Worth It - New Voltz series coming out soon

For those of you who don't already know, which is probably all two of you, I've been working with a group called Midcore on some videos and we've just recently started releasing what amounts to their 3rd series in war, destruction, and a lack of parental supervision.  Needless to say, good times for all.  I joined them just as they got into series two about a half a year ago and since then we've been helping push each other make better and better content.

Tomorrow I'm going to be releasing a sort of spinoff from the series three.  It will happen in concert with the primary series but from my angle and with my own style.  It will all be canon and contribute as much as possible to the greater story.

What compels me to write today is that the work is pretty much finished.  I'm rendering it as we speak for the second time after I spotted some glitches that needed to be reworked from the first pass.  It took near a week to finish and I got to say that I've never been more proud, frustrated or exausted with anything I've done but I'm glad its done.  I hope that it is well received when it's released because unlike some series that me or midcore has done in the past this wasn't any sort of job that was done start to finish in an hour, no, this took work, a lot of it.  Most the time going into hammering out details, shining up parts that looked shit, and experementing with things I didn't really know how to do until I figured it out or came up with something better.

When the video comes out in the next day or two, I hope that you enjoy it and please comment.  It doesn't seem like much but when you've a small audience a single comment or two can make it all worth it.

Appeasing the YouTube - Quick Thoughts

Proud that I've been able to keep up on my don't starve series but I don't think honestly that's going to do anything on its own.  It's like filler with nothing to stuff it into, I need something that some people can actually use for these games. 

If you want to get more views on YouTube you need to do a few things.  While granted I always feel proud and want more subscriptions I also just want to put out something people will find entertaining or maybe engaging.  Here's my short list of collected thoughts on how to help a channel thrive.

1. Regular Updates - It seems so simple but at the same time I have struggled immensely with it.  You need to be predictable, be consistent, keep people engaged and not stagnate otherwise you're going to end up dropped when someone decides to clean out all those 'dead channels' they watched.

2. Real Content - This is what I've been mulling over for a while.  I like my don't starve series and I'm getting better just by doing it but it doesn't offer anything other than a chuckle here or there.  If you want to engage more people you should consider offering a little more.  Offer up advice or how to guides.  Just think of how many people go threw the wiki every day and in some cases the wiki's link popular how to guides.  That could be your how to guide link!

3. Participate - There are threads out there that discuss these games, and there are other you tubers who make videos and roam the net.  Leaving comments on other channels or participating in forums is a good way to get traffic.  I don't mean spamming 'check out my channel' on every other channel you visit.  Sadly that may work but it might just get you more negative attention being a dick move really.  Simply leaving a good comment and participating can help.  A good profile picture and signature couldn't hurt either.

4. Interact - This is just something new I'm thinking about.  It seems important that you need to engage and interact with your audience.  Figure out how they heard about you and find out what they like.  Keep in mind you shouldn't ever slave to their interests as its more important that you stay interested in your channel than anyone else.  If you can do something special for your viewers they might help bring you more traffic.  Simple things like engaging with questions, doing pulls, or offering to put someone or some idea into the video.  Anything fun really will work.

5. Go Pro - Don't release any personal garbage.  Nobody wants to hear your drama unless it winds up on cable or better yet the six o'clock news.  So unless you're screaming 'leave Britney alone' and want people to laugh at you, you're really just unloading drama onto people who ultimately have nothing to do with it nor really care for the most part.  Though I will grant I've seen a very select 'few' cases where people need to discuss something semi serious or explain a lack of content.  They can end up better off for it but that's still risky to unload on the collective mind that is the internet.  I'm thinking mostly high school level 'he said she said' drama should be avoided.

And that's where I am on this right now.

6 days off in a row?  Yup, back to school is over and I have to get something done.

I recently got into Don't Starve again for a lets play and kind of realized two things.  Finish what I start.  Not going to cut the series out after 3 episodes this time, gona keep going till I explode.

Second, I love Don't starve.  Games have developed this cool trend that works like free expansion packs.  Getting games early, via indie developers, kickstarter, etc, games keep growing and growing as they're being worked on.  I have a game that just keeps getting better, keeps changing and the replay value has gone threw the roof!

Already I play this game Don't Starve and have found so many things that I've never seen before.  In the famous words of Honeydew from Yogscast, "It's like a WHOOOOLE new game"

Bigger is Better

Not a lot of submissions this week.  I blame a social life which every now and then I like to pretend I have.

But besides that I'm wondering if constantly throwing games at the internet is a good idea or if I should slow down and submit a few more thought out ideas over longer stretches of time?  I don't know, its hard to say if that's a good idea or if I should just stop burning myself out so fast from one thing to another.  Anyway, some more citycraft soon, promise!

If fate gave you a lotto ticket...

I've not much time but I want to get my thoughts out before they vanish, if only so I can look back on them later.

An offer has come to my attention today, an offer that may actually boost my traffic on youtube.  To me it seems like a lotto ticket, a chance to win big or remain as I am.

The demands are resonable and they have results to back up their claim with a quick browse of the internet.  All I have to do is agree to make money, but thats the problem.

I went into this thinking that I would never make money, that I just kind of liked messing around with adobe as something to do and always just loved people looking at my stuff but now that theres a lottery ticket in front of me that sais I could actually win something, all I have to do is try do I want to try?  If I scratch the ticket, win or loose it suddenly becomes about money and legalality of my content.  Doing it just for skills sake doesn't usually result in much a backlash legally so long as you're not making money.

This is just a quick thought but it's something thats been lingering in my head the last two days.  Do you scratch the ticket, admitting its about money, or just go on in obscurity refining your talent? 

Maybe I'll just tell myself that being with an organization will help refine my skills since they did promise to teach me stuff...  I think I'll scratch the ticket before long.

When to Ban from minecraft

So you'll probably hear on my next episode of minecraft that we had to ban someone. 

I'm curious what you think it takes to ban someone from a server or what others who are reading this might have been banned for that seemed unfair.

Basically the man wasn't participating with the rest of the group as was the point of this co-op minecraft scenario we where running.  He explored large chunks of the map against the server host advicement because it makes the server more difficult to backup.  He did this to loot all the chests nearby.  he went into the twilight area alone without recording and killed the fortress. 

All of that is just kinda jerkish but not bannable in my opinion.  The one that did him in i think was when he kept trying to use a mod that currently crashes the server several times, each time being warned not to use it.

Admin said that we can do better for our server which I believe but made me wonder what it would take before I ban someone from a server myself.

New CityCraft! Lots of mayor stuff

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Just seems like stuff never stops to slow down in this new series!  Day 3 and we've already got a mystery on hands revolving around the mayor.

Also, been getting more comfortable with adobe but I think I'm lacking, wondering if anyone knows any good sites to get sound effect stuff or anything they think this is lacking.  I feel like as much as I do I'm not doing something right or forgetting something I'm not sure.  Just nothing ever feels finished for whatever reason.