The state of the industry

You may have noticed that I haven't published a let's play video in a while. You're not imagining things and no, it's not a quirk of the algorithm. So let's talk about why.

How we got here

I'm sure you see it yourself every time you open YouTube: The BEST! The X Killer! SHOCKING! HUGE! WRONG! Clickbait is rampant and it's only getting worse. Why? Because as much as people complain about it, they still keep clicking on it. The algorithm encourages it. If every video you make doesn't do better than the video before it, then YouTube doesn't recommend it to as many people, and with most views coming from non-subscribers, that means that even people who liked your video will stop seeing it. So every video needs to be bigger and more ridiculous than the last.

And then there's Shorts. A recent court case has found that Instagram and YouTube have intentionally designed these platforms to be harmful and addicting. Why? Because the longer you scroll, the more ads they can show you and the more money they make. These days, the money making schemes are rampant, not just with Shorts but also regular videos. Every time I look at my feed it's filled with people trying to sell me a solution for a problem I didn't know I have (because, really, I don't).

I have refused to participate because, frankly, I'm just not interested in it. I hate clickbait, I hate ragebait, and contributing to the problem will never help solve it. My titles and thumbnails are just things that I think would be interesting and on the rare occasion I bother to make a Short, it's just an entertaining clip from a stream or video. I know I am not alone in this, so I am not claiming to be some sort of savior of the internet, but the fact is, the more you resist The Almighty Algorithm, the less the platform will promote you and the fewer people will find you. It is, quite frankly, demotivating.

Where we're going

That brings us to now: I've decided to shift my focus to streaming. The more I spend time in the content creation space, the more I grow tired of inauthenticity. Streaming seems like the best solution to that. Because it's live, it's a lot harder to maintain any sort of facade. Because it's live, I can't just edit out the boring or bad parts. It's one of the few ways to have actual, genuine human interaction on the internet these days.

So that is where we are at. For the foreseeable future, I do not have any plans to make edited content other than the occasional Short. Since my time outside of my full-time job is limited, I've had to pick a single focus and that is going to be streaming. I'm extremely grateful for the views, likes, and comments I've gotten from people over the years, and if you've enjoyed my let's play videos, I truly am sorry. Thank you for watching and I hope to see many of you in chat.