Reprioritizing & WIAGWhenever (IMPORTANT UPDATE!)

Well lads, I think the title pretty much sums it up.

If you've been listening to the BGE Monthlycasts you probably saw this coming a mile away, but I have decided to no longer do WIAGW episodes weekly. This is not necessarily permanent, but it is how I'll be operating for the foreseeable future (of course I am also aware I haven't consistently hit the weekly target, but that is a separate matter). The series is not cancelled per se, but I will instead be making them whenever I feel it is appropriate to do so, if a topic strikes me as fitting the format, etc.. The reason for this is to give me more time to produce my other, more time-intensive content. I realize that WIAGW as a weekly show has been a core promise of this Patreon until now, so I know I owe you guys as well as potential future patrons a full explanation. Here's the deal.

There are many reasons why I have decided to make this change, which, if you know me, you know I take extremely seriously. Nothing is more important to me than integrity and honestly when it comes to other people's trust and money. I'm in this for the long haul lads, to make content so good people feel proud and excited to support it, and to do so for many years to come. This is the main reason why I will be making this change. 

You probably know that I went full time as a YouTuber as of July 1, 2019, leaving my programming job. At that time I made it clear in my first BGE Monthlycast that, having saved up money in case of catastrophe, the coming year would be an experimental period in which I would try out various content creation strategies to see what worked, both in terms of viewership and finance. Since then it's been just about 6 months and, by several metrics, I haven't reached the level of success I am aiming for. In terms of viewership, it has been significantly lower than I had hoped it to be when looking back at Season 1 and Season 2 of WIAGW. Season 3, no doubt for a multitude of reasons, has had significantly lower viewership and, even more importantly, eaten up more of my time than what I had hoped for what would be available for producing all the other types of videos I have planned for the channel (which has long been an ever-increasing backlog). It's also notable that my subscriber count has been stuck at just over 100k for this entire 6 month period, my slowest period of growth yet. This is surely not a coincidence.

I don't see a world of difference in the content itself to explain the drop off in interest, but overall it seems likely to me there is a sense of weariness with these kind of faster, lower-effort videos. If we trace back the history of my channel, these live-action videos began with MIAMAFV 1, continued with WIAGW and eventually MIAMAFV 2, but during this ~2.5 years, interest in this type of content overall seems to have waned, at least for now. This, combined with the reality that there has been a lack of the big landmark videos that initially got attention to my channel, seems to me to likely be the main factor here. 

This, dear readers, is where we come to my new approach. The BestGuyEver channel began  with a certain kind of content (some exceptions aside) that took a while to complete, but has been historically popular and has sustained that popularity, but that we haven't seen since before MIAMAFV 1. Like this lil ol vid for example, that a few people seemed to enjoy. Frankly, looking back at the channel now, I think I may have been coasting on the goodwill and interest generated by that kind of content. This wasn't intentional, but simply an attempt to capitalize on what appeared to be a successful business model at the time. This has been the motivation behind WIAGW and, more recently,  MIAMAFV 2. 

In retrospect, MIAMAFV 2's performance relative to MIAMAFV 1 seems telling. While the first event came out of the blue, suddenly releasing a massive wave of content the likes of which my viewers had never seen, as well as being my first outlet for a bunch of videos I had never had the chance to make until then, MIAMAFV 2 came on the back of a trickle of middlingly-successful WIAGWs and fighting the specter of the hype of the first event, among other issues. My hope was that the announcement of me going full time would buoy interest in the series, but I think the reality that the content itself was not something that excited my audience particularly, and I think this largely applies to WIAGWs as well. 

I believe I was mistaken in prioritizing regularly-scheduled content as opposed to slower, well thought-out content. I think that taking my time and dedicating myself to my older styles of content will have a many benefits, including increasing interest in the channel, delivering on oooold promises of mine, and overall giving people more of a reason to be excited to watch a new BGE video, and hopefully to support the work! After some time in which I star delivering more of this content, I believe things like WIAGW and perhaps another MIAMAFV series would be more welcome, perform better, AND I would have more material stored up for them. All in all, a win-win scenario in my mind.

In short, it is my feeling that the audience is craving something new. And that is what I plan to give them. 

So here's how it's going to be from here on (I'll update you if/when the plan changes): WIAGW is not cancelled, but will no longer be a weekly show. I have one more episode in the works, but after that, I have no immediate plan to make another one anytime soon. This will be done specifically to free up that time to be dedicated to working on my other series. My hope is to get out one of these videos at least every month. It is likely you will see additional, smaller videos on the channel as well, such as my recent Konosuba and Sunflower videos. These have been closer to my old style of content and been exciting for me to work on (and notably more successful on the channel). 

I hope you take this news with excitement, as I consider it an opportunity to get back to my roots of what many people came to my channel for to begin with. This whole year is about experimentation and have I prepared so I can do so without worrying too much. It's time to try out a new approach. Hopefully people will enjoy watching shows like my Nuzlocke, the PCP, and KHANTEHNT! to get the kind of faster, less editing-intensive content I've been providing recently, but considering the existence of those shows, especially KHANTEHNT!, it's starting to seem redundant to have WIAGW existing alongside them when I could be spending more time working on the big, tent-pole content people have been waiting for. 

So, now that you've heard my reasoning, here's what I'd ask of you, my patrons (or potential patrons!): hold me accountable to delivering the content you crave. I'm here to provide a service and its up to you to decide how much that is worth. If you signed up for WIAGW and do not approve of my decision to put it on hiatus x hiatus, I of course understand. However, if I could ask one thing before you unpledge: to everyone, please give me a little time to adjust. I haven't been sitting around idly while cranking out these WIAGWs, and therefore my next project is well under way. With the additional time I will have, I expect to have it out shortly, certainly before the end of the month. The purpose of this change isn't to produce less content, or to give myself more time off, quite the opposite. I intend to work harder than ever, but to use that time on more dense, higher-quality productions, the kind of thing people have been hoping I would make since I went full-time! If all goes as I hope, you'll have better content, the channel will do better, and I'll be better off financially. I will do everything I can to achieve that, but only time will tell!

If you read all of this, thank you for sticking with it. As I said, transparency is the most important thing to me, and I want everyone to have a full understanding of my thought process so they can set their expectations accordingly. My patrons are the only real boss I have now, so I can only hope I do a satisfying job for all of you.

Thank you all for the opportunity. Time to get back to work. 

-Nate Bestman, BGE