A lot can change in 7 years. Now with this blog post, I could start talking about general things that changed in the past 7 years. I could talk about how we elected the first black president elected in 2008. I could talk about what new video game consoles came out since 2007. I could even start talking about how much the WWE has changed in 7 years. I'm not going to talk about those things. This blog post is more relevant to me and my Youtube channel than anything else. 7 years ago, I created my own personal Youtube channel. It's crazy how much has changed since then. I was in 7th grade when I started Youtube. Now I'm 1 year after graduating High School. At the time, Youtube wasn't nearly as big as it is now. With my channel turning 7, I thought this would be a good time to look back. In this article, I'm going to go through each phase of my Youtube channel across the 7 years of it's existence. I hope you enjoy my recollection of my past.
The Beginning: 2007
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Youtube logo used between 2005-2009 |
Back before you had to link a Google+ account to your Youtube account, everyone had to create an online alias to identify themselves. My Youtube channel name was "wiistevenduda1", A name that I still use for many things to this day. I kinda feel the need to explain what the name means though as it's just 3 words and a number all mashed together. The breakdown is wii-steven-duda-1,
Wii is of course the video game system I was excited about in 2007, the Nintendo Wii,
Steven and
Duda is my first and last names if you couldn't already tell by the name of this blog, and
1. I put in there because numbers are cool!
My first video was
Super Smash Update Episode 1, A series of only 4 videos where I take all the pictures of the updates from the Super Smash Bros. Dojo website and put them into a slideshow with music. The songs I chose for the video was Evanescence's "Bring me to Life" and 2 songs from High School Musical. I used "Bring me to Life" because I loved that song ever since I watched the WWE Pay-Per-View No Way Out 2003. And I don't care what anyone says, High School Musical is a good movie for what it is. Cheesy yes, idiotic perhaps, but it tells a simple and effective story. I don't want to talk about it's sequels though.
The only other videos I have from that year is on a PC fangame called Sonic Robo Blast 2. Now the game is still actively developed even to this year. There's 3 of these videos all using everyone's good old friend from the early days of Youtube, "Unregistered Hypercam 2". What's interesting is that on the first one, titled
"me playing sonic robo blast 2" at the end it shows an inverted color version of my desktop. It's fun to see how much has changed between what's on my desktop, where I put my games, and even what Operating System I used.
New Equipment: 2008
2008 brought a new invention to my Youtube videos, a capture card. I was able to record gameplay footage from a video game console. The device I used was a Dazzle, which was "the shit" way back then. Of course now a days this capture card is considered crap and there are WAY better ones out on the market. I mostly did random gameplay videos on Super Smash Bros Brawl such as a
"speed run" of classic mode using Marth. Man, just look at that 240p quality! I also recorded gameplay videos on Mario Kart Wii, Wii Music, Animal Crossing City Folk, and Sonic Unleashed.
I started to record walkthrough videos of of the Road to Wrestlemania Mode in WWE Smackdown vs. RAW 2009. I only did John Cena's and Chris Jericho's stories in the game. I never did get a chance to finish the rest of the stories.
I also for some reason made a top 5 list of my favorite songs in Sonic Unleashed. Each video was just a picture of the box art and the song itself. It's funny now but back then, Youtube videos had a time limit to them. First it was 10 minutes, then 11, then 15, and finally unlimited. I had to upload
the #1 song in my top 5 to Myspace because the song was longer than 11 minutes. Anyone remember when everyone used Myspace? I even had Stan Lee as my friend, which then my real life friends made fun of as a old pedofile. They didn't know who Stan Lee was.
More of the Same: 2009
2009 was basically 2008 in terms of video subjects. I redid the John Cena Road to Wrestlemania using the Xbox 360 version of WWE Smackdown vs RAW 2009. I also did Edge's story in Smackdown vs RAW 2010. I started to record more walkthroughs for other games. The two other games were TMNT Turtles in Time: Reshelled and TMNT The Arcade Game from 1989. There were also more random gameplay videos, mostly Legends of Wrestlemania, assorted WiiWare games, and Sonic Robo Blast 2,
I became a member of an online forum called The Turtle Dojo for the game, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Smash-Up. I recorded some matches of online tournaments I participated in.
Here is the most popular video out of them all. Thankfully I won that match. Unfortunately the website is now no longer up as it was, and when you go to it you get some dude's Blogger Blog (Ironic as I'm talking about it in a Blogger Blog post).
I wanted to give my random gameplay video purpose. So I wanted to record a series of videos that are split up into two groups, Classic Video Games and Next Gen Video Games. Then in the description box, I would give my very brief thoughts of the video game in the video. I only did 3 of these videos in that year. Here is the first video,
Spider-Man: Return of the Sinister Six for the NES. This was back when I used emulators all the time to play games I didn't even own. Still kinda do that but now for games I want, I'll actively seek them out online and at retro game stores.
A Slow Year: 2010
2010 was again the same things from 2009. 2 more videos in the Classic/Next Gen Video Games series Some more random gameplay footage. What was new was a video walkthrough of
Mega Man 10 for WiiWare.
What's new about it is that the walkthrough had commentary, But not audio or visual commentary in the footage itself. It used Youtube's annotation system to have optional text commentary. This is something I wish more people did that make video game walkthrough videos as some people love commentary but some just want to see the gameplay footage with no sort of commentary. Youtube annotations would make viewers be able to watch a walkthrough the way they want to. I really wish that it caught on with other content creators.
Another series I started was "Road to Halo Reach" This was a series of videos that I would commentate over Halo 3 gameplay. It's the type of commentary videos that you find on Machinima about Call of Duty where someone just talks while playing a video game. I stopped making those videos because well, Halo Reach came out. I found those videos okay, not the best.
Starting A New Channel: 2011
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Youtube logo used between 2011-2013 |
2011 was a year of reinventing myself with Youtube. I started 2011 doing the same old random gameplay videos and a walkthrough of WWE Smackdown vs RAW 2011's Road to Wrestlemania Mode as Rey Mysterio. I felt like my main channel was kinda bloated with old, lower effort videos. I just wanted to go from a fresh start. So I made a new Youtube channel that would go along with my main channel,
VG Entertainment.
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VGE's first Logo |
VGE or Video Game Entertainment was a channel about me and my friends playing video games together and talking over them. We played many games, such as Call of Duty: Black Ops, Team Fortress 2, Halo 3, Halo 3:ODST, Halo Reach, Counter Strike: Source, Left 4 Dead 2, and even a little Minecraft. VGE was a fun channel to do as it's just me and my friends and sometimes myself, playing video games we enjoy. However the quality is on the rough side as we are not skilled commentators. During a roughly 1 year time span, there was a total of 97 videos uploaded onto the channel. Also don't forget that these videos don't require really any editing so I was able to produce a higher amount of content. The main inspiration for this channel was the group of Youtubers called "The Creatures", I was watching a lot of their content during this time and I used their style of videos on us. Looking back, these videos while fun to make, were perhaps not the best of quality so I kinda stopped making them. As of now, these videos are just around to remind me of the times of playing video games with my friends in high school.
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VGE's second and last logo |
Meanwhile on my main channel, the content was pretty slim as the majority of my effort went to VGE. Just random videos that I felt like making. Such as
"What happens when Super Cute meets Super Epic?", which was just someone else's video of their puppy on Youtube and Guile's theme from Street Fighter. After VGE I kinda just lost interest in making videos for Youtube. This is prevalent in the next year....
Year of Decay: 2012
2012 was the year I just stopped making videos of any sort on Youtube. I have a total of 8 videos from 2012. 3 of them were just test videos, another 3 was videos I shot at a WWE Monday Night RAW in Hartford, CT, and the rest where just very short and simple Source Filmmaker clips. I lost all interest in doing anything with Youtube besides viewing other people's work on it. There's not much to say besides this was the year my Youtube channel was just an afterthought.
Trying to Find That Desire: 2013
Just like 2011, I wanted to reboot my channel of sorts in 2013. I once again wanted to start a brand new channel, but I wanted to do a different style of channel. VGE focused on Multiplayer games, I wanted this new channel to focus on Singleplayer or Co-Op games. The channel was called
The Retro Game Club. As the name implies I wanted this channel to focus on older games and give it a sorta, book club feel to them. I did only one game on the whole channel,
Sonic the Hedgehog for the SEGA Genesis. This is what caused me to realize that I just suck at live commentary. I would much prefer scripted material than stuff that I had to improv. At the time I was watching the "Game Grumps" so that was what inspired me to make the Retro Game Club. It was just another Let's Play channel in a sea of other, much higher in quality, Let's Play channels. That's the reason I stopped doing anything on it.
Back on my main channel, I once again produced only 8 videos in the entire year. Just some nonsensical, low effort videos. Eventually I found that desire to make videos again. So at the very end of the year, I used my old cell phone and recorded 3 unboxing videos of various stuff I bought using my work money. However I was let go after only being hired for 16 days. This brought my mood down considerably. I just didn't have any motivation for really anything anymore. Now I'm not talking about suicide tendencies or anything, but just a general sadness that I spent 5 months after high school looking for a job, finally getting a job, and then only to not have that job 16 days after getting it. I don't want to say it hurt my ego as that implies that I had a pretty big ego, which I don't think I do, but I think it did hurt what little ego I had.
The Present: 2014
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Youtube logo used currently |
So now we get to this year, 2014. I wanted this year to be the year where I start taking Youtube seriously. I've been unemployed for a long time now and I wanted something to do creatively. So I started "
The Collection", a series of videos where I take something from my own video game collection and talk about it. So it's a video game review show of sorts, the only difference is that I don't give a game a "score", just a recommendation. I also left the concept about The Collection pretty open as I might not only talk about a video game. Maybe I'll talk about a video game console, or a video game magazine, or anything else that's video game related. I've only got 2 of these videos finished, and a third one in the works. The only problem I have now is that my work rate is extremely lower than I want it to be. It shouldn't have taken me 2 full months to finish 1 video.
Also in 2014 I started up my own blog, which your reading at right now! I feel this blog will fill my creative need for subjects that I feel a video would not be the best way to express them. Such as my WWE Pay-Per-View reviews. A video is more about footage and for WWE reviews, I can't show footage because I don't own the copyright for it. That's why words with pictures are the best way to talk about my opinions on wrestling. I also put my occasional video game finds on here as well. No job = no money, so those finds are to be random and sporadic. While I can't tell you what I'll be doing for the rest of 2014. I'll try my best to make sure the rest of it will be better than what we already went through this year.
Lost History
I put this into it's own section as I don't have these videos anymore on my Youtube channel. Looking back, I wished I kept all of these videos as private videos because it would have been fun watching my real old content in 2014. Aside from what I described above, there were three things I wanted my channel to be about. All of this came from 2007 and 2008 primarily.
The first thing I wanted my channel to be about is an wrestling figure federation. For those who don't know what the hell I'm talking about, let me explain. A wrestling figure federation is videos where people have their own wrestling figures and produce shows like a real life wrestling event. I know, I know, it sounds completely stupid, and it is. Basically it's kids playing with action figures and putting it on Youtube. Back in 2007 this was a pretty big thing. It seemed like everyone who was young and liked wrestling made these videos. The biggest federation at the time was
the WFF. My federation was called the EAFW, Extreme Action Figure Wrestling. This whole thing was something of a bygone era as I don't think there's a single wrestling figure federation going in 2014. That might be a good thing though.
The second thing I wanted my Youtube channel to be about is video game reviews. They were beyond crap as I didn't even use a script and I talked about the game while playing it at the same time. That's not a review, more of a Let's Play than anything else. What is funny is that I found an very old website about my Youtube channel. It's one of those free website builders.
Here it is in it's entire glory. Apparently I made 80 of these video game reviews. Also along side these videos I did playthroughs and video commentaries. I really wish Youtube had a feature to restore long deleted videos because I would REALLY want to see these again.
The final thing I wanted my Youtube channel to be about is Super Smash Bros. Brawl Machinima. For those who are not aware of what Machinima is, it's videos that tell a story but is captured through a video game. It's machine cinema. An example of Machinima is Red vs. Blue by Roosterteeth. My own machinima's were titled "The Legend of Toon Link" and "Fun Brawl" I recorded these by using my webcam pointed at my TV screen. My god they were horrible. I actually found
an old forum post where I was advertising my videos. To best describe the videos, I'll take a quote from what someone said on this forum thread. "After seeing these videos, I no longer have a reason to live. What is the point?" Well said Ander, well said.
The Future: 2015-
So now after I told you all the history of my 7 years on Youtube, what's next. I intend to keep "The Collection" videos going for the foreseeable future. As for anything else, I don't know yet. All I know is that I'll be making Youtube videos and blog posts for a while now. See you in the next 7 years! Thank you for reading my ramblings and hope you have a great day!
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