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Post-Mortem: Ubisoft Isn't Bad... It's Infuriating
🕑 Added 2024-03-29 23:56:59 +0000 UTCThis video took way to long to...
Write.
Now granted, the gap in time wasn't just rewrites, it was also juggling multiple projects simultaneously, personal and professional. The latter very much delaying a video that I could've easily had out by early February, being pushed back and back while I worked on the video for GOG, which I'll delve into in the next Post-Mortem.
TL;DR, doing interviews at 4am doesn't help your productivity.
(Also, apologies for all of these links, I wanted to embed the videos, I tried multiple services, but apparently, Patreon just doesn't allow that, and their video's option only allows one video per-post, which sucks... my vision is being compromised!)
As that first clip hints towards however, the opening and title had a very different intent.
As previously discussed with my coverage of OTXO, I've been wanting to enter my "don't give a fuck" phase of Youtube, for as proud as I am of that video, it's got multiple sections not because I personally wanted them, but because I thought they were necessary to be understood by viewers.
Letting go of people's perception of you is something that I never thought I'd struggle with, since I didn't care about being liked or agreed with, but I did care about being understood, and what took me way to long to accept, is that isn't always possible.
More importantly, it's not necessary.
If someone thinks I'm too pretentious, simple-minded, long-winded, fast-talking, slow-talking, old, or young...
Cool.
If addressing that makes a video worse, why do it?
Yet ironically... I don't think the lesson was learned with OTXO, but here.
Because the original title was "Ubisoft Isn't Bad..." and the reason I wanted to do that, was to fuck with people, to use their instant rage at a title to be addressed directly one-second into the video, followed by the question...
I was even more cocky about how effective the opening would be regardless of perception when my own Discord server was reacting exactly like I intended.
Thing is, it was this which sparked the slow realization.
What is really being accomplished here?
I show people can get angry about things they don't like?
...Duh.
"No man" the other side of my brain would argue "it's about using that to tell the story you wanna tell man."
...Except it now takes an extra 2-3 minutes to get to the damn story, with the only difference being now, a whole bunch of people are going to be so pissed off, they won't listen to anything I say.
I've often admired inflammatory personalities. Yahtzee Croshaw, Charlie Brooker, I grew up with AVGN and Angry Joe, and I still to this day go back and rewatch videos from big names like YMS or smaller names like Examined Life of Gaming.
I've accepted though that even the times where I've lightly dabbled into that over my time on YT, that's just not me.
I don't like being an inflammatory personality.
I don't even know the specific reason why...
I just know that whenever I'm intentionally setting out to upset people, no matter how insignificantly in a video, no matter how effective it might be in-terms of moving people, or its relation to the topic, it feels like I'm wearing someone else's skin.
Part of the rewrites, and rewrites, and rewrites for this video, was really just trying to make the original premise work, and when I finally accepted that it didn't work for me, the rest fell into place rather quickly.
I could cut all the personal anecdotes trying to setup my concept, now that its not a twist, and is baked directly into the title.
[Video & Audio: Established Franchises]
[Audio: Assassin's Creed 1]
[Video & Audio: The Crew Motorfest]
I was even able to add things in that were previously cut for time/flow, like the clip of Far Cry 6 developer Santiago Castro on his Podcast, and make it really pop thanks to Stoofer's magnificent AE edit of the clip.
Funny enough, that last cut-section, The Crew Motorfest, would've addressed one commenter I saw, who was so taken aback by me saying that Motorfest was the genre's best last year, they wrote a long post listing all the issues with the game.
...And that's the only commenter I saw for said subject, who was very level-headed and probably relieved to hear about responded to them about my personal experiences with that's beta.
I'm glad I cut it, because it doesn't add anything to the video's point.
There is one thing I cut that had some collateral damage; in the original opening "name a criticism of this company, and I agree with it", were going to be accompanies by articles instead of Tweets, some of them being about Ubisoft's notorious sexual harassment claims.
If I could change one thing, it would be address that head-on, and even more so than I originally intended, as it highlights the real heart and talent of people working at Ubisoft is even more disrespected by their bosses than the public.
The biggest surprise though was seeing a noticeable chunk of people be seemingly offended by the opening, where I was so effective at characterizing myself as a hipster, some unsubscribed from the channel.
Having converted that part of the video from a conclusion of the opening, to the opening itself, I hadn't really thought about that possibility... the whole point however, being that I am definitely not better than anybody by virtue of playing Ubisoft's games, mostly left those comments with me scratching my head.
Others just liked that I mentioned Bring Me The Horizon.
As usual, I wrote the video a million times, re-recorded the video a million times, edited entire sections that didn't appear, and completely swapped music choices a million times...
However, unlike the last time, at the end of the day, I'm happy for myself.
And I'll consider that progress.
