So, I had an entirely different article written up and ready to publish today, until things changed a bit last weekend.
As you may be aware, I’ve taken the last few weeks off from Livestreaming on Twitch. Partially for my mental health, partially due to burnout, and partially because I just wanted a break. In fact, I had been considering stopping doing Twitch entirely, and YouTube as soon as all of my pre-recorded videos had published (at this point being July-ish). But then I bit of a change of heart last week, and decided to give content creation another try.
I’m not saying I’ll be consistent at it, by any means, nor that I won’t decide to walk away later on. What I’m saying is that I am going to try.
My plan is this: While I enjoy doing Twitch, especially hanging out with friends in chat while I play [Insert Game Here], I’m thinking of doing something else, now. Basically, I’m looking at doing a travelogue-style video series on YouTube, using my old “Meander about Middle Earth” channel. This may be in addition to my “Scormey Rants” videos, which I also enjoy doing, as a general rule.
No, I’m not bringing MaME back, per se’. What I’m thinking of doing is making (hopefully) comedic videos where I visit zones in MMORPGs I enjoy, and try to ‘show off the natural environment’, while getting absolutely wrecked in the process. I’m still working on the concept overall, but I think it is something I might enjoy doing, which maybe won’t burn me out. Again.
Now then, I’m still trying to get everything put together, so I can make these videos relatively quickly, allowing me time to… y’know… actually enjoy my weekends? My “Scormey Rants” videos are fairly straightforward to make, and even though they get almost no views, I enjoy having a platform where I can rant for a few minutes about interesting subjects.
Interesting to me, anyway.
Anyway, I’m still working out details at this point, but I expect to start getting videos out on the old MaME soonish. I was going to shoot for the start of the month, but considering that’s literally tomorrow, I’m not sure I’ll be ready quite then. That said, once I have some videos going up, I’ll let you know.
Now then, what about the podcasts?
There has been some talk that maybe our two podcasts aren’t exactly pulling reasonable listener numbers, and that maybe we should just stop doing them. I have looked over the various stats from the services they are distributed through, as well as the stats my hosting service provides, and determined that the opposite is actually true. Maybe our numbers aren’t great, but many of the services have been providing conflicting information, so I’m going to go with the one service that has been showing the most consistent stats.
That would be my webhost, which shows each of our podcasts are getting several thousand hits a week. Those may not be full downloads, I have no way to know for sure, but those numbers are the only ones that have been consistent at all, when compared to the other stats. When the download tracking service I had been using was showing each of our podcasts at around five downloads each per week, while also showing each episode being downloaded from around a dozen different countries, that just doesn’t match up. I can see most of the downloads coming from the USA, but when most of those other countries show as zero downloads, but also counted as downloads?
Yeah, I’ll stick with the service putting out numbers I can trust, thank you. If that means I only know 3000+ per week are seeing each episode, and potentially downloading them, then I’m okay with it. That’s still 3000+ people who might be listening, and that is reason enough to keep going.
Apparently it is also reason enough that we got an offer to do some ads. It was a ridiculous offer, but still, an offer just the same. Again, reason enough to keep going, in my mind. Maybe I’m wrong in that, and just not willing to let go, but that’s my problem I guess.
In actuality, I’ve been thinking about joining a podcast network, or forming one on our own. With “Pixels & Dice” and “Knights of the Tabletop” being our two, active podcasts, I’m thinking of creating a single feed for both of them that people can subscribe to. It would be pretty easy to add other gaming-related podcasts to said feed, and have our own cooperative podcast network.
It isn’t like I haven’t been a part of such a network before, after all.
