State of the Channel 2020, or, How Much is Too Much?

I haven't done a major update on my channel in several years, and the simple reason is that I've often felt lost and confused about that myself. Every month for almost three years I've said to myself "I ought to tell everyone how it's going, what's next" and then chicken out because I haven't had any decent answers. It's surprisingly easy for this to happen month after month for an extremely long time. The more I let it go on, the more conversations I needed to have but didn't pile up. I wanted to do this as a video update but ultimately there's too much to talk about for me to keep in my head for a live bit. So I'm going to try and have all those conversations now, in rapid succession, to try and paint a picture of why the channel has struggled so visibly and what might be done to remedy the situation. For the most part it all boils down to one thorny question: Am I Making Too Much Money?

It used to be that I really needed everything I made on Patreon. I think that was valid up through about $2500 a month. We're up over $5,000 before taxes now. And no matter what I do, I can't validate my creative output justifying that amount of income for any reason. It's just too much for the kind of work I'm doing at the pace I'm doing it. 

This is not to say I don't work consistently, but instead that I can't quite produce consistent results and I think that's ultimately unfair to patrons. For example, this past 60-day gap in a three year period filled with 60 day gaps-- I banked footage for three of twelve of the Tomb Raider games, I tried fixing a Gears of War retrospective whose script turned out in a way I feel is boring despite major rewrites, but when I realized how long it had been I pivoted then to finishing my Kentucky Route Zero project which I had felt stuck on since February. There are some games I've played in the past that just never panned out into videos, some footage is so old it doesn't pass a quality control standard I've been trying to keep for the 1080p videos. Too often, I have too many open projects at once and fail to manifest them into actual reality in a timely manner.

I'd actually feel okay about all of this if it wasn't for the fact that I'm being paid an amount equivalent to and possibly surpassing what professional video creators make for an end result that is still, ultimately, amateurish and riddled with errors. I've been trying to improve and in a number of ways I think I have: narration quality is up, I've been spending double the time with it and throwing out more takes. I feel like the videos themselves are watchable in terms of footage selection and frequency of cuts, I've been recording more footage and spending more time pulling relevant clips. And I do think my writing has been getting better, I certainly hope it has but I can't say for sure since I'm too close to it. However, I think it's clear my rate of improvement is lagging behind the increased income. 

What's tricky is that just because I'm making more money doesn't make me more competent as a content creator. The rate at which I improve seems fixed to my strengths and flaws to a point where I can't much push it any faster and have it yield results. I have a lot of enthusiasm for what I'm doing, but I end up putting that into the essays more than I do trying to understand audio filtering and working with codecs. I honestly have never cared at all for the technical portion, but I do want people to feel like their time is being respected and I do want them to be, at the very least, 'Watchable', which is to say decent enough that you don't really even think about the technical part when you're viewing it. Some people are hard to please in that department, but I feel like I've done well in meeting a kind of minimum broadcast standard.

When I first began doing YouTube, the whole aesthetic was born out of necessity and a desire to be seen as a peer and not an authority. That's why I've kept the hand-drawn titles, because I think it starts people off with a sense that this is a one-man-band kind of production and to take what I say in a conversational spirit. This is the kind of YouTube I really like doing, I truly enjoy a casual approach because it's a casual platform. I know it's become more like corporate media in the past years and that there are expectations about branding and presentation, but I get a huge amount of creative pleasure from continuing to produce videos like it's 2008. I think people like that about it, too, to have content that feels friendly without being too steeped in SEO branding or contemporary formatting. 

But is it fair at all to continue doing this when I'm making a wage that can now be considered professional? It's more than I ever had before or frankly dreamed of having, but this is also a time of social upheaval and economic collapse so it's a gross feeling to be doing better than ever when, for so many, it's the worst hardship in years. And has my output increased alongside the income? It has not. And I don't know that it ever can at this point. I'm working essentially as fast as I'm able-- if I performed perfectly, I would have one video a month at least.

I don't perform perfectly, however. I make frequent mistakes, go down side project detours, and get so tangled up and twisted that something that ought to take weeks takes months. I am always trying to improve, not make the same mistakes twice, but there are a remarkable number of different mistakes a person can make the first time over.

The most intense attempt at time management I've ever made also led to the worst community interaction I've ever stumbled into. When The Last of Us Part 2 came out, I was ready for it, ready in a way I almost never actually manage by having the first game's footage all tucked away and labeled. In less than two weeks, I played the whole 35 hour thing, wrote over 40 pages about it, and produced them all into a video. I barely slept, I just kept my nose to the grindstone as much as possible, and in doing so didn't reach out to listen to any opinion besides my own even when it came to Lev, the trans character. 

Most of you are likely aware by now how disappointed people were in me for that take, how many still are. It's not a cancel culture thing at all-- one of the things I had valued the most in my viewer feedback is that, previously, I had gotten multiple notes from trans folks saying they felt safe watching my stuff because they knew I wouldn't be an asshole for no reason, and I let down each and every one of those people. It doesn't take much to feel unsure with that sort of thing-- like, I was watching A Mighty Wind for the first time in years and for 99% of it I thought "This is going back in my top 10" until literally the last 30 seconds where it drops an extremely mean spirited trans joke and then cuts to credits. It makes the movie impossible to recommend even though it's possibly my favorite Eugene Levy performance. With what I wrote because I was trying to go so quickly, people felt I talked over and diminished actual trans voices just because I wanted to pop off how I felt about it. I didn't mean it in a mean-spirited way, but the damage is done. I carefully laid the rake down in front of me and didn't just step on it but stomped on it.

I feel positively that I managed to make it a full seven years in the public eye without making a complete ass out of myself, but that counter is now at zero. It's been suggested to me that I host a video exclusively of trans criticism of Lev by trans critics to make up for it, but to be frank I never want to discuss The Last of Us Part 2 again in any capacity, for any reason. Just thinking about the video makes me sick to my stomach, but I've left it up because it still meant something to some people and, again, it isn't meant meanly.

The Last of Us video I did was the final straw for a lot of people, who had been feeling for a long time that I was in a state of decline and that now it was blisteringly obvious. One subscriber wrote "What the fuck happened to you? I think I know what the fuck happened to you. It's the money. You have money now, and I think that's really poisoned who you are, and what I liked about you. You've moved up on the social ladder and it shows eminently to those who are listening for that. I don't think you understand this, so I want to spell it out. You are one of the luckiest people on the planet. You're mentally and physically healthy. You are paid to travel. You have people who will listen to you. I just wish you'd acknowledge that sometimes." A context of this comment is my discussion of my experience with depression that I put into the video-- this commenter felt I was playing up the depression for clout, and that depression is no excuse for sub-optimal output when I'm making this amount of money.

More than anything else, this is why I've been terrified of actually talking my patrons. I don't think it's an excuse either. But it's a contributing factor to my failure to produce at least one video per month. Every video I make has an arc of panic to it, panic it's taking too long, panic it'll be bullshit drivel nonsense, panic I'll do something that invalidates it. Like the God of War retrospective I did, for instance. I was shocked to find that some people (maybe it's just, like, two, but even then) actually enjoyed it because the comment section consensus seemed to be that I played the games so ineptly that my opinion on them was invalid by default. If I can't play the game right, I can't understand the game right, so what I write is by definition wrong. 

Now, there's a lot of people who would say this is a bad faith argument and why am I listening to it-- it's because I can't tell the difference between good and bad faith criticism when I usually just agree with all of  it. When another youtuber edited together a supercut of all the times I took a breath in a video I did to illustrate how lazy and incompetent I am as a video creator, I felt that was probably valid, but the problem is that I am who I am and that includes my deficiencies as well as my theoretical talents. I like making videos this way so I'll probably keep doing it, although I have taken steps since then like I said to at least try and improve. 

I can't stop suffering from depression. I have tried. It's just a fact of me. I do think I get a lot done anyway-- 2020 is already a better year than 2018 or 2019 in terms of output and I still have a good three months to try and hammer things into shape. YouTube is a complicated choice of occupation for someone with depression, however, because inevitably the absolute cruelest and nastiest things you could possibly ever think about yourself are presented to you in the comments section. It also creates a deep and painful paradox for me when it comes to this Patreon account.

The paradox is this: I also receive some of the nicest, kindest, most heartfelt notes a person could possibly receive. Yet the people who make derogatory statements argue frequently that I'm running a con job on those same people who send me the kind messages, these negative voices say that I "only shit out a video when I need money, leeching off patrons" in the meantime. I'm always, always working on a video. They're just difficult to complete and there's no evidence of working on them at all until they're 100% done and uploaded. I absolutely can't stand the idea that I'm taking advantage of my viewers, patrons, and supporters, which makes it impossible for me to write it off as a bad faith argument when people call me a con man. Over the past few years, this has become my overwhelming fear, that the level of financial support I get isn't just excessive for the kind of content I actually make, but that this support is predicated on me lying to the people who are nicest to me with promises of timely, adequately-produced content. 

I'm overwhelmingly grateful for all the support I've ever received. If you feel I've let you down and lost touch, I'm sorry. I don't know what I can do besides keep going and continuing to deliver the content that people are paying for. I do have some ideas about how, possibly, both of us could feel better about this whole deal.

The biggest possible thing is to get on the same page about where I'm at now with the Patreon-- your individual donation is no longer quite so critical to my survival. You could likely halve or drop your donation entirely and I would be fine. Even if everyone halved their donations, I would simply pick up a part time job again and continue to deliver the expected content.

However, after the mess that was my Last of Part 2 video, it occurs to me that it's not a wholly positive thing that so many people can keep me afloat. It also means I can't effectively be fired if I do something that truly is beyond tolerance. I already have an anytime/any reason refund policy for individual patrons, but as a whole-channel option I'd like to introduce a voluntary clause where if the patreon dips below $1,000 a month for reasons of widespread economic hardship or some catastrophic implosion of reputation, I will shut down the account. I will then produce six more videos as a sign of good faith and find a different path. It's only because of people's kindness and tolerance I'm here in the first place. There should be a mechanism to tell me to leave as well if that becomes necessary. 

With that understanding, with your absolute assurance as a patron that you're donating with the knowledge that I'm striving to do right by you but often fall short, I might be able to feel more positively about what I'm doing, to let go of the pervasive sense that all I'm doing is ripping folks off. Sometimes when I talk about this sort of thing people make a sympathy pledge and up the donation-- please do not do this. If you approve of what I'm doing, just keep doing what you're doing and I'll keep doing what I'm doing. But I'm no longer the person I was where I truly need the money to make my dreams come true. I got to have that already. Switching your pledge from my patreon to another, more obscure one could make all the difference in the world to them like it already made that difference for me.

With the money I'm making now, I'm able to plan for future projects better, but it makes some projects harder to justify. Like writing fiction. A few years back, I began work on a fiction project, but since all my time is essentially malleable, any time spent on a fiction project necessarily takes away time from the nonfiction projects. So I ran a twitter poll asking if people thought it was time theft for me to split my attention in such a way. Only 10% said it was theft-- but it was 10% of over a thousand respondents. If over a hundred people thought it was shady of me to try and write a novel, I figured that settled it, and I didn't try to write fiction again for two years. I'm doing it again: I want so badly to try, I feel such a thrill in writing  with a whole different methodology. Except I do feel it's theft in a way. And so do some of you. I need for the people who donate to ONLY do so if they feel okay about me exploring other artistic avenues. I need to be able to follow my nose. The stress of feeling like I'm not *allowed* to write fiction is honestly equally as time consuming as just taking a day out of the week for stories and not just criticism. 

Or take the travel videos, for instance: what haven't I done yet? Well, East Coast Fallouts, and a point-to-point byway travelogue. Both of which are magnitudes more difficult and expensive than any bus trip I've done. With the amount of money I'm making now I can do those sorts of projects, but in the middle of the pandemic and its associative crises it feels kind of ghoulish and gross to be following the same plan I had before that all went down. The travel videos are special to me, and a lot of patrons donate specifically to encourage them-- it seems important to continue to move towards them. As it stands, I'm preparing to spend three solid months on the road with a multi-project loop about a year from now in September 2021. Does this justify the income? Could it? Is it too long to ask people to wait? The whole thing feels fraught with risk, and that was before I invested heavily in the idea.

Part of my long-term plan now is to go back to school, not for the arts but to get an ASE certification and learn how to be a real mechanic. Eventually, I'd like to do car repairs live on twitch but I'm just not skilled enough yet. I need to learn properly. I can't do that either if all of my time is owed to video game videos. There are ways I want to grow as a person, skills I want to learn, paths I want to pursue, that seem contradicted by the obligations of the kind of income I'm making. But then again what could I even use the money for in terms of video game videos? I've invested in a new desktop that should allow me to play brand new releases at 60fps for the first time, that should be complete in October. After that I'm set for another five years. I redistribute some of the money I get by donations to other patreon accounts or nonprofit institutions, but travel videos are the only area where the income I'm getting could find justification. As far as travel videos go, they're a bit of a bargain-- the Fallout Tour and Atomic Pilgrimage videos cost around $4,500 between the two of them. When I think of that money, on the one hand it seems disgustingly large because it never used to be attainable to me. On the other I live in Bend, Oregon where you're likely to stop at any stoplight next to people who have spent $45,000  or more on a campmobile. My excess is not especially excessive compared against the median. 

What it comes down to is that I won't ever feel right about what I'm doing unless you, as a patron, feel one hundred percent comfortable just letting me figure out what comes next in my own way with the understanding that I'll get it to you when it's done. I need to know that the people who donate don't feel resentful or taken advantage of. I need the transaction between the two of us to be as between peers and not a manager/employee relationship. Trying to figure out the ethics of anything from taking a chance on a game I might not finish a video on to taking classes for professional development to taking time for a long lunch with my wife is maddeningly impossible to parse out when you have that kind of relationship with over 800 people. Over 800 sets of expectations, almost all of which are implied or unspoken.

The thing about this is that I'm not trying to do anything differently or less professionally than I've done before, if anything my hope is to land on a footing with my patrons that allows me to feel and behave more professionally. Because as it is I've been too confused and frightened by the ambiguities of the patron/creator dynamic to even type out this message for almost a thousand consecutive days running. I want to do right by everyone, and I find for one of the first times in my adult life that I'd like to do better by me as well. I think that might mean less money changing hands if that's what it takes for everyone to feel less pressure. 

I know these past couple years have been rough and your faith in me hasn't always been consistently rewarded with adequate content. This year I've tried to change that. I've had some successes and some failures. I think it's always going to be that way for me, ups and downs, fits and starts. What I hope to have conveyed is that, even when there's a gap in the content, I'm not just taking your money and pocketing it. You deserve a return. And if you don't feel you've gotten it you deserve a refund. I don't want to have to spend so much time telling you how sorry I am about things. I only really want to say thank you.