I'm going to allow backseating.

When I started streaming, the world was quite different, both online and offline. The streaming industry was small, scrappy, and just getting started. There were so few of us that just about everyone knew each other. This led to a shared culture among a large portion of the industry. Something I latched onto and went along with was the rule about backseating.

Simply put, it's a rule that did not allow members of chat to tell the streamer what to do or how to play. This rule makes sense for a lot of different kinds of games. However, with the recent change to my recording style for longer format videos, I think it's become a hindrance rather than a benefit. Because I'm focusing on the stories and trying to collaborate with the audience, it does not make sense to disallow tips or spoilers. Unlike something akin to Elden Ring where exploring is a crucial part of the gameplay, I have already removed the tag from my channel and I am going to go out of my way to make it clear it's not a rule on the channel anymore.

The thing that broke it for me was as I was streaming Norland on Friday, I was asking for story ideas and things we could progress, and chat pointed out that I don't allow backseating. This forced me to think about how I could remedy this issue and move forward. The problem, as with a lot of things, is me: old habits that should have been kicked long ago. It is time for me to move on from that habit.

The new video style is working.. I think?

I've been seeing more comments on the recently uploaded video on Norland talking about how people are seeing my videos on the YouTube front page.

That was the entire reason behind the shift in my content. Hoping for higher overall averages of views on videos. The whole reason behind me having a YouTube channel in the first place is traffic. Its a platform with a lot of eyes on it. Even if its not benefiting my old upload style as much it is still extremely useful. While there has been some push back especially after I uploaded the initial video talking about the changes. Numbers and money on YouTube have stayed roughly the same. Granted a lot of the views now are coming from shorts. They don't pay great but at the end of the day they are giving me exactly what I need from YouTube. Views, This months end post for paying subscribers on this news letter will be really interesting. I have a lot of stats on shorts and styles of content that I am looking forward to sharing with you.

Videos landing on people's homepages mean that the shorts are getting engagements. The way I am thinking about YouTube currently is quite simple. Shorts are like billboards. If you have longer retention with specific shorts from specific people, then YouTube will go out of its way to make sure you know that the creator in question uploaded a video. I can't stress enough how crappy this is for anyone who does not like shorts or vertical formats in general. It reminds me of the fear people had when phones became strong enough to run 'good-looking' games, followed by people rejecting them, and as the years went on, eventually getting used to them anyway. I'm looking at you, Genshin Impact. I think I have made it clear about how I feel about shorts. I watch them now and then when on the toilet and that is about it. I never got into Vine and have never used Tiktok outside of bluestacks at least. Short form is the direction the big company's are going, hell Twitch even announced a partial rework of their app to focus on short form. When it is working for someone behind the scenes we have to learn to work within it regardless of how it works. Fortunately in my case it does seem to be working. I've had a few shorts do quite well and get some rather good numbers. But I am a long ways off from understanding them or having any idea if mine are any good or not. At least people are seeing them.

I am beginning to see the hours that I need to work within these new limitations. The video that I posted today took much longer to make than I am used to. It used three hours of footage from Norland and was compressed down to 13 minutes. The editing time was about 15 hours including uploading, scheduling, rendering and making promotional shorts. The amount of work here is going to be huge when I begin tackling the next project in this style. That'll be on the Dwarf Fortress death embark that I'm currently plucking away at during streams. In short, while the current stream schedule will stay more or less the same my upload rate is going to drop dramatically.

Streams are still Tues - Friday but I'm aiming to keep them under ten hours. Nine hours might be the sweet spot here. I'm working on a Dwarf Fortress Iceberg watch along video. Not sure how or what that'll look like because I'm just beginning production work on it. Same with the Death embark. No idea what that'll look like. Rumor has it there might be a Dwarf Fortress Beta patch this week. However I am probably going to be splitting my time between Dwarf Fortress and Norland mostly.

Games on stream that I have in rotation right now are Dwarf Fortress(duh) Caves of Qud, Norland and Songs of Syx. Norland is out on the 18th and I'll do a full day of it. Probably some more on other days leading up to it as well. I also want to play more Qud.. it Calls to me..

Stats for the week! Twitch stuff is up a bit 181 average viewers up from last weeks 150. YouTube is around the same as last week with 80,536 views in the last 7 days.