Summer months are slow

It's kind of a little-known fact, at least for most people that don't really sell things or do anything online, but the winter months are actually easier to make money in. It's got something to do with the fact that people are stuck inside/they don't want to go out at much, so they're home most of the time. When the weather is nasty people are also more likely to spend more time on the internet. It's a way of getting out without actually leaving the house. This also increases the chances that people will buy stuff online. Since I'm an eBay seller, I had done a little research and asked around and found that it is pretty common for the summer months to be really slow, but it seems like everything relating to the internet is a little bit slower. 
More people are outside, and even though the media keeps saying everyone is inside on their computers and not enjoying life "the way it should be enjoyed," that just isn't really that true (Like most of what the media says). This is probably the longest dry spell I've ever had on eBay without a sale, and that's pretty sad, since I currently have the most things listed for sale in my shop that I've ever had. A lot of choices, but no one's biting. 
While I never really imagined that YouTube would be my primary source of income or anything like that, what little I make is actually currently the only stable source of income I've got at the moment (I don't have a real job, the one that I had kind of... let's say, got deported, it's a long story...). 
I realize that I should probably advertise more often as well, about everything I do online, and while I am not really one of those people that is too prideful to ask for help, I find it difficult to urge people to take an interest in me. This is one of the many reasons I end up getting screwed over pretty often, but that's another story altogether. One of the things that is very well established in the YouTube community as a way to get your audience to come together is to issue a "Call to arms" at some point in each of your videos. Now, the creators are not asking you to start up a revolution, it just means that you should rally people to do something, and in the case of YouTube, that's like, favorite, comment, subscribe and dislike. 
You're probably a little confused as to why all of those things are positive and then I added dislike to the list, and that's actually a little known fact about YouTube. Likes and Dislikes actually count exactly the same on a video as part of its metadata, and likes and dislikes are what help rank videos in search. For example, a video with 100 likes and a video with 50 likes and 50 dislikes will be ranked the same in search, even though half of those should be 'negative.' So, in reality, you should actually be thanking the people that took the time out of their busy schedules to dislike your videos!
ANYWAY, since I hit you with that knowledge, I just wanted to put out there that I am in fact an eBay seller, and it would be exceptionally helpful for me and also for my YouTube channel (More sales means more gear and games!) if you checked out my eBay store every now and then! I've got tons of stuff up there now and I generally add new merchandise to the store every other day. I've also got a Spreadshirt store thanks to being a Fullscreen partner, so you could grab some new threads I designed and help me out too! Alternatively, if you don't wish to spend any extra money, you could always use my Amazon Associates ID, or use the Amazon search on the side bar of my blog to purchase something, in which case I would get some advertiser fee out of your total purchase on applicable items. You're also helping me out just by reading this, since AdSense is connected to this blog, so I thank you very much for that too!

I also have a PayPal donation button waaay down at the bottom of the page, but I don't feel very comfortable being like "GIMME YO' MONIES PLS." 

NYCC Ticket Fiasco

Going to New York Comic Con has become a thing with me and my friends each year. As of right now though, this year it doesn't seem very likely that pretty much any of us will be going. This is the second time in as many months I've had the... experience? Yeah, let's put it that way... To witness what a big company really thinks of its customers.
The first instance was OGPlanet, the longtime publisher of Rumble Fighter, as well as quite a few other MMORPGs, basically reacting in the most spiteful, negative way to losing Rumble Fighter. It was pretty much a given that OGPlanet had a terribly low player satisfaction rating with Rumble Fighter, but even before that, they had troubles with Lost Saga. Lost Saga's developer simply cut their contract off and went to a new publisher, pretty much out of nowhere. This did not really spur OGPlanet in the right direction when it came to taking care of their customer/fanbase though. Instead they decided they would sit on their laurels with the rest of their games as well. If you've never played a game that is published by OGPlanet, when I say "resting on their laurels," I really am not insinuating anything good.
They rarely patch games that are desperately in need of a patch, and when they do patch the game, they obviously don't actually test anything out in the patch, so it causes a TON more problems. Not to mention the servers are spotty, at absolute best. In any case, when it came time for Nimonix to renew their contract with OGPlanet this year for Rumble Fighter, they just, well, opted out, and all of us as players got to witness exactly how they would handle knowing they were going to lose a game beforehand. The very first thing they did was erase all posts that Nimonix had made regarding the transfer and what we could do about it, and then they went on a spree of deleting information and negative posts from actual players. While there is something inherently wrong with all of that, what's funny about it is that THIS IS THE INTERNET, someone out there probably has proof you screwed up and that's going to come back to bite you in the ass. 
It's true that Rumble Fighter was OGPlanet's cash cow, but the way that they dealt with the situation really does not help their reputation at all. I understand that they were angry about it, but to lash out at the community itself, which they are supposed to be fostering by basically making it impossible for us to transfer to the new publishers, was definitely not in their best interest.
The NYCC thing is not exactly the same, since naturally ReedPop isn't changing publishers or anything like that. Tickets are always staggered for NYCC, and this year, when 3-Day and Single Day tickets were supposed to be sold, the site IMMEDIATELY crashed. I realize that there are probably more and more people interested in NYCC each year, but you should probably do a load test before you release something to the public. After the page came back, they instated a virtual queue for all of us to wait in, with no real indication of where you were or how long you would be waiting. They then told us officially that it was totally okay to refresh the queue because nothing would happen. About an hour later they told us that refreshing the queue page probably would drop you down waaaay to the end of the queue. 
To make matters worse, while all of this was happening, instead of updating their frequently used Facebook page, they spent about an hour trying to delete all of the negative feedback people were leaving as comments. ON TOP OF THAT, after basically lying to us all about whether or not the tickets were sold out, they deleted their post telling us what we should be doing if we wanted our tickets. While the 'right' thing to do would probably be to own up and apologize, they've done basically the worst thing they could possibly do, by pretending it never happened at all. I could understand if this was some small, start up con, but with something as big as this, plenty of people will be bound to notice that you made a mistake, and that the way that you dealt with said mistake was not really the best way to go.
Kenbei brought up a valid point to me, that "reputation>sales" but I think in this case, their reaction was actually very hurtful to their reputation. They made sure we all sat and bought as many tickets as possible, and if they weren't the tickets that we actually wanted because we were lied to, then "oh well." I see a lot of people complaining that there are so many tickets being sold by scalpers right now, and while I see how upsetting and obnoxious of a practice that is, there were literally thousands of us that didn't get the tickets we wanted. 
Almost every kind of ticket sold out within 24 hours of its release, and that means that there was a TON of people trying to attend the event. The place was packed last year, and tickets were out for ~a month or so before they sold out. I can't even imagine how many people are going to be packed like sardines into the event. Either that, or they released exponentially fewer tickets to the masses. Which is very strange to me, since NYCC takes up more of the Javits Center each and every year, which means more floor space, which translates into more attendees. 
In any case... If this is the way businesses want to treat their customers, I'm pretty scared for the future. Seems like the average Joe's like us are just going to get shit on every single day. I'm pretty much happy with not getting a ticket at this point, as I don't really think with the way they handled the situation they deserve support from me this year. If you're still looking for a ticket though, I hear some retailers are gonna be selling tickets at some point. 

Leaderboards ≠ Multiplayer

There was a huge push in the last generation against local multiplayer, either couch co-op or splitscreen versus types, which really distressed me. There has been such a tremendous push occurring lately towards outright getting rid of local multiplayer altogether that I just can't seem to understand. I've heard a lot of arguments against it, and one that I hear a lot is that "it's just an added expense," which makes it sound like it's more difficult to add local multiplayer than online multiplayer. 
That just can't be right though. Personally, I've never worked on a game that was intended to be played online, so I can't really say for absolutely certain, but at least logically it can't possibly be right. If you want online play to work properly, you have to configure the internet connections properly for each person to join up with others, designate proper ports to be accessed, as well as provide servers for everyone to sync up with, unless you intend to function on peer-to-peer play. If you already had multiplayer in mind when you were designing the game then you've already gotten the balancing down at least to a functional level, so I mean, there's no real extra balancing required between online and local. Therefore, I'm reasonably certain that simply finding a way to split the screen would be much simpler and cost-effective than all of the stuff you need to do to get the game to function online.
That being said, another thing that really irks me about games nowadays is that they tout the name 'multiplayer' when really all they mean is that you can see other players' scores on a global or area-wide leaderboard. I don't understand who thought that being able to see someone's score was the same as actually playing with them, whether it was online or not. This is not multiplayer, though I suppose it does create a sense of competition with other players. 
While it's nice that there's a huge push for globalization in all forms of media nowadays, and it's amazing to be able to play against someone that lives across the country, or even across the globe from you, there's something missing that used to be there in a lot of games. I'm not saying the experience is exactly the same for everyone, but I absolutely thrive on a group getting together to play something. I love my friends, and I love having them over just to play things. Back when we were children during parties, I distinctly remember playing things on the Genesis and SNES where we would be doing a two-player game and people would line up and swap out at a character's death, this ESPECIALLY being the case with TMNT: The Hyperstone Heist & X-Men 2 on the Genesis and Turtles in Time on the SNES. That sense of camaraderie you get sitting with your friends is amazing. 
A lot of people think that gamers are solitary creatures, but we're actually some of the most sociable people on the planet. While it may be hard to get a glimpse of our world if you're looking in the window from the outside, once you're in, you're pretty much golden. It's hard to find a game that no one else in the world likes, so you're bound to make some new friends in any situation. I can't tell you how many times personally I've been able to include someone in a local multiplayer game that never would have participated otherwise. I've helped so many international students feeling alone and scared open up to people around them through video games that I feel like I should teach a class on how to make people that think they're excluded from everything realize they are more than welcome to be included in things if they just let it happen! 
But... I digress. There's also a similar push to add multiplayer where it's unnecessary. A lot of games nowadays, especially in series that are known for their single player campaigns, have multiplayer sections seemingly tacked on to later iterations of the series. While it's great and all to get people together around something, sometimes it's a totally unnecessary addition. If you're not going to spend the time on something to make it right, then I don't really see a point in adding it. Sure, the idea might help grab a few new people, but the backlash from releasing an incomplete product will most likely hurt you far worse in the long run.  
I see more than a few games that have different options when playing online and local, which really confuses me. Games like Street Fighter IV and Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3 have different lobby and match options, some of which you can't even change when you play online, but you can when you play offline. If you have it for one, why not have it for the other? You've already done the work once, so you might as well just move it over, it can't really be that difficult. 
We need to find a balance between single and multiplayer, and I think game developers need to understand that such a balance exists in the first place before we can actually take a deeper look at it. Most games have their own strengths and weaknesses, and it's important that you work with those in mind. You can't just add leaderboards and say your game is multiplayer now, that's just not how it works. Take Skylanders for example, they say there's an online component of the game, which happens to be a leaderboard. That has absolutely no bearing on the game, and I honestly care nothing for it at all.  
Humans are social creatures, and that feeling of inclusiveness and camaraderie you get playing a game with someone can be exhilarating, but in my opinion it's even greater when you can reach out and touch that person for an extra high five or even a clink of beer cans. I've got friends that I hang out with, people we all know and love like GrimJak and D-T, and I absolutely hate the idea of having to send them home so we can play together. That just doesn't make sense to me, when I could have even more fun while they're sitting right there next to me. I can tell you that while I don't frown on a little friendly competition, it's just not the same when I'm looking at someone's score, as opposed to actually seeing them work for that score, whether that be online or in person. 

What do graphics really mean?

This is something that I've had on my mind regarding games since I was a teen, first starting to really think for myself. I started playing games on the Genesis and SNES, the 16 bit era, so the games I started with really weren't that pretty, though they were considerable steps further in development than their predecessors. Around the end of my childhood and the beginning of my teenage years, the PS2, Dreamcast and the original Xbox debuted. For years until probably midway through the Xbox 360's lifetime, I absolutely hated the Xbox.
It wasn't the games, or the advertisements, or the controller or anything like that that caused me to loathe it, but instead the gamers that sprung up alongside it. You might be thinking "Oh, you're clearly a PlayStation fanboy then!" or some such statement now, but that isn't right either. As of right now, I'm pretty much an equal opportunity gamer, though I spend a lot of time on my PC and my Dreamcast right now (Barring my Skylanders addiction on the PS3, of course). It's the fact that the Xbox was touted as the most powerful machine of its cycle in regards to consoles and they used that for the most part, to talk about how graphically powerful it was. They didn't care that more power in general meant better engines could be run and more stuff could be done, they seemed to care solely about the fact that the games were prettier than everyone else's.
That statement in itself is kind of funny to me, seeing that it has basically ALWAYS been the state of things for PC master race to be the most beautiful and powerful anyway, but not everyone uses their computers for gaming. In any case, this campaign to show how beautiful the games are really irks me, because I don't really see a point in it. The way I see games, and I think a lot of other people do, are as a chance to experience something new, something different, to live a life aside from yours, where you can literally be someone/thing else entirely. That being said, while graphics are a great way to draw in your audience to the setting, they shouldn't be viewed as the only thing that's going to do that. 
There were so many games released around then that were absolutely beautiful, but they played like absolute shit. To this day there are still tons of games that fall into this pit of irksome behavior. I don't really care how beautiful a game is if the controls are clunky and you can't do what you're intended to be doing. I guess since that was part of the campaign for the Xbox, for the games to be MINDBLOWINGLY BEAUTIFUL, I sort of equated the type of gamers that care only about graphics with it. I'm sure there are other factors, but I always seemed to blame the Xbox for creating those gamers out of nowhere, at least from my perspective.
I know quite a few people that won't even play a game if it's considered "ugly" by today's standards. I can't fathom living with such an elitist view as that. It just doesn't make sense to me. A couple weeks ago, I brought DDR MAX 1 + 2, and EXTREME 1 + 2 to school to play with a few friends, and when we were trying to decide which to play, one of our friends asked "Which one has the best graphics?" I just... kind of stared at her and I must have blinked at least 1000x in the span of 10 seconds, before finally replying "They're just arrows, what do you mean graphics?" to which she in turn replied "No, the character models can be better!" First of all, who in their right mind that doesn't play on Beginner or Light in DDR still uses the avatars? Really though, the avatars are like a secondary or tertiary part of the game, but she's going to choose which to play based on which set of avatars looks best? Why would you do that as opposed to the fun factor or the tighest controls?
I just want to put it out there, especially to all these game developers that like to put 700 hours of cutscenes in their games and have no real gameplay inbetween, that graphics should NOT be your first priority. Though I fear that there are far fewer gamers out there that care more about gameplay than graphics nowadays, PLEASE consider the fact that you are making a video game, and it has more to the title than just "video." I played through Halo 4 with The Laundry King a month or so ago and there was a cutscene at least every 30 steps, and the MAJORITY of them weren't even necessary! I wanted to play a game, not watch a movie. Why are there still people out there that think that a game has to be beautiful to be playable? Those two things can be mutually exclusive you know? Beauty is not synonymous with fun, nor playable, and I wish that more people would realize that. They just might miss out on some of the greatest experiences of their lives!

任務完了！ (Mission Complete!)

I've always wanted an excuse to shout "mission complete!" in Japanese, and I feel now is the absolute perfect time for that to happen! For those of you that follow me on the YouTubs, which is probably going to be anyone that happens to be reading this entry, or anything on this blog, really, as of two days ago, I completed both of my goals for the year on YouTube!
I set two goals for myself this year, one for views and one for subscribers, and thanks to a couple kind-hearted souls, I've surpassed both of those goals! The view goal was 1, 060, 000 and as of the time of this writing I've got 1, 069, 815. I've already got almost 10, 000 more views than my goal and the year is only half over! My sub count goal was 300 and now I've got 301. It takes me so long to get subs because even though I may accrue five or six every month, I lose just about the same amount, either due to account closures or people deciding to unsubscribe.

These two goals may not seem like a lot to you, or even kind of low considering where I was when the year started, but I'm absolutely stoked that I was able to surpass both of these points with half of the year still to go! My previous post, A Little Bit of Confidence Can Go A Long Way told you guys how happy I was to hear that someone cared, but to be able to actually see that sentiment in action, has been freakin' amazing. On top of that, I finally finished adding the metadata to all of the videos it was missing from (~500 of them!), and while there are still quite a few things I need to go back and fix, I am ecstatic that I've been able to make it this far, and I just want to let you guys know that I have absolutely no intention of stopping now. 

Since I'm done with metadata for the most part, it's time for me to put all my data and planning to use! I've got plenty of time to work on the next things for my channel, like starting up Un-Fairy Tales and some more Let's Plays. Expect tons of footage from games that almost no one has footage of as well! In the near future, there's going to be more Dynasty Warriors matches, goodbyes to my Rumble Fighter characters, more SMITE, and a few Feet of Fury matches. I plan on tackling some requests as well, since it has been so terribly long. 

I want to say above all else, THANK YOU.

My experience thus far has been stellar, and I'm looking forward to it only getting better from here on out!

A little bit of confidence can go a long way

A bit more than two years ago, I got a message in my inbox on YouTube from Zoomin.tv games. At the time, I had no idea who they were, or what that message entailed. After a bit of research, I realized they were actually a partnership network for YouTube from the Netherlands. Now, with that knowledge in hand I initially thought they had made a mistake. Why was this group waaaay out in the Netherlands coming to me, asking if I wanted to join them? Naturally I thought it was a hoax right off the bat, but after reading their message I thought "Wow, maybe someone does think I can do things right!"
During college I really didn't have time to work on my channel, so I sparsely added videos every now and then to it, but I wasn't really focused on it. When I got out of college I was rather dejected about life in general so I figured I'd go back to it. I missed the feeling of community that I had gotten to experience at the end of high school/beginning of college through YouTube, and I figured I might as well try and get that back. Then out of the clear blue sky I got that message. Zoomin.tv Games seeks out smaller channels to partner with, but the people they seek out they see as having potential. I think I've written about this before, but when a partnership network seeks you out of absolutely nowhere, it's an incredible feeling. "This person, whom I've never met or interacted with before, they think I can be someone!" That's exactly the kind of thing I was looking for. 
I realized at that moment that I had been far too lazy with my channel over the years, and it was time to step it up! From then on, I decided I would go back and fix all the things that I had messed up, especially my metadata. I never really saw a reason for tags and the like, especially at the beginning, so I spent a bit of time every other day since then just going back and fixing up my tags and categories on all of my old videos. After 2+ years, I finally succeeded, and I can tell that it is actually helping me. I've also gone to great lengths to get data and statistics from my channel over the past two years as well. With that task done, it's finally time for me to look towards the future, as opposed to continuing to dwell on the past. Though, that isn't to say there's still a couple things here and there I've still got to go back and fix up, but like everything else, in due time!
Before I finished fixing the metadata on all my old videos I actually got a message from Fullscreen, and even though I told myself that I was going to look for a partnership when I was done with all my metadata, I figured "What the hell, I might as well try it out!" Astonishingly, I got in! It wasn't just Zoomin.tv that thought I had potential, now there was another network that thought I had potential! That little bit of confidence was exactly what I needed to continue doing what I was doing.
For the first time though, when I saw the end of my metadata additions drawing close, I finally thought "Wow! I can actually do this! I'm gonna keep going!" If you've ever met me in person, you'd probably know that I basically have self-esteem in the negative quadrant, so being able to think that at all is pretty much a crowning achievement for me. Sure, I've had plenty of help figuring out that I'm a pretty cool dudefrom my friends over the years, but now I actually am starting to believe it. With that surge of confidence, I'm ready to move on and do my absolute best to succeed in this environment. With an audience like you guys, and all my friends around, I know, for probably the first time ever, that I can do this.