Hello and welcome back to the Retro Break podcast. In this episode I’m going to be talking about my experiences as a content creator and how that’s actually affected me playing games over the years.
So before I get into the history of this, I kind of want to explain what my actual situation is at the minute and why it’s been such a struggle for me to actually enjoy games outside of ones that I’m recording for YouTube.
It’s kind of a difficult topic to get into but I really want to share my thoughts on this and to find out if any other content creators feel the same way too. I’m sure a lot of other creators as well have also felt very similar about this topic and that is the fact that whenever you’re playing anything you’ve always got in the back of your mind the fact that you might want to turn it into a video at some point.
And that’s been a real struggle for me because the way my setup is at the minute in the flat, every time I actually wanted to record gameplay I would have to unplug the console from the living room, take it into this room into the computer room, plug it into the capture card in here and get all the HDMI cables set up and stuff and then get all the the screen set up properly, make sure the the recording program is all set up for the right format, get the right controllers plugged in in here and take it everything take everything out of the living room.
It’s been such a faff and because of that, and because of the fact that I really want to make videos about a lot of these games that I’ve been playing, I always kind of put off playing games just for the fun of it because I always was either worried that I wouldn’t have any footage to show in videos or I knew that I wanted to make a video on it so I always kept putting it off until I actually had the time to sit down and play it properly in this room and actually record the footage for the video as well.
And it’s been even more of a problem with Game Boy games as well because as you know I’m a huge fan of the original Game Boy but it’s also one of the main content topics on my channel so every time I actually want to play a Game Boy now I can’t just sit on the sofa and play a Game Boy game, I always have to come in here, plug the SNES into the CRT here and plug it all into the computer and capture the game through there through HDMI and always have to sit at this desk and play it.
With things like all of the Game Boy homebrew games that I’ve been reviewing as well it’s kind of been difficult to properly review them for what they were meant to be which is to be played in handheld mode because I’ve always been using the SNES or the GameCube to play them.
And at the minute it’s actually stopped me playing games completely so I’ve got loads of new homebrew releases that are just sat in the drawer here because as you know the house is completely empty, I haven’t got any recording equipment left and I just can’t enjoy or play the games at the minute because I’ve promised to make videos on them and if I play them before I make the video and before I’m able to record it, it won’t be my true first impressions on the games when I get around to actually filming it.
So I’m sure you can understand my struggle and my situation at the minutes and I’m really curious to see whether anyone else who always puts stuff out online like I do has the same sort of problems that I’m experiencing at the minute.
And I’m really trying to get away from that as well, I’m trying to just play a lot of games without talking about them online at all and I’ve been doing that with a few things recently. I’ve been playing Pokemon Minecraft, which is like a mod with a few friends online and that’s not for any sort of content. I’ve been quite enjoying that and I’ve also been playing Gran Turismo 6 on the PlayStation 3 recently as well which is something that I just want to play for myself before the new one comes out on the PS5 and that is another game that I haven’t mentioned at all online.
So I’m getting a little bit better at it but over the past few years I’ve never really been able to properly sit down and just enjoy games for their own merit.
That becomes especially difficult with something like playing RPGs or attempting to play them at least because I am so busy throughout the week with work and then making videos after pretty much every single day. The only day that I actually get free to sit down for more than maybe an hour at a time to enjoy a game is Friday night and Saturday if I’m not already started working on the next video.
So playing RPGs has just been a complete no-go for the past like five years or so, I’ve been really struggling with it, I really really have. And it has been kind of a struggle and because of reasons like that I’ve kind of not been enjoying just playing games for the sake of enjoying them as much.
But that is kind of a recent example. But if I go back a little bit this isn’t a recent problem, this is something I’ve been struggling with for a long time, ever since I first set my channel up in 2007.
So in 2007 I was a huge fan of let’s plays on YouTube, they were a brand new thing at the time and I was completely obsessed with watching other people playing some of my favorite games from back in the day. And then of course I decided to also start doing my own let’s plays and that led me down the slippery slope of what I was trying to talk about earlier where I just couldn’t play a game just for the fun of it.
Every time I played a game I had to also capture footage for YouTube and also try and present it in a way as well where I’m always talking over the game as well, which is kind of the point of let’s plays but I wanted to do that with every single game that I was playing at the time.
And it was a real bad situation for me to be in because I could never really sit down on the sofa downstairs and just play a game in front of the TV. I would always take it upstairs to my bedroom and try and at that time I didn’t even have a capture card or anything so I would angle my webcam on my laptop up with the TV that was on the wall and it looked absolutely awful but I was so obsessed with making videos even back then that every time I wanted to play something I had to turn it into a video.
It’s not all bad though, sometimes having the urge to record everything that I play has its upsides as well. And thanks to that whenever I’ve done a pickups video I always made sure to get footage for the game as well. And probably a vast majority of the games that I picked up over the years I probably wouldn’t have played otherwise if it wasn’t for making a video about them.
They probably would have just sat on the shelf until I was ready to get around to playing them which may have ended up being never. So at least thanks to me always wanting to get at least a little bit of footage from each game that I’ve got, I have actually experienced a lot more games than I would have otherwise.
It just makes it a bit more difficult to sit down and properly enjoy a game on its own terms. I’m always thinking about other things like should I be making notes while I’m playing this, should I be recording the entire thing and taking time stamps in the notes for bits that I want to talk about in videos, do I need to worry about how much space I’ve got left on my hard drive, can I even play this game in the place that I want to.
And with handheld games this was especially difficult because up until recently I never really had that many ways of actually capturing footage from handheld games and it’s still a problem today actually. I just did my video on the Analogue Pocket Game Gear adapter and even doing this video in 2022 it was kind of like going back to 2007 where I was hunched over the desk with the preview on my camera being the only way that I could actually see the screen I was playing on.
So it’s really not the ideal way to play or enjoy these games and I’m really trying to get away from the thought that I constantly need to record everything that I’m doing. And I even mean record things in the sense of taking pictures to put on Twitter and that sort of thing. I really need to just get away from the fact that I want people to know about what I’m playing constantly and to just enjoy games for what they are.
It really has affected my ability to just sit down relax and play games so I’ve really been trying hard recently to just sit down relax play some games. And I can’t wait to do these podcasts in a proper setup rather than just sitting in front of this green screen.
Fingers crossed I’m actually moving house next month, I know I’ve been saying that for ages now but next month it should actually come true and I really can’t wait to get my proper setup. I’m gonna do a full video for everything that I’m planning in the room in the house and I’ve got some fantastic ideas.
And I really think it’s going to improve my content a lot and it’s also thankfully going to make it a lot easier for me to play and record games at the same time. I’m going to look into getting a proper cloud storage solution so I can just literally record everything that I’m playing and just store it away just
in case I want to use it for a video. And that is one of the ways in the future that I’m hoping to get around this problem I’ve not been able to play games in certain locations because I need to do YouTube videos.
I’m going to really try and wire up the house properly so it doesn’t matter what sort of screen that I’m going to play the games on or anything, I’m always going to be able to just hit a button and record all of the gameplay in really high quality onto a really big external hard drive which I will have attached to the network.
And that will be really easy to play games from anywhere I want and to also sit down and play longer games as well without worrying about running out of space. So I am super excited for moving house and getting all of this set up. I really think it’s going to be fantastic from what I’ve got in my head.
I’ve got three different positions that I’ll be able to sit at throughout the house to be able to play games and record from any of those spots. And I’m also really excited that I’ll also be able to record VR gameplay as well and hopefully I’ll have just enough room in the new game room studio to actually be able to play and record VR games as well which I’ll probably just upload onto my gameplay channel but I’m still really excited for the possibility of being able to do that properly.
So thankfully it seems like the problems that I’ve been having with sitting down and playing games is actually going to be solved soon whenever I move house. And fingers crossed that is next month now it’s been going on for so so long and I’m getting so fed up and frustrated with the entire thing.
I’m sure you’re getting fed up with hearing me talking about it as well so fingers crossed next week all the paperwork gets finished and then we can finally think about moving out. It’s been way too long it really has and I’ll probably do a podcast or maybe actually an episode on my normal just regular channel as well not the Retro Break channel to actually talk about the crazy length of time that it’s taken to move house and all the many many problems that have come up along the way.
It has really been insane and way way more effort and way longer than I ever imagined. I’m so sick and tired of the whole thing now and I’m definitely going to share it all at least just for me to look back on in the future and just to see the crazy time that I’m in at the minute with this. It really is insane.
So this week’s podcast was just a short kind of episode to tell you some of my struggles I’m experiencing at the minute and it was a little bit rushed if I’m completely honest because I’m going away for work for the entire of next week. And I’ve also got to try and do as much recording as I possibly can for my main video which is going up next Friday and I’m hoping to get all that recorded today as well and then I’ll be able to edit it while I’m away from work in the week.
So I’ve got a load more really interesting topics coming soon as well including one that I want to talk about which is my journey through game development and kind of why I’ve stopped doing game development more recently. So I hope that’ll be a really interesting topic for some of you to listen to very soon.
That’s all for now. I’m gonna go back and record some more gameplay for next week’s video. Really hope you enjoyed this episode of the podcast. If you did enjoy it, please leave a rating on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, that would really help out. I’ve got loads more exciting episodes planned for the future and hopefully soon as well, I’ll have more time to make some bigger episodes too.
So I really hope you’re looking forward to that. That’s it for now though. Thank you so much for listening as always and of course don’t forget to follow and subscribe wherever you’re listening to this to get new episodes every single Monday. Thank you so much for listening. Goodbye!