2020 Wrap-up Spectacular! (Patreon)

Hi, hello and it’s time for a 2020 wrapup spectacular. I’m technically still taking a bit of a break but whatever - let’s get this thing done shall we. The original plan was to record this and do a full Architect Address but there’s some loud building work going on outside and I’ve delayed this for long enough as it is!

Anyway, let’s get on topic. First of all, welcome to all the new patrons that joined as a result of the end of year video! It’s great to have you around and your support means a lot, particularly in times when money is tight. Stay safe out there, particularly with all the stuff going on in the US right now.

Anyway, the first video I want to talk about is “When Great Games Have Terrible Beginnings”, a video made entirely to justify the fact that I’ve spent upwards of one hundred and fifty hours playing through both of the xenoblade games. This one was… bizarrely popular for what I thought was a pretty niche subject area and, to be honest, an overly long video. The idea of talking about literary topics like how to structure a story via the medium of games is always one of my favourite ways to make a video and I think that this clearly resonated with people.

In many ways this one is a followup to the earlier video about how to modernise and fix RPG combat systems and draws from a lot of the same angst - maybe they could’ve been one single episode but I think intros and combat systems are distinct enough to be worth splitting up. When you play as many games as I do, you realise that a lot of games are so backloaded with microtransaction nonsense and DLC that they forget to actually hook people in and that sucks, hopefully games can remember how to make people enjoy playing without relying on a bunch of cheap sketchy tricks. We’ll see.

Next up is a video that up until the last second I just called The Barrel Video. Probably good I changed it, huh? Anyway, the elephant in the room is that I unintentionally ended up sliding pretty close to the premise of Ahoy’s great video on sort of the same subject, something I wasn’t aware of until it was much too late to change course. WHoops. Luckily, we end up talking about pretty different things, Ahoy’s video is all about the history and cultural context of barrels whereas I use them more as a jumping off point to talk about symbology more broadly.

I think tropes, symbology and their uses in games are some of the most important and least talked about things in game design. Without developing a language of games and moving beyond the absolute bare basic form of media criticism, games are never going to develop the sort of robust critical landscape that other forms of media enjoy. Plus, talking about this stuff and trying to convince people that tropes are in fact not bad and are an integral part of how we view media is a good way to root out some hacky critics which is just gravy.

The third video I need to talk about before I talk about the channel more broadly this year is of course 2020 games you should have played, which has been a rousing success! Honestly I didn’t think I’d be able to get it done as fast as I did but somehow I managed to pull things off. Honestly, the end of year videos are sort of my little treat, I really love putting them together and they’re a great excuse to go back and play a bunch of great games I missed over the year. My preliminary list for 2020 was fifty seven games long and let me tell you there were some heartbreaking decisions to be made as I narrowed it down, 2020 has been full of great games and some really great ones were sadly left out

Luckily, I really like all the games that made it into the final list and it’s great to see that a lot of the games I mentioned were actually not very well known! Terra Nil seems to be the real surprise hit of the bunch along with Crumble and Deep Rock Galactic so I’m really pleased to see those games thriving. I think the biggest “snub” was probably Hades or Ori 2, but both games were too big to qualify for the list so I don’t feel too bad about excluding them.

Speaking of the year as a whole, it’s about time I go over how 2020 was for the channel and I can’t do that without dressing Covid-19. Obviously, a hell of a lot more people than usual have been indoors watching youtube and that’s meant a lot of eyeballs on the channel, it’s been one of my best years so thanks for sticking with me even when things were tough.

Obviously, the pandemic wasn’t all good news and I absolutely think it had a hit on my productivity - I produced fewer videos this year than any other and whilst they were longer and debatably of higher quality, I’ve felt lower energy and I think that’s got a lot to do with being forced to sit inside all day looking at a computer screen as opposed to... willingly doing that. It’s a big difference, honest.

I don’t mind the videos taking longer to come out in theory, god knows I’ve complained about it enough in the past - I just don’t like feeling that I’m being lazy. Being self employed as I am it’s hard to stick to deadlines and I’ve got no idea how to balance work and leisure time even after more than a year doing this professionally, it’s all part of the learning experience I guess and it’s something I’m going to have to work on going forwards.

In terms of individual videos, the “the longing” video was so massive that it pretty much warped everything else around it, so it’s hard to get a solid read on what performed well and what didn’t. What I do know is that broadly speaking the weaker videos were the more… specific ones, with by far the worst performing video being the one on deckbuilders, which is a shame, because I quite like that one. Videos about more general gaming concepts like combat design, intros and time in the abstract fared much better and that’s good because those are the sorts of topics I most enjoy discussing!

I think one of my biggest aims for 2021 is to get more involved in the wider community of youtube video essay people, I’m a very independent person and I never really felt I relied on anyone else's' popularity to get the channel rolling but I do still feel like there’s a lot to be done vis a vis sharing ideas, creating a more unified critical landscape and turning talking about videogames on the internet into less of a cottage industry and more of an actual group of likeminded people. To be honest, I’ve got no idea how to start with that sort of thing but I’ll give it my best shot.

This might be a little short given that it’s an end of year wrapup but I’d like to get back to work as soon as possible - I’ve got a bunch of great ideas already! Hopefully your 2021 is shaping up to be good and if not good then at least interesting, stay safe, have fun, and I’ll see you around. Bye!