BLOG: THE STORY OF DIGITISER ON YOUTUBE

The Digitiser YouTube channel has had a weird journey. 

Originally, when Mr Biffo came out of premature retirement, I thought I’d just stick to doing what Mr Biffo always had done; write about video games. It was a safety net, a default position that didn’t really account for the fact I’d already said almost everything I wanted to say about games.

One day, while waiting outside a Post Office with Sanja, I tinkered around with the video editing software on my phone. It was like a fire being lit inside me – the possibilities of a new creative language opening up before my eyes. When she came back to the car, I excitedly showed her the little video I made while she’d been inside. She had no idea what had been kicked off in my head. I was burning to make more, and to explore the possibilities.

When Digitiser first started on YouTube, I played around a bit with editing to make some quirky little videos, which got very little interest. Which was fine, because I was just playing around. They were sort of video game-adjacent, but the thing I really enjoyed was the editing. Just that thrill of putting stuff together, and sharing it.

Then we did Mr Biffo’s Found Footage, which did surprisingly well – despite getting weirder and more obscure as it went along – and that sort of let me really experiment with editing. Though I appeared in a few of the sketches, I didn’t really feel confident as a performer. I never had that urge to be on camera. Believe it or not, I’m not a natural show-off. I’m actually quite introverted and shy, and seem to almost draw attention to myself as a by-product of just existing.

I mean, that’s changed now. These days, I actually enjoy performing. I would do more, given the chance. Especially our live shows; I like the challenge of it, the thrill of having to think on my feet, and becoming different characters.

THE SHOW MUST (DID) GO ON

After FF, we did Digitiser The Show, and I kind of got shoved out from the shadows by force.

The show was popular (though I’m of the belief that some people would watch an hour long video of a dog turd if it had the words “RETRO GAMING” carved into it) and the channel sort of lurched into the stratosphere. 

Every ep, the subscribers climbed up and up, and I’m certain that if we’d stuck to doing the retro gaming stuff, Digi would have at least 100,000 subscribers by now.

We’re under no real illusions that its success came from the fact that a) It was about video games, and b) We had a massive cast of collaborators from the realm of retro gaming; through Gannon we also definitely inherited some of the Barshens audience.

Without that inherent drive to be in the spotlight, I thought I needed other people around me who wanted it more. But… the more collaborators you have, the more chance there is for drama. I just wanted to make stuff, not be a child minder, or walk on eggshells around anyone. 

And then there the unwanted knock-on effect that I sort of became overshadowed by the guests and co-hosts, which I found hard to deal with. Not because I thought I deserved plaudits for my performance, but because my DNA ran through the whole of Digitiser The Show. 

It felt like to most people I was irrelevant to the series that I’d sweated blood over. It slightly felt like a vanity project for everyone's vanity but my own. 

It was pretty thankless, and it coloured my feelings towards the whole thing. 

MINI BREAK

After Digi The Show, Gannon and I - because we loved (and still love) working together - continued to collaborate with the Digi Minis, which started out being about old games, with appearances every now and then from our past collaborators.

Despite appearing on every single episode, there persisted this constant sense that I was irrelevant to it all, that people were just tolerating me while they waited for the guests to show up.

People would come from their own channels, and be heralded like returning heroes, but I was constantly being reminded that I was getting in the way.

It didn’t help that back then I was still finding my feet on-camera – slowly growing into it, gaining confidence, and learning to enjoy crafting videos from within, in real time. 

Nevertheless, that introverted part of me also wanted to remain invisible, and there’s no question that I relied too heavily on others to carry me along, for far too long. 

Paradoxically, I still wanted credit, and to be recognised in my own right - not merely as some bloke who featured other, more popular, people on his channel. The only way to get it was to step further into the light, and further from what until then had been my comfort zone. 

I also was starting to get bored talking about games. 

Gradually, Paul and I drifted away from them; though we both like playing games, neither of us have ever been sufficiently obsessed to maintain a channel whose focus was entirely on that one subject. We're both far too attention-addled. 

MOC-MOC-A-MOCK GAMES JOURNALIST

The truth is, I never set out to be a video games journalist in the first place – I was always into music and movies and comics and TV more than I was gaming. I enjoyed writing Digi in spite of it being about games, not because of it. I mean, why else was it so full of weird characters and humour? I was trying to stop myself getting bored.

As the channel moved further away from games, and our retro gaming and Barshens collaborators, the more we struggled for views and subscribers. Comments were a constant chorus of “Bring back Person X!” – continually ramming home this notion that pretty much everyone who had been even peripherally involved in Digi was more important to it than the person who did the vast bulk of the work, co-created the brand, and appeared in every single video.

I mean, we still get it even now; literally this morning we had a new comment on an old Digi video, in which I appeared with Ashens and Gannon, that read “Get rid of Biffo”. 

We’ve never had a “Barshens bump”. Not one that stuck anyway.

What was weird throughout all this time was the number of people who had their own channels or slight social media profile, who would jostle or badger to be involved with the things Sanja and I put together.

We could always rely on people to be on camera with us, because – I presume – we’re fun to be around, and we made stuff that was fun to work on. The Digitiser legacy had its own cachet for some, I guess.

Part of growing a YouTube channel is collaborating with others, but I it hasn’t always felt like it has been reciprocal with Digitiser. As in: there were those would want to come and do things with us, and get a small boost to their profiles, or get to spend the day having a laugh, or showing off, but wouldn’t always afford us the same courtesy. 

Which is possibly another reason why we spent so long struggling to grow; we were helping everyone else by asking them to appear, but any benefit to us was temporary.

We’ve obviously continued to work with Paul and Eli because of their generosity. Paul still plugs every Digi video, regardless of whether he’s in them or not, and I love him for it. Sanja and I remain good friends with Paul and Eli.

However, Paul was very much my training wheels, for which I’ll be forever grateful. At some point I had to take the wheels off and learn to ride in my own style. I just didn’t know when or how.

COVID VIDEO

I was slightly forced into taking Digi back when Covid happened, and Paul and I couldn’t get together in person.

That’s when Sanja started appearing on screen, and through neither of us being performers by trade, I had the space to finally become more comfortable performing, and finding a way to be both authentic and a heightened version of myself. That's when it felt like my voice as a performer really began to develop.

Yes, our views went down even further. Yes we lost subscribers every single time we put up a video. Yes we’d still get comments to the effect of “Bring back Person X and Person Y” or "Digitiser The Show was better than this shit".

But… I was finally taking back ownership of this thing I’d created. Even though it meant we had begun to shed a lot of those people we’d picked up through retro gaming, or Barshens, or Cheapshow – those who’d been just sticking around in the hope of seeing more of things they liked significantly more than me – Sanja and I gradually, finally, began to build an audience of our own. People started to watch because they wanted to see the two of us. We got more women starting to watch us than ever before. 

I actually, for the first time since Found Footage, felt that Digitiser was mine again.

It was only earlier this year – ironically, the year when we probably put out the least content since the Digi Channel started – that the commentors who’d tell us they liked other people more than us, or that we were better when we were with someone else, seemed to slow to a trickle, and we finally stopped losing subscribers.

Then – unexpectedly – we started putting them on for the first time in years. New people seemed to be finding us from outside the bubbles we’d previously been associated with. Some of them came from BYAMPOD – which Sanja and I had been doing since the first Lockdown – others came from… I dunno. Somewhere else. Who knows?

PIVOT! PIVOT!

We’d be the first to admit that what has probably hurt our channel more than all of the above is just never being quite sure what we are. 

We’ve never put out a video we didn’t like or weren’t proud of – trust me, we’ve certainly pulled a few from broadcast – but without video games to fall back on, there was always a sense of us feeling our way for the right path. I’m sure that may have come across to the audience, even if it was only on a subconscious level.

Then this past year some things changed. Obviously, I’ve had a few major life events which have had me reassessing parts of my life, but the biggest change for Sanja and I is that we’re no longer parents to any children. 

All of our many, many, many offspring are grown up, and we don’t need to be around 24-7. We talked about it a bit in our recent Excalibur video, but we’ve got a freedom now that we’ve literally never had. Which is why it may seem like the channel has once again pivoted (even if we've been doing out-and-about videos for years now).

It honestly doesn’t feel like a big change to us; it just feels like we've taken a step up in what we're offering. We’re still us, still got the same rapport – we’re just doing it outside. 

It just feels like at last we’re on the path we were always meant to be on, but couldn’t see before. Even if we could’ve seen it before, we couldn’t just rush off to film in Cumbria for three days. Now we can, and it feels like the recent run of videos are the natural evolution of years of us both becoming comfortable on camera, learning to trust our own comedic instincts, learning how to edit and tell stories on video, building on our BYAMPOD rapport, our love of travel, and my love of history and research.

SPIRIT OF DIGI

Weirdly, these videos seem more true to the spirit of the original Digi than anything I’ve done since. There are facts, but they’re delivered in a way that’s daft and weird. Just as Digi took a games magazine and made it weird and funny, we’re sort of doing the same thing with travel vlogs. That's why, for now at least, the name Digitiser is staying.

Unfortunately, I earn about a quarter of what I did pre-Covid, which is a bit of a pain - for multiple reasons - and means we have to be careful about how we pay for our travels, but for the foreseeable future this is the channel. We’ve never loved making anything as much as we have the most recent run, and because they feel truly reflective of us, we’ve never been more proud of anything we’ve put out.

Through it all, most of you reading this have stuck by us on this journey. Some of you have been Patrons right back since the start, and that level of faith is mind-blowing. You’ve stuck with it through every era, and every change of direction. You've given us the space to experiment, and try different things, and been with us on the journey.

This doesn’t mean we won’t still have characters - oh, we very much will! - or never do another desk video, or never collab again with Paul and Eli – we’re friends, and we’ll always gravitate back to messing around together (I mean, we’re doing a live show together this weekend, and we’re filming with Paul for Digi Level 2 later this month; we talk all the time). 

But, after the past year or so that we’ve had, we’re focusing only on the things that make us truly happy, and feel truly right. 

GROWTH SPURT

We want the channel to grow now, because we think it deserves it. We know there are people out there – who aren’t just waiting for the next appearance from their favourite YouTuber – who we know would love what we’re doing. Plus, if we had a few more people watching, we might be able to afford to make better videos, with better equipment. 

Further down the line, we might also try to collaborate with some different sorts of people (alongside those we always enjoy working with) outside of the usual bubbles - because those bubbles haven't always been kind. Maybe those audiences would have been less resistant to us if there'd been a little more mutual cross-pollination.

Right now we’ve got a hunger to grow the channel like we never have before, because we’re so proud of the recent run of videos. We want to get better at making them, and become more ambitious, but we’re not rushing it – we’ve got a long-term plan, and want to make sure we’ve got a good foundation first. It may not even grow beyond this point. I mean, that's fine. We've done alright so far. We've nothing to grumble about. 

Besides, becoming successful YouTubers is not why we’re doing it. Never has been. We've never been driven by chasing fame, and we’re already successful in the sense we get to do this at all. We get to fund big projects – Digi Level 2 is still on the way, don't forget (though it'll be on a new Digitiser Gaming Channel) – and put on live shows. 

We know how lucky we are, and we love the community we have on here, who have stuck by us through so much. We feel like many of you are friends, and the gratitude we have is beyond words.

So I dunno. 

Why did I write all that? 

I guess because it’s a relief to finally be on the path we were already heading towards, and I wanted to take stock. I know Sanja feels the same way as I do. And right now, we're just really loving being able to do this. However you found us, however far back we go, you've been a gift to us.

Thank you.

Paul

PS. Go watch our latest video, because not many of you have, and it's doing shit: 

https://youtu.be/l7wG0P5zs3o?si=jEMvHOqQHYwS6jo9 

And the Excalibur one could be doing better: 

https://youtu.be/P4yiOJ4y2rE?si=oltpydcvw_YHAhFQ