So here I am, once again, here to tell you why I suddenly dropped off the radar the last week or so. Obviously this was not part of the plan, in fact it was quite the opposite. I was all geared up last week to work on a series of projects for M4J for the next few weeks, but little did I know what was about to happen.
So let’s start with why sometimes recently I’ve missed a couple of uploads. As you’re all aware, here in the UK things were in total lockdown from December until 17th May. 6 months is a very long time without seeing friends and family, and during lockdown I promised myself that at the first opportunity I would go and make up for lost time. So that’s been the first reason, spending time with family and especially my much better half. Normally when I know I’m going to be away from the office I’ve tried to pre-record as much as possible to make up the gaps, but right now that’s not always been possible without pulling all-nighters and since I’m no longer a university student that just didn’t seem right! So to spend as much time as possible with the missus, and to not give you all an inferior video, I took the decision that if I can’t make a decent video in the timeframe I have, I instead will skip a week and make up for it next time.
That idea seemed great until the week just gone, where I was away for 2 weeks. Because of that I missed 2 Hatfield Town videos and 2 Hatfield Town streams, as well as an episode of the M4J Network. That wasn’t actually the plan, but I just didn’t have the time to record 2 normal videos of Football Manager, 2 90 minute matches and then an OpenTTD video, so I decided to take the whole week off and not make any content. I remembered to mention that in the Hatfield Town series, but for some reason completely forgot to mention it in #101 of the M4J Network. D’oh! Ironically though, I was meant to take the whole week off but instead ended up actually making more content than usual. “Where is that content then?” I hear you all ask, well that’s reason number 2…
My first editing project for Racing Games, it’s been pretty well received too!
As I’ve mentioned previously, I’ve been job hunting since May of last year. One piece of advice, job hunting during a global pandemic is like trying to find a burger at a vegan convention. You don’t have much luck. I’d lost count of the number of interviews I have had over the last 12 months, and have no chance of counting the number of times I’ve had my applications completely ignored. But luck would soon change and I’ve landed a really awesome job at RacingGames, a branch of Gfinity, as their Social Media Producer. If you already follow their channels, you’d have already seen my work, but if not I can highly recommend their Facebook, Twitter and YouTube channels especially since I’m basically in charge of them! This means for the last 2 weeks I’ve been producing a lot of content for them, meaning my editing skills have never been more on point, and you’ll definitely be seeing some improvements to M4J content as a result of that. As for my channel, hopefully there will be minimal changes. I’m actually working on some new series to come to your screens soon which I’ll chat about in a bit. But I now get paid to talk about F1, as well as making awesome videos, playing some epic games and even making memes. How cool is that!?
From this new role, I’ve been diving deeper into Adobe After Effects, as well as learning new Photoshop skills and even realising there are more effects in Premiere than just ‘Ultra Key’ (who knew?) All of this is making me a better editor, and since I’m now being paid to content create, that means my channel has once again become my escape. It might seem weird saying that since they’re basically the same job but when M4J is my main focus I always find myself getting less motivated to work on videos, whereas now I feel more motivated than ever before! Because of this I’ve got some new ideas lined up that I’d love to have some feedback on.
I loved this city, but sadly the save file is completely gone.
First up is Cities: Skylines. New Gardcity is completely dead now, the save file just won’t load. However I’ve had some ideas for a new city that I want to work on, and therefore want to dive back in. First thing to note though is I don’t see this as regular videos, it’ll purely be an ‘as-and-when’ series whenever I have the ideas/time to record. But with some new updates and some really interesting looking mods added to the game, I want to start on New Bahecity as soon as possible!
Next up is Transport Fever 2. Yes ok, I caved and bought it. I have 6 episodes recorded already, and once they are edited they will go up on YouTube weekly. This series is yet to be named, but features me playing a megalomaniac map and trying to basically play OpenTTD in 3D. Another disclaimer though, they do include a lot of gameplay mistakes so please be nice in the comments!
Now we move onto the M4J Correctional, otherwise known as Prison Architect. I made a huge mistake trying to recreate Alcatraz, and as a result we lost all the monies. So I’m selling that prison and starting again. The ‘Second Chances’ DLC has just been released, so the plan is to get that and all the cool features that come with it and start a brand new prison, but on land this time! Just like New Bahecity, this will be an ‘as-and-when’ series so don’t expect weekly uploads.
Finally we have Rail Route. Just this week the game entered early access and I will definitely be picking it up as soon as possible. I’m torn as to whether to play using the existing maps or instead try and recreate some parts of the M4J Network instead, so leave your thoughts on that down below. Whatever we decide, I want to make as many videos on this game as possible, it scratches an itch I’ve had for a long time for a game about rail operation as well as construction so it’s perfect for me. We could maybe even turn it into a collaborative series where people create maps for me to play. Let’s see!
So that is about it for this update. I will try to keep people posted in the future about missed uploads but at the same time I’ll be trying hard to not miss uploads to begin with! Despite the success OpenTTD continues to have on the channel, it has actually been 2 far less popular series (Football Manager and F1 2020) that have opened doors for me, leading to an awesome partnership with Hatfield Town and now a job with RacingGames. I guess that just goes to show that there’s always a point to making content you enjoy, no matter who’s watching, and to all those who tell me to ditch series because of whatever reason they might have, I guess they can eat their words!