20170303

And in the end ...

... so I had another post almost ready to go yesterday, but work and life get really busy occasionally, and my blogging tends to be one of the first things to go ... for now.

Anyway, I had a pretty neat pre-travel blog in the works yesterday that'll now be some time next week. Basically, it talks about my travel gaming as I prepare for my annual Spring Training travels. Basically, I go spend a couple weeks with my beloved Cardinals, soak up some Florida sun, get away from the Midwest winter hell, and it's all pretty great. I sometimes also shoot down to Key West for a few days, as I love that place.

During all that, I do find some gaming time. I'll talk about that more next week.

The Road to Andromeda
I finished it. I started the Mass Effect trilogy playthrough stream on 8/28 last year, and completed it last night, 3/2. WOW.

You can see the whole damn thing here.

It was a really interesting process, and honestly, it's kinda stupid, but I'm proud of it. It wasn't perfect, it wasn't quite what I wanted it to be, but I finished it, and I learned a LOT. And I had a good time!

The best moments were when chat would get really animated, and we'd have some fun discussions.



I'm still kinda reeling from it, and honestly, from a few personal and professional shocks (all good) that have happened over the last 24 hours, but it was really cool, and I'm going to do it again.

I'm not sure what series or game I want to stream/record next, but I have a few things I'm going to do differently.

1) have more set start and stop points, and more consistent lengths of time that I play
2) bring more fun 'behind the scenes' info to the table; research the section that I'm about to play a little bit more in advance, and have some fun factoids to throw out
3) bring more personal stories and humor; either stories from pervious playthroughs, or personal stories that I'm reminded of while playing; I have a pretty wild history from which to pull, and I need to leverage that more
4) a little more professionalism; I had too many instances of screaming child and/or background noise; I also want to get a green screen; I'll probably also run some cabling to my basement and set up a pro streaming thing down there; we'll see
5) get better with the graphics for my thumbnails and shit; I'm a goddam fucking professional developer; I should be able to handle shit like that (though my dear friend Marc makes them sooo well)

And I welcome any feedback ya'll have. I really wanna make this more fun for all involved, and I wanna grow my audience. What I need to do next time is make a fucking great first episode that can get circulated and really give people a chance to see that I'm not just another falsetto-screaming jackass that's trying to appeal to the millennials. I'm an older dude trying to hook older, more mature, more seasoned gaming enthusiasts, or just chill people that want a fun time.



I think with the above Mass Effect series, I had long stretches where I wasn't injecting enough of my personality into it, or where I was just REALLY tired. Both of those things will be addressed in the next series.

I also need to figure out how the hell to market this. I think that's where I'm really shooting myself in the foot.

I also wanna figure out if I should be streaming on YouTube Gaming or Twitch. I've gone back and forth. I think YTG might be good because there's so much less competition and I like the interface better (as a viewer), but Twitch has sooo many more eyeballs. I dunno.

Also games and game series I'm contemplating: KotOR 1&2, Dragon Age trilogy, Pillars of Eternity, The Witcher trilogy, a Telltale series, Jade Empire, and ... what else? What do you wanna see? I tend to shun games that I've never played before, for a couple reasons, but I won't say never. Again, what do you wanna see?

So, lots to think about and research. Please, let me know what you think, and what you wanna see.

Thanks, and happy weekend!

-Blaine

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