Some minimal context. For the last 3 years I have run a tiny YouTube channel devoted to creating content from a video game. I won’t link the videos or mention the game as this post is meant more to reflect on my thought process during those 3 years.
Rather than regurgitate the typical fare associated with video games (preference lists, trivia, etc.), I decided to devote the channel to fan fiction generated around the game itself.
The channel has had some minor success and for 3 years I was able to develop, present, and complete the story that I wanted to tell. In many ways these last three years have been the most creatively succesful years of my life. The channel did not begin that way, however.
How it started
The whole thing began in the summer of 2018. I had been away from the gaming scene since about 2004.
As my career ratcheted up, I found I had less and less free time to devote to things like video games. The games I played were not that satisfying and I needed to get away from it all to focus on other things.
Fast forward to 2018 and I suddenly found that I had a lot of free time. I ran across several videos and articles about this particular game that made it sound fairly enjoyable. So, I bought a new computer with a good graphics card and began playing this game to see if it really lived up to the hype and I liked it.
The game features a main quest line that you can play through but after that it becomes a sandbox game, meaning that the player is free to change the game world anyway that he wants to. You can put up buildings and take down trees. You can make the world space into what you want it to be.
This gets your imagination involved and as someone coming from a fiction writing background it got me spinning elaborate backstories and thinking about story ideas. The more I investigated the lore of the game, the more my mind worked to concoct stories relating to the place and time I was in.
By 2019 I noticed that some people in the gaming community were making videos about the game. So, I bought the cheapest video editor program that I could find, taught myself the basics of how it worked and posted up some short videos. Nothing spectacular, basically just in game footage with no narration or text. The videos were not even noticed by the public at large. So, I left it alone.
The pandemic came round, and I delved deeper into the game world while ideas brewed within me. By the beginning of 2021 I was ready to try my hand again. Again the videos flopped.
I realized that maybe part of the problem is that the videos were basically just footage with no narration or indeed a storyline. I made the decision to make a long form video with a story and narration.
It took 3 months to write up a script, put together images, maps, and live action sequences. I then had to narrate the video. My voice is just not up to the task, so I used text to speech apps to narrate the video.
In mid-June 2021 I released the video and waited. At first it just sat there but then suddenly the video began getting noticed. What is more people were commenting and wanting to discuss the video.
I was having several in-depth conversations about the game and the video itself. Then the inevitable question came up. When was the next video coming out?
I had not thought about this yet. But I could see that there was interest in this type of video. As I wrote the next script I kept referring to future events outside the scope of that video and realized that instead of making one off videos totally unrelated to one another that I could do an anthology of related videos, even a history that went far beyond the scope of the original game yet still grounded in the basic lore.
The second video came out in 3 months and proved to be even more popular. I knew I had found something special.
I ended the year with the first part of a 3-part story and a good road map of where I was going with this project. Every project brought me joy as I learned more and more the process of turning words on the page into images on the screen.
I must admit that more than once I was surprised at how well the process was going. I was creating a living breathing world on the screen and people were interested in the story that I was telling.
I thought to myself that if I had taken the chance at an earlier age that I might have enjoyed a career in film or TV as a writer or a producer.
How it ended
But it was demanding work and towards the end of 2022 it began to take a toll on me. Trying to meet self-imposed deadlines, the pressures that YouTube puts on creators to constantly publish new content to keep subscribers happy, and of course dealing with toxic fans. These are the things that batter you down over time.
For the success that the channel had enjoyed, it was nothing compared to other channels related to the game and certainly not a profitable pursuit that I could do full time as a career.
Looking at my body of work that I had produced, I finally decided that the story had to end. So, I plotted out all the out standing storylines and began to herd them all towards a conclusion around the beginning of 2024. One last big epic story to close it out.
My best work? From a technical standpoint, yes. I used every trick I had learned in the last 3 years to make the video the best possible. From a writing standpoint it was a bit predictable but overall, a satisfactory effort.
I now look back on the body of work that I produced in those 3 years. Sometimes in wonder. Thinking to myself “Did I really do all of that?” Sometimes in disgust, “I could have done so much better”.
But I am happy with what I accomplished.
Now what?
Recent Comments