Hello everyone! Year’s almost over and this time around I wanted to reflect back on everything, and dole out some thoughts about the whole thing. Many things have happened, and yknow - why not have a retrospective?

The Numbers

Don’t worry, this segment is short. As much as I don’t care about fame and getting it quickly, I do like numbers in general and looking into how they change. Brain’s wired like that for me.

So, in the 26th of December last year, I was at 541 subscribers - and now I’m at a hefty 918! I’ll be really honest, I didn’t think it’ll grow this much - hell, we’ve almost hit a thousand!

Now, honestly speaking - most if not all of that is due to the Library Of Ruina videos. They popped off and effectively served as the biggest reason the number went up. I should probably be grateful, but in a weird way I’m kinda not? Don’t get me wrong, I did love the game, and I appreciate all who stuck by — but it did start to wear on me.

Like, imagine knowing that like 90% of your metrics are due to a single game - the infamous dilemma creators encounter. You become inherently tied to it, and if you start to stray away then the numbers stop growing. I remember this impacting me quite a lot when I finished streaming Ruina - but the experience was also useful in teaching me how to treat numbers.

In any case though, I finished the Ruina series of videos back in July - and since then I’ve still gained ~170 subscribers. Can’t help but feel excited about the 1000 mark, especially since it unlocks like, 50 features at once the moment you hit it. At the same time, I’m not actually expecting myself to hit it anytime soon - which I don’t mind! Whenever it happens, I’ll be jumping for joy.

Just to have a public guess - March 17th’ll be the day I hit it. Hopefully I hit it before so I look humble - cause if it comes after then I’ll look completely vain and never live this down. Except I will, because I’ll have hit 1000 - win win.

Stream Fusion

Now, I didn’t mention another number - being the live channel’s metrics, and that’s cause I’ve moved away from there. I’ll be completely honest - there’s many reasons to why I decided to go ahead with putting streams on the main channel.

1. It’s closer to 1000 subs - this metric unlocks loads of things - chats, members, the sorts - but the thing I’m most excited for is custom emojis - and if I stuck with the live channel, which hovered around the 350 mark for the past few months, that’d never happen right?
2. Youtube split the videos and livestreams - the major reason that I even made a separate account for streaming in the first place is the clutter - I didn’t want to mesh videos which I spent hours editing with multi-hour long streams that, realistically, less people would be interested in. But now that they’re split in the UI, that reasoning kinda went out the window. Now I’m just splitting the audience by staying with the live channel.
3. It’s kinda annoying to manage - this one’s pretty minor, but honestly it did stack up. I mean, I’d need to constantly switch accounts to stream, upload video, update metadata, the sorts - and because I keep forgetting to switch, everytime I wanted to look at my history to continue a video I’d have to re-swap again. It was a mess. Very minor, but not needing to care about any of that again is a bonus.
4. Centralizing everything - I’m all for decentralization, but let’s be real. For something like content - you kinda need to centralize. I have the feeling that most people didn’t even know I streamed, or what I’d been streaming. That’s so many people who could potentially be interested in what I’m doing, that I’m just hiding my schedule from. Kinda wack.

So yeah, it’s all happening on the main channel now. The poll which had almost everyone tell me they preferred both in the same channel or to do whatever I wanted helped. I mean I know there’s bias which can skew results, like maybe there’s some element of guilt stopping people from outright saying no - but considering how no one voted to keep the split, I think it’s reasonable to say even the people wanted the merge to happen.

Project Moon

Ah project moon… It’s been a while hasn’t it?

Now, like I’ve mentioned before - most people who’ve seen my stuff came here from Ruina. Met quite the large number of people, and a bunch even decided to stick by after the whole thing ended. Buuuut, if you’ve seen me in the Extralife stream, or saw the new Fortune page - you’ll see that I’m not going to do Limbus Company.

I think I’m just kind of burnt out, really. Ruina dominated years of my presence, and I’m not exaggerating when I say that it was starting to break me down. Loads of things really.

• Stress: call me soft, but the game’s real stressful. I could handle it, but you can probably see me getting more and more tired as the game goes on. I’m good with difficulty - but only in bursts, and since Ruina is so long, and I didn’t want to abandon it - the whole experience ended up lasting over a year. At some point it stopped being as fun to play, and started being stressful since I didn’t want to game over and restart.
• Pressure: well I mean, look at me. I’m small time. Before Ruina, 3 viewers was a huge success for me. Hell, after Ruina it still kind of is a success - although nowadays I’m a lot more apathetic towards metrics like that. Enter the game, and suddenly I’m getting double digits and a fully active chat. I had to adapt, which took a while - and now I’m a lot more comfortable with the prospect - but back in the day it was a lot of pressure to perform well and frequently.

Lastly… well I just don’t want to be known for being a Ruina content creator - and the thought kept hitting me as I played Ruina, which added to all the stress.

Don’t get me wrong - I still love Ruina, and frankly this whole thing was a learning experience which helped me deal with a lot of turmoil that creators can experience. The struggle of what to stream, handling pressure, working with loads of eyes, dealing with a sudden influx - the lot. Infact I started treating streaming a lot less like a job and more like a hobby - which is the inverse of what I’d started doing at that point.

Even if you come in with the thought that you aren’t doing this for the numbers - it’s easy to lose yourself and suddenly end up in that exact state. Ruina helped me realize that and snap out of it - and sadly part of that realization is kind of noticing that I didn’t actually want to stream Limbus Company.

I wanted to go at length regarding this since, yknow. I’m known for Ruina. But yeah - don’t expect more PM content from me. Maybe I’ll enjoy it passively, maybe in the future I’ll look back and reconsider - but for now, I’m takin’ a break from that field.

Development

This’ll be short because most people aren’t programmers - but I’ve been doin’ a lot of work on this site. Infact the past year there’s been a huge upgrade to the whole thing. I mean, now there’s multiple more pages to focus on content - such as schedules, history, and fortune - and everything’s now a lot more responsive! Instead of polling every 5 minutes, things happen live (except for the youtube and patreon metrics). I’m quite proud of everything I’ve made - especially how I’ve migrated to using a custom server rather than a host provider like Vercel.

Patreon

Ah patreon. Not mentioning numbers, but I’m bringing it up specifically because I’ve been considering moving away. Honestly, I was considering Ko-fi, but since I’m approaching 1000 - it seems like Youtube Memberships will be the way to go. Sure the cut is horrid compared to the others, but at least it’ll allow supporters to get things like emotes and the sort. Having multiple platforms just felt kinda wrong for me, making people choose where to put their money - or god forbid, implying that I want them to put their money in both places.

If I’m going to have a membership service, I’m gonna want at most one - even if it means sacrificing a bunch of mony. So yeah, when I hit a thousand - get ready to see me start migrating!

Echoes

In the Extralife stream which didn’t have a theme and was a mess as a result - I started up a system to bring people onboard. Most people use schedules with guests planned to arrive at specific times - but I opted to just whitelist a bunch of people and let them join whenever they wanted. That way, it’ll be a surprise when it happens - and since there’s no need to establish a specific schedule, guests can appear more often.

Not that they will of course - people are busy, timezones exist, and a whole load of other reasons could stop people from joining - but the potential’s there, and it leads to more fun personally, like the Paradise Killer streams.

Retrospective

I’ve done quite a lot of things this year - it’s not as much of a chaotic mess as previous year - but honestly I don’t mind that. Chaos is fun and all, but it’s also nice to tone it down a bit ya know? Plus, it wasn’t dull at any point - at least for me. People might have tuned out when I went onto my Like A Dragon/Judgment binge - but I had fun.

The “Commentary Movie” Yakuza series was an idea I had to share the plot along with my reactions - which is something I don’t often see. Usually it’s either just the plot, or snippets with reactions - so why not merge the two? Turns out, because it’s distracting and dull to edit. Not gonna lie, I’m unsure whether I’ll keep going with the series - but who knows? Only uh, 7 games to go (okay thats a lot).

I’m unsure whether my editing got better or worse this past year, but I do feel more proud of my thumbnails and designs this time round. Somethin about them just feel more refined this year, maybe it’s just me I dunno.

All in all, I’m still proud of the past year. Lots of things happened, and nothing actively went worse - so it’s more than I expected. The move to Youtube has proven to be a good one - what with Twitch effectively shitting the bed these past few months. Youtube’s got problems but I mean - you learn to deal with them honestly. Even if the API is a nightmare which makes custom things painful to make.

Thanks

Well, we’ve reached the end! I ramble quite a lot and this page is no different. To end, I kind of wanted to dish out some thanks to people who’ve helped make this year really awesome.

• Gomu ~ you’re a legend bestie. Stuck by my side all this time, and hanging out with you has been a blast. Thanks for all the emotional support and overall being-a-legend vibe.
• Frankie and Quinn ~ god it’s been over a year now - time sure flies by eh? I’m still happy we’re all friends, and can’t believe all this started because I sent some flippant message at the start. Still remember the times of us playing Peggle and hanging out together. Can’t wait to play Noita with you Quinn! Also good luck with the impending Blaseball!
• Mafreidyne ~ Discovered you last year, and we’ve been in touch ever since! Life’s real busy so we don’t talk often - but I still appreciate all the little conversations we have sometimes. Plus it’s nice to geek out with a fellow Doctor Who fan now and then, especially with how exciting things have been. Let’s have a good 2023!
• Cyanide Dansen ~ the cheerleader who’s always been there, I really appreciate you! Always happy to talk and hang out, and that time we watched a race together was basically the first time I’d ever seen a race - even though I love racing games. Hope things are going well, and thanks for all the support!
• Fox ~ you’ve been wonderful, and without you I wouldn’t have even considered moving to have my own server instead of using Vercel. That single thing helped me improve so many aspects of my site and my skills, and I still can’t believe it took me this long to take closed captions into account. Hopefully 2023’s captions work well!
• Kawa ~ getting to know you has been an absolute delight, and I’m so glad that Yakuza’s ended up bringing us together Kyoudai. Was a blast experiencing the end of Lost Judgment with you, especially ruminating over everything that was going on. You’ve been great! :)
• Patrons ~ I still can’t believe y’all are supporting me. This includes the people who’ve had to drop out for one reason or another - I appreciate the lot of you for ever contributing. It’s really meant a lot and honestly was quite a boost to my confidence. Still doesn’t feel real, and I hope that what I’m doin’ here is all worth it!
• Birthday Tippers and Viewers ~ Not gonna lie, I didn’t expect so many people to show up for my birthday’s Abyssathon - let alone tip, and tip at that scale. That was incredibly heartwarming and the whole day proved to be one of the best birthday’s I’ve ever had. Thanks to all of you who showed up!
• Veterans ~ This one’s for all of you who’ve stuck by me. Part of me thought things would have fizzled out by now - infact when I made the discord server I was sure that it’d die. What I didn’t consider was that so many people would stay, and that the server would stay alive till the end of the year. Hugely thankful to all who’re still here!

With that, it’s been a great year, I hope you’ll enjoy the Best Of 2022 video coming out in Saturday, and let’s go 2023!