Post-Mortem: I'm Jealous of Warhammer

This isn't the first time a video spawned from an old Randomly Mine article. Often, my posts on Friday act as a testing ground for future content. Not always, sometimes there's subjects I very deliberately setup in the format of a mini-essay or rant, but in the case of "I'm Jealous of Warhammer" I had a feeling it'd be a video one day.

If you've watched the finished video, you already know which franchises made me think about this topic.

Writing then was both easy and difficult. It was easy, because the setup, the premise, was already done. The challenge, was building to a conclusion that was hopefully more than just "Wahhhhhhhhhhh." Lots of the video is intended to be that, but it can't only be that.

Once again, it was just a process of not so much rewriting, but restructuring. I had the paragraphs about Mass Effect 3's multiplayer, Space Marine, and the mountains of 7/10 games that people hold as 10s in their memories. I just had to rearrange them multiple times until finally finding the best order.

The final line wasn't originally there. I left the script at "And my jealousy… rages on," and left to go watch The Witcher with a friend. Perhaps it was that show's dry protagonist that gave me the idea on the spot of ending with the video jokingly insulting the audience. My friend laughed at the idea, and I wrote it after that episode finished.

Despite the confidence of that line, I was actually very insecure while making this project. Mostly, in regards to narration. I recorded the script three times on three different days, and was never completely satisfied with the result. For those that don't know, I used to use an Apex 460 microphone that I loved, but was a real bitch to work with due to its analog compressor, so I've since swapped to a Rode NT1, that's much easier to work with.

However… my voice is still a real bitch to work with.

There's certain words my mouth can't help but click on, so I'd spend hours editing down audio tracks, meticulously cutting it up. I often joke that my timelines look like the result of an axe murderer.

By the end, I was still unhappy, but figured that the audience wouldn't have nearly as much of a problem with it as I did.

Hopefully one day, I'll be fully confident in my ability as a narrator.

For now, I'll just carry on despite my objections.

Actually, in regards to both the narration and the… final line, I had the video rendered and uploaded, ready to go for its 6am launch, but thought there was a potential for viewers to take my original take of that final line, for lack of a better word, personally, due to its harsh nature.

One thing I've definitely learned on the internet, is that if you say things a certain way, people are going to take it literally, not matter how much irony and absurdity might be surrounding what you've said.

So I used a take that was less harsh, and while I didn't care for how it sounded exactly, it did seem to have the intended effect, with many commenters replying to the final line with the same degree of sarcasm.

I'm not really effected at all by some of the negative reactions, because I knew from day one this video's topic is personal, weird, and not delving deeply into a particular game.

I also knew the title is one that'd lead to many responding to that, rather than the video. It makes sense that somebody who hates Warhammer (a lot of Warhammer players) is going to think it's stupid that there's anything to be jealous of.

Before posting, I did share the video with both Bricky and MandaloreGaming, as they're much more familiar with Warhammer than I am, and figured if there were any landmines I was setting off in particular, that they'd spot them.

I'd be lying if I said I had no hesitation talking about the franchise, as I've seen how passionate people are about it. Very similar feelings I had when delving into Team Fortress 2 for the Orange Box video. So it was reliving to hear them give the green light, while still giving notes on a couple things to tweak. 

Originally, I had Underhive Wars in the list of games people slam, but it actually turns out that game has its fans, and the reception is more mixed than outright despised like Eisenhorn Xenos.

It was also Mandalore that shared with me the Mass Effect Homeworld mod that appeared at the end. I figured it'd be a much better emphasis on my desperation than just another ME3 MP clip.

During our back and forth, Mandalore made a great observation that I tried to squeeze in, but just couldn't fit.

"Warhammer gets some total conversion mods nowadays… but I see far, far more stuff for mass effect, star trek… generally franchises not getting much in the way of games."

I don't think I could squeeze this topic in, because it's juicy enough for its own video. There's no denying how many mods stem from trying to fill a void, and how many of them have to do with franchises that have very little voice in gaming these days.

Lastly, there were some things I missed.

Turns out, there is a Hotline Miami comic. Now, it's very brief, only a couple issues long, but it is something I missed while researching. There's also an aspect of Metro I forgot to delve into, though this one I care less about, and that's the Metro Universe Novels. These are books written by people other than Dmitry Glukhovsky depicting other parts of the Metro universe, it sounds awesome, but unfortunately, they're treated more like fan projects, with a lack of publishers and translations, making it basically impossible to delve into without knowing Russian.

Overall, I'm pleased with the video, and that it got attention immediately. I'm admittedly terrible at self-promotion, titles, thumbnails, etc, but I was relatively confident on this one, just purely based on how sexy Chaos Rising's box art is, how well it fit my usual format, and how much the title would make my friends, peers, and patrons go "…What?"

Your job when writing is to make the viewer ask a question, and in this case, just the title seemed to make people ask several.

Honestly, the hardest part of this video were the Meds I happened to be taking during it. Proton Pump Inhibitors apparently fuck me up after a couple days. That's one lesson I didn't plan on taking with me while making this.

Best wishes,

Raycevick