I don’t really have anything to say… nothing that exciting has happened this past week. TITOLT is doing great across the web, which is awesome.

Make sure to check out the forums, they’re quickly becoming a happening place.

I’d like to discuss the pros and cons of doing videos in multiple segments. Because it’s a decision that has to be made on every game that I work on… and should be considered by anyone else who makes walkthroughs. There are a few choices: 1) Show the entire game in 1 video. 2) Split the game up into a few videos. 3) Do 1 video per level.

1 video per game:
-Simple. Viewers only need to click on 1 video, and they get everything they need. Can make it more difficult to find 1 specific level. May intimidate potential viewers by how long the video is or they may get bored and stop watching. Likely will only get 1 view/person out of the game. Non-partners capped at 11 minutes, so may need to edit out some content or speed up the footage.
-I recommend doing 1 video per game on very short games that do not have levels, specifically point and clicks and room escapes. I’ll also try to only do 1 video for games that I don’t think people will be very interested in and I can make them reasonable in length (ala Blox).

A few videos per game:
-This is what I like to do, when possible. You’re not going to upset your subscribers if you pump out 2-3 videos for 1 game. With a few videos, you can keep the length down while keeping the footage at 1x speed. You’ll also likely get multiple views per game this way. It’s a balance between being a greedy view whore and keeping your viewers happy and focused. Bite sized pieces, instead of everything at once.
-I try to do 2 videos for a game, ideally. As mentioned, it doesn’t make sense to do it with point and click type games… and some other types of games wouldn’t make sense to split the footage either. But most level-based games work to have the content split. They can find a specific level quickly if they want or get half the game in a few minutes. Multiple views per game is also very nice, but watch the greed.

1 video per level:
-Ultimate ease of finding the level you’re stuck on. Extremely short videos. Tons of views per person per game. Lots of extra time in editing, rendering, and uploading. Likely will piss off subscribers from the flood of videos at one time. A pain for users if they want to watch the entire game.
-I really don’t recommend doing this. It’s enough work to edit and upload 1 or 2 videos, but doing it for a game with 30 or 40 levels is just a royal headache. The times I’ve done 6-7 videos for 1 game have all resulted in me losing about 10 subscribers… people do not like getting flooded with content from 1 person. Sure, you’ll get extra views out of it, but is that worth the scorn of your viewers?

In the end, it’s about judgment. Different games make sense having different numbers of vids for them. To me, it’s common sense. But make sure to balance your desire for views with your audience’s wish for simplicity. I’d say to always err on the side of too few as opposed to too many. When I’ve done 6-7 videos per game, it was almost always out of greed, and it hasn’t worked out for me yet. I’ve really tried to stop doing that, and keep it to 4 videos max per game… ideally 2.

I know I said I wouldn’t talk about FFR anymore… but the fact that I’m still getting about 5 comments a day on my FFR Lo-Down post, I felt I needed to do something for those fans aching for a place to call home. So I decided to purchase a vBulletin license and set up a forum.

To start, I have 2 forums… General and FFR People. General will be for anything… suggestions, feedback, bugs, what you had for breakfast… whatever. If I see certain things are requested (such as a Walkthroughs or Flash Game forum), I’ll add them. The FFR People forum will be for those former FFR users to congregate, meet up, talk about the good old days, that sort of thing.

Hopefully this will be beneficial to some folk. Take a look and register.

A classic battle in monochrome: You vs Chopper vs Scissors vs Sheep. Who will win? Navigate your way through 21 levels and become the masta of yo choppa.

Play Hanna In A Choppa! A walkthrough is also provided, of course.

My last post was a bit of a lead in to this… I’m going to begin hosting some popular flash games on the site. I’d like for the site to be more than just a blog, and turning it into a destination for quality flash games is the next logical step. To accomplish that, I took the baby step of installing a wordpress games plugin. I’ll be messing around with it a bit this week, and hopefully will start adding a few games once I get the layout how I want it (which will probably be harder than it sounds, given how completely inept I am at anything web design related).

I have no plans of adding thousands of games. For one, that’s WAY too much work. Also, it’s not my way to endorse crappy games… which is what having them on my site would be. So, the only games you’ll find on my site will be ones that I approve of and am comfortable endorsing and letting you guys play. I’m open to suggestions as well.

The real goal, eventually, will be to start licensing games to draw users to the site. But that seems very far off, given that I still don’t understand how some of these sites are able to spend thousands of dollars on a marginal game that likely won’t get more than a few hundred thousand gameplays across the web. I’ll save those questions for another post though.

Haven’t posted an update on my vid stats in a while… so voila!

(view the image directly to see it full-size)

Percentages continue to go up… but I’m most certainly being pickier on games I walkthrough; I rarely do vids now unless I know it’ll be in-game or a very large title that I can monetize (ala Bloons TD 4).

Hit 20 million total video views yesterday. I feel like I’ve come a really long way since getting my 1st 10,000 view video (Epic War “The End” Walkthrough). It’s been a year now since I first really started making a lot of vids and about 8 months since I started doing it for a living.

So, thanks to all of you guys for needing help on games and watching the vids. It means a lot to me. <3.

So, I haven’t really decided what I want out of this site. Is it a depository for my walkthroughs? Is it a place for me to talk about recently released or upcoming games? Do you care about what I do in my personal life? Beyond that, I only just started to advertise this site at all, via annotations in my Bloons Tower Defense 4 vids. I’ll continue to do this, hopefully starting to drive some traffic to the site.

Basically, for the 30-40 people that actually check this… what do you want out of this site? Please post comments as to what you want me to post about and what you don’t want me to post about. I’m thinking about putting up more random content, about stuff I do and about upcoming games (with developer/sponsor permission, of course).

On that front, I’ve spent most of the past 6 weeks playing Sacred Seasons, a flash-based MMO that is free to play. I’ve quickly risen to one of the highest levels in the game (probably top20), became a moderator, and am working to assist on balance/gameplay. I find it amazing how all of my addictions turn into jobs… shocking, awesome, and amazing.

-Tass