G'day legends, welcome to a NEW YEAR! I hope everyone's holiday season was happy, bountiful and safe. Apologies for the radio silence, it's been 2 months since I posted on Patreon, will get into why that is shortly.
Long story short, this post is gonna be a BIG update about the channel, where I'm at with things and what you can expect! So let's get started! 😁
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Where Have I Been?) Holidays of course! Following the Mario Kart ELR I was totally burnt as well as feeling a bit depressed given the video simply underperformed way below my hopes/expectations. It's a shame because I'm really proud of that one of course and I was hoping it might have some more mainstream appeal, YouTube's algorithm currently focusses on short form content and Shorts to compete with TikTok so I had a little bit of a crisis about how I was going to operate moving forward. But I've taken some time off, visited family and friends for the holidays, got out of the house. I've also treated myself to a lot of downtime just to recharge and focus on some pleasure activities that spark my interest. Mostly playing a variety of different games just for fun (while I still capture gameplay and take a couple notes here and there) it's been so nice just feeling the vibes!
I replayed Kingdom Hearts (1.5 ReMIX on PS4) and thoroughly enjoyed seeing it all again with a more experienced palette for that kind of thing.
FINALLY committed to playing through the first Max Payne with a friend of mine and we both really got sucked in and enjoyed it. Hopefully you'll see a review of that later on in the year!
Also I got sucked into an old project in The Sims 3, designing and building essentially an entire world from scratch and finally got that finished off! (World sculpting, characters, narrative, building, the works)
Current Perspective on Life) I'm feeling a lot better now and just trying to remind myself why I fell in love with making YouTube content is that it's basically just an excuse for me to be a big kid, enjoy the things I love and explore the stuff I missed growing up! While I'm still somewhat apprehensive about this never-ending battle against algorithms and trends etc. impacting my ability to be successful, I'm also looking into other avenues on the side. I've gained quite a skill set from making all this content and while I still definitely want that to be my top priority, if I can get the odd job doing voice work, camera work behind the scenes or potentially even some minor on camera roles then it might help to keep life afloat while still allowing me to make my own stuff. And who knows what avenues could open up exploring outside my usual spaces.
Alright let's talk VIDEOS!!!
WHAT IS JAK COOKIN'??) So we've got a big anniversary coming up rapidly... 10 YEARS since I uploaded the very first Crash Bandicoot review on the channel.
Of course we need to celebrate that with a big video so I'm currently working on a big compilation project. This won't be ready in time for the actual anniversary but that's fine, the video will definitely be up in a couple weeks! However while working on this project, I've accidently stumbled into something related that I'm REALLY getting excited to talk about. So you'll be getting a big video and then a follow up second part shortly after.
From there we will also be quickly approaching 200 episodes so I'm hoping to knock out a few big long awaited projects on the way to that milestone! I'd like to do some more GTA, maybe a couple long requested games. For episode 199, I'd like to do something a little more personal, like a "man behind the character" type of deal just because I feel like the channel and my presentation has evolved over the years to a point where I'm a lot more like my real self on camera (more so that my real self has grown and evolved beyond who I used to be).
I'm also really REALLY going to try hard at finding a bit more of a regular routine when it comes to streaming this year, I've got a big backlog of Game Testing and after a lot of overthinking and contemplation about how I'd like to go about presenting it, what platforms I should stream on etc. I've decided fuck it, I'm just gonna live stream onto the main YouTube channel so everything is in one place. No idea when that's going to start but hopefully 🤞 I can get my ass into gear this year.
Another Cool Thing) I get to meet Tony Hawk in 2 days so I'm pretty psyched about that! 😎
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Closing Thoughts) I do have some big things coming up the next few weeks. I'll be caring for my partner after a minor operation, not long after that he's having an art exhibition in Melbourne so I'm helping with all of that, volunteering as photographer for the event etc. so I've got other commitments. The first few months of this year have a lot of stuff already booked in so the frequency of my posting might be a little inconsistent cause I know I'll probably feel a little burnt out. But...
I am very much looking forward to getting into 2024 with a positive outlook and simply getting back to all of the things I love doing, talking about and being involved with. So thanks everyone for your continued support, stay tuned for this big Crashiversary and I hope you all have a great fucking day. Cheers! 💜