#oneaday Day 59: Popularity produces pricks

And not in the way you might be thinking. Okay, there are times when someone getting popular or enjoying some success with something leads to them becoming a prick, but that is not what I’d like to talk about today. I’d like to talk about life as a small-scale creative person on the Internet, and what happens when something you produce manages to extend far outside of its usual audience.

I’m prompted to talk about this as a result of the thoroughly lovely RoseTintedSpectrum’s recent video on the first series of beloved video game TV show GamesMaster, which, to put it mildly, has been doing numbers since he released it. If you haven’t watched it yet, I highly recommend giving it a look:

What we’ve all been noticing since the video started blowing up, however, is how much more frequent comments from complete arseholes become once you cross a particular popularity threshold. Not necessarily comments that are being directly insulting to the video maker, but comments from people who are just being dickish. People who use terms like “woketard”. People who think the ’90s was a utopia where white people flourished and you never, ever had to look at those filthy Muslims. You know the sort of people. The same sort of people who cry “DEI” anyone someone with a slight tan appears on screen.

When this first started happening, we were discussing the phenomenon in a Discord server that hosts a number of UK-based retro gaming and retro tech YouTubers, and we all had similar stories to share. There comes a point, it seems, usually after you cross the 1,000 views mark, where there’s a marked uptick in comments from twats.

It makes sense when you think about it. A video blowing up and getting a lot of views means that it’s being pushed by the ever-mysterious YouTube Algorithm to people beyond your usual audience and subscriber base, which means people from circles you might not normally mix (or want to associate) with may start stopping by. And boy, do they love to hear themselves talk.

I had something similar a while back when I had my own video “blow up”. It was this one, a video I’m still pretty pleased with, but which left me feeling well and truly vindicated in just making videos about what pleases me, rather than what is guaranteed to be “popular”.

Because what no-one tells you about getting popular and suddenly attracting all these complete penii is that it’s genuinely stressful and often quite upsetting. I got to a point where I had to “pause” comments on the video above because the influx of them was stressing me out so much. And I wasn’t even getting nearly as many dickheads as Rosie is getting on his video. It was just overwhelming, and not in a good way; I did not like it at all.

The same is true for anything tangentially related to social media or online presence. Post something — be it picture, video, blog post, article, whatever — that manages to get a significant reach, and it’s seemingly inevitable that you’ll have to deal with dickheads. This is, of course, frustrating, because one would hope that it’s possible to get a significant reach on something without attracting the very dregs of Internet society, but with every “success story” like the ones I’ve described above, it seems increasingly inevitable that the dickheads? Oh they will come. They will come in droves.

I wonder how many people have been put off from a potential career of making creative things online by this sort of thing. I guess after a certain point you start to get used to it and be able to tune things out — and once you reach a certain size as an online personality, you can start hiring staff to take care of things like the comments section for you, so you can focus exclusively on actually making the videos.

But for everyone who gets to the point where they’re able to hire a staff, I’m sure there are myriad more who gave up the first time they saw mild success, because the dickheads came. And I can’t help thinking that’s a real shame. Online culture shouldn’t have come to this. But it has, and we just have to live with it, it seems, because no-one seems in a particular hurry to do anything about it.

Thank heavens for YouTube’s “Hide user from channel” setting, at least, which means the dickhead of your choice is banished to the abyss; you’ll never see them in your comments section again, and neither will the rest of your audience — but, here’s the fun bit: they’re still able to rage impotently at you, never knowing that you’ve effectively “blocked” them because YouTube doesn’t tell them that.

This is the one bit of YouTube I can honestly say is absolutely masterful. There are few things better than knowing that there are dickheads who think they’re posting amazing putdowns of your latest work, only for their comments to be silently banished to the abyss before they get anywhere near you.

Anyway, the Internet sucks, but go subscribe to Rosie ’cause he makes good vids. Ta-ra.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

#oneaday Day 51: The Art of the Thumbnail

I’m in a Discord with some other (relatively) low-subscriber retro gaming and tech YouTubers, and we’ve had some interesting discussions over there. One subject that comes up frequently that I think I’ve derived the most value from is that of video thumbnails.

To put this in context, prior to joining this Discord, and for quite some time, my YouTube channel looked something like this:

I don’t dislike this look. I was rather fond of how each “series” I was doing had its own distinct appearance, and I feel each thumbnail got nicely to the point: telling viewers that it was a video about a particular game on a particular platform.

But that’s not really how YouTube works. However nice it looks to have a lineup of games with lovely consistent thumbnails Criterion Collection-style, it doesn’t necessarily bring the views in. And so, with the advice and encouragement of the folks in the aforementioned Discord, I do things a little bit differently now.

This is how my channel looks today:

I’m pleased with this. Because I feel like these thumbnails do a much better job of intriguing and attracting the viewer’s attention without assuming knowledge — i.e. “what is ‘Atari A to Z’?” — while still allowing me a certain degree of consistency and coherence that makes my work immediately identifiable if you know what to look for.

Best of all, I haven’t resorted to any of the more flagrantly transparent “clickbait” techniques, and “YouTube Face” is nowhere to be seen. The videos I make on YouTube are not for the same audience as Mr. Beast, so I make zero effort to court the sort of people who respond to those sorts of thumbnails.

And it works. At least I think so. Some of my videos perform about as well as what I considered a “solid performance” two or three years ago — that is to say, breaking three figures in the view count — but quite a lot more of them exceed that by two, three or even four times. And I’ve had a few breakout successes: my Super Woden GP 2 video sits at 86K views to date, my look at Ultima love letter Moonring has 21K views to date (and a very long tail), my video covering the announcement of The400 Mini attracted 14K views, and most recently a video on Project Gotham Racing 3 brought in a relatively modest but still impressive-for-my-channel 2.5K pairs of eyes.

I don’t do this for the views, as I quite frequently state; I do it because I enjoy it. But I won’t pretend it’s not nice when a video does well — at least partly because it results in a bit of pocket money for me. That Super Woden GP 2 video made me over a hundred quid within a few days of it being posted. And now I get a small payout from YouTube earnings (i.e. the minimum payment threshold) every couple of months, whereas once it was a far-off goal I thought I’d never achieve. That’s nice.

The secret behind those thumbnails? It’s not really anything complicated. The most effective advice from the Discord I’ve followed is to keep text to just a few bold words, and present those words using at least two of the following: a bold outline around the letters; a bold drop shadow; and slightly rotating various parts of the complete text so that the eye is drawn to lines that aren’t quite “straight”. That’s about it. I don’t overuse colour; I don’t overdo the “big red arrow” or “circling the obvious thing” tricks (although I put in a big red arrow occasionally as an in-joke to the group, which refers to itself as the “Big Red Arrow Club”); and, as noted, I don’t do the “YouTube Face”.

It works for me. The result is a channel full of videos I’m proud to call my own, and which a gradually (very gradually) growing number of people are coming to appreciate. That’s pleasing to me.

YouTube and YouTube culture has myriad problems, but it’s still the best place to create and share stuff like this. It’s a valuable means of self-expression and sharing one’s interests, and it’s something I’m glad I decided to get stuck into exploring properly.

You are subscribed, right?

#oneaday Day 50: Another Project Complete

As of today, I now have videos recorded for all 25 of the games included on The400 Mini, the miniature games console based around the Atari 8-bit. Not all of them have been published yet — the final one, which covers both Centipede and Millipede, will be out later in the week — but it’s nice to feel like another creative project is “done”. If you’re interested, I set up a playlist on YouTube here:

As you’ll note from the thumbnail, this playlist includes both videos that I’ve previously recorded that happen to cover the games on The400 Mini and new vids that I’ve recorded specifically to look at everything included on the system. The Atari 5200 games included in the playlist, covered during my “Atari A to Z Flashback” project, where I made videos for all 150 games on Atari Flashback Classics for Switch, are fundamentally identical to their Atari 8-bit counterparts, and a few others I’d previously covered on the 8-bit-centric “Atari A to Z” series.

I’m pleased with this, at least partly because it means I can now get on with exploring the broader Atari 8-bit library once again. The games included on The400 Mini are a fun cross-section of what was out there on Atari 8-bit, but they are just a fraction of the whole picture — a picture that today includes some incredible efforts from modern developers who are still putting out amazing stuff for the platform.

One of the things that I hope comes to light for people who watch my videos is that a lot of games that ended up being very famous across multiple platforms actually got their start on Atari 8-bit. Off the top of my head that I’ve covered already, there’s Boulder Dash, Alley Cat, Spelunker, Lode Runner, M.U.L.E. and plenty of others besides.

All of these are arguably more famous in other incarnations (except perhaps M.U.L.E.) but I feel it’s important to acknowledge where they came from in the first place; a lot of self-styled gaming historians don’t give the Atari 8-bit the credit it is due, assuming it to be a niche system on the level of stuff like the Oric Atmos, Dragon 32 and suchlike. But no; while the Atari 8-bit never had the same widespread acceptance of the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64, it was still a lively, active and well-supported system (supported by everyone except Atari for significant portions of its lifespan, anyway) with some excellent capabilities that the platform’s more talented programmers really got to grips with.

I realise this all might sound a bit fanboyish, but that’s just because, well, I’m an Atari fan. Always have been. And I feel it’s a bit silly for big chunks of computing and gaming history to be ignored just because they didn’t happen on the most famous platforms.

And so I will continue to bang that drum on my YouTube channel. I have a platform there, and have amassed a following of quite a reasonable size. If the stuff I do convinces just one or two people to explore things a little beyond the usual scope of “retro” — or just to acknowledge that Atari home computers exist — then I’ll feel like I’ve done a decent job.

#oneaday Day 22: Trends Have Made the Internet Boring

See? I told you I’d be back. And I thought I’d talk about something other than Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail. Specifically, as the title says, I want to talk about how trends have made the Internet boring. Or perhaps more accurately, why everyone all wanting to do the same thing all at once makes things deathly boring.

There are a few practical examples I’d like to give. First is a YouTube channel I was introduced to recently called Obscurest Vinyl. This channel is run by a designer and musician who found some joy in creating fake record sleeves for songs with names you definitely wouldn’t have gotten away with in the eras they’re parodying. Songs like the wonderful Pullin’ Out My Pubes (She Loves Me Not) by The Sticky Sweethearts:

You’ll notice from that video that the record label now has some music attached to it. I was initially a little perturbed to discover that the person behind the Obscurest Vinyl YouTube channel had been using AI music generation to create the tracks, though my mind was set somewhat at rest by how he had written the lyrics (which are generally far too offensive to be the product of the typically rather po-faced Large Language Model AI bots) and tinkered with the initial output to make it flow properly, incorporate all the filthy language and sound consistent with the other works from the same fictional “artists” on the channel.

Of course, what the YouTube algorithm then did was go “oh, you watched a video about a fake record with lyrics about someone gluing their balls to their butthole, HERE, HAVE A MILLION MORE OF THEM”. And it became very apparent that Obscurest Vinyl has a lot of copycats out there, none of which have anywhere near the same magic; these other channels are just trying to ride a trend.

This, of course, is symptomatic of one of the main things that is killing the Web right now: excessive Search Engine Optimisation or SEO. Have you ever searched for some information on something, only to find a billion unrelated websites all magically having articles headlined “What Time Is The Superbowl On?” or “Where Do You Unlock Pictomancer in Final Fantasy XIV?” That’s SEO at work, and that’s a problem that is only getting worse with the amount of AI sludge that is being fed into the Internet at large. Sites want quick and easy clicks, so they look at what people are searching for — the trends of the hour — then provide a hyper-specific article about the thing.

Helpful? Arguable. I hate it, because I’d rather have the information directly from the original source — in the latter case above, for example, it took me a fair bit of scrolling before I got past all the websites jockeying for SEO juice to the actual website for Final Fantasy XIV, the thing I was looking for.

More than being frustrating if you want the information straight from the horse’s mouth, it just makes the Web boring as fuck, because every site (including a lot that should really know better) are doing the exact same thing. Daily Wordle solutions. Individual articles for things that would have been much better incorporated into an FAQ. Outright copying and plagiarism of other sites. It really is a shame to see what online media has become — and frustrating to see that certain portions of the creative types on sites such as YouTube are more obsessed in chasing trends with transparently copycat material rather than, you know, being creative.

I don’t know what the endgame of all this is. I hope we’re in a “things will get worse before they get better” kind of situation, but honestly right now, it feels unlikely that the “get better” part will happen. The Web gets demonstrably worse, less useful and less fun day by day. And we’ve all let it happen. I don’t know if we can undo that.

The TikTokification of comedy

I fucking hate TikTok. I hate “short-form content” in general, which means I loathe YouTube Shorts, Instagram/Facebook Reels and anything anyone feels the need to send me that is in a 9:16 aspect ratio. So if you’re considering it… don’t. I won’t watch it.

My reasons for despising short-form content are numerous and varied, so I won’t go into all of them here, but one thing in particular vexed me so when I stumbled across it yesterday that I felt the need to get this particular rant out of my system. And that is what I call the TikTokification of comedy — or, to put it another way, the divorcing of comedic moments from context purely so that idiots can quickly and easily steal them and share them on their mindless social media.

I’ve actually been thinking about this for a while. The first time I was particularly conscious of it was when I started seeing that a number of comedians had started upping their YouTube presence. And all their videos had a few things in common. Take a look at these thumbnails:

All of these are completely transparent clickbait. And while a certain amount of clickbait is a necessity on a platform as saturated with material as YouTube is, I really detest the whole “half a sentence” thumbnail format. I didn’t click on this one, which has almost certainly floated across your YouTube recommendations at some point, either:

This, to me, is the YouTube equivalent of the Twitter engagement bait (that thankfully seems to have died a bit of a death… along with the rest of Twitter) where a brand would go “[our brand] is _________” and expect people to “fill in the blank”. And people, dumb consumers that they are, absolutely would. And it didn’t matter whether they were filling it in with obscenities or bootlicking nice things, it was engagement. It made the numbers go up. That’s all that mattered.

It’s the same with these comedy clips. I like all of those comedians above, but I don’t want to click on their videos because it’s rewarding manipulative behaviour, and also encouraging the main problem that I want to talk about today: encouraging people away from enjoying a creative work in its entirety and towards a grab-bag full of “best moments” that completely lack their original context.

Good stand-up comedy makes the entire show into an event, and runs a narrative thread through the whole thing. Not all comedians do this, but the best comedians, in my experience, make you feel like you’ve enjoyed a complete story by the time you’ve left the room. Sure, there may have been some deviations along the way, and the story may not have made all that much sense… but there was still a sense of narrative progression. A beginning, middle and end, if you will. For some great examples, check out Rhod Gilbert’s show Rhod Gilbert and the Award-Winning Mince Pie and pretty much anything by Eddie Izzard.

When you slice a show up into little bite-sized bits, you lose that context. Sure, the individual moments might be funny on a superficial level, but you lose the added depth of them being part of something bigger. And that’s a real shame. And this leads me on to the real reason I’m writing this today: my discovery yesterday that Friends, a TV show I absolutely adored during my formative years, has its own YouTube channel.

And yes, you guessed it, the Friends YouTube channel looks like this:

The stand-up comedy thing I can sort of forgive. While I much prefer seeing an entire stand-up set and enjoying that feeling of context and narrative, there are sometimes just single jokes or routines that you want to share with someone. And you can probably make the same argument about Friends.

But for me, and regardless of what you and/or the general public might think of it now in 2023, Friends was always about more than just the jokes. Friends was a phenomenon. Friends was about us spending 10 years alongside these characters in an important, turbulent part of their lives, and watching them grow and change. Friends was about us simultaneously being envious of these twentysomethings somehow being able to afford massive apartments in Manhattan, but also feeling like the moments they shared were relatable in their own ways.

And an important part of the entire experience was context. While Friends actually starts kind of in medias res, halfway through a member of this pre-existing friendship group telling a story in their favourite coffee shop, it still makes an effort to introduce us to everyone through the way Rachel enters the picture as a formerly estranged friend of Monica.

We feel included. We feel like we’re learning who these people are — and over the course of the subsequent ten seasons, we really get to know everyone. And while the age of the show means that life in general is quite different for most folks right now — look how infrequently anyone on the show uses a mobile phone or a computer, for example — it’s still relatable to anyone either going through that “20s to 30s” part of their life, or who has already been through it.

These characters grow and change as a result of the things that happen to them and the simple act of getting older. They enjoy amazing high points and some heartbreaking low points — although nothing too heartbreaking; this was a primetime comedy show, after all. But everything that happens helps to define these characters and make them more than simple, mawkish, two-dimensional representations of a single personality trait.

Slice all 236 24-minute episodes up into one-minute chunks, though, and you have content. You have individual moments that, in many cases, simply don’t really work as standalone “jokes” because they rely on you knowing and understanding the characters and their relationships. And you have no sense of that ongoing growth and character development, because all these clips are posted in a seemingly completely random order determined by whatever the person running the Friends YouTube account felt like putting up today.

I realise this is a bit silly to get annoyed and upset over, but it’s frustrating to me to see something that I loved so much in its original form and its original context be treated as fodder for the mindless content consumption machine of 2023. It irritates me to think that there are doubtless some people out there whose only contact with Friends will have been minute-long clips on YouTube, and through those they will likely have formed a totally different opinion of the show than someone who watched it from start to finish.

Is this elitist and gatekeepery? Not really, since Friends itself is easy enough to watch in its entirety via either streaming services or undoubtedly cheap DVD box sets that no-one wants any more. It’s just the latest symptom in a disease that blights society, where no-one believes they have “time” for anything any more, so watch badly cropped minute-long 9:16 clips on double speed while they’re doing their daily quests in Mindless Gacha Bullshit X, rather than settling down, taking some time to relax and just enjoying something in its entirety.

I hate it. Hate it. And while I’m aware there’s nothing stopping me from doing what I describe above — I think I even still have my Friends DVD box set somewhere — it’s exhausting just to be around all this short-form garbage, and frustrating to live in a world where seemingly no-one has an attention span longer than a TikTok video.

2431: I Also Made This

I made another video today in an attempt to further solidify my knowledge of Hitfilm 4 Express, and indeed to refresh my subject knowledge with regard to video editing in general, as it’s one of those skills that can atrophy from non-use, particularly with how non-intuitive professional-grade programs can be.

I’m still in two minds about the advent of video on the Internet and how, for young people in particular, it has taken the place of good old fashioned text Personally speaking, I’d still rather read a good article with nice screenshots than watch a video — particularly if I’m out and about on my phone and am not in a situation where listening to the audio of a video would be practical — but I’m forced to reluctantly admit that for gaming content, video does sort of make sense.

Video games are, for the most part, a dynamic, audio-visual medium in which the way things move around the screen and the noises they make are just as important as what they look like as still images. This is more true for some genres than others — shoot ’em ups such as the two games I’ve covered with my videos over the past couple of days are a good example. But even in more sedate games, there’s value to being able to actually demonstrate what the thing looks like in motion, how its interface works and all manner of other things. And while you could take the TotalBiscuit approach and make hour-long videos about options menus — there is value there for some people — I think the real strength in video coincides with the atrocious attention span most people have these days: short, snappy summaries of what something is all about and why you should pay attention to it.

I don’t yet know if I’ve nailed that format in my videos just yet, but I’m enjoying making them if nothing else. Plus insofar as creative projects go, they could potentially end up forming a “portfolio” of sorts should I find myself in a position where my video-making skills might potentially get me a job of some sort. That would be nice, wouldn’t it? I’m trying not to think about it too much, but as I’m broke it’s kind of constantly on my mind.

Still, I guess this counts as a vaguely productive use of my time, and I did at least apply for two jobs earlier today, so I can say I got something done. Unfortunately none of those somethings quite pay the bills at present, but, well, doing something is better than nothing, non?

2203: Pete Reacts to Growing Older

A significant proportion of the Internet has been up in arms over a recent copyright kerfuffle on YouTube recently, where a collective I’ve never heard of called the Fine Bros had apparently attempted to trademark the word “react”. Digging deeper, it seems that the Fine Bros had done this ostensibly as a means of trademarking the concept of “reaction videos” and allowing others to make videos in the same format — one which the group have had plenty of success with in the past — while allowing themselves an opportunity to profit from licensing fees.

Leaving aside the whole ethical implications of attempting to trademark a common word such as “react” — one of several different “brands” that Fine Bros had attempted to trademark, theoretically as a catch-all term to encompass any specific series they might concoct in the near future — this whole debacle brought one thing into sharp focus for me, and that is that there are certain aspects of modern popular culture that I simply don’t understand the appeal of whatsoever.

The concept of a reaction video is simple. You show some people — preferably from a specific demographic such as “teenagers” or “the elderly” — a thing that is Shocking in some way, then you film what they do while they’re watching or looking at the thing that is Shocking. Early examples of reaction videos included various instances of people seeing the notorious “2 Girls 1 Cup” video (for heaven’s sake, don’t Google that if you’ve never heard of it) as well as well-known shocking scenes from TV or online videos such as Game of Thrones’ “Red Wedding” scene.

Trouble is, in the few reaction videos I’ve managed to stomach, it all feels so painfully forced as to not be entertaining. No-one I know whoops and hollers at the television, bellowing “OH MY GOD!” as something shocking happens. The most I do when seeing something shocking is flinch and wince at something gory, particularly if it involves eyes, but I don’t shout and scream or anything. (That said, given the general difficulty I have with expressing emotions clearly when I’m “in person”, I may not be the most representative example, but none of the people I know are like this either.) In other words, it doesn’t seem believable, with the whole situation being so contrived as to seem utterly pointless.

And aside from the implausibility of some reactions, I simply don’t see the appeal whatsoever. Why on Earth would I want to watch a group of people gathered around a TV that I can’t see all screeching and gesturing at something I may or may not already be familiar with? And, by extension, why on Earth would anyone want to trademark such an utterly inane concept on the arrogant assumption that other people would want to pay them for the dubious privilege of churning out more culturally bankrupt tat like this?

I guess you can just add reaction videos to the ever-lengthening list of things that I just don’t “get” in modern online life. It joins the illustrious ranks of Twitch chat, Twitch in general (unless you’re hanging out with an actual friend), MOBAs, unboxing videos and doubtless a whole bunch of other things I’m not even familiar with yet.

I’m 34 years of age. Some days I feel like I’m still 16. Today, however, I’m feeling every one of those years. Now get off my fucking lawn.

2029: Our Video Future

I’ve been playing a bit more with making some videos using the PlayStation 4 and its ShareFactory software. As it turns out, today I actually hit the upper limit of how many clips of commentary it’s possible to add to a single project; apparently I need to record narration all in one go, then split it up later if necessary rather than recording in small chunks!

This was today’s project:

Sword Art Online Re:Hollow Fragment is a really good game that I’m enjoying a whole lot, and making a video about it seemed like a good idea, because a lot of people who haven’t taken a chance on it and just started playing it really don’t know anything about it at all. My good friend Chris Caskie, for example, specifically thanked me for showing all the different parts of the game across the course of my six-minute video, since gameplay footage he’d seen in the past had only ever shown a tiny (and, from the sounds of things, boring) excerpt of what’s actually on offer.

I think I’ve found a format I like working in, too: I never felt quite comfortable doing “Let’s Plays” or recording live reactions as if I was streaming a game. At least part of this, I feel, is due to the fact that, as a viewer, I don’t really have much interest in Let’s Plays and streaming, because I’d much rather play a game than watch someone else play it. What I do appreciate, however, is the opportunity to see a game in action, find out a bit about it and perhaps a touch of personal opinion as to whether or not it’s worth exploring. I am also uninclined to spend 20 minutes watching someone go through options menus and whatnot; short and relatively snappy is the key, summarising everything I might want to know about the game without rambling on and on about it for too long.

So that’s the format I’ve adopted in my last couple of videos. I feel it works well; I’ve been pleased with the result (though not so much with the sound quality; I need to 1) adjust the sound levels between the game footage and my commentary recording and 2) invest in or find a pop filter for my headset microphone, which is otherwise proving to be pretty good for this) and I actually find myself going back and watching the videos I’ve recorded again; considering a few years back (prior to the first time I went on a podcast) I absolutely loathed and detested the sound of my own voice and would rather have stuck my head into a woodchipper than listened to myself, this is Progress of sorts, I guess.

I think the fact I’m enjoying making these videos — and that I can do so quite quickly — is important though. I will always be someone who enjoys writing about games first and foremost, and that’s what the magazine project I’m currently working on is all about. For a basic “review” of sorts, however — which is effectively what I’m doing with these videos, or at the very least providing some first impressions after a few hours of play — video seems to be an eminently suitable medium, perhaps even better than dry written words on a page.

Perhaps I’ll even be able to make some money off this sort of thing eventually, though I’m realistic here; my viewing stats have broken three figures on, I think, just one of my videos posted to date, with the others having anywhere between 10 and 70 views. That’s not at a point where it’s worth putting ads on my videos as yet, though that said I haven’t really made a huge effort to try and promote what I’m doing; I’m just putting it out there to see what people think.

If nothing else, it’s something to do on empty, tedious days, and I’m having a whole lot of those at the moment.

2022: Video Star

Been experimenting a bit more with video today. Specifically, I had a play with the PlayStation 4’s app ShareFactory, which allows you to take video clips and screenshots you’ve saved while playing PS4 games, then edit them together with commentary, music, transitions and effects into something that can then be rendered and uploaded (almost) directly to YouTube, Facebook or DailyMotion.

ShareFactory is a decent bit of software, it turns out, and works quite nicely with the DualShock 4 controller. Its interface is initially a little difficult to parse, since it’s largely icon-based and not immediately apparent what all of said icons are actually for, but once you get your head around it it mostly works well.

ShareFactory is no Final Cut, obviously, but then it doesn’t need to be. To make an effective gameplay video, all you need at most is the game footage along with perhaps some still images, some music and some commentary. There’s no real need for multiple tracks of video or anything like that — though I believe ShareFactory does support picture-in-picture if you have a PlayStation camera — because you’re not making a multi-angle extravaganza of a movie; you’re making a video about a game.

I learned something else while making my ShareFactory project, too; I much prefer making videos that are “pre-scripted” rather than improvised Let’s Play-style videos. This is probably due to the fact that I also prefer watching videos that are pre-scripted rather than improvised Let’s Play-style videos. I grew up on traditional media, remember; I’m not really interested in watching Kids React To Something Pretty Mundane, nor am I interested in listening to someone’s reactions in real time as they play something for the first time. I am, however, interested in seeing video used in the “documentary” style; footage of something relevant, with explanatory commentary over the top. This sort of thing doesn’t have to be dry and boring, either; more importantly, though, it tends to be a lot more concise, with pre-scripted videos more often than not clocking in at considerably lower durations than Let’s Plays.

More to the point, though, it means that I can write something in a “traditional” manner, then just read it out (with feeling!) when it comes to time to record the video. The only real difference is that in the script I found it was a good idea to mark where different video clips/sections should begin. That really helped with editing later, particularly with the way ShareFactory’s workflow goes. I could take a clip at a time, record the commentary, then trim/split the clips down to fit the commentary afterwards. After that it was a simple matter to upload it to YouTube and share it with the world.

What’s that? You want to see it for yourself? Okay then!

1904: 21st Century TV

The Internet has brought with it many things both good and bad, but by far my favourite thing about it is to do with video.

No, I’m not talking about YouTube generally — the whole “anyone with a webcam can make videos!” culture it promotes feeds into modern youth’s unhealthy obsession with “being famous” — but rather the fact that, between the various streaming services out there, both legitimate and… less legitimate, there is probably some way of watching all those programmes/adverts/movies you wish you still had 1) the VHS tapes for and 2) something to play them with.

This last week, for example, Andie and I have watched Police Squad!, the TV-based precursor to the Naked Gun movies. Only six episodes were made, and back at university, when I “discovered” the show for the first time, I had a VHS cassette with two of them on it, so I had only ever seen those two episodes. Now, however, some helpful Polish person has kindly uploaded the whole lot onto YouTube for anyone to enjoy at their leisure. No waiting for TV networks to license them and show them again. No tracking down video tapes and VCRs. Just click and go.

The ability to rediscover old favourites is one of the best things about streaming video, then, as my rewatch of Star Trek: The Next Generation for the first time in about ten years will attest. But the fact that streaming services makes new favourites easier than ever to discover, too, is rather wonderful. I doubt I’d have become so interested in anime without my Crunchyroll subscription, for example; prior to widespread streaming video, the only real way to get into anime was to buy VHS tapes or DVDs, and with anime being niche-interest and somewhat “exotic”, particularly when it first hit these shores in the mid-90s, it was a rather expensive hobby. Anime DVDs and Blu-Rays still cost up to twice as much as a regular ol’ Western film even today, making online services like Crunchyroll much better value.

This is the TV of the 21st century, then; it really is the vision of the future we had twenty, thirty years ago: decide what you want to watch, then just watch it. In most cases, that’s possible to do, even if you have strange, bizarre and peculiar tastes. And even if you’re more fucked up than most, I can almost guarantee that there’s some dark corner of the Internet out there somewhere more than willing to cater to your particular interests, whatever they might be… for better or worse.

In these days of people seemingly constantly yelling at one another on social media and comments sections on large sites being widely (and, sometimes, justifiably) regarded as fetid cesspits, it’s easy to forget the great and wonderful things that the Internet has brought to modern life. I’m a strong believer that its ability to “archive” — for future generations to be able to enjoy movies, TV shows, animations and other videos from years ago — is one of the best things about it. And as technology improves and we find more and more ways to interact with this world-wide network, I hope we never lose sight of these simple pleasures that it’s allowed us to enjoy like never before.