Post-Mortem: I Love Racing Games, They Suck! (Patreon)

Everytime I upload a video, I always think… this is the one that’s going to make people hate me.

I hadn't uploaded in four months because of a wombo-combo of a relationship in December, and a completely unrelated poisoning attempt from god in January, topped off with the effort to make So I've Finally Played… Dead Space 2, being a complete waste.

And what would the video replacing it be?

A video about driving-games!

Because those are always uncontroversial… They've never had YT's analytics scream at me to make something else until three months later when a nerdy sub-reddit discovers it and finally gives it enough attention for me to pay rent.

I've not been working on a video platform that's consistently rewarded people who regularly uploaded with a script format instead of not appearing for months with two videos whose only connective tissue is… video-games.

So clearly, this video about Racing Games, not just racing games, but racing games being shit, is going to go splendidly and not horrible in the slightest!

…And it got 100k in the first day.

I'm hoping that after seven years of doing this, and setting myself up mentally for a complete demolish that never came despite everything on paper being stacked against it, that I can finally just let go and no longer concern myself with appearances or algorithms.

I've always tried to keep the mindset of, let the chips fall where they may.

When it's my time to quit and do something else because my life can't be sustained on YT content… so be it.

It won't stop me from making what I want to make, and I think, finally, I can let that truly settle in.

Though now I'm uploading shorts as an experiment and I've got some disappointed response, and now the nerves are back.

Ah, shit.

In all seriousness, the response was better than I ever could've hoped for, and for everyone who is here because of that video… welcome, and thank you very, very much.

(I)

As usual with videos I write, at first, I'm struggling to get enough material to justify 5+ minutes, when one day, I vomit out twenty pages in a few hours and before I know it, the video now seems too grand for its own good.

However, unlike previously, it wasn't hard to cut this video down.

My biggest concern was the opening section being about Racing Sims that it would turn off too many viewers who have no interest in these games.

Kind of like how a video about FPS games would shove people away if the opening minutes concerned the detail of Arma.

However, I figured that glitch compilations of hardcore games often get attention far beyond the crowd that plays them, so the one minute or so of explanation for AMS2 before the Daytona Rolling Start disaster, wouldn't be too long of a course before the average viewer jumped off, and even analytics which I normally don't care about, seem to confirm that.

I'm not talking about how these games calculate their physics interactions, or data of the tire models, I'm showing a flying Viper spinning fast enough to give the driver inside whiplash.

That's something anybody can find entertainment in.

(II)

Much bigger problem I had was the tone…

I needed to communicate frustration, or else the video would just sound like Eeyore got behind the wheel.

The original take however went… too far. 

There comes a point where you're so worked about a subject that in the grand scheme of things really doesn't matter, that anybody over the age of fifteen won't be able to relate or take you seriously anymore.

It goes beyond constructive criticism and becomes whinging, bitchy, silly.

Part of my reason of goal with this video was to remind everybody that ultimately, these are pretend cars going around pretend circuits, and is meant to be fun, no matter how seriously it's taken.

Screeching about a dumb eSports goes against that intent.

I'm no voice-actor, but I've accepted that to communicate your honest intentions, you need to at times be calculated in your delivery, for if you're not, your intention won't matter, because it won't be what anybody hears.

(III)

Finally, I was honestly expecting a lot more push back from this video than I actually got, which in a way was quite vindicating.

I just couldn't believe that I would be the only one going down this train of thought, and sure enough, I'm not.

However, that doesn't mean it's a faultless piece.

For instance, I booted up BallisticNG to confirm that there weren't any bots added to Multiplayer.

What I didn't think to do was to double check, because clearly my eyeballs are not working, and I couldn't see the obvious setting in Multiplayer to add bots.

I also forgot to add AMS2 to the "Custom Games with Bots" tabs, as I spent so much time setting up that split-screen tediously in Premiere, that I became more preoccupied with lining everything up correctly, instead of making sure that no game went missing.

Looking back on it, I should just done a split-screen within one column of both AMS2 and PC3, as they both share an engine, and PC3 could disappear when mentioning "bots" as that game for some reason removed them.

However… that's the part of making content, mistakes can't be undone after the fact, so just admit it, suck it up, try not to repeat it, and move on.

I'm still okay with the sequence overall as it does very quickly communicated the message of the video, that these are problems not because of one game but of one genre.

I just wish it didn't have these holes, as I think they're the biggest problem with the video overall.

Finally, I'm very much considering to make the next video in DaVainci Resolve again, as this project had me tearing my hair out with Adobe that, despite seven years of use, always finds a new way to have new bugs on every single project I do.

This time, it would be everything being working swimmingly, when all of the suddenly, the interface would do this…

Or some variation of this…

And suddenly, a twenty minute job, becomes two hours of troubleshooting until one menu click on an obscure tab fixes the entire thing instantly, or even worse, it just sorts itself out without me doing anything.

I managed to get away with using Adobe Premiere 2020 to minimize the bugs, or at the very least, be able to predict them, but it seems that tactic has run its course, and the recent windows updates or something, is causing even old Adobe Software to start running into walls.

I'm hoping that either DaVinci Resolve has sorted out its rendering bugs that I suffered previously, or that I can move the project over to Adobe purely for rendering…

If not?

I might succumb to desperation and pick up an M2 Mac.

All I want is stability…

And when editing videos is what you do for a living, those hours spent troubleshooting, might as well be years in-terms of my sanity.

Nothing worse than being in a creative flow only to hit not a speedbump, but a wrecking ball.

This writing? I've cranked this out in 30-45 minutes.

I can talk, and write, and edit, and talk, and write, and edit for ages.

When I’m writing though… Microsoft Word doesn't rearrange all text, reconfigure my keyboard into Chinese, and lock the entire computer for minutes without saving progress. If it did, I would've give this up a long time ago, or narrating a pad of paper.

I don't know exactly what's next, but I'm thinking about making a video about UI's, specifically, from a UI designer's point of view. That, or I could maybe at long last boot up Red Dead 2, though knowing that game's length, maybe a video about it would take even longer to come out…

Regardless, thank you for your donations, your words, and your viewership, and I hope you enjoyed the video, this post-mortem, and what's in store!

Best wishes,
Lucas Raycevick