Many questions
If you have come across my channel you may see community polls for things like Season Selection and wonder "What is this", "Is it part of something bigger", "How do the games get picked" or "Why is this a thing". This article will explain my reasoning behind making the system but first, we should cover why I even play games when most of my viewers are interested in MCreator tutorials.
What came first?
What came first, the chicken or the egg? Many still don't know but in the case of what content NorthWestTrees Gaming started to make I started gaming before I offered help to Pylo (MCreator founders) to do tutorials. So, if anything, the tutorials are second-tired content, not gameplay. Now that this is covered I can explain the rest.
What is Season Selection?
We need to look at how the year is divided into the years to understand this question, but before we do that I want to talk about "burn" something that can happen to many creates from doing similar things all the time. And this brings me to the 100-episode Ark series I did a long time ago.
So when the channel was starting I did this one series that had 100 episodes of the same game, it lasted a few months but I quickly found that I burned out from the game over halfway through getting there. I observed that when I started a new game to play I got a boot of motivation again so I knew I needed a system to divide the year into quarters and seasons where born.
Seasons are based on the schedule for recording and publishing, I could go into detail about how I do it but all you need to know is I record the day before I publish the video normally.
So how did I get the numbers for episodes, it's simple, we need to look at a chart of the general months first.
Month | Days | Videos | Season |
January | 31 | 17 | Winter |
February | 28 ~ 29 | 16 | Winter |
March | 31 | 17 | Spring |
April | 30 | 17 | Spring |
May | 31 | 17 | Spring |
June | 30 | 17 | Summer |
July | 31 | 17 | Summer |
August | 31 | 17 | Summer |
September | 30 | 17 | Fall |
October | 31 | 17 | Fall |
November | 30 | 17 | Fall |
December | 31 | 17 | Winter |
So now we can see the raw data from each season and how many videos they add up to so what does this exactly roll out to be for episodes for the current schedule? if you guessed 52 episodes then you are correct, with the exception of winter being 51 episodes.
So this actually helps explain a lot of the questions at the start of the post but one of the questions still remains.
Is it part of something bigger?
The simple reply is... Yes.
But the longer reply comes down to the main factor, not burning out, so I have some ground rules for picking the games.
The last game of the year will never be in the next year's selection.
Games that I am not motivated to play at the end of the year will not be an option.
Games I have been playing often in my free time are not viable options for the selection.
So each one of these things can explain a lot of how games get chosen. So let's go over number 1 first.
The first main issue with the current poll-based system is the last game could also be picked for the first game of the next year, for obvious reasons this would turn out to be over 100 episodes and rarely do I even have the motivation to continue past the desired 52 episode mark.
Number 2 is pretty simple, this is a variable-based option that changes with my taste for what I crave to play at the start of the new year. I go through my Steam games and pick up to 4 games I want to play in the season and take into account which ones I have not played for a very long time. Simple as that really.
Lastly, Number 3 is straightforward, if I play the game before the season then I might get tired from the game, I normally lay off from the game before the season selection poll is active so I can have a boost of motivation just before the series is due to start. But normally I try not to play the games close to the spring season selection so I don't burn out and actually look forward to recording the game.
The last question might be a paradox really.
Why not just record MCreator?
I can see why many people over the years have suggested doing this. I mean after all two tutorials a week can't be that bad to record right?
In a simple way, this makes sense but oddly it's a bit of a paradox because I am used to my schedule and I often get restless during the weekend, so not having the structure I have would actually make my motivation less than it already would be.
"But does it have any effect on motivation?" This is the paradox I was talking about, even though it's more content, MCreator is more logical to record, and then Let's plays is actually more relaxing to record. So hopefully this explains a bit about how the season selection works. And how I am able to push out 6 videos a week times more with bonus content on other channels I have.
So now you know my trade secrets to not burning out and how to optimize the performance of my motivation.
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