If you’ve been visiting the blog here–which let’s be honest, you haven’t–you might have noticed that it’s been rather dead here lately. Well, there’s a pretty good reason for that. I’ve been putting pretty much all my energy into my (previously lifeless) Youtube channel.
I started the Youtube channel maybe a year ago, and I did a couple of videos and well… I just kinda let it stagnate and eventually die. There were a few reasons for that; One, I had a lot going on at the time and didn’t really have the time to devote to a channel, and two, my PC, while capable of producing a video, was struggling, as 12-year old computers tend to do. I mean, it could do it, much like how I am able to “run” a half-marathon. I’ll finish. I won’t die. But it might take me a day and a half. But the past year has seen a few developments, not least of which has been the acquisition of a relatively competent gaming PC.
The weird thing was, I didn’t buy the gaming PC for gaming, I bought it for my photography work. Adobe was running progressively worse with every update they released, and it was really started to affect my workflow. At first it started with slow tools, my brush would lag, for instance. Then it got to the point where I could only have one app open at a time. That was a big hit because having both Photoshop and Lightroom open at the same time was a pretty important function. But I could no longer do that. It was annoying, but whatever. Then came the last Lightroom update with A.I. masking (that would initiate automatically) and that would absolutely murder my CPU. Literally everything would come to a screeching halt, even if I moused off of the filter, until that preview was done generating. That was the last straw. So I bit the bullet and took on extra debt and bought a new PC.
Then I realized something. My PC was a gaming PC. That was made for gaming! Shock! Gasp!
The real kicker is that I haven’t even been doing much modern gaming on my new PC. Most modern games are released on consoles anyway. What I’ve been really enjoying are the older games that may have had console ports back on the 360 or PS3 back in the day, but were probably awful. The PC was a haven for Western and Action RPG’s, and while some of these got consoles releases, like the Risen series, they were hamstrung by both the consoles’ weaker specs and the fact that these games weren’t originally designed for controllers and sometimes that just didn’t translate well.
Other games, like Return to Castle Wolfenstein, might have run fine on consoles, but at much lower resolutions and framerates. Playing a game like that on a PC from 2022 is buttery smooth. It’s no contest. There’s a degree of smug satisfaction that comes with downloading one of these games, cranking all the settings up to maximum, and knowing it’s going to run flawlessly.
Okay, maybe not flawlessly. One of the benefits of a new PC is also one of its roadblocks. Those old games weren’t designed for multi-core processors and massive new GPU’s and DirectX 12 and yadda yadda. Some of them require fan mods or third party patches in order to get them to work. Games like The Saboteur should have been a dream come true, but is virtually unplayable in its vanilla state. This tinkering with dll’s and game files is precisely why I never wanted to game on PC in the first place. But it is what it is. These games have been out long enough where there’s usually somebody out there that has an answer for whatever problem you might be having.
But I digress. Those of you reading this that have been gaming on PC for any number of years are nodding and shrugging your shoulders because I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.
Another big revelation that I had when I got this machine is that I now had a system capable of some serious emulation at my fingertips. This was great news, since I have a pretty healthy library of physical games that I can no longer enjoy because my consoles are collecting dust on a shelf for one reason or another. Maybe I can’t find a power cord, or my controller turned to dust, or because I no longer have a TV that supports that hookup. So in light of that, my gaming library has increased significantly. I’m looking forward to finishing up or revisiting games I have not been able to play for a decade or more.
I’m still trying to find a balance between Youtube and this blog. I like making videos, but not everything I play, or a point I want to make, is worthy of making an entire video over. Plus, I love writing. There are few things more cathartic than putting my thoughts to paper (or screen). So I don’t want to completely abandon this. I think they can co-exist, and I feel like they should. Right now Youtube is getting priority due to its more organic visibility (the dreaded algorithm) and the fact that I can more easily reach a wider audience. Blogs, unfortunately, are not as friendly. Getting people to read, sadly, is getting to be a harder and harder sell as the years go on. It is what it is.
I’m hoping the two can feed off of each other, and I am… begrudgingly… considering the re-activation of my Twitter account, that I’ve never actually used. I’ve always felt that if I had anything to say, I could say it here. But I can’t discount the fact that it’s a good way to gain visibility for the Youtube channel. It’s a given, and I would honestly be doing myself a disservice by NOT using it.
But that’s neither here nor there. It’s all supplemental bullshit to facilitate the actual content. “What content,” you say?
Well, I am nearing the home stretch on my Call of Duty Re-Enlisted series, which takes a pretty shallow and not-at-all scientific look at each of the campaigns in the Call of Duty games. It was mainly a project to act as a catalyst for the channel, something to give me a few months’ worth of content while I worked on other things.
One of those other things was the revival of Side Quest, which is the umbrella under which I put all of my RPG gaming projects. This mainly focuses on ARPG’s like Diablo, Baldur’s Gate Dark Alliance, and other such titles, but also consists of a few Western RPG’s and as I go, will probably eventually include JRPG’s as well. The caveat to all this is that, well… these games are fucking long. And while Side Quest is easily my most popular series, it’s difficult to release them in a timely fashion. As it is, I am currently rotating through a number of ARPG’s in hopes that I can complete them and have a number of videos lined up for release.
Backlog Barbecue is also making the jump to video, but so far I’ve only managed a single video in the form of Enslaved: Odyssey to the West. This game turned out to be perfect for BB because it was high-quality, fun, and relatively short. The reason for the lack of releases is due to the popularity of Side Quest. I kind of feel an obligation to grind away on the next Side Quest project, and as such, I haven’t really been paying much attention to other games in my library. There’s only so much gaming time in a day, and it’s only going to get worse.
One of the quicker video projects I’ve introduced, mainly as a way to get up videos over games I may not necessarily have completed, is the new Nobody Talks About series. This is kind of a tongue-in-cheek look at games that nobody talks about anymore, and games that nobody probably talked about to begin with. My first video in the series is focused on TimeShift, and it seems to be getting a decent amount of traffic so far.
The only other category I have so far, and it’s reserved for quick looks and streams. They do okay, but they’re really just intended to be a catch-all for games that I want to share but don’t really fit into any other category.
That’s about all I can manage at this point. Granted, the Call of Duty series will eventually end (and soon) so it doesn’t really count as an on-going project. As the year 2023 looks to be an insanely busy one, I can see more of a focus on Backlog Barbecues over anything, as that stack is going to get thicker and thicker (and thicker.)
We’ll see what the future holds, I guess. I can’t wait to see how the Youtube channel does, and as time goes on we’ll see what rises to the top and what falls to the bottom, I will adjust accordingly.
Until next time!
