My plans, my rambling thoughts, and a new Q&A video!

Hi Patrons!

The latest Q&A video is linked above! It'll be releasing publicly soon and I'll be following up asking for questions for the next one in the coming days.

Also - it's been a minute huh. We're overdue a chat about what's been going on over on my end. I get into a bit of what the plan is for this whole minimme thing in the Q&A vid, but I want to expand on it a bit more. Also, again, thanks to everyone who said hi at PAX last month. It was delightful.

I've been away for the last few weeks which gave me a chance to step back and think about where I want to take YouTube, my life, my career - all that stuff. Don't worry I won't get too existential. But I want to shift my focus in some ways going forwards to keep things fresh. For me, and for you.

I'm prone to overpromising and underdelivering so I'll do my best to realistically temper my plans- but alas, enjoy some subheadings.

YouTube Videos

Coming out very soon are videos on Driver: San Francisco which I've recorded the VO for so it'll be very soon, RoboCop: Rogue City which I'm very excited to put together after enjoying the last Terminator from the same developer, and 007 Legends which is as bad as it is fascinating. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is also releasing in December and I'm currently trying to track down a review code for it - I'll likely cover it whether I get a code or not. Hopefully all four will be out by the end of the year but again, I'm prone to overpromising.

As I talked about in my Q&A video, my aim gong forward with video creation is to lean heavier into art analysis in a similar vein to my Afrika, DRIV3R, and Red Steel videos. I'm particularly proud of that Red Steel vid, and happy with how the on-camera segments turned out in it, so I'd like to do more with my ugly mug on camera.

Also I want to generally dabble more in new release games. The licensed game seems to be returning to this industry in a huge way, which gives me the perfect avenue to do so. Also since I've talked about Alone in the Dark a good handful of times in the past, I'm considering covering Alone in the Dark (2024) which releases in January. Let me know if that's something you'd be interested in.

So yeah, as far as main videos go, no dramatic changes. I'm always trying to up my game a bit and evolve in directions I think I'll enjoy, and I hope you do too.

Shorts

I've never made a YouTube short. TikTok scares me. But shorts are incredibly popular, and I think I can have fun with it, so I'm going to make some and see how it goes. TikTok still scares me, for now.

I'll start with a batch of shorts essentially summarising some of my old J2ME videos and directing traffic to them. Think a minute long piece about Hitman: Blood Money J2ME with a "If you want to know more check out my full video on the game." With J2ME games being portrait aspect as is it just makes sense. And then going forward I can cover J2ME games I haven't talked about before that don't warrant more than a minute's worth of video. That's the current plan, anyway. It's a bit see how we go.

Streams

Streams are back now that I'm back! Continuing once a week on the 2nd channel on either Thursday or Friday depending on my schedule, they're a fun time, come hang out. I have some ideas around bigger, occasional main channel videos (I'll get around to that DRIV3R full playthrough eventually) but for now I still mostly consider streaming in the practice/mess around/figure out what I'm doing zone. Also I have so many tech issues streaming lol, I need to iron those out ASAP. I like to think they're part of the charm.

Podcast

You might remember a while back I softly announced a limited run solo podcast I'd like to do where I talk about my favourite games. I think I'll call it something like "The minimme Hall of Fame" where I just ramble about one game per episode that I love - for 10-20 episodes or so. I even recorded an episode about FFXV, which you can hear here. 

I never released this publicly, but I still plan to record a few more episodes, batch them up, and launch the podcast. I got a bit sick, I got married, life got busy and I put this on ice - but all this time it's remained an exciting idea in the back of my mind. I won't put a time frame on this, but it's an idea I do plan to return to. Just need to manage my workload a bit I reckon!

Sponsorships/Monetisation

I'll be ramping up ad readouts again over the next 6 months as I've partnered with an ad agency that a lot of my YouTuber friends use. Nothing extreme, around 1 per month at most and only 60 second spots, but with cost of living going up it's just something I'd like to do to supplement my income. I realise ads are a bit of a necessary evil, and I know some consider having Patreon and ads to be double dipping a bit, but hey, it's just a food and rent thing innit. As always I'll be releasing ad-free versions of each video here on Patreon.

I'm also considering adding YouTube Memberships to my channel which will effectively operate just like Patreon does. Same cost as Patreon, same content as Patreon, just another avenue to support. This isn't an idea I've committed to so I'd love to hear any thoughts you may have.

Game Development

I've been talking near-to-mid term goals so far, but a long-term goal of mine has always been to make a game. And lately I've been working on it a bit, practicing, doing game-jams, and co-working on some dev stuff with a mate of mine (hi Jesse). I know this is a tad unrelated, but hey, maybe I'll do some devlogs or something eventually. Each passing week making a game looks like more of a reality for me, and it's super exciting, and I hope someday down the track I'll be able to share my super rad Driver PS1 style throwback game on the channel.* The dream!
*video game concept subject to change hehe

So yeah. Life. YouTube. Hairbraned schemes and content plans. This was a long post but it's been a long time, and self-indulgently writing this stuff down helps clear it out of my head. Now to do my best not to do that whole underdelivering thing!

As always, thank you for supporting this funny little gamer thing I do, and I hope you're all well.

Take care,
Peter