Good gaming channels on Youtube?

[Butter]

I heard you guys like long youtube videos.

 

[Blaza]

Ambiguous Amphibian makes edited lps where he usually plays stuff with some sort of challenge attached. Such as his Kenshi solo torso start series called Torsolo and his recent Rimworld series about tribal starting in the desert

 

[Puukko]

Good coverage of Morrowind mods among other things.

 

[Wunderbar]

Not sure if Avalanche's survival horror series has been posted before. He should've skipped covering stuff everyone knows like SH and FF, and focused on the more obscure titles, but it's an interesting watch.

didn't watch the video, but looking at the timestamps i can see that he ignored SH4 and covered Origins instead. What the fuck is that?

 

[A horse of course]

Good coverage of Morrowind mods among other things.

ESL speaker. Downvoted.

Not sure if Avalanche's survival horror series has been posted before. He should've skipped covering stuff everyone knows like SH and FF, and focused on the more obscure titles, but it's an interesting watch.

Shame that almost no one recognizes Alone in the Dark (1992) the real originator of survival horrors (and RE clones).

He mentions it in the third video on AITD: TNN, saying he doesn't like the series.

 

[A horse of course]

 

[Young_Hollow]

Ed123
Great analysis and I really like how you're comparing ID2 to the other IE games. I like hearing someone's own opinions on a game so the developer commentary is less relevant to me but is probably much more relevant to people who are interested in the game from a historical and game development perspective. From the POV of someone who wants to pick up his first IE game, the sections on mods and versions are also very helpful. I think the scholarly and buyer's guide-ey sections could be a bit better separated though.
For the technical stuff: I don't think there needs to be a fade after the smaller portions of commentary and think it would be better used to separate the big parts of the video from eachother rather than after relatively smaller sections. Also the fade seems to happen just 2 or 3 seconds too fast so it feels like its going to cut off what you're saying. Highly nitpicky but I thought it was a bit annoying. The 2 links on the outro were blocking the message at the end of the video. Also, I don't know how its added but it might be useful to have this thing in your video : https://imgur.com/a/6vM5I4a

 

[A horse of course]

Ed123
Great analysis and I really like how you're comparing ID2 to the other IE games. I like hearing someone's own opinions on a game so the developer commentary is less relevant to me but is probably much more relevant to people who are interested in the game from a historical and game development perspective. From the POV of someone who wants to pick up his first IE game, the sections on mods and versions are also very helpful. I think the scholarly and buyer's guide-ey sections could be a bit better separated though.
For the technical stuff: I don't think there needs to be a fade after the smaller portions of commentary and think it would be better used to separate the big parts of the video from eachother rather than after relatively smaller sections. Also the fade seems to happen just 2 or 3 seconds too fast so it feels like its going to cut off what you're saying. Highly nitpicky but I thought it was a bit annoying. The 2 links on the outro were blocking the message at the end of the video. Also, I don't know how its added but it might be useful to have this thing in your video : https://imgur.com/a/6vM5I4a

Yeah, I intend to do some "bite-sized" retro reviews for a while (e.g. 15-20m max) cutting out stuff like the development section and focusing on improving my video editing (and mic). I won't make a super long IE video until my next vacation.

Part of the reason I went "all in" on the Icewind Dale games was that they're a relatively obscure topic on youtube - the original Icewind Dale has a few reviews of the Enhanced Edition, and until yesterday there were just two reviews of Icewind Dale II on the entire site. Chris Davis (the guy who thinks Deus Ex is some kind of alt-right Q-anon game) actually did a very long (49m) video on the Icewind Dale EE, but it was 99% just his impressions of the game as a new player. That's absolutely fine ofc, but I felt like there was a niche for a more "complete" review of the IWD series from the perspective of someone who played them at the time they were released. Compare this to something like Baldur's Gate, which has several dozens reviews and at least two extremely long retrospectives (though once again using the Enhanced Editions and stupid Beamdog shit). Neverwinter Nights, meanwhile, is the subject of a two hour video essay by Noah Double-Barrel. And of course there are a billion video essays on New Vegas, the Fallout series, Morrowind and so forth.

Obviously I don't consider my videos "definitive" or anything like that - I didn't analyse the HoF modes, I didn't do playthroughs of the big mods, I didn't really get into the spells or anything like that, I didn't do an in-depth comparison of IWD to the Gold Box games or its rival hack and slash titles etc etc. But I'm proud of both videos as pretty solid summaries of the games, how they were received at the time, what distinguishes them from other Infinity Engine games, and a couple of the key people involved in making them.

Regarding their weaknesses as video content: I did add chapters and timestamps to the videos, I'm not sure what the image you posted is I've only ever seen the timestamps in descriptions and the little bars at the bottom of the play bar.

As for not clearly delineating certain sections when talking, yeah that's definitely true and a result of my workflow. Firstly, I originally designed the video around keeping footage from Chapter 5 onwards behind spoilers, but then noticed the old IWD areas were all over the pre-release screenshots already and thus weren't considered a spoiler by BI. Simiilarly, I was constantly moving the pacing/combat/AC topics from one part of the script to another, without adjusting the surrounding paragraphs to compensate for transitions or signposting that now leads nowhere. Secondly, I have a policy of not going back and re-recording lines due to my amateurish mic setup, due to the fact that my voice sounds different in the various sections (not just the volume, but the amount of background fuzz, how nasally it sounds etc.). Just like in videogames, voiced lines prevent me from re-editing or restructing my script after the fact without doing a lot of extra work. If I could restart the video, I'd definitely think of a way of explaining the 3rd Ed changes in a more concise manner and talking a bit more about how specific spells being changed (e.g. stoneskin) affected balance. There's definitely a lot of stuff I meant to say but forgot to write down (especially on roleplaying and skill checks).

I'd say a broader problem with my IWD2 video is that it isn't clearly directed towards a specific demographic. It has incredibly lengthy and dull sections on AC for people who've never played IE games or perhaps only played the BG EEs very casually, but it also repeatedly references things like skill checks, quest design and roleplaying in Arcanum/Planescape/Fallout on the assumption that the viewer is already intimately familiar with how they differ from the IE games. So yeah, some of these issues are just the result of me being lazy and saying "I just wanna finish the video ffs". The outro problem, for example, I knew was an issue, but couldn't be arsed to change after clicking the render button. At the end of the day I just make the videos as a hobby, so I tend to get laissez-faire about them once boredom begins to set in. To be frank, the most enjoyable part of the video was creating the opening teaser since it was time-consuming but also matched my ADHD.

The fades (cross dissolves in DaVinci) are a difficult one. I specifically used them because they're a relatively "gentle" transition that I think fits the comfy fantasy style of Icewind Dale, which is why I usually use hard cuts during the trailers/action sequences. What I tried to do was use cross dissolves when shifting between subpoints, and fade in/out from black when moving to distinct topics (especially when they were marked as spoilers in the timestamps). The problem is that I also felt compelled to use cross dissolves when jumping from one IE game to another (to prevent confusion), or when cutting between scenes on the character creation table (the has to be very obvious because the changes are so subtle when hard-cutting from one part of character creation to another that it looks like a video artifact rather than a deliberate cut).

So my priority right now is to try and improve my video editing skills with the shorter reviews. However, a HUGE issue is my audio setup. The way it is right now, I have to spend an insane amount of time fixing it in post-production due to all my sharp intakes of breath between sentences. Part of the problem is that I'm an ESL teacher irl and instinctively speak very loudly and deliberately in an audio environment with a lot of low ambient noise, so I have a very "breathy" way of speaking. I've tried raising the noise gate and such, or moving my head away from the mic during breaths, but it's very distracting to do this, and I still have to edit the silent pauses out afterwards anyway. I asked Tweed and a few other minor e-celebs about it but people seem to have different ways of dealing with this. I don't think a pop filter is much use, as the only time this was an issue was in the early parts of the video (where I had the blue snowball ICE mic right up near my mouth).

tl;dr I'll do a few shorter videos for a while and hopefully improve my skillz, then do the BG1 retrospective when I feel like my workflow is more efficient.

 

[A horse of course]

By the way, if there's one thing I hope my videos get across, it's how fucking low the bar to entry is. If I can go from zero knowledge to making 40-50m videos within a couple of months (that's after watching, like, ONE short davinci tutorial), so can any of you idiots.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

That's true, but it should also be said that it's only worth it if - as is your case - you do it solely as a hobby with no interest to turn it into a stable source of income (with the end goal of having it as your full time job). The chances to hit it big on YT nowadays are slim, both due to an obtuse algorithm that one can only guess how it actually works and due to market saturation.

 

[Fedora Master]

You don't WANT to be a big famous YT personality because it means having to interact with the Youtube community.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

You don't WANT to be a big famous YT personality because it means having to interact with the Youtube community.

Having some niche podcast and surviving through Patreon donations though, that I could get behind.

Too bad that even that niche is nowadays saturated with content producers.

 

[Bad Sector]

By the way, if there's one thing I hope my videos get across, it's how fucking low the bar to entry is. If I can go from zero knowledge to making 40-50m videos within a couple of months (that's after watching, like, ONE short davinci tutorial), so can any of you idiots.

I tried it once a year or so ago but turns out i sound like an ogre :-P and that despite my voice having a low volume (it certainly doesn't sound like that in the video but i was only a bit below "shouting" level, which was kinda tiring). Also thick accent, i wonder if people understand what i say.

 

[Ol' Willy]

so can any of you idiots.

Why, though?

 

[Fedora Master]

Best game, best person to play it.

 

[Alienman]

If you go in with the mindset of making money you will only be disappointed. Saving videos, doing some blind playthroughs, or just retrospectives/documentaries are a great keepsake memento. Always find it fun to back and watch your own created old cringe

 

[A horse of course]

By the way, if there's one thing I hope my videos get across, it's how fucking low the bar to entry is. If I can go from zero knowledge to making 40-50m videos within a couple of months (that's after watching, like, ONE short davinci tutorial), so can any of you idiots.

I tried it once a year or so ago but turns out i sound like an ogre :-P and that despite my voice having a low volume (it certainly doesn't sound like that in the video but i was only a bit below "shouting" level, which was kinda tiring). Also thick accent, i wonder if people understand what i say.

Accent is fine, it's roughly at the level of Ragnar Rox (whose accent used to be a lot clearer, for some reason). Microphone is the big problem. I'd recommend setting the noise gate higher to reduce all the static/fuzz in the background. The reason I'd never do streaming/commentary whilst playing is the lack of control over these things.

 

[madbringer]

I'm not into watching other people play all that much, and I'm sorry if they've been mentioned before, but Decino and Coincident are my fav Doom YouTubers. Check them out, they're funny dudes and are actually competent at what they're playing.

Some intro vids:

 

[Young_Hollow]

Regarding their weaknesses as video content: I did add chapters and timestamps to the videos, I'm not sure what the image you posted is I've only ever seen the timestamps in descriptions and the little bars at the bottom of the play bar.

Its the button to make the timestamps appear rather than have them on by default at the start of the video.

Your audio sounds good to me though; don't know if a better mic will help but you currently sound like most youtubers I listen to . If the problem is background noise, I can't hear any of it and it doesn't sound like you're recording between breaths, so I don't think you need to worry about that. Transitions are a personal choice but IMO it might be best keep >5 total transitions unless its for a really long video or comedic purposes; it can kick you out of the video when its done for shorter vids. According to Mandalore, make a video about something that you can go on and on about and following that advice, I wouldn't worry about tailoring a video to a demographic but rather just form your opinion and express it until you're finished. I used to watch TB's WTF is vids and that's what he used to do there.

 

[Young_Hollow]

By the way, if there's one thing I hope my videos get across, it's how fucking low the bar to entry is. If I can go from zero knowledge to making 40-50m videos within a couple of months (that's after watching, like, ONE short davinci tutorial), so can any of you idiots.

I tried it once a year or so ago but turns out i sound like an ogre :-P and that despite my voice having a low volume (it certainly doesn't sound like that in the video but i was only a bit below "shouting" level, which was kinda tiring). Also thick accent, i wonder if people understand what i say.

Your accent is understandable to me as well. The only problem I saw(or heard, rather) was that the in-game sounds were too loud so that it was difficult to hear you speak at some points. I could hear mic static but afaik that can be cleaned up and it wasn't overpowering your voice.

 

[A horse of course]

Regarding their weaknesses as video content: I did add chapters and timestamps to the videos, I'm not sure what the image you posted is I've only ever seen the timestamps in descriptions and the little bars at the bottom of the play bar.

Its the button to make the timestamps appear rather than have them on by default at the start of the video.

Your audio sounds good to me though; don't know if a better mic will help but you currently sound like most youtubers I listen to . If the problem is background noise, I can't hear any of it and it doesn't sound like you're recording between breaths, so I don't think you need to worry about that. Transitions are a personal choice but IMO it might be best keep >5 total transitions unless its for a really long video or comedic purposes; it can kick you out of the video when its done for shorter vids. According to Mandalore, make a video about something that you can go on and on about and following that advice, I wouldn't worry about tailoring a video to a demographic but rather just form your opinion and express it until you're finished. I used to watch TB's WTF is vids and that's what he used to do there.

Sorry, what I meant by the audio is that I need to spend a lot of time editing it - the reason you didn't hear any serious problems is because I have to spend a huge amount of time cutting out breathing/snorts/lip smacking. When going back through the video now, I physically cringe at multiple points because I can remember the massive snort I made between two sentences or w/e. You can still hear the odd chair creak or click but it's mostly fine, though there are 2 or 3 points at which you can hear me cut out too quickly because I had to edit something out too close to my voice. So the benefit of sorting out my audio is that I can just record it, dump it in DaVinci, and then start cutting the footage around it, rather than wasting a lot of time messing about with it and introducing timing errors when putting it back together.

 

[A horse of course]

 

[Heroic Liberator]

 

[razvedchiki]

ed123 i think you could do better with snarky/edgy videos like the above.

 

[Rahdulan]

Good coverage of Morrowind mods among other things.

This dude is underrated as fuck.