Making Fun: Years Later

Making Fun, Episode 1 - Paratext

Starting in November 2017, I decided that, with enough attempts made to explore methods of how, that I would start uploading videos to Youtube. I decided to build on my then-recently-finished Honours thesis as an experiment in seeing what I could create that could suit a rapid-fire fast-talking Youtube content form, and as a direct result, my first video series, Making Fun was made.

It’s been a bit over a full year now, and I thought I’d spend some time to look at these videos and see what I thought of them, what lessons I had learned, and what lessons I would recommend.

What’s the good:

  • I straight up laughed out loud rewatching it and seeing this bear knows nothing of my work.
  • I think that game-icons icons in a contrast field look pretty nice.
  • The aperture science joke at the start was emergent – It happened accidentally as I was making the frames and I thought this was funny as heck.
  • This whole thing took a day to make, or so, and that made me happy to hit a goal as a first timer.
  • It’s not very long but still makes interesting points. How long a video should be is a moving target and one I’m not sure about. I’ve been worried about how my Love is Strange video is too short, but also that my Deus Ex: Human Revolution video is too long. I feel like this video is just right for its content.

What’s the bad:

  • This is such a bad place to start with the idea of ‘making fun!’ I wanted to make a series about making games and I decide to kick off with a discussion of paratext. This isn’t totally off-base: I wanted to underscore that playing games is creative, and therefore give you the skills to make games!
  • there are way too many ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ jokes. It’s far too fast-paced and some of the best jokes are only there for a heartbeat. I’m clearly anxious about time here.
  • The anxiety about timing isn’t just that I want to be quick for comedy: The more time I take talking, the more work I had to do in the tool I used at the time (which was Microsoft Movie Maker). I was trying to rush to the end of my idea so I didn’t have to make ‘as much’ video to go with the audio. Whole thing feels rushed.