February Round-up!

Welcome friends to February's monthly roundup.

Last month I announced I'd be doing these as a stats roundup, a retrospective look back at what the last month consisted of, and a bit of personal reflection on the pros and cons of the content that came out last month.

For the month of February 2019: 

Notice: February is the shortest month, and I only have data right now between January 31st and February 27th.

- 60 videos. (Not bad for the shortest month!)

- Around 2038 minutes, or 34 hours, of content.

- In February, my content was watched for a total of 4.3 million minutes, which is a crazy 8.3 years of mankind's time wasted!

- Revenue was very average, however, towards the end of the month it was the lowest it has ever been since the channel started which is why I've made some changes. I'll discuss this below!

- 3 sponsorship offers (Including one very dodgy MCN offer) all of which I declined for not lining up with the channel!

Channel Changes:

Revenue has never been the primary focus of the channel, it's always been about producing sustainable and good quality content that covers a lot of bases to help channel growth - and acting under the assumption that the revenue would grow with it. Unfortunately, this has proven over the past 2 - 3 months not to be the case at all. Although subscribers and views have been steadily climbing, the revenue has always sat around an average amount; Patreon still accounts for far more than Youtube! 

So, I've got some great news for all of you Patrons. For the foreseeable future, you're going to be getting three videos a day. Now I've tried this in the past and the response was mixed, with a lot of people wanting quality over quantity. I agree with this fully, but I honestly don't believe that having a third series will impact the quality of the other series, mostly because I'm the type of person that works on a bell curve i.e. if I only made one video a day it would probably be fairly poor because I'm not as committed, I'm not in the right frame of mind, and I'm not warmed up. Three videos definitely push the limit and stretch me as thin as possible without, I believe, affecting the quality too much.

The other issue with three videos a day was that one series frequently derived from the other. In the past, I had two simultaneous CK2 series that were so similar I was constantly getting confused between my goals, and I think the audience was suffering from the same issue. To combat this I've tried to implement and elucidate to the audience, a very clear line between the two CK2 series, which I've imaginatively called Series A and Series B. 

Series A is the content people have come to expect from the channel - somewhat tongue-in-cheek, fantasy, fast-paced, moderately edited themed series. Examples of this would be the El-Rang series, Warhammer, and the current Dwemer mod.

Series B was inspired by my market research into what the largest CK2 Youtubers produced. These series tended to be a lot more grounded, they were rarely edited, and a bit more meticulous. This series will feature your more realistic mods: CK2+, HIP, WTWSMS.

From a creators perspective - I find not editing videos extremely lazy, I also find that it adds a lot more pressure to the commentary; you have to remain constantly entertaining even if nothing is happening on the screen, which I personally find either disingenuous or just simply dull depending on the creator. Although I'll be doing less editing as a stylistic choice, I don't think I have the chops to carry a series purely on my dashing wit and charm, so I am going to place entertainment over style when I think it's necessary. 

As for the audience communication factor; every episode has specific branding appearing at the start, along with an indication in the title, and an additional line in the description explaining the purpose of each series. This is predominantly for occasional or entirely new viewers who may find that the alternate series suits their viewing habits a bit more, but more importantly helps to draw that hard division between the two series, so that they should be more enjoyable to both watch, rather than having to pick one series to commit to. 

Retrospective Review:

For the content itself, weaknesses that I alluded to during last months round up definitely came true this time around. I speculated that having three series of the same mod (Game of Thrones) would throw a spanner in the works, particularly for those who have little to no interest in the Game of Thrones world. In hindsight, I would have definitely cut out the middle series, the series I personally consider the weakest.

In the future if we ever have a continuation campaign (which is what I'm officially calling it now - "Mega Campaign" confused too many people into thinking it was a traditional Paradox Mega Campaign flowing from CK2 to EU4 etc) then I'll be sure to put a hard limit of only two series within the same modpack to ensure that viewers with no interest in the world are catered to. This was also one of the reasons for introducing a second campaign running simultaneously; it gives those who aren't interested in, for example, Game of Thrones, something else to hopefully enjoy and stick around on the channel. 

As for Rimworld - I've always had mixed feelings on it. Originally it was supposed to be the Patreon series for a short while, but it attracted a lot of viewers who wouldn't otherwise have any interest in the channel. It has also been going on for so long now that if I cancelled it I would expect to see a significant decline in subscriber numbers. Rimworld is a safe, but not lucrative series. 

I have learned the hard way that attempting to completely reshuffle the game is a fairly poor idea unless you are gaining something significant about it. Rimworld has always been a sci-fi game, despite having a "Tribal" playstyle. I feel that by limiting a series so massively with the Medieval Rim modpack I put together, it suffered quite significantly, as Medieval Rim definitely did not add enough to make up for content that was lost. This time around I'm focusing on reshuffling gameplay in a way that complements what is already there - the Star Wars modpack. 

Next month I might end up doing a full comparison between the Bonnet Bigly Medieval series and the recent Star Wars modpack to see if my theory holds any water.

I have very, very high hopes for March. The Dwemer mod is something I've been personally touting for quite some time, so it going live was particularly high pressure. Introducing a second CK2 series is something I'm going to be keeping a very close eye on, and I am fully prepared to axe it in a heartbeat if I feel it'll impact the overall channel quality. Finally, we have Star Wars in Rimworld, a beloved franchise in the perfect setting for it.

If you're still reading then randomly share a horse fact in the discord general chat to confuse and baffle them. 

To all of you who have patronised - thank you. You're keeping the channel alive and the community going. Hopefully, you deem the channel worthy of another month of support. Especially when you're getting a third more content ;)

Actually, I just remembered - I am going to be making more of an active effort this month to get into Twitch streaming. I'm most likely not going to be doing any CK2 or Rimworld on Stream because it's just far too much for me. I have been compiling a short list of games that I'm going to be playing on Stream though, so keep an eye on discord!

Hope you all enjoy the content and I'll swing by next month with another wall of self-aggrandising ego-stroking.

Tales of your misdeeds are told from Tamriel to Coruscant, 

- Sam