Almost a year since my last update, the monthly update has returned!
I guess I could wait until next month so it will have been a year, but I’ve been in a groove lately, so now’s a good a time as any.
I’m back in the swing of things with a video once every two weeks.
I’ve always been on the search for a series, and I’ve kind of had a hard time coming up with one. I wanted it to be something I could see myself watching AND have it be easy to put together in between longer, higher effort videos.
So I put out the Promo Vault video.
I’ve always liked old commercials, and I noticed that pretty much NOBODY online covers old video game commercials/promotional material. So I thought it’d be fun to do a live commentary over some of them with a friend.
It was fun, but I can’t get over how I came across. I did a lot of umming and ahhing as I tried to talk on the spot, and I don’t think that makes for interesting content. I did maybe a dozen or two livestreams like 2 or 3 years ago, but I’ve lost that spontaneity. I could maybe get back up to snuff if I put out like 10 more Promo Vault episodes, but I don’t think those would be good content. Maybe if I do livestream or podcast in the future and get better at speaking on the spot, I’d return to the series.
That video though was the start of my video every two weeks pace.
Since that video a month and a half ago, I’ve stuck to that schedule of getting a video out every other Monday at 11am. I had a similar pace in late 2020 where there’s a stretch of videos I got out once a month, but I feel a lot better about this.
Maybe that’s because I finally got my Final Fantasy video published.
I spent the better part of a year or two ruminating on that Final Fantasy VII Remake video I put out last month. I started from scratch at two different points; I even had like a 80 minute script at one point, but I ended up ditching it because it felt too aimless. The video I put out had focus, and I’m really glad with how it turned out. My goal was to have that video published before any Final Fantasy VII Remake Part 2 news came out, and I’m glad I could have achieved that.
Which brings me to my newest series. Video Game World Tours.
This blew up in a way I didn’t expect.
Well, mildly blew up. It’s sitting at 1,940 views right now, which is crazy because most of my videos get anywhere from 50-250 views. And almost every time it goes above 100 is because I posted it to reddit and the thread got a couple upvotes.
I Just uploaded the video and posted it to /r/Games, the subreddit I probably visit the most. It was at a 30% upvote rate not long after posting (early critics are harsh 😢), but before long, it was getting positive reception. As of now, it’s starting to wind down in traction, and it has 150 upvotes. Throughout the midday, it was 5-7 posts below the highest upvotes post on the Hot page for that subreddit.
The views on the video have been increasing at a near linear level since I posted it yesterday morning, but as more posts from today have pushed it out, views are dwindling. The comments I’ve been getting have been lovely to read, it’s nice to see some people resonate with something I was unsure about before uploading.
That video got me over 100 subscribers!
I knew I’d hit it sometime soon, but it’s nice to have gotten it out of the way.
An unfortunate part of that video’s performance is that practically none of it is from YouTube recommending it to people. Only 2% of it’s viewers are from YouTube’s browse features. So I have a long way to go when it comes to optimizing my videos’ metadata.
But it seems like the /r/Games subreddit likes my stuff. I’ll post my next VGWT episode there and hopefully they like it again.
So yeah, I’m definitely planning on doing more tours. I have a shitton of games written down that I’d like to do an episode on and I’ll slowly pick off at that. I was planning on alternating between a VGWT episode and a normal scripted thing, but maybe doing two VGWTs in a row couldn’t hurt… Something to think about.
I don’t know if I’m gonna post every month like I was before. Now that I’ve finally learned to spend more time working on videos, I can get them out quicker and I don’t plan on taking long breaks anymore.
I have no reason to expect I’ll deviate from the video every two weeks release schedule. If you wanna keep up to date on my goings on, check my Twitter or Discord, I post more frequently in there.
I think this is the beginning of something good for my channel and I really hope I can play my cards right going forward. Stay strong out there. ✌️