Five videos in, thought I’d talk s’more about how I feel it’s going. Under a cut again to protect your delicate dashboards from my babblings. Largely stream-of-consciousness again.
Shaky start! Who could have predicted. Between QUBE and Anodyne I streamed a whole bunch for the Four Job Fiesta, which definitely helped loosen me up a bit. The addition of midgi as my co-host also made a huge difference, since we would often just banter away when playing games anyway, and I think it makes for a far more entertaining video than just me trying to be funny in an empty room for an hour.
My workflow has improved tremendously since Punch Out- that video took upwards of 10 hours to produce and the whole thing was kind of a mess. Spyro took about 2 hours total (not including the recording, obvs) and was a much more seamless process.
I’ve had some considerations to make about my ‘style’. I’d been trying for a snappily edited, LP style with the earlier videos which just didn’t quite gel with either the way I enjoy thngs, nor the format of the blog. The core principle is the 1 hour of gameplay, including learning curve and exploration, and t cut all that out makes it a bit wishy-washy. Also, I was spending ages cutting out all the dead air only to reduce the video time by about 5 minutes, and it was barely worth doing.
With midgi along to fill in the dead air a little, I’m happier making fewer edits and cuts, only cutting out the repetitive bits and loading screens. The videos are still very long, but I guess that’s kind of a necessity? Been considering multi-part uploads, but that might just make them more annoying to watch.
I have also been considering the reviews part of the blog. The next game on my list is Subserial Network, which is 100% reading things from browser windows and more dialogue heavy than a visual novel. It’s not going to be an interesting gameplay hour to watch at all, so I’ve been thinking I would skip it, and just upload a video version of the review with some gameplay snippets as visual aids. If I did that, I’d want to keep that a running thing- much the same way NintendoLife handle their video reviews, the video and the text are the same content, but the video has the benefit of showing rather than telling.
It’s a work in progress, but one I’m constantly re-evaluating. If anyone cares to have some insight go ahead reply to this post or let me know in my Discord server which I need to do a better job of highlighting.
Finally- streams. I’ve kinda started to feel they’re not worth doing, since I play at varying times and typically dislike having a live chat I need to interact with when playing something new (I hate hate hate being ‘helped’ by people without asking first, and it’s a compulsion few can resist, among other reasons). Streaming itself is fun, though, so maybe I can figure out a way to stream stuff tangentially related or not related to BBLC? Gain a cross-audience?