Hello everyone and welcome to another channel update!
Firstly I’d just like to answer the question as to why there was no update last month. The simple answer is I didn’t feel there was enough going on to warrant its own post. However this month a lot has happened so here I am to update you all!
Let’s start with current series. The main headline here is that the M4J Network will no longer be streamed live on YouTube and Twitch. Instead, the series will be going back to weekly videos, published at the same time that the streams started (7pm GMT). This was a difficult decision to make, however after mulling it over for several weeks I came to the conclusion that it was either this or ending the series completely. The recent technical issues also helped make the decision easier. To be totally honest with you all, the series was getting very dry. Each week less and less people were engaging, whether that was leaving comments on the streams after they had finished, chatting with myself and other viewers during the streams or sharing the streams to try and attract more viewers. Some people were using the streams as their personal news dumping ground, just bombarding the chat with headlines that they found interesting and hoping that I would talk about it, with no context or extra comment from themselves. This might make the chat look busy, but in reality it makes my job a lot more difficult. I realise it is slightly contradictory to say that no one chats during streams, but to also say I don’t like people bombarding the chat with news stories. The truth of it is talking about the same news stories week in, week out just isn’t interesting. It’s not interesting to watch and it’s even less interesting to do every single week. I prefer streams to be places to discuss ideas, share thoughts and build a community. When people only talk about their news, it blocks off other people from being able to join in a lot of the time. I know beggars can’t be choosers but I do find it a little selfish when people take over the chat to only talk about their interests, as a viewer myself in other streams it always puts me off when people do that so I really want to avoid that happening here. As Stewart Lee once said:
“The only thing worse than no-one clapping, is the sound of one person clapping alone.”
For me, streams should have at least 2 people in the chat before it can become truly interactive. This just wasn’t happening anymore- as normally only one person would watch and would remain silent for the majority - and since my streams were built on the idea of viewers deciding what happened during that stream, a lot of weeks ended up being badly improvised projects just to fill the time. Going back to videos means you guys can still suggest ideas for the future, but I can go back to recording big builds and projects that can then be shortened to manageable video lengths. Ultimately I feel this is the best decision for the future of the series, and I hope you can all agree with me on that.
For the remaining current series, we still have M4J Logistics and Global Ventures. Both of these series will be remaining, especially as they have both seen a huge increase in viewership over the last couple of months. I have really hit my rhythm with Global Ventures since the new year, finding a new focus and style that I hope will see the videos gain even more traction as the year goes on. M4J Logistics has also improved greatly since the introduction of the Q&As, which was always the goal so I am really pleased to see it working. I have always enjoyed the idea of having a special series where people can interact directly with me, and this was the perfect opportunity to do so. You can continue leaving questions in the specific Discord chat, and they will all be answered in the order they were asked. Please do check beforehand though if your question has already been asked so we don’t get the same questions over and over again!
Now we come to the new series. Sadly I am still unsure as to when Football Manager will begin as the database is still being worked on, but I can report that I have started pre-production on the Rainbow Six Siege series. This is something I have never done before, but really wanted to try out, so this series will work very differently to the rest on the channel. Each episode will have graphics, replays, overlays and even a script! Planing all this has taken a while, but at this stage I’m pretty much ready to write the script for the first episode. The plan right now is to produce the first 6 episodes before the first one is published, with each “season” of the series being 12 episodes long. This will give me time to produce the second half of each season whilst the first half is uploading. I’m really excited about this series, as you’ll see a side of my gaming that I’ve not shown on the channel yet!
Finally we come to the reason why things have quietened down over the last couple of months. X Vision Interactive’s first game, Project MCAIFIA, is just about to reach demo stage! This is of course incredibly exciting, but in order to hit the deadline we’ve all had to focus on the tasks at hand. This has, for me, included setting up Steam pages, planning marketing strategies and of course play-testing the game. This has taken up a lot of my time recently, which is why some uploads have been missed. I can only apologise for that, especially this week as I missed two videos due to attending a careers fair at my old university on Wednesday to help promote the game. Once the demo is out, I will be making some videos for M4J showing off the game, as well as having more time that I can put back into M4J. It’s been a very stressful time over the last couple of months getting everything ready, but thanks to the hard work from the XVI team, especially Kurt and Ben, we’ve got a very good game ready that I know you guys will enjoy playing!
The last thing I wanted to mention was the M4J Store. I think there’s still a little bit of confusion as to why the store is on the XVI website and not hosted here. Hopefully that hasn’t put anyone off buying from the store, but the reason behind it was to help manage costs. Hosting a store is not cheap, so running it through a website that already had a store set up and ready to go made more sense than setting up a new store here. I can assure you that buying from the XVI website is the same as if you were to buy from here, so hopefully that can help put some minds at ease. As for new designs, they are constantly being worked on and there should be some M4J Network designs being added to the store within the next couple of weeks so stay tuned for those!
That’s it from me for this month. There’s been a lot to get through, and as the year progresses there will be a lot more happening too! I’ll be back next month with another update so thanks for reading and until next time, I will see you soon!