It has been 3 years since I started blogging my gaming activity and it is now time for my year 3 review. As before in my year 1 and year 2 reviews I will be considering lessons learned and what I will aim to do for the next year of blogging and gaming.
Once again I would like to remind any regular readers of a ‘disclaimer’ in that I still do not consider myself a ‘content provider’. This blog is still a platform I use to write about and enhance my gaming experiences. It is a way to document my gaming achievements and share them with whoever is interested. I have only made a minimal effort to share my blog with others and I have no intentions of changing these objectives.
Since my year 2 review there have been 43 posts. Each month I post an update of my activities in Classic World of Warcraft and the results of Snooker Nation matches played between my friend Jason and me. It’s safe to say therefore that these monthly updates make up the bulk of the 43 posts and are the games I spend most of my time playing. Other games I have played and blogged about include Magic: The Gathering Arena, Diablo III, EVE Online and some retro games such as Crusader: No Remorse and Gran Turismo 3. There are however games that I have almost completely played through but have not quite completed and blogged about. They feel like unfinished projects which is a shame because my blog really could use more variety. I have always said that I am the kind of gamer who plays the same 2-3 games, sometimes for years, but have always wanted to play a wide variety of games, complete a game within a few weeks and then move on to the next game. When I try to be like that and play a different game for a while, it’s sad that I don’t see it to the end and write about it. I will therefore try to finish unfinished games and write about them.
In terms of using OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) to capture my gaming activities and Sony Vegas to edit, I have learned very little more this year. I did however make a number of YouTube videos public and have found that my most popular video, ‘Getting Draconic for Dummies: Chapter IV From The Undercity‘ which I did not share on my blog or my Discord community had the most success in terms of views and ‘likes’. This I assume is because it had some educational value. What’s heart-breaking however is that it is perhaps the video I put the least amount of effort. Where as another video ‘Astero Wormhole Exploration – 56.2m EST ISK in 75 minutes‘ I put in considerably more effort and planning but got considerably fewer views. I assume this was because the educational value as much less and is more or less demonstrating what can be achieved rather than how to achieve it.
One key development is I now have the ability to play PS1 (Playstation 1) and 2 games on my PS2 while capturing the game play using OBS by using an RCA to HDMI video converter and a cheap external USB video capture card. The quality is fairly poor and is especially noticeable when playing PS2 games, however, I spent very little money to achieve this and it is tolerable, especially if I am not too close to the monitor. Using this setup I really should and want to play through some of my most favourite PS games, including some of the Final Fantasy 6,7,8,9 and 10 games which are widely accepted to be the best selection of Final Fantasy games.
I have toyed with the idea of purchasing a Nintendo Switch console, but I have to admit, the device and games seems quite expensive. I believe the switch would offer a different kind of gaming experience, partially with it’s portable unique selling point but also because of the Nintendo brand of games, including Zelda, Mario and Pokémon. But because of the expense I will have to give it some more thought. What I will not be doing however is buying the current generation of Playstation or Xbox consoles. I currently own a Playstation 4 pro which suits my needs perfectly as an entertainment system and still offers a huge amount of games I have yet to play.
Experimenting with having some YouTube videos ‘public’ for anyone to find rather than ‘unlisted’ to compliment my blog was an interesting experience. To further the experiment, I would like to try and put together at least 1 quality video and try to inject some of my personality into it. Doing this should teach me new skills and possibly give me something to be proud of.
Last year I had some excellent and positive feedback from some of my work colleagues and friend Jason, all of which was appreciated. If anyone would like to provide some feedback, be it about the website, the brand, my year 3 review or my gaming, please feel free to do so. You could leave a comment or contact me by any means.
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