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Notes
🕑 Added 2021-05-21 19:55:22 +0000 UTCFor years I've had a notebook. It's positively packed with all the things you'd expect one to contain. Horrible lines for movies that'll never be made. Thoughts the person who wrote them doesn't remember writing. And passwords! 'Cause there's always that one using a phrase you thought was memorable, and forgot five seconds after typing it.
Thing is, I've never reached the final page of it and realistically I should have. Things like the Mass Effect Andromeda video have 5-7 pages worth of notes, and while I may not upload consistently anymore, I've definitely worked on enough things to max it out.
I suspect it's because the book that almost always has takeout, water bottles, or an air conditioning nozzle over it - Summer came early - and isn't fast enough to catch a fresh idea, that in the moment intoxicating feeling one gives you. It's instead a memorized version by the time I write it down. It's been diluted , filtered, it's had to share an elevator with 80 other random things in the past five minutes and avoid being suffocated.
Not to mention that pens suck, and writing with them sucks, so one is probably going to summarize those internal thoughts, filtering them even further.
So something I've never done then is write down notes while playing. Notes in the past have generally been things I discover a playthrough, what 3rd party studio assisted with what mode, what developer said which quote, things like that.
I rationalized it as priority. If I'm playing through a game, have a thought, and can't even remember I had that thought, it must not be important enough for a video. When I'm playing a game, I don't want to feel like a teacher, because I'm not one. I play games, I don't want to armchair developers with reasoning that takes place in a parallel universe separate from the one they worked in.
One of the reasons I don't want to stream new games is that I view it like texting in a theatre. You will unavoidably have moments when you're interacting with things beyond the game when it's calling for attention. So similarly, I didn't want to alt-tab from a game to jot down notes of something as trivial as the way a single gun sounds.
I came to realize something though.
I already interrupt the experience all the time. Answering Discord messages, checking recordings, getting Tea, going to the bathroom; so why couldn't I just put down the notes, then?
It all started with copying Skill Up's setup where he has a Laptop right next to the computer to write notes without exiting the game, but eventually, the note program's cloud saving had me going to the desktop regardless.
I've not only written 1000 words worth of notes just for this next project, but much more pertaining to future videos; Years Later, SIFP's, and Originals, as well as personal things like potential books, screenplays, or podcasts, and even more personal things than that.
I haven't seen David Lynch's movies and I think I've got to change that, because a few brief clips of him talking really changed my perspective on the value of ideas. Ideas are often considered easy and therefore, useless. The cliche telling of a wannabe Author who shouts an elevator pitch at a party to seem interesting.
But ideas are what spawn work, we are nothing without an idea. So it's important to write them down, and give yourself the means to cement them instantly wherever you are.
This will be the first video I've done using this method, and while I don't know yet if it's here to stay, I'm curious if it ends up changing how they're perceived, because it's certainly changed how their written and made.
Comments
Justin Wolownik
Funnily enough, I randomly decided to start a "game journal" for my first playthrough of the Mass Effect games, taking brief notes on my phone as I played and expanding on them later. Considering I haven't found the first game particularly fun to play, taking notes has really helped me to appreciate its ambition and more thoughtfully determine what it does well and what prevents it from reaching its full potential.
