Production update 2023-01-31 (Patreon)

Hello everyone!

Already the end of January! Crazy how time flies. I hope you all enjoyed the Minecraft TAS video. It's probably the simplest I've made so far, but I definitely needed the departure from the intense ABC breakdowns, especially in parts 6-8. I appreciated all the kind words I've received about the video and its music!

How the video is doing

So, immediately upon release, the video was doing extremely well, but right around the 24-hour mark, it took a sharp drop. I even thought it was flatlining for a moment, since it went almost instantly from a steady 4,000 views/hour to 900, and even 500-600 during the night.

I was a bit confused because the numbers were looking really good: 6.5% CTR (remember how the 5-hour supercut of the ABC was at 2.5%?) and an average watch time of 12:00. That's 60%! I've never seen it that high myself - my average videos hover around 40-45%, although they are longer than this one. Anyway, the video starting to lose ground on my typical content made no sense to me. But then, right around 2.5 days, it started to hit the Minecraft crowd.

And we're back to 4,000 views/hour! Close to 5,000 as we speak.

Now, hitting the Minecraft crowd means hitting the crowd that knows a lot about set seed vs. random seed, the Ender dragon, the any% route, all that stuff. I'm getting more and more comments complaining about how me breaking down all that stuff was padding for content. It's a little frustrating to receive that accusation, as someone who tries to be as thorough and to the point as possible. I believe they're all too focused on their own perspective and experience with the game so they don't see the thousands of people who were glad I explained those things. 

I find it funny because the part where I explain what a TAS is must feel really old to my regular viewers like you guys, but to the Minecraft crowd, that part is crucial in their understanding of what the video is about. If I had cut that part out, I'm sure I'd be getting dozens of confused comments right now, and no one would have said anything in the first 2 days. I spent a bit of extra time on every explanation to really take it from the base level because I am indeed hoping for this video to hit a very large casual audience.

Music

The music is out! Check out my other post from about 12 hours ago. For the public release, I'm gonna do something different this time: I'm gonna release each track a few days apart, instead of all at once around the time when I release the next video. I don't have an exact schedule yet, but I'm gonna stagger it between around February 5-10 and the end of the month. So, about one every 2 days for a bit over two weeks.

Current plan

The question on everybody's lips: have I started the next video yet? Not quite. In the immediate future, my plan is to look into the process of giving conferences in schools. YouTuber is among the top jobs kids and teens these days aspire to, and I believe there must be a whole universe of misconceptions and optimistic dreams in their minds. Well, I'm gonna go in there and crush all their hopes and dreams.

Gracefully. I would like to talk about some of the stuff behind the scenes: video editing, selling your content well (thumbnails and titles in my case) using social media in an intelligent way (I'm no expert on that but I think I at least have some common sense), etc.. 

I also want to bring up things they might not know they need, like a video editor if they want to go more into streaming and don't want to edit themselves, an agency for sponsorship deals, some legal knowledge for copyright and for signing contracts with said sponsors and agencies, and perhaps guide them towards studies that help like cinema, theater/comedy, communications, marketing, or if they pick a specific niche, studies in that field like math and computer science for me.

Finally, I want to tell them that it needs a lot more work than it seems, and having no deadlines and no one to report to can be disorienting. You need an excellent work ethic (something I struggle with).

Anyway! I think that might be something interesting to do from time to time, giving conferences on that subject in schools in my area. I've contacted a few people I know that might be able to give me pointers as I look into how I get into that line of work in the first place. I might take the better part of the week working on that, while I also think about the next video topic.

Next video

The question on everybody's lips: if I haven't started the next video, do I at least know what it's gonna be about? 

Well... no. Here's what I do know: the next video will definitely be a speedrun explained. I'm gonna aim for a run that's 10-25 minutes long, for a video that will add about 15-30 minutes of explanation on top of the run. I will probably look at an RTA world record, but maybe a TAS will pull me in again. I'm not ruling out making another video on Minecraft, but of a different, and RTA, category. At a quick glance though, it doesn't seem like there would be that much meat on the bone for a proper breakdown.

I have a few ideas that have popped up over the years and that I have never looked into yet. Maybe an SNES game could be nice, since I haven't touched that console yet (can you guys tell I grew up on an NES and an N64?). A quick list of names off the top of my head: Super Mario World, Donkey Kong Country, Super Metroid (perhaps too long), GoldenEye 007 (a single level with an insane amount of tech could be cool, I'm thinking maybe something like Factory SA/00A, Frigate 00A, Control or Silo DLTK). 

In the future (a month or two), I might put up a poll or a call for suggestions on video topics. I'm a little bit conflicted about doing that, because I want to stress that while I do care about your opinions, ultimately I will base my decision of making a video on a particular topic based on many different factors, so it could seem like I would disregard the poll results or suggestions.

Next update

My next update will be when I am set on a video topic and I have a very rough idea of the structure of its explanation. Hopefully that will take about a week, but it might be a bit longer since my 30th birthday is coming up this weekend and I was told there might be some festivities planned for that occasion.

I hope everyone has a great week!