Post-Mortem: EA's Goldeneye "Successor"

Because I succumbed to doom scrolling through world events in February, pausing the Patreon and not posting content, Youtube's analytics were screaming at me everytime I dared to log into the site.

Red-arrows flooded the screen with decreasing views, subscriptions, and monetization. It always happens at some point, but when you do these gaps, that's when payments can dip to sub $400-600 a month.

And there I was steadily working on a video about Goldeneye Rogue Agent...

I was fucked.

Who would give a single damn about this game?

I figured I'd get yelled at for a twenty minute video about a game no one had ever heard of. Nobody would watch it, the algorithm wouldn't pick it up for a minute, and I'd be spending all of next month's Patreon on rent and food.

Shows what I know.

Now Youtube's going to yell at me for not making more Goldeneye Rogue Agent videos. It's truly a strange world we live in.

So firstly, thank you. Y'all were a massive help, and I think the initial test of releasing videos on Patreon early is something to stay. It gave useful feedback, and let me properly refine the video building up to its weekend release, rather than panicking and staying up until 4am making minor tweaks.

This video was the hardest to write since Control, and actually for similar reasons. I had a whole lot to talk about, but structuring those thoughts was a whole other challenge. It wasn't until I finally segmented it into what you see on the video that it finally clicked for me.

Part of that trouble was being really unsatisfied with Danny Bilson's interview on my end. It was even part of my February burnout. I hated having to listen to myself stupidly fumble my way through needlessly long winded questions that just ate up time, but when I finally got back to work, I found the interview actually gave me exactly what I wanted, and essentially had the finale write itself.

Before then, early scripts were discussing EA's struggles with the game at the beginning, which I really didn't like, as it felt disjointed, took forever to get to the gameplay section, and didn't really have any payoff by the end.

Back then, I was considering to even end the video with no "Boom" effect at the end, just depressingly fade out like the game depressed me while playing.

That's where I decided to several other ideas needed to get cut.

Many of you likely spotted the Mutiplayer clip with my friend Kacey, that came from us testing the Mutliplayer over XLink Kai, planning to host a much bigger session with a full lobby of eight people.

Thing is, I figured out pretty quickly that my usual goal of covering every aspect of a game just didn't fit the flow of this video. Covering the Multiplayer not only would have been time consuming, it would've gotten in the way of building up to the Danny Bilson Interview I already had.

I also dropped a whole tirade about it being ironic that a T-Rated bloodless shooter was being marketed on its violence. It was amusing, but I ultimately dropped it, because most games aren't E, T, M, because of their gameplay, but their context, and almost all of Rogue Agent's originally villainous context that would've fit the game's original marketing, was cut.

Making this point then would've been pretty pointless.

It'd be like telling a game developer they were stupid for not making an open-world game, when they don't have the budget, time, staff, or tech to do it.

Final note, I was told by some long time followers that this video was disappointing to them and didn't meet my usual bar of quality, at the same time, I got comments from people who said they don't normal like my videos, but appreciated this one.

Either way, something changed, and I'd be lying if I knew what it was.

I made a point to be more careful about cuts in this video, not making them quite so rapid as they have admittedly gotten over the years, maybe that gave the video a calmer pace to it that made it more approachable to some but duller to others.

Just something for me to consider about how I make these videos, I can't say I care about those people who left or came back. I'll post videos when I want to make them, and when that's no longer viable, I'll find something else.

Oh, I also typed (and therefore) said "flailing" rather than "flaying." So much for that Mass Effect 2 reference...

Hope you enjoyed this Post-Mortem, it's my first attempt, so leave any feedback or ask any questions, even unrelated ones. I'm already working on a video based on one of the Randomly Mine's I did called "I'm Jealous of Warhammer." It'll be a shorter quicker piece in the style of my DLC video for Battlefield 1.

Until then,

Best wishes,
Lucas Raycevick

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