Patron-Exclusive Vlog: February 2023

Hey everyone! It’s been a crazy year so far, and I wanted to update you all on the direction of the channel in 2023.

The Quintet video turned out well from a narrative and visual standpoint I feel, but I ran into some technical issues at the last minute, which caused some sporadic sound issues throughout, which desynced, skipped or otherwise messed up music and audio clips which I didn’t notice until later on. This was due to my inexperience with DaVinci Resolve, which is my new video editing software. I really like it, but any major change in tools is going to have a learning curve.

So basically I re-uploaded a scripted video after publicly publishing for the first time, due to me not wanting such a dumb technical mistake to be in the video permanently.

What resulted in the re-upload (predictably) was less engagement and essentially a real big flop in terms of viewership. Very disappointing, but I chalk this up to growing pains due to last year being truly nuts on my end.

I moved houses, and then started getting chronic headaches, as well as having to fix a lot of things around the house, set up my office, and fix whatever the hell was going on with my head. I thought it might have been chemicals or paint we used on the new house, or some sort of diet problem. Come to find out, I moved to a sort of mini “Floyd, Michigan,” and the local water was full of toxins and stuff. So I was literally poisoning myself with arsenic and chromium every day, literally the stuff Erin Brockovich revolves around.

An expensive water conditioner and a bunch of detoxing later, I was able to focus on video making again, though I had an editor and artist working on content for the video while I was working on getting my health better. While the Quintet video was getting preliminary visual effects and editing done, I was also researching and writing my next video.

So Quintet didn’t get a ton of viewership, but I’m starting 2023 strong.

For starters, I’ve been occasionally clipping my longer content and posting it to my new channel, Indigo Gaming Clips. I’ve also started posting short, original content that I can knock out quickly. So keep an eye on that channel. Should be fun to make quick content that I don’t have to slave over for months to meet the standards of my main channel.

Secondly, I’ve been busy perfecting my script and gathering gigabytes of archival footage, movies, shows and gameplay from over a dozen games over the past 30 years for my next big video: a comprehensive Miami Vice retrospective/documentary. Initially it was looking to be about 75% about what made the show great and influential, and how it was made, but I wasn’t completely satisfied with that concept. Because it's one thing to say that something is influential, but what did it influence, and how?

So I had a bit of a breakthrough the past month while watching and rewatching shows and movies. Five seasons of Miami Vice, Brian De Palma films like Scarface and Carlito’s Way, To Live and Die in L.A., a ton of shows that aped off of Miami Vice’s style, and the new era of television and movies Vice helped usher in.

It was here where I found the heart of the 3rd act of the documentary: the vast influence of the show, in the form of so-called “neon noir” films. This includes various movies, anything from Bad Boys, To Live and Die in L.A., Law & Order, Burn Notice, and just about anything from Nicolas Winding Refn, Drive, Only God Forgives, Neon Demon, et cetera.

Next up, I follow through the long and storied history of video games that got inspiration from Vice: the official video games, dating all the way back to 1986, the reboot game and movie in 2006 (both which are underrated by the way), as well as Miami Vice’s influence (in some small  way) to the Grand Theft Auto series. I didn’t even remember this, but GTA 1 had Vice City in it, all the way back in 1997.

The most obvious influence was, of course, the GTA III follow-up, Vice City, which will play a big part in the video.

But then we get into a wider influence of the style of the show, such as the nebulous “Outrun” and “Synthwave” music and art movements. These were influenced by synth pop music of the 80s, but also the mesmerizing style of media like Miami Vice: the hot sports cars like the Lambos and Ferraris featured in the show, the neons, pastel colors and art deco look of everything. Another big influence was of course the VHS and TV ident logos of the 80s, which I’ll get into as well.

Out Run (the actual game), its various successors, other games inspired by Miami Vice and its reimagining of the city of Miami, and how one TV show sort of saved a very troubled city that was on the verge of collapse due to riots, crime rates, a sudden influx of immigration, and of course, literal billions of dollars of drugs funneling through the Miami area every year.

The whole synthwave aesthetic gets a look in the video, and it's all wrapped up in sort of an analytical bow at the end. With questions like, “Was it all style over substance?” and the like.

Hopefully that all sounds interesting. But as you could probably tell, this is becoming a very big video. I was originally shooting for a 45 minute runtime, but that basically only covers the show proper at this point. I’m still fine-tuning the script, but the final video will definitely be over an hour long.

So to break up the wait, I’ve already started on a stopgap video. And what better topic to bring up this year, than Diablo?

I figured I might as well post something relevant for a change, so I revived an old script idea I had about Diablo III, specifically talking about how the game evolved so much to become almost unrecognizable by release date.

This Diablo III video would acknowledge Diablo IV, but like all my other videos, I try to make my content evergreen and timeless, so I will do minimal comparisons to Diablo IV, as we don’t know exactly how the game will turn out later this year.

Basically, I’m digging through years of archival footage, BlizzCon presentations, GDC postmortems, screenshots, Diablo III vanilla footage, and apparently somebody revived the 1.0 version of the game, so I can play that again firsthand.

The game has evolved so much since Loot 2.0 and Reaper of Souls came out, so I wanted to refresh everyone’s memory of the long and arduous path to that game, and how the constant busy bodying and tinkering with its various systems by Jay Wilson and Wyatt Cheng turned the lauded Action RPG into a sort of medieval Call of Duty.

Either way, it’s an interesting topic, and I think it has some relevance to future action RPGs, as well as obviously the hype and hullabaloo around Diablo 4. Eleven years, damn! I’m getting too old for this.

Anyways, I’m terrible at ETAs, but realistically, I’m thinking…a summer release for Miami Vice, and an earlier release for the Cautionary Tale of Diablo III, sometime before Diablo IV’s release date in June.

Hopefully that sounds fun. And as always, I appreciate all the support.