Architect Address March 2023

Hey what’s up it’s the architect address! Welcome one and all come in come in take a seat there are biscuits  off to the side only take one each though they’re very expensive okay right you good? Awesome, let’s get on with things. This is an… infrequent series of videos I create  for you patrons in order to give some extra insight into the last few videos and what’s been going on with the channel lately, I also used to answer questions posed to me by you lot but that kind of stopped. Hell screw it, if you want some questions answered chuck ‘em down in the comments, let’s bring that back - this isn’t even in my notes but I’m bringing back questions, that is assuming people are interested.

Anyway, one thing I wanted to talk about was my attitude to marketing videos in regards to thumbnails and titles and stuff because with the last few, some of which I’ll get into later - I’ve tried to be a little more… I dunno, I’m trying to avoid the word clickbaity here because it makes me feel bad but a bit more attention grabby with the titles and presentation. I’ll retire before I go full WOAH CRAZY GONE SEXUAL 7 THINGS YOU WON’tT BELIEVE or doing the new video essay thing which is to be super vague and esoteric with video presentation but I did feel like there was a point where I kind of fell into a bit of a rut of doing “how X does Y” or “why Z is good” sort of stuff and it became a tad predictable. I dunno it might be in my head and I’ve not really got enough data to confirm whether that’s a worthwhile approach but it’s interesting to think about. As much as I wish I could just put the videos on the internet and for people to be able to see them, there is a certain amount of game-playing inherent to youtube as a platform that I try to engage with as little as possible but still occasionally has to be done .

When it comes to thumbnails, as you are all no doubt aware I have the artistic skills of a toddler and am also too proud to hire someone to do pretty thumbnail pictures for me so I tend to go with quite bold, graphically simplistic designs and I guess I don’t really know how well they work because I’ve never done anything different? I think one thing I have started doing which is effective is to use the thumbnail as kind of a second title, rather than just re-stating what the video is called I can use the thumbnail to offer a second, tangentially related hook that serves as a bit of a backup in case the title doesn’t land.

ANyway, enough about that - let’s move right on to discussing the first vid I want to talk about and that is Vampire Survivors Only Works Because We’re Stupid  which is a title I really like it’s very silly and I think it kind of has a little bit of a surprise in it when I gradually reveal us being stupid is a good thing! I think actually explaining… why that is was one aspect of the video that I really struggled with though. When writing, trying to make maths and numbers a concept I could explain in an engaging way was really hard. Because.. It’s an interesting subject area but I didn’t want to bog people down in a bunch of complicated formulas and ratios and comparisons so I instead leaned really hard into the more psychological angle which I think was definitely a good move!

One thing I didn’t actually know about vampire survivors was that the guy who made it worked in gambling before he went into independent gamedev and that really does explain why vampire survivors is so good at pushing all those little mental buttons and, even more interestingly showcasing that all these gambly loot boxy quote-and-quote manipulative mechanic can be used in an ethical way if divorced from direct financial incentive. That idea is a weird one actually, because initially I was planning to just talk about our relationship with how videogames present numbers and figures and the whole time I was writing I kept feeling that pressure of “okay, but isn’t this a little bit evil?” changing over me and I just don’t feel like the script quite works without that element because it is kind of the natural next step, and it’s important to address the fact that the lines we draw between ethical and unethical game design are fairly arbitrary. A lot of people tried to boil things down to “oh it’s bad when you do it for money” and to those people I ask, what was the foundational principle of vampire survivor’s word of mouth advertising? How addictive it was and how much content there was relative to the price - it’s designed to turn a profit just like anything else, it just respected us in the process.

One other thing that’s worth mentioning about this video is actually how popular it was - it’s crazy because I was convinced it would be super boring and no-one would like it but it outclassed every video I released last year fairly comfortably. I actually have very little idea WHY this was, it might be the thumbnail or the popularity of Vampire Survivors or more likely it might just be sheer dumb luck. It even got to the point where massive streamers like Asmongold watched the video and gave it the official W seal of approval which as far as I’m aware didn’t really contribute to any patreon uptake or extra subscribers because they already watched the video on his channel. Maybe I should file a copyright strike against him, that’ll show him. Ultimately I’m glad the video struck a chord with people and yeah I think it’s one I was glad to be wrong about. Turns out maths is fun after all.

The other video I want to talk about is Why dark souls (probably) taught you cowardice and oh boy… this one upset some people. I think that’s partially my fault, I struggled to come up with a good title here and I think the one I went with is a little too negatively framed in retrospect but also… I think I kind of ended up walking into some unexpected crossfire with this one.

See, for those who don’t know, the great Hbomberguy, a far bigger youtuber than me made a video about bloodborne before I even started my channel I think that made a lot of the same criticisms of dark souls and shields as I did in this video, albeit in a slightly more inflammatory way. Now, Hbomb is a bit more polarising of a youtuber than me and has his fair share of haters as well as his fair share of fanatics, and I think people kind of jumped the gun seeing that we make kiiind of the same argument on the surface and alternately accused me of stealing his copyrighted ideas which I didn’t and/or getting very defensive about their beloved shields before really even seeing what I had to say. I think in actuality, not only do I disagree with Harris in some key areas, for one I actually don’t think bloodborne solves this particular problem very well, but I also think that playing with a shield is cool and a valid way to play dark souls, it’s just something that doesn’t really gel with the rest of the mechanics very well and so kind of ends up a bit boring,

Maybe if I’m going to lead with a slightly spicy take, I need to get the thesis statement and the nuance across a bit more quickly and spend less time antagonising people so as to avoid people locking in their opinions based on other videos that made them angry before I’ve laid things out. Ehh, we’ll see. Anyway, the idea that games are good at tutorialising but bad at that next step and encouraging people to play a little better is an idea I’ve seen mentioned but never discussed in depth and man are there a lot of things I *wished* I could have talked about here but just didn’t have the time, it meant that this video is a bit of a frankenstein's monster of various bits I chopped and changed through the writing process and I think that does come across particularly towards the back half.

Fun fact here, the dark souls shield thing was actually added midway through writing and, as is so often the way with these things, the video was SUPPOSED to be about hi-fi rush and how effective it is at encouraging mastery, but I needed a good strong central example to build from that that game didn’t quite provide. There’s also an alternate video idea about music/rhythm games in there somewhere that I may have to give a go at one of these days but that’s something for another time.

All in all this video did… okay? I guess? It started off quite slow but it’s looking like it has a strong tail on it and has been slowly creeping up the rankings as other things drop off. The dislike ratio is actually more or less fine so I think any complaints might be a bit of a vocal minority - it’s certainly way better than a video I got an equivalent amount of hate for which was the toxicity video, that one’s on about 90% likes, this is on about 96% which is on the low end of average. Actually looking into it my most disliked video is my old-ass one on the dawn of war games, I’ve got no idea why that actually is but strangely in spite of the fact that I dish out my fair share of spicy opinions in every video my most disliked ones all involve some games with infamously sensitive fanbases crazy coincidence that one - no no I need to stop it I need to stop being bitchy, that’s it I’m stopping the recording now, have a good one, bye