2019 than I did this year, and I'm strongly considering doing one on the very, very disappointing sequel, but once again I don't want to flood people. The List™ still takes in a lot of new suggestions, so there will be some more polls at a few points when I'm undecided. Oh right, the CONSOLE GAME is also coming. 

For the time being, I'm taking a holiday break from doing "video work" in the editing department, though I'm already pretty deep into recording some other stuff. I'm in nowhere near as busy a place as last year, so there won't be another three month gap. The next video should be in mid-late January, but if I don't have anything uploaded I'll be disabling the Patreon for that month. Having the working on the video part also be a part of another project is weird to think about, so I'm not sure how much could get slowed until I'm actually doing it. I don't think it'll be too big of a speedbump.

Thanks again for all your support! Have a great New Year lads.