General News (An Excuse for Not being Able to Think of a Decent Title)

A title-less blog post, brilliant. I do however know what I want to talk about: Video Uploadage.

For some reason lately I've been recording videos one day, then uploading them the next. It's been a while since I released two videos in two days, and to be perfectly honest, I'm sitting on material that I want to get out there. I'm looking at you, Nostalgia.

And I think I know why this trend has begun: I like playing games. :P Specifically at the moment, I'm playing Dungeon Defenders an awful lot. I'd be happy to record it... if I didn't get 3 fps while doing so.

The bottom line is, I need a new computer. I need a decent one. One that was built for gaming. One that costs thousands of dollars and is packed full of state of art green plastic and solder. Unfortunately, I'm not rich. But then again, CaptainSparklez's first videos weren't that great quality. But then again, he's always had a decent computer.

And all this makes me realise: the key to sucecss here is not niche videos, but variety. I'm sure somewhere I've spoken about falapasta, a fellow MC video maker. He makes variety. And while he has less video views than I do, he has almost 3 times as many subscribers. Why? Because he posts stuff that lots of different people like to see.

I think once the Nostalgia series is done and dusted I can begin a new segment for mods or something. I can start simple, with TooManyItems or something. I already realise the most important thing about videos like that is a SCRIPT, or NOTES. I have to know what I'm saying.

I enjoy talking about all this :D As I don't keep a RL diary, its my only opportunity to lay the thoughts out there. After this I think I've developed a plan of sorts.

So... I need to play less, record more, record more variety, record more NEW variety, write notes for videos

EDIT: The Nostalgia series sucked balls anyway, I might can it. Yep. Canned.

Steam Group

While a little over 30 YouTube subscribers is hardly much of a fanbase, I've gone ahead and made an official Steam group. The Legion of Birds. For the moment that's a temporary name until I can think of something better.

Anyway, it makes it look like you can have say, 20 people all voice chatting together. That'd be pretty nice to have in a livestream video.

Being an admin is a bonus as much it is a bummer. You get access to all the adminny areas, and I realise, with an eventual goal of being a *bit* more popular, I'm going to be finding myself having to ban people from the chat, and so on. It's a shame that most of the gaming community that I've been exposed to is pretty nice, but I realise that there are also undesirables out there. I'm looking in your corner, trolls. :P Nah, just kidding, you guys are alright as long as you don't make too much mischief.

Co-op with Falapasta

I decided to approach Falapasta, one of my subscribers who also makes videos (and has a similar number of subscribers). And we've agreed to record some co-op Minecraft mapping stuff together.

The idea here was to mix or communities a bit and gain a few subscribers on both sides.

Secretly, he definetely has a different style to me. The 'comment, rate, subscribe' thing and all that. People who are reading this will probably already know my standing on this. :P

So yeah, if this goes well, which it probably will, you can expect more collaboration with small-time video makers!

Capturing those Golden Moments... and a general rant

Being a successful YouTube video maker is all about the golden moments. In most cases people go to YouTube when they want to see something funny, informative, or simply awesome. Kickstarting a subscriber fanbase is all about hitting the right chords in the videos you watch. Take the Yogscast for example, probably the most entertaining gaming coverage there is on the internet. They have close to 1.4 million subscribers, and they're self admitted idiots. Why? Because amazing stuff always seems to happen to them. I am of course referring to their Shadow of Israphel series. It's not planned by them, but it is planned by other members of The Yogscast. My point: once you 'make it' it gets easier to 'keep making it.' The tricky part is getting there.

I've always had the firm belief that having more than one person talking in a video is a good thing. It gives the people a chance to bounce off one another, and people have different ways of looking at things, which induces conversation, which makes entertainment. Diehard fans of mine (from a fanbase of 35, this would be amazing) will be aware of my multiplayer exploits with Princess_Block. Off camera we can have some amazing discussions and giggles, but between you and me, she isn't in to this as much as I am. The case in point is my poor CPU, which had to run Minecraft, Skype, the recording software AND a Minecraft server. Frankly I'm astounded it managed 10 fps. Meanwhile all she has to do is run Minecraft and Skype. I've pointed out the unfair tax on my CPU, but she hasn't exactly taken to the idea of hosting a server.

To sum it all up, she doesn't like new things.

The first day I discovered the Yogscast I said to her, "hey, you should watch these guys videos, they're hilarious", and she just shrugged it off. Ya can't even discuss this concept with her, because she flares up :P

If anyone actually reads this, you may be the next candidate to go on a custom map adventure with me. :)

(I feel the need to point out I ended up not talking about what I wanted. Is that normal in blogs?)