Update 8th November 2023 (Patreon)

Howdy friends,

Hope everybody is keeping well and had a lovely Halloween!

I'm back again with another update for the patreon crew. Just to talk a little about the most recent video and then the plans for the future.

So after a long wait, I managed to get the Worst Games video out. It was definitely one of the more challenging videos to make. Not only because it was an extended period of only playing mostly bad games, but the video ballooned greatly from my original idea. It ended up effectively being 4 regular-sized reviews, about 9 mini-reviews, and one larger full video-sized segment for Bubsy 3D. It's difficult to get a video of this length to flow consistently especially when trying to highlight the broader topic of worst games in the background, but hey I gave it a go and I'm happy to make it to the finish line! Thanks as always for your patience and support throughout the process.

Although as you may have seen, the video got blocked yesterday by the WWE for including roughly 8 seconds of the old RAW is WAR opening. I'm not gonna lie I play it kinda fast and loose with copyright, specifically music copyright because my IRL job relates to music copyright and I have a decent understanding of YouTubes music flagging system and its blindspots. You would have seen that in action in the latest video as it features numerous instances of commercial music, but never got flagged by Youtubes systems! (it doesn't mean it can't be manually flagged later, but the risk of that is very low and it's a risk I'm willing to take).  Video copyright, on the other hand, is way more inconsistent. 99.9% of videos are ok to use on YouTube without issue, but certain companies are quite trigger-happy when it comes to video usage, the WWE (and most wrestling companies actually. AEW, and NJPW are the same if not worse) are notorious for blocking videos for using footage. Now I thought that strictly related to wrestling content creators who use A LOT of WWE footage in their videos, but even the opening to their shows is fair game. I imagine it was flagged by a bot and WWE just approves every claim, so even though it should be covered by fair use and the claim will be dismissed, it still means the video will be down for a couple of days to a couple of weeks.

Now from what I know, videos that experience these claims almost always fall out of the algorithm immediately upon going public again, which is quite unfortunate since that particular video had about 3 times the views of my previous most successful video in the same time frame, so I think it could have been a huge one in terms of getting eyes on the channel. I'm not going to take it to heart because it's a lesson to be learned and I think the most important thing is that the video itself got a positive reception from the viewers. At this stage my main goal is just getting it back online for people to watch, so while the dispute is currently ongoing with WWE, I'm just going to re-upload it again with the old footage removed and we'll start from scratch. It is what it is, but it's not the end of the world!

Anyway with that out of the way, it's time to return to our old PAL the wheel for another edition of Obscure & Forgotten PS1 games, Vol.15 this time! The games have already been picked and I'll give you a little spoiler, but there's gonna be 5 games featured this time! (It'll make sense when the time comes, don't worry).

The plan is to try have that video out early to mid-December, then after that, I'll work on getting the 2023 Fan Translation video prepped for around Christmas/New Year. I found out last time that waiting until literally the last day of the year to make such a video is a good idea since those fan translations can drop outta nowhere.

Then early 2024 should kick off with Japan Only Vol.15, and then we're going straight into the big Capcom video afterward, it's gonna be a chonky one.

I won't lie to you all it's getting harder and harder to manage making these videos between work and life stuff. My partner and I have had a rather bad run of luck during the latter half of the year, we've had family members back home experience very bad turns of health and I expect that will take up a lot of our time in the near future. I'll continue to work hard on these videos like I always do, but my priority is always the well-being of my family and loved ones, so if the videos seem slower that's probably why! Either way, i'll still be working away on them whenever I can.

Also, If you managed to pick up or read a copy of the October issue of Retro Gamer with my Psygnosis articles, I really appreciate you checking that out, it should still be on shelves for a few weeks! Also, the podcasts I've previously guested on are still scheduled to come out in the not-too-distant future, so I'll share them here as soon as they're available. I'm down to record another about Parasite Eve in a week so there may be even more on the horizon, who knows?!

Anyway, that's it from me for now! A BIG thank you to all of you for your ongoing kindness and support. Take care of yourselves and I'll talk to you again soon!

Much love,
Seán

(Ps. We got some top-tier photos of Honey and Luna today. pls enjoy!)