Madness. Madness, and Stupidity.

I feel like I'm losing my mind over this one. This post will be a bit long, but stick with me - I want your opinion on this.

The Conundrum

At every turn, this Campaign for North Africa video has thrown a curveball at me.

First, I (accidentally) overwrote the Audiobook file. That was...unfortunate, but honestly fine. As I said at the time - all that extra effort wasn't really worth it for that one joke anyway. I was "happy" to move on to working on the real video.

Then when a game of CNA was (finally) scheduled, we discovered how bad it really was to play. We were barely able to make it past the first op-stage before the whole "let's play this intro scenario" idea fell apart. Put simply, this game is not worth playing.

But that was fine as well, or so I thought. It meant I had to modify my plan for the project a bit, but it wasn't a huge roadblock. It'd be a hybrid video - part video essay, part funny video. Bits of footage of us playing it spliced with something of an overview and tutorial for Campaign for North Africa. I planned to give everyone both the knowledge and tools they'd need to play CNA online themselves, while hopefully dissuading them from doing so.

And now comes the next bump in the road. Well, it's less of a bump - more of a mountain.

I'd spent a good amount of time writing the script for the video essay side of it - gathering my thoughts, outlining, and writing big chunks. It's not completely done yet, but it was far enough along that I now needed to go through and sort all the footage I have from the day(s) we played.

It's here I should clarify something. I usually record with OBS, but since I knew this would be a very long video - I decided to make like Bokoen1 and use Nvidia's Shadowplay feature. Because this was a new way of doing things (and I'm not that big of a moron) I did a big test beforehand, and everything was good to go.

Yesterday, I decided to begin sorting the footage - and much to my surprise, once I began looking I immediately realised something was wrong. The discord half of the audio was missing. It was just me talking to thin air. 

I opened the test footage (which was recorded right before we started) and it had the discord audio in it. I have absolutely no idea what happened in that interim 10 minutes, but whatever it was has ruined everything I had planned.

While my disappointment is immeasurable and my day ruined, this new roadblock has given me a big pause - mainly because it's completely disrupted what I was working on up until now. 

I've come to realise that this god damn CNA video has honestly been a big blocker for me. My ideas board has accumulated over thirty other videos I could be working on (all of which sound more fun than this shit...) that have naturally been brushed aside to make way for this one.

So, the question. I have to cut my losses here. But how?

I can think of three, tantalizing options I could be run with. There is one of these I'm leaning towards (pretty heavily) but I thought I'd throw it open to the rats as well and see what you guys thought. Do note however: this isn't Brexit. This poll is non-binding, it's just to see what you guys think I should do.

Option A

Re-plan out the video and just do it as a video essay. Honestly not a bad idea at all, though it's not really what I wanted to make originally. That said - this is definitely my least favourite of these three options. I've got better videos I could be making with my time right now.

Option B

Just outright move on from this steaming pile of excrement. An appealing option - although the sunk-cost fallacy mindset is very strong for this project. Also, I know I'd never hear the end of it. Valefisk gave up on CNA.

Option C

Simply move it back into the icebox and get on with my life. You'd see a big uptick in videos (since I'd no longer but sitting on this big one) - and maybe someday you will get to see how bad CNA is.

Conclusion

So that's more or less it. Regardless of the option I go with, the next video will be something else entirely. This project has burned me pretty bad, and I want a break from it to do something else.

Progress on Crypt II has also been ongoing this whole time - as always, stay tuned for more info.

And I have something else very unexpected that I'm thinking of doing. More on that later.

Stay safe out there. I'll see ya around.