The FIX - Bren

I’ve been doing YouTube for a LONG time now, well 8 years certainly sounds like a long time to me.. but eerily doesn’t feel like a long time. We’ve been through so many changes and trails, trying different things, making movies, TV shows, Interviews, Press events... you name it, as a content creator for the video game community I’ve made it. I’ve always wanted to be a successful youtuber when it came to video-games, these days that usually means you have to figure out a silly name and play lots of games and make a fool of yourself (and yeah i’ve done that too). A youtube star is someone that has millions of followers, uploads daily, sometimes twice daily, but I have none of those things... does that mean i’m not successful? I dont’ think so. I’ve conducted interviews with lead game designers, been to top tier invite only press functions, had 2 shows on UK TV for video games, a movie, and run an active community driven youtube channel that has a great gathering of awesome people. So why is it that I feel like I’ve failed somehow? is it because I didn’t find the right audience? is it because I didn’t get launched to super stardom for my time as a games journalist... would I even want that if it came knocking... i’m not even sure I would like it to be honest. It's strange, I've always felt like I’ve wanted to be successful in making video content, films, art, always wanted to entertain and make something that would make someone say “wow” and I have done that, but on a small scale.

Now on Youtube I see things are very different, attention spans are miniscule, kids are starting channels left right and centre, no knowledge of how to frame a good shot, how to use a decent microphone, no knowledge on how to make a proper video... vertical videos of cats being dicks, fail videos, pranks, challenges, all of that stuff to me is benine crap,  redundant. I feel the same about reality TV and how most formats prey on schadenfreude( german phrase meaning "to take pleasure in anothers missfortune") I find it nausiating that television, for the most part, has become so mundane, fuelled by adverts and les than average production values. I recently watched a shocking piece of output form the BBC where they seem to have forgotten that sound levels are important... as well as whitebalance and did the OP forget his tripod? Hand held is ok, but this chap looked like he'd had a bit too much rum in his coffee that morning.  

Anyway, back to Youtube. I'm a part of a few "small youtuber" groups on facebook, basically if you don't have 500,000 subs these days you are considered to be pretty small time. And in these groups I see thousands of the same posts everyday "yay i got 20 subs" or "how many views do i need before i can monetize." and the best one "sub for sub anyone?" honestly pretty much everyone on those groups that i've looked at (except one or two) literally have no fucking idea what they are doing and couldn't make a video if it meant saving their own life. Time and time again I see the same shit, constantly. It honestly makes me Wince at the thought that these kids are about to embark on the most dissapointing crusade of thier lives.  I started youtube in 2009 and it was a bloody good time to do so as there were pretty much no such thing as lets plays or video game shows etc... we had an amazing show, 4 presenters, heavily edited reviews, sketches, comedy! And best of all we were in with the big boys, interviewing people I never thought i'd ever get to meet!  "But Bren, why didn't you just keep going with that?" Well, thats a whole different story and i'll just sum it up by saying there were differences of opinion and it fell apart.

Starting GameGazmTV was very freeing... I had decided that I needed a platform where I didn't care too much about what content I put on it... I had boxed up my camera equipment and used a phone to film most of the stuff for it... we slapped half naked manga girls all over it with flames and rock music in the hope that we would offend someone enough to just come and look at the channel... even the name "GameGazm" was fucking ridiculous. It wasn't long before we started to slowly change everything. Removing the semi naked girls, and some "dead weight" and started to clean up the brand... but it didn't do anything really.. I started to slip back into the "everything must be good" routine, so started heavily editing videos again, making bigger productions, adding more visual effects to everything... graphical updates, weekly updates, started doing let's plays for more content, live streams... then by year 4 we changed the name fully to Ministry of Gamers in the hope of finally shedding the GameGazm crappy beginnings. And now I've suddenly realised... that I hate most of it... I look back at a lot of our content and pretty much 90% of it I could throw in the bin and no one would bat an eyelid. The content I love the most on our channel is 2 videos... Solstice and Top Gun. 2 videos that I think are actually really worth watching... the rest of them i'm not that bothered about... but solstice and top gun both took 6 weeks each to make... thats a lot of time... and then the most successful video on our channel is a video about a fucking controller that we shot in an hour because we thought "why not" I couldn't give a crap about that controller... but its the only video that i've spent the least amount of time on and its the most successfull thing ive ever made.... talk about a kick in the teeth... thats some way to really get yourself down.

Up until this point if you asked me is YouTube worth doing, should I start a channel? I would have said " yeah its really fun to do, and totally worth it." but ask me right now? i'd say "no... don't do it.. its really not worth the stress you'll put yourself through, its not worth seeing comments like "shut up and stop reviewing games you fat cunt." on a video that you spent DAYS writing, recording, editing.  Its not worth making any video that takes you longer than an hour to do, because honestly... your effort is the last thing youtube gives a crap about." Youtube does not care if you stayed up for a week straight slaving over an edit, making sure your colours are good, sound is balanced, Youtube doesn't care if you spent days crafting a CGI intro for your channel, making custom graphics, building a brand! It DOESN'T CARE... but make a controller video, slap it up, and youtube will give you £300 and a pat on the head..... great... just film your cat doing something retarded and you'll be a millionaire in no time. don't worry about talent... its not required here.

Basically youtube isn't the kind of platform I would like to be on. But not being on Youtube is like saying "I don't want to be on the biggest viewing platform available." throughout my video carrer I've only ever really been interested in making content about videogames. It's my passion so what else would I do? I have a couple of thoughts about other avenues I could explore. But if I really cared about them then I would have been doing it already. No I still care about making content for videogames but now its time to change the focus... change the direction because something has to change... i'm no longer going to use youtube as a platform to give content thats about something else.. i'm going to make it about ME and my team as people, its not a show anymore. I want it to document OUR struggle, OUR journey through a project, how we as people are focused on making entertainment. Youtube doesn't need another gaming channel, it needs to hear about how crushingly difficult it is to get anywhere with content creation, and thats where I want to be now. I'll be working on something I really care about, and i'll provide updates to that on youtube.

I can't keep going the way I have been, a constant viscious circle of dissapointment and failiure, over and over. I'm done trying to fill a gap that just doesn't need to be filled. There are other ways I can use my time and thats the most precious thing to all of us.. becasue there really isnt' that much of it.

Why have I written this? I guess to just put it all down somehwere other than my head.. the more I write at the moment the more I feel it leaving me.. literally like ive turned a tap on and the water was filthy and its slowly starting to clear up. My main point to all of this though was to fully understand why i'm so successful at failing, I make incredible work that never gets anywhere and no one really cares that much about, but its still MY work, and even if only one person sees it and is entertained by it, then to me, i've won. So in closing, I am a youtuber, and a fucking successful one.  And no one really knows it...... yet, and of course i'll never give up, I firmly believe I have something to offer a wide audience, i'm not quite sure what that is yet, but I feel like its my mission to figure it out, I owe it to myself to keep trying! and always give my best. Take pride in what you do, and if you believe in something enough, you will get it... after a long bitter road of absolute mental turmoil.... you'll get it.

Bren.

Check out this video on vidme!

YOUTUBE Changed me. A lot of people have thought about doing YouTube channel, and in 2009, I had an opportunity to work on one as an editor. That was GameTank TV and it was the beginning of a long YouTube lifestyle that has changed me... totally... you’d never think about how much you would go through in that time. But team politics, friendships being shattered, a lost marriage, death and sadness were all hidden behind the YouTube curtain. A few years after it started GameTank stopped, after creative differences, team shake ups, and failed attempts at trying to recapture what we once had. Throughout that time, Matt was going through a rough relationship, I was going through a rough marriage and Ian and Dan had a lot of creative differences. I could see where both of them were coming from, but neither did well to sort it out between them and in the end it drove a huge wedge between us all. It started and stopped again a couple of times after, but it never felt like it worked. It was never my project, and I really didn’t have any control over what happened to it. I had a big say but ultimately it wasn’t up to me. That was a big deal, as I always wanted to be making “something” video wise to do with gaming. So naturally the next step was to just start my own, at the time the goal was to just get stuff up. make quick videos, be real with our opinions and not be too afraid of upsetting anyone.  so we did. I started GameGazmTV with Joss Fearn, a good friend that helped out with being a co presenter, I never liked the thought of doing something alone, I think the banter you get between two people was always better. We made a lot of videos and shot a lot of them on a mobile phone and recorded all our voice overs with a £20 mic...I couldn’t afford a mic stand at the time, so it was stuck on a floor fan that was stacked on top of a couple of boxes. it was crap, looked and sounded crap too. But back then it was the greatest thing ever. Not long after it started Jason Weyham joined the team and Joss left, he decided that it wasn’t really for him in the end. We got accepted into our first network (Curse) this meant that we could start earning money and it was all sorted for us and they send us paychecks every month for what the channel earns in ad revenue... its not much, but its money :) YouTube can change you in a way that you can’t switch off. you have to be thinking about the next video, what is your output going to be for this week? what can you do for the thumbnail? relevant keywords for your videos, detailed descriptions that contain keywords for search engine optimization, What games are coming out? how many reviews can you do in  a week? do you have a social life? no...... you have YouTube. It takes that, to get anywhere with it, I feel like I’ve given myself to this website and put every part of my focus towards it. Even with all of that, it’s still a hard struggle every week to keep the numbers up. At first you think its you, you’re not funny, people don’t like your videos, what’s the point? Why put weeks of writing and recording into something that gets a handful of views and never goes anywhere..... Well, you do it because you love it, and that’s it.  I have a day job, and that job is great. I’m a video editor by trade, and I also do graphic design and animation too. I do a lot of freelance work in my spare hours and it all takes a piece of what I am. People ask me, “how much to do this?” and I’ll give a price... but It’s really costing me time, sometimes I’ve even said a price I thought would be too high, just to get people to forget about it or go elsewhere... you have to look at what you value more.... money? or time? and sometimes I’d rather have my hour, than be paid to do something I don’t really care about. Today is my birthday, yup, and today after work, I have to get 2 videos edited for tomorrow, a poster printed and put in the mail, make a thumbnail for a video going live tomorrow, render 2 3d animations and find time to have dinner with family and celebrate the fact that i’m 32. This might sound nuts, but everyday is like that. At Christmas time I moved to my parents house for a couple of weeks and I didn’t know at the time but I had a panic attack... never had one before... but shortness of breath and being terrified and calm at the same time is the weirdest fucking thing ever, but it was all to do with the fact I was thinking about how much I needed to get done and I couldn’t do it because I was supposed to be relaxing for Christmas.... messed up right? Sometimes I forget why I do it... sometimes it is soul destroying when you spend 6 weeks on a YouTube video, forgetting about going to events, hanging with friends, being with family, all to dedicate your efforts to something you’re really passionate about and then you watch it fail... you give it everything, it fails, you carry on. I don’t know how long i can do that for, but I’m not done yet. Over the couple of years I’ve been working on the new channel, I’ve learned so much, but YouTube is constantly changing and more and more people are joining. If you seriously asked me about setting up a channel now, I would ask you one question... How much of yourself are you willing to lose? I’m not the greatest youtuber, nor do I have the best abilities as others out there. But I’m here to talk about my love of gaming, talk about why I love games and why the industry sometimes does something astronomically stupid in the name of “business” and point that out to the masses. I try to be professional, I try to make sure the content looks its best and is interesting to watch, and one day, I hope more people will find our little corner of the internet, and i hope when they do, they stick around. I’m not really sure what this post was about... maybe i just felt i needed to write this down...if you got this far, thanks for reading. Peace and Love, Brendan. x  www.gamegazm.com

NIOH is a third person hack and slash with heavy Dark Souls influences with its gameplay. We tried out the Alpha demo that was released on April 26th 2016 and got to experience dying a lot. With it being more fast paced than Dark Souls it can become very difficult very quickly! But it’s well worth persevering with and certainly worth trying out! After an hour of playing I really started getting into it, its a game where you take 2 steps forward and 1 back and balancing tactics, skill and caution is key to progression. originally announced back in 2004, NIOH has been in development for a long time, and it’s staggeringly obvious that it has taken major influences from Dark Souls. Whether it started out that way, or whether it has been molded to that genre over its years is a top debate, with people mainly thinking it is a clone of Dark Souls set in a Japanese ninja like world. Team Ninja is famed for its Ninja Gaiden series and of course the Dead Or Alive fighting game franchise. With Ninja Gaiden, players took on the role of Ryu Hayabusa and gameplay was super fast button mashing with emphasis on timing and combos, it was brutally difficult and now, NIOH has seemed to have combined the best parts of Ninja Gaiden with a more refined and tactical combat and progression system that feels very good, and fresh! I personally can’t wait to play the full game when it is released on the 28th of October 2016. If you haven't tried the demo yet i suggest you do! but if you can’t for whatever reason or the demo has now bee taken down then please join us in our video as we go through and experience it together. Brendan.

Occasionally it’s nice to load up an old game and have a blast from the past, this time we take a look at Rage Racer on the PS1, I pretty much lose the ability to speak due to laughter in this one! Possibly the stupidest thing I’ve laughed at in a long time! Join us every Monday, Wednesday and Fridays! 6pmGMT GameGazm Time!

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHp08eZTN1M) We love old games, so we made this! :)

Because everyone wants to drive a car built by the Devil right?

We've seen a lot of big hitters at the show with their triple A titles, but how about some incredible Indie Power!!!! check out some of the awesome talent on show at this years EGX 2015!

http://www.leikir-studio.com/isbarah - ISBARAH

http://projectzomboid.com/ - PROJECT ZOMBOID

http://coocoosqueaky.com/TearsOfAvia/ - TEARS OF AVIA

http://www.polygrammatic.com/ - SUPER MIX TAPE

GameGazmTV are: Brendan Toy: Editor/ presenter Jason Weyham: Editor/ presenter Isabel Warman: Presenter

Graphics and animations PLANETSIDE DIGITAL www.facebook.com/planetsidedigital

Wow what a day. meeting Shuhei Yoshida was just incredible. the man is a legend! check out our coverage of day 2 at EGX 2015!

We went to EGX 2014. Come see what we played! And Joss dancing!!?

Let’s Play The CLUB // Can You Beat Me?