Flashcasts Return!

Everything old is new again. It's true for movies, it's true for podcasts.

Flashcasts are back. These are approximately ten minute podcasts I do with friends. The time constraint is supposed to incentivize getting to the heart of the topic and avoiding the fluff that usually happens in a conversation.

I haven't done a Flashcast in a long while, mostly out of apathy. It's difficult to say what has changed. Work is still going on. Life keeps on keeping on. And for some reason I've been bitten by the bug to start up projects again.

Starting today Flashcasts return. Right now they will be going up first on YouTube, and as I get my things together, later as audio on iTunes. One step at a time.

Expect Flashcasts once a month. I'd like to get more done, but a recording session a month is all I can commit to, along with videos, and articles, and other writing. The new format of editing Flashcasts on YouTube is also more work. Before they were a still image over the audio, but for new Flashcasts I'd like to have more video and edits that happen as we discuss a topic. This should make it more visually interesting for YouTube.

That's the update for now. More content will be coming in January. See you all then! 

Breath of Fire 3 LP Returns?

Back in 2013 I had my first Let's Play experience on YouTube. As someone who wanted to always do a Let's Play, but was too nervous to ever commit, I finally made the leap by playing Breath of Fire 3.

I didn't want to do just any Let's Play that continues on forever. I wanted a clear focus with a definite end. Breath of Fire 3 was the perfect specimen to start with, because I remembered how easy it was to turn the game into a cakewalk by leveling up Peco with the masters system.

It was my first Let's Play and it shows in the first episode just by how nervous and shaky my voice was. As I kept doing it, the more comfortable I became with talking out loud to an empty room, and within a few minutes recording became natural, and by the end it was no big deal.

That trip down memory lane was squashed by Capcom when they flagged parts of my series through YouTube's ContentID system.

Why does ContentID hurt me if it just places ads on the video? Because I never put ads on it to begin with. I was and am a small YouTuber and ads directly impact channel growth. People are taking a risk to watch my video over anyone else's, so the last thing I want is to subject them to an unskippable just to watch some BOF3.

By putting ads on against my will Capcom is directly hurting my chances of growing my channel. So I pulled down those videos that were flagged. Now if the video was just footage of me playing the game without commentary, I can understand the flag. I'm just showing parts of the game off with nothing substantial of my own to contribute. Instead I showed players how to optimize their game playing experience by crushing any and all opposition that stands in their way.

I have found a workaround and that is Facebook video. The Game 'N Pals Facebook page has the entire 19 part series of Breaking the Game for Breath of Fire 3. Anyone can even play along if they like, since Peco can become a party member rather early on into the game.

Thankfully there is becoming an alternative to certain kinds of video on YouTube. I'm actually not much of a hater when it comes to YouTube protecting content creators, but when gaming is their largest demographic on their service they shouldn't punish the little guys. All I want is to share my experience. That shouldn't be difficult.

Enjoy the journey!

YouTube Gaming Mobile App is a Glorified Re-Skin

I am not pleased with YouTube Gaming so far. The desktop version still does not work yet, which is a major detriment. 

YouTube Gaming is nothing more than a tab. The YouTube Gaming infrastructure is so tightly bound to existing YouTube, that it's hardly more than a portal tab. I can watch vlogs and animation by typing it into the search engine, which is great because I enjoy the color palette more, but it doesn't offer video game streams anything that didn't exist on YouTube previously.

One thing I can commend YouTube Gaming in is that my subscriptions are placed in alphabetical order. I absolutely hate going to YouTube and seeing my subscriptions in an ever morphing mess. Certain times searching through my list is actually more work than typing the channel name into the search bar. It borders on being useless.

Subscriptions can be imported into YouTube Gaming, which means any channels labeled under Gaming will be the only thing in the new subscription bar. And that's where the benefits begin and end.

Outside of the new colors, the regular YouTube app offers so much more functionality than YouTube Gaming. For example, there was an older video on a channel I watch that I wanted to rewatch. It's less than a year old, and the YouTuber doesn't update too often, so I decided to scroll through their upload list. What I found out was YouTube Gaming wouldn't let me search farther than three months, and the video I wanted to see and couldn't remember the name to was about seven months old. I had to switch back to the regular YouTube app and find the video, which scrolled faster and had more videos on the screen at once.

White light on a computer screen is harsher on the eyes than dark colors. It's the reason why Theater Mode was added around the edges of YouTube videos. Bright lights hurts and drain the eyes, which is not conducive for having viewers watch a stream for hours on end. I enjoy the color change, but don't see why YouTube Gaming should be the only one sporting it.

If possible, I would remove this exclusive functionality from YouTube Gaming and give it as an option to YouTube as a whole. It would make YouTube Gaming less exclusive power, but it would exponentially benefit casual YouTube videos.

YouTube Gaming is not much more than a re-skin. In many ways it's worse than regular YouTube apps. The YouTube team will need many months to address and fix this issues, because nothing listed is an easy job. 

Dedicated Handhelds On Their Way Out

An article on Tech Crunch really got me thinking, the rise of mobile as the new handheld, and the possibility of merging the media stick with the handheld. 

I mentioned previously about the idea of the war for the living room. Consoles will be in a safe place for the time being. They are the hardcore gaming media outlet. A PS4 and Xbox One offer all the functionality of a Roku or Apple TV, but their draw is primarily playing video games. If a consumer picks up a console, they don't need to purchase anything else; it would be redundant spending.

Handhelds can't offer the same excuse. In today's app market, mobile has them pinned for 90% functionality, and most consumers have some type of smart phone. It really comes down to how does that 10% differentiate itself. Is there a strong enough case to stop the consumer from redundant spending?

There's an app for that, I get it. Consumers can write, check emails, call, text, GPS, and everything else, and games are no slouch in that regard. Sega is constantly putting its backlog for purchase. Square-Enix has GO versions of some of their biggest franchises, while having nearly all the Final Fantasies remastered and for sale, plus other rhythm games and mobile exclusives. Capcom is putting more money into mobile, even going so far as to bastardize one of their revered franchises to Trojan horse their way in with Breath of Fire 6.

And hey, even Nintendo isn't going to let that mobile money run away from them.

That 10% has to be a strong enough to get people to want to carry another device. My pockets are full as it is, with my wallet, car keys, and ever growing cell phones. In fact, I can purchase Metal Slug on the Google Play Store right now for good emulation at an affordable price.

And while buying 3DS and PS Vita games is incredibly affordable right now, with very few games costing over $20, the initial price shock is still too high. A PS Vita is $200, and depending on the 3DS or 2DS model, it's $100 or more. I know there are certain stores that sell a little lower, but it can't beat the price of a sunk investment, the smartphone, with games being much cheaper.

When we look at the previous generation of dedicated handhelds, we saw a healthy competitive ecosystem for the first time with the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS. The PSP sold about 82 million units worldwide, and the DS sold 154 million worldwide. Now they're selling a third of those total sales or worse.

It just goes to show what a force mobile was in a single generation. The Wii U and 3DS are Nintendo's worst outings, and there is no reason to believe anything will change in the immediate future.

This is why the rumors about the NX using Android technology are flying around, because for once it sounds like a good idea. The NX can be what all these media hubs want to be, but at a more competitive level for the consumer based on price and functionality.

Nintendo is working on this unified NX, so a dedicated handheld may be gone. Sony can try again with their PS TV line, however much of a long shot that is. These big companies are getting creative with how to take some of these big markets.

Amazon's new Fire TV includes two games a controller, and a memory card. Where the Apple TV falters in terms of drawing games as a competitive angle, the Fire TV knows what a selling point it can be to consumers.

The idea of a device that can always be upgraded, yet always backwards compatible to all it's software is enticing, and something I think we'll see more of in the future. Until then, I'm going to keep buying the ever dwindling selection of PS Vita games at my local stores. 

YouTube Gaming's Impact on Streaming

YouTube Gaming has been out long enough to get a true impression, rather than opening day hype. And my thoughts are this service needs a hell of a lot more work.

It would be accurate to call YouTube Gaming anemic. I have a difficult time is assessing numbers, because the desktop portal still doesn't work for me. The service gave me a "funny" meme telling me it was down and to try later, and I do use those quotes with full satirical effect. As of the day this article is posted, it still doesn't work.

The Android app works, and although the phone apps are a topic for another day, I can tell the biggest streamers only pull in a few thousand views during a livestream. Now these numbers entirely depend on snapshots in time. The biggest streamers come on only during certain hours of the day, whenever they schedule their streams, but the service has been out long enough for us to see the migration effect taking place.

The effect is small. That goes to show Google shouldn't have let Twitch slip through their fingers.

Google hurts itself with ContentID. When Twitch was getting serious about being purchased, they had to deal with their copyright problem. Gaming is a strange grey area where the vast majority of games being recorded and stream are done so illegally, if the word illegal carries any weight at all. Some developers and publishers give explicit right to free use, while the vast majority of publishers keep their mouth shut and enjoy the free publicity.

Still, games are a collection of more than just programming, and the biggest proponent to ContentID are music companies. More often

This created a market for a streaming services like old Twitch, and Hitbox.tv stepped up to the challenge. And Hitbox is nice, but it's not a serious competitor.  Here is where a company with an inferior service can afford the superior marketing plan, but I digress, I don't think Twitch is all that bad. 

There are no specifics about why the deal with Google fell through, but Amazon ended up purchasing Twitch instead. Now a tech giant owns the standard streaming service, and Google would much rather that tech giant be them.

Cue YouTube Gaming.

While I haven't been able to use the YouTube Gaming desktop mode since launch, I have watched several streams through my phone. It's about the same as one would expect streaming to look like.

An issue I saw, and it relates to the unaware YouTuber as much as YouTube themselves, is multiple linked channels play the same livestream. The app gives me little information about the details of a channel, and the lack of tabs means I'm unable to browse around to see who else is streaming. I watched a YouTuber play The Witcher 3, because I recently purchased the game and wanted to see how it played in action before opening up the packaging. While I was watching, I thought it would be fun to be in chat. So I posted, and noticed the YouTuber was responding to another chat. It turns out the real stream was on the stream above mine, and I wasted my time even rubbing the brain cells together to type messages.

It was a real turn off, but just as much my fault as the streamer themselves.

I do admit to seeing many of the benefits of streaming on YouTube Gaming. On an abstract level, the more giant companies entering a marketplace, the more competitive it becomes, which is a net benefit to streamers and viewers.

The first convenience is everything stays in the Google ecosystem. There is no two week VoD on Twitch that must be transferred to YouTube. Once the YouTube livestream ends, it immediately begins processing into a regular video.

Adsense revenue is easy to establish on YouTube, so no doubt channels will experience an uptick in revenue if they also stream.

The issue is that ad money just doesn't pay the bills. It's no longer the early days of YouTube where Google invested $100 million into YouTubers. Yes, people still make a living with ad money, but it is no longer the golden goose it once was; those days are long past.

Working YouTubers can earn more money by finding a regular job. Donations and paid subscriptions are the lifeblood of streamers, and in this area Twitch is king.

The more steps something takes, the less people follow to completion. I understand writing this article follows the same rule. The longer the article, the more paragraphs a person has to read, the less people will reach the end or read to completion. No sane person will place all their eggs into the unproven YouTube Gaming basket, because that involves a donator to not only follow them, but start an account, then find where to put their credit card information, then subscribe to the new account, and then donate; and all for just one person. It's not feasible, and it's the reason no major streamer is jumping ship.

Likewise, ContentID rules the YouTube roost. Yes, a streamer may potentially earn more revenue, but if that video gets flagged, they will see none of the money and ads will be placed on it regardless if the YouTuber wants it or not. I for one don't agree with it, and think YouTubers deserve their self-employment autonomy. And that's really what it is, stripping the individual of power.

YouTube will remove 80% of the content of a channel because of ContentID, and this individual was lucky he wasn't rammed with an immediate three copyright strikes that deletes a channel.

On Twitch, watching VoD's is the minority. It's all about the now. Streamers have schedules and viewers come for the chance to interact with the streamer and with the chat. The system isn't perfect, but it does function.

Overall I'm excited about what YouTube Gaming will mean for streaming services. As I mentioned before, Hitbox is a viable alternative, but Twitch isn't going to change their rules or add additional features in response to Hitbox, but they will for YouTube Gaming. If YouTube Gaming is big enough that if they figure out how to pay streamers better, if they find out how to improve their service in such a way that viewers flock to them, then Twitch will respond in kind, and then all streamers and viewers will benefit as a result.

Both YouTube and Twitch have integrated streaming on major consoles, and the streaming market is heating up, so I can't wait to see what happens in this wild and crazy future of ours.

Apple TV and The Gaming Future

We are entering an era where two forces battle for the household, the media hub and the console.

Media hubs will have Apple, Amazon, and (if rumors are true) Nintendo fighting for attention. Apple will be using their iOS, Amazon will either stick with Fire or Android, and rumor has it the next Nintendo console will be android based, and my assumption is the NX will be a media hub/console mix.

The console space is more competitive, but that's because it's been longer established. Nintendo will still have a presence due to their first party legacy, but Sony and Microsoft will be the two goliaths in this arena. The Steam Machine has massive potential to shake things up, although that impact has yet to strike.

Media hubs and consoles want the same thing, and in fact, consoles have wanted the living room for a long time, dating back to Sony's PlayStation 3 reveal. Back when Sony was prepping the PlayStation 3, they wanted it to be an all-in-one media machine. It would be a Blu-Ray player, and a gaming console, and stream machine, where consumers can buy movies, and television, and music, and so on and so forth. Sony fumbled hard, and because of that fumble we had the return to form that is the PlayStation 4, a game console first, a media machine second.

That's what made the Xbox 360 so successful. It brought consumers in with games, and then they can play with the added functionality. Somewhere along the way, Microsoft switched places with Sony a generation before, and they tried their own media machine first, video game console second approach with the Xbox One. It's in the name; the one stands for all-in-one, and consumers have rejected it.

What media hubs are doing differently is giving consumers functionality first at an affordable price, unlike the PlayStation 3 at $600 United States dollars, or a PS4 or X1 at $400 right now.

The world is cord cutting. The age of Netflix and the cloud is upon us. With this new demand, a new market has opened up in a big way, media hubs and sticks. Consumers cut costs on services they hardly use or need anymore. What was just a humble market to get Netflix and Hulu to a television without cable, is transforming to integration with all media, and the Apple TV wants to be the biggest company to do so.

The idea is simple enough, and hopefully is what's powering the thinking behind the Nintendo NX. A machine that can be upgraded regularly, while keeping full backwards compatibility with apps.

Consoles will be between a rock and a hard place. If they try to go after the all-in-one box again, they're price, specs and control scheme will turn off casual users. Once that happens, the Steam Machine will gain console market share. If consoles choose to ignore media hubs, then they'll always play second fiddle in the living room.

Apple, Amazon, and Google want to win the household, and truth be told, they have the architecture to make it happen. Apple is going into the game market and soon the original programming market for videos. Amazon bought Twitch and is creating it's own stable of games in complete secrecy. Google recently launched YouTube Gaming, showing they have a clear interest in entering the market.

It'll be interesting to see what a combination of the PS3 media goals and Wii casual audience attraction will bring.