nerdcubed

Leaving Limbo

Hey, I missed a post last week. Sorry about that. I blame Christmas MADNESS*. 

It's been a busy few weeks. The whole "YouTube is collapsing" drama combined with Machinima being bought out kinda leaves me in a state of limbo. YouTube analytics is up the swanny so I have no idea how many people are watching, what reactions to things really are, if I'm even being paid for any of this. It's a mess. That's why people are panicing. We don't know which was is up anymore.

(Note: This is not...

Making the Top 100 Games Series.

NEVER. AGAIN.

I started work on this god damn series in June. JUNE.

I thought this would be a fun thing to make. A video on the top 100 games of all time. Easy, simple and nice and fun. First I needed to come up with the games. It took months. 

Turns out, there are a lot of games.

First I had to come up with some judging rules. Ambition, quality, how it's held up etc etc. Once I had some rules that gave all games a fair shot I started to rank them.

I gathered a lis...

THE ADVENT CALENDARS RETURN

OH GOD

Today you get an exclusive, secret and advanced look at the return of the Advent Calendars. Expect crap toys, knock off lego and an alarming amount of horror...

I had the great pleasure of editing these (well, I stole a memory card so Ashen's didn't have a choice) and... let's just say it has some... interesting... moments. 

Starting on 1st December. Sorry you have to live with the burden of knowing this is a thing for a few extra days. Think of it has MORE TIM...

I Got Married

It was the only way to sink the Demma ship.

- Dan

 PS. Love you Rebecca.  <3

One Billion

It's Saturday.

Right, now the pleasantries are over I've got a very quick update for y'all. Tonight is my 1 Billion views video. It's a bit talky and I quite like it. Also it involves scrabble.

I've spent the week setting up some EXCITING collabs for upcoming videos. That's EXCITING, not exciting. EXCITING. Way better than just exciting.

Also, Dad³ is doing some videos over the next two weeks about a cruise he went on. They're VERY good. You should watch them.

Keep diggi...

Draw

Today's art from Rebecca is the new channel header! Attached to this post are a couple of wallpapers and some of her initial sketches for it! I love this one! :D

Some updates on things. No announced game progress at all this week. Rebecca has been ill and for me, well, every fucking year I forget that 90% of games come out in October and November and it's always a stressful recording time. I'm trying to get a big lead on myself so that I can spend more time on other projects. Normally I'm only...

Life

ALL MORTGAGES AND NO GAME DEV MAKE DAN A DULL BOY.

ALL MORTGAGES AND NO GAME DEV MAKE DAN A DULL BOY.

ALL MORTGAGES AND NO GAME DEV MAKE DAN A DULL BOY.

ALL MORTGAGES AND NO GAME DEV MAKE DAN A DULL BOY.

ALL MORTGAGES AND NO GAME DEV MAKE DAN A DULL BOY.

ALL MORTGAGES AND NO GAME DEV MAKE DAN A DULL BOY.

ALL MORTGAGES AND NO GAME DEV MAKE DAN A DULL BOY.

ALL MORTGAGES AND NO GAME DEV MAKE DAN A DULL BOY.

ALL MORTGAGES AND NO GAME DEV MAKE DAN A DULL BO...

Thank God For VR

Thanks to illness, hospital visits and many, many hours playing Battlestar Galactica for charity we had zero progress on the games front this week. Instead of the current dev log thingy I'm going to write about a Jim Sterling (Thank God For Him) video. Specifically, this one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_h6GYI8ddA

This video isn't kind to VR. I like VR. Let's talk about the points raised and giv...

The Greenlight Game - Part 3

You know when you decide something is a good idea and once you've started you realised that it was literally the worst time ever to do it.

WELCOME TO THE GREENLIGHT GAME UPDATES.

GOOD THING HOUSE BUYING AND WEDDINGS ARE SUPER NOT TIME CONSUMING EDITION.

Systems Nominal is going well. All quiet on that front. It's just being built and bits of it are working nice! Yay!

The other game? Well, today I'm going to talk about the constant battle I have in my head when it come...

Intermission

This week I have done nothing but real life stuff. 

Wedding Stuff.

Mortgage Stuff.

Lawyer Stuff.

Tax Stuff.

Lots of stuff.

Because of this (and the fact is 5:39am and I haven't gone to bed yet due to trying to catch up on videos) this week's post is a picture of a dog that I found on the internet.

Thank you and goodnight.

- Dan

The Greenlight Game - Part 2

Updates from possibly the most tiring week of my life. Far too much talking to people wearing ties. Phone calls that literally lasted whole days. Said the word "Accounts" too many times. Was sick a lot. Very tiring.

Anyway. Let's check in with both games because for some reason I kept working on both.

First up, Systems Nominal Edition Steam (or SNES for short) is feature locked. That's my side of it done really.  We've got difficulty modes, new keyboard layouts, different ships...

The Greenlight Game - Part 1

Multi part post about making a game AS WE MAKE IT?! OK, here we go!

So, like I mentioned last week, I want to make a game for Greenlight. A short little game that we put less resources into so if we mess up it's ok. A $1 game.

First step is coming up with ideas. That's the easy bit. I sat around for a bit and came up with a few concepts that could work, then I narrowed them down to just two. A re-build of Systems Nominal and a short, clever choose your own adventure game. Let's have a lo...

Learning From My Mistakes

Sorry for the late post this week. I may have not even noticed it was the weekend.

So, I really fucked up bits of the games I've already released. Really badly. Let's talk about some of them fuck ups.

Systems Nominal

Ah, my first little game. So innocent, so sweet, so shitily built.  Biggest issue here was my YouTube bad habits crossing over. I saved nothing. Most of the original files were gone. Old versions weren't kept. It was a mess.

See, when YouTubing I...

The Patreon Q&A for August 2016

Totally forgot to post this earlier! The Q&A has been uploaded for your VoDing pleasure!

So how many of you played the drinking game from the YouTube post earlier in the week? None of you? That's good because you'd be DEAD.

Seriously, YouTubers fucking love their all caps, panic mode titles don't they? I saw at least 4 videos that ended in the sad sigh and one with a crying emoji on the thumbnail. The YouTuber is a predictable beast.

In other news, I came up with a short fi...

The YouTube Sky is Falling!

Well... No. Not really.

So today a whole bunch of YouTubers had some of their videos un-monetised for not being "advertiser friendly". Big YouTubers made noise. Everyone had a panic. I updated my CV. The usual.

Then, new terms were found on the YouTube support page (see above). Big scary terms. No more sex jokes, no more violence, no more controversial subjects and absolutely no more swearing.

Fuck.

So that's it? End of everything? Let's all pack up and move to Vimeo?...

ANOTHER LIVE Q&A SOON!

Hey let's do a Patreon Q&A soon! Ask your questions below and I'll do a live stream either tonight or tomorrow night at like 9pm UK Time! (Keep an eye on twitter for the announcement!) I'll put the VoD up here later if you miss it.

Ask away!

- Dan

Making The Banner

Ooooooo today you've only gone and got a special video! Remember that new Toys channel header that Rebecca painted? Well she's only gone and recorded all 19 (!) hours of painting it and we've only gone and talked about the bloody thing in this video!

Disclaimer: The video is sped up. It's not 19 hours long.

- Dan x

P.S. Have I only gone and used "only gone and" 3 times in a single paragraph? Yes. Yes I did.

P.P.S. Last week I only got around to making 2 videos. Today...

No Man's Sky

"I like to design games so that everything the player does and doesn't do ties into the main goal of that game."

I wrote this sentence a few days before No Man's Sky (NMS) came out on PS4 and, while playing the game for the first time today, I realised that this is exactly the opposite of what NMS does and is the reason I seriously dislike NMS.

First, I'm going to expand on that idea by breaking down two other games first as examples. That'll be Super Mario Bros and Minecraft. T...

Oh When The Saints...

Some new wallpapers for you this week based on the new YouTube header based on Saints Row 2 based on video games based on gangsters based on crime based on life on the streets etc etc.

It's 3am. It's the best words I have at the moment. Should get a new shipment in soon.

Night. <3

- Dan

So. Games.

Today, I'm going to talk about the games we're making. I won't be revealing what they are just yet, just how I'm going about making them. And yes, I said "games" not "game".

There are five. One big project, two medium sized ones and a couple of small ones.

Now they're not all in active development, they're just planned. I wanted to come up with five different and diverse ideas before I even started working on one so we knew we were working on the right game. A first game is tric...

July 2016 patron supported

Thank you so much for the support this month!

New Toys Channel Header!

Rebecca's spent the last week painting a huge version of my Lego Town for use with the Toys channel! Couple of wallpaper versions of it attached below for you to glue to your face or whatever it is kids do with wallpapers these days.

Hopefully she'll have a speed painting of it up soon so you can watch how it was done.

That's all for this week.

Don't work too hard.

- Dan x

YouTube's Bad Words

There are two ways I get described when it comes to YouTube and I seriously dislike both.

1. Influencer. 

What a horrible word. It's the go to for 50% of business related emails I receive and I loath it. It sounds like what you'd call someone who sells drugs to kids or, even worse, the sort of word a person in marketing would use. It strips away everything I do and boils it down to "opinion leader." Bleh.

2. Content Creator.

I hate being told I m...

A little bit of art for you

Rebecca is re-doing the IRL header right now so I figured I'd share the test painting she did for it. 3 guesses what it'll be when it's done.

Also some very lovely messages on last weeks post. I appreciate it.

Game news very soon.

<3

- Dan

The Impasse

On one hand YouTube is the best thing to happen to me. I play games for a living. Editing is easy. I can work from home. It pays OK. I've had many great and wonderful moments in my life because of it.

But I feel stuck.

I feel like the challenge is gone. I can pull a damn fine video out of my ass 12 times a week. Occasionally I set myself something more complex to do but I feel like I'm hitting the limits of this gaming YouTube medium. I still enjoy this work, I just feel lik...

The Man in the Iron Vive

A little tease for something special coming up next week.

Get hyped.

- Dan

June 2016 patron supported

Thank you so much for the support this month!

Scipio!

Everyone's favorite time traveling Roman general turned sports entertainer is here!

First up you get the super nice wallpaper above! Woo!

Second, you get 3 unfinished alternate ideas for this month's header! Just hit up the attachments listed below. Aren't you lucky!

Third, you get this emoticon!

:)

WOW!

- Dan

Numbers

2.5 Million is a lot of people.

Like, a lot.

It's around 0.035% of the earth population. If you got 10,000 random people in a room then...

1. You'd probably have a lot of Visa paperwork on your hands

2. 3 or 4 people in that room would be subscribed to me.

So that's my subscribers, but how many people have heard of me? Well I have 932,017,442 views so far. How many of them are from subscribers?

373,945,616.

So that's a...

Sneaky Thumbnail...

... it's sneaky.

It's also for the 2.5 Million Sub Special...

Hmmm...

*Sneaks Away*

- Dan