Deadlocked, Channel Updates, Behind-The-Scenes!)

Hey folks! I'm sure many of you already watched it but in case you didn't, the Deadlocked video dropped on Wednesday. I figured I'd let it simmer for a few days before I talked about the production secrets on the video, because there were a few!

For example, I'd decided already that with the Future saga onward, I wouldn't feel comfortable/cocky enough to label these videos as "The Ultimate Retrospective" anymore, simply because my research starts to dry up as we get closer to the modern era of games; more developers either don't email me back, politely decline, etc., which is totally fair! But, if I can't pull some scoops, the research is all stuff that I can be certain others have found and sourced, and even if most people wouldn't know each detail, I wouldn't feel right saying "this is the definitive video on the game" or any other dumb stuff like that.

Partway through Deadlocked, I started to feel like even this would feel wrong to label with that Ultimate branding. It was during 3's video's production that I realized a huge blind spot in my research process: I'd not been able to speak to any animators! So, I decided starting here to let the games speak for themselves as far as video #branding goes.

More than that though, this video was audio mixed (and some of the editing itself was done) remotely! I left for vacation on Monday, and ended up dealing with render issues while sitting in a car a few hundred miles from my PC that was doing the rendering. It eventually worked, but there's ONE hiccup that the astute viewer could hear around 11 minutes in - where I had to split the video, render the parts, and shove it together and hope it wouldn't cause a hiccup. Didn't work, still hiccuped; didn't care, still uploaded!

The last thing I'll say doesn't pertain to the DL video, but is a general thing: In the last couple months, thanks to you here as well as the big bump in viewership that's come with these retrospectives, I've started to out-earn my pay at my day job. I know money can be a weird subject for a creator, but considering where I'm writing this, I know you folks understand that too. In short, I've slowly but surely been able to cut back my responsibilities and time at my day job. Effective next week, I'm running a one month test as full-time content creation, to see if I can speed production up enough in a "40-hour" week to release these videos faster, and to see if that'd be enough income and stability for me to be comfortable working only 1-2 days at that day job going forward. (I can't drop it entirely because US health-care is tied to your job, yay!)

What this means is, if this works, stronger videos at a faster tic - I'd like to do every other week if I can. It also means I'd have these videos produced ahead of time, so that I can start delivering on the Patron-early videos I like to provide. And, it also likely means we're nearing the Sponsor Era(™) in the coming year or so. Should I do any sponsored plugs, Patrons will get an ad-free version without fail.

I'll be vetting those options heavily, as I'd prefer not to slam viewers upfront with a big ol' minute ad. In either case, you'll hopefully be getting all videos a bit early going forward! I have a few other tweaks and adjustments I want to make to the Patreon to try and give you folks some more bang for your buck, too, which I'll hopefully be working on in the next few weeks!

Much love as always, my friends!