Why You Should Cancel Your Pledge

Hey everyone, I'll try to keep this brief.

When I started this channel Lili and I just had our first baby. I started making the first Dark Souls video around June or July of 2015 after thinking about doing it for months. After uploading it, the channel quickly became my job, obsession, and passion. I had many reasons for starting the channel and I was lucky to find a lot of success with it.

This isn't a resignation by the way. I know it may read like that after going through that first paragraph.

As we're approaching the six year anniversary of the channel, it's clear a lot has changed. Lili and I now have four children. We've moved across Canada. I've produced dozens of hours of video content (still not as much as I'd like but I'm proud of my catalogue), and I've also become a streamer and produced who knows how many hours of that content too.

On those streams I've often said I feel like I don't do either of these jobs very well. I cannot commit fully to either of them and, combined with also trying to manage a community and online platform, I regularly feel stuck trying to serve multiple masters. I don't stream enough to be considered a good streamer. I don't produce enough video content to be considered a good youtuber. And I definitely don't engage with my community enough to have a successful "platform" in that respect.

Why have I spread myself over all of this? Well, because of youtube. Although I do want to quickly state that I have more or less eliminated my attempts at managing the online platform. I have 99% disengaged from twitter, the discord server is mostly on auto-pilot and I may abdicate soon as another way of further simplifying things, and I don't spend much time replying to emails, DMs, or youtube comments anymore. Entirely because I just don't have the time.

So what does youtube have to do with twitch? The short of it is -- youtube support is so abysmal that I cannot in good conscience put all my eggs in that basket. If it were just Lili and me then I would risk it. But with our kids in the mix... it's just insane to throw everything onto youtube when a bad copyright bot rampage might put us under, and no one at youtube will ever respond. We've lost thousands of dollars to copyright strikes that did not function the way youtube's system states it should. I recently had a claim on a video in which the claimant didn't even have to specify what was being claimed and I was left to guess if it was fair use or not. I've sent dozens of DMs/emails to youtube support teams directly on youtube, through email, and on twitter. And they usually ignore them or send back copy and pasted responses that don't address the issues.

To be clear I do understand that copyright law is complicated. I also understand that youtube is caught in a very bad place with trying to fight legitimate copyright infringement in a world where copyright law hasn't caught up to the internet (and the world may end before that happens). It's the lack of any direct support for when rules are improperly followed that is the issue; the automated system they have would be functional and acceptable, if they would only also help creators after that who run into issues. But they don't. Not even for youtubers much much MUCH bigger than me. We're always rolling the dice.

So... twitch. I'm a video game critic. I need to play games anyway. Why not get two headshots with one bullet? I've also taken measures to focus my streaming time on experiencing the games first and foremost. I like to entertain people but the knowledge gained by the games wasn't enough of a priority for a while during some "stream seasons". And I think the balance we achieved in the most recent set is a good compromise going forward. For the sake of simplicity and being "good" at just one thing, I would love to be able to quit streaming and just focus on youtube. Or I would love to be able to quit youtube and just focus on streams. But I cannot because twitch has much of the same issues that youtube has when it comes to supporting its creators (and I just enjoy making the videos too much). I also started an exit strategy--making a video game--to be independent from both of these platforms some time ago. But that's still very much an idle, background process for now.

This is already longer than I wanted it to be. I'm sorry.

Much of this doesn't matter right now because I'm not streaming anyway. Lili and I just had our fourth (and final) child. I am focused on getting the Witcher 3 video and Cyberpunk videos done and then I will return to balancing both streaming and youtube work together. But there is a problem that is continually growing into more and more trouble, and it's now gotten so bad that it feels unethical to not inform you all about it in writing like this.

For the vast majority of this patreon's existence, I have been working as many hours every week as I possibly could. I could lie and say that this is because I felt like I OWED everyone it as a thank you for such generous support--and it actually wouldn't be 100% a lie. But *more* honestly the true reason is that I have an addictive personality and I cannot keep a healthy balance of work. I thrive on just throwing myself into projects and losing myself to them. It's how I have made every video, and I'm not always in a great state at the end of a project. I work like people binge watch tv shows. And I have to be even more uncomfortably honest and say that I don't think this is ever going to change, and that I don't think it's all that unhealthy for me. Relatively.

Regardless, the channel/platform has gotten nearly every single waking hour of my life that I could pour into it for the first... five years let's say. From the first Dark Souls video til September of 2020. Yes there were some weeks something might come up--or when we were moving, of course I couldn't work as much for those weeks. There were times I tried to give myself a healthier work balance because I felt like I should? It would never go anywhere. But those were the exceptions not the rule. Keep in mind I also have a serious sleep disorder. I don't sleep nearly as much as most people, and I would work those hours too.

This brings us to the issue--I can't do this anymore. Not because I don't want to, but because my family life has finally caught up and "working every hour I can" is vastly diminished because there are just fewer hours to do that. Our oldest child needs more time as he gets older. The second child is right behind him. Our third child just hit the "terrible twos" (some people say it's "Threenager" but this is a lie, it starts at 2), and the newborn is actually the *easiest* of them all, by far.

This has hit back-to-back fairly quickly. It crept up on me in a way. There are ways to alleviate it but they will also take time. The short of it is that I'm finding it harder and harder to get time devoted to work. It still happens. I am mostly nocturnal at the moment so I can work at maximum capacity while the kids are asleep. I don't know how that is going to align with streaming when these videos are done but that's a problem for Future Joe, I guess.

Here's the summary if you're skimming or are getting bogged down by everything:

If you pledged because you wanted to support the previous pace of video releases and anything short of that is unacceptable, then you should cancel your pledge.

If you pledged just for video content, and not streams, you should cancel your pledge. You should have cancelled it a while ago actually. I'm surprised you haven't.

If you pledged just for streaming content, you shouldn't have pledged to begin with. Unless you don't like twitch's bit system or I dunno. I doubt there are many of you that did this.

If you pledged a small amount as a way to support work on future videos at any pace, or as a way to justify an ad-blocker, or because you watch the videos very regularly and feel like chipping in some money? Then I think we're still cool. If you disagree then feel free to cancel.

This should go without saying but you should not feel any guilt or any negative emotions whatsoever about cancelling. If you want to drop it and come back when the next video is out, or use paypal, or simply feel like you've pledged enough over time that it's enough to justify how much you've watched my videos. It doesn't matter. I appreciate any amount for any time, and you should never feel bad about cancelling for any reason.

I am not quitting. I am working on the Witcher 3 and 2077 videos concurrently. The Witcher 3 video will be out first. They will be released when they are done. I would like very much to stop feeling miserable and that I am letting everyone down by not working more when I simply just... can't. I'm sorry, but outside of some massive overhaul of our life at home, which just isn't feasible at the moment, I am capped at just above normal full-time work hours. I am frustrated, not just because I think you all deserve more, but because I am wretchedly addicted to this work and I am unable to commit to it as much as I can. These two videos in particular are like a poison that I can't expel fast enough.

You should not be pledging to support the family that Lili and I have built. You should only be pledging for the work I do which results in content. If you do not feel like I am producing enough, then please cancel. From this point forward I will consider any pledge to be made and/or maintained with this understanding. It's voluntary anyway. I would guess the majority of you already think this. But as you can tell from this long post I am neurotic enough to constantly be worried about it.

I don't want to feel like a piece of shit about this anymore. Please cancel your pledge.