Welcoem to posts!!
in the future - u will be able to do some more stuff here,,,!! like pat catgirl- i mean um yeah... for now u can only see others's posts :c
Hey everyone!
Just a reminder that I uploaded a feature length piece on the bosses of the Metal Gear Solid series—my longest video yet! YouTube doesn't seem to be doing a great job pushing it out to people but hey, a) I really liked making it so that's all that matters and b) that's what you get when you don't upload in three months (plus a bunch of my most popular videos started off ranked 10 of 10 in YouTube Studio, with YouTube explicitly telling me to make less of those kinds of videos if I wanted anyone to care lol)
Either way, if you watched it and liked it, sharing it or telling a friend would be truly appreciated! Thank you to those that have already checked it out, and cheers everyone for your continued support. You rule!
Thanks again,
Writing on Games
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Hey everyone!
It's been a while (about three months to be exact) but I'm back with a new video! Thanks for all your patience and support while I worked on what has managed to eclipse the Armored Core video as my longest project yet—a feature length examination (in the style of my Hitman videos) of how Metal Gear Solid's bosses evolved, how the series managed to spawn so many iconic characters, and why certain rosters were more successful than others.
I really hope you like it—tell a friend if you do! I have a bunch more stuff in the pipeline (including some more longform pieces) that I've been working on alongside this, so more videos are coming very soon!
Incredibly appreciative to get to do this after almost a decade. Thank you all so much.
Writing on Games
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Once again coming at you with a music post—I'm in a noise rock band called CIVIL ELEGIES and we just released our first new collection of songs in eight years. It's an EP called NO LIFE, and if you're into bands like Melvins, Godflesh, Full of Hell, KEN Mode and the like, you may get a kick out of this.
I realise this won't be to everyone's taste here, but a lot of you have shown interest in my musical endeavours outside of the channel, and so I present this to you!
Available on our Bandcamp (civilelegies.bandcamp.com/) and streaming services!
Now, back to work on the videos! Trying to finish this Mad Max vid I've been producing on and off for a couple of years, I'll keep you posted
Cheers!
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Hey everyone! So whenever I've posted about my music before I've expected people to be way more hostile than actually ends up being the case—very cool of you, so here we go again. I've released some more music, only this time I made it all myself!
For a while now I've been working on an album in the background, that I'll be releasing at some point soon under the moniker POINT CRUX. Here's the first single, entitled TOUCH GLASS.
The stuff I've previously posted about has been super heavy and noisy, where this is far more melodic and groove-oriented by comparison. I guess my reference points were bands like Talking Heads and LCD Soundsystem. Is that reflected in the final product? Who knows.
Either way, it's been super fun and satisfying to have written, recorded, mixed and mastered (and now releasing I guess) this whole thing by myself. Pretty proud of it if I do say so myself, and hopefully you might be able to get a kick out of it.
The track is available wherever you stream music, as well as Bandcamp (where, for a few hours more, it's Bandcamp Friday, meaning I get 100% of purchases made on the platform—not that I'm expecting anyone to buy the track, just something to consider)!
Thanks so much for your support everyone. Means the world. Details on the album soon, as well as more videos!
pointcrux.bandcamp.com/
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Did you know I have an almost half-hour video on my experience completing Tears of the Kingdom, Final Fantasy XVI, Street Fighter 6 AND We Love Katamari, that also happened to turn into an examination of how the need to finish games can also ruin them?
Did you know I also have videos on what kind of "game" Edge of Tomorrow/Live Die Repeat is? How people misunderstanding music production affects my perception of Game Design YouTube?
You might not, because these videos aren't on the main channel. I'll be making a video to update people on this soon, but these vids and more are all available on my Patreon, to patrons of all pledge levels.
patreon.com/writingongames
For the last wee while I've been trying to build a library of Patreon exclusive content - both to give more value to those who allow me to keep doing the work I'm doing sustainably, but also to allow me to explore weirder topics in a way where I'm not worrying about how these might affect overall channel performance/algorithmic placement.
It's honestly been a really rejuvenating thing, making videos on whatever the hell I want, with that notion of "if only 100 people watch this that's fine, as long as the patrons are happy with it" in my mind. I feel, and those patrons have sent me many messages to this effect, that these videos represent some of my best work yet.
Don't worry, if you're not able to pledge, you'll still be getting access to tons of videos, with many coming very soon—a big review, a massive retrospective on the entire Ace Combat series, a vid on Baldur's Gate 3, Sleeping Dogs, Mad Max... the list goes on. I've just needed some time to explore these topics that, like the cheese drum kit video I made a while back, take a lot of work but don't necessarily find the viewership. On Patreon, that worry vanishes.
So yeah, if you're into my work, for less than the price of buying me a Pepsi Max you can not only directly support the show's continued production, but you now get access to a whole bunch of exclusive stuff. I think it's about an hour and a half worth of video right now, and this will continue to grow.
If you can't, I'm just glad you're watching.
Thank you so much for the continued support. It really does mean the world.
See you very soon with more videos!
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HOLY MOLY THIS NEW FIRES OF RUBICON TRAILER LOOKS SO GOOD
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Coming very soon. Longest video yet.
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Hey everyone! Just a reminder that I put out another video in my Analysing Hitman series a couple of days ago—this time on the game's completely broken, yet still completely Hitman virtual reality mode. Check it out in the Videos tab of my channel!
Have you put any time into Hitman VR since its release on PC? What's the wackiest thing you've seen happen in your playtime? Let me know in the comments and thanks for watching!
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Hey! So first off, here's your reminder that I uploaded a video recently revisiting Red Dead Redemption 2, and how its smaller, more emergent moments ended up making the open world feel far bigger and more intimidating than any amount of grand, cinematic missions. You can find it in the Videos tab!
Second of all, it's belated for sure but I feel the need to thank you all. I put out that update video a week or two ago not knowing if the channel had much of a future, and now I am feeling more energised to create than ever thanks to your incredible support. I honestly can't thank each and every one of you enough for watching, sending messages of encouragement or pledging directly to the Patreon (which if you want to, you can do at patreon.com/writingongames).
I made a much larger post over there outlining not only my ideas for bigger, weirder video projects going forward in the coming months (a deep dive into yakuza cinema, what a Kurosawa-style video game would actually look like, circuit bending and the idea of "distorting play," and game design in literature to name but a few), but the ways in which this increased support is directly helping my life and approach to work—even just things like being able to breathe a bit more/take a bit more time for myself and sort out my sleep schedule without so much stress not only makes things healthier, but will see the work improve in quality as well.
Those larger video ideas are going to take a lot of time to research and produce so I greatly appreciate your patience with that. As I said in the video I do have a few sponsor obligations in the pipeline and I do still very much enjoy making shorter, more traditional game-centric stuff (and there are a few big name releases I am interested in covering coming very soon...) so those kinds of videos will continue to release (I've got one on Hitman VR coming in a few days!) but I'll definitely be focusing on making those bigger projects as good as they can be, so it definitely won't be as much of a Content Treadmill going forward. Like I say, your patience could not be more appreciated.
So yeah, hope that gives you a little update on things. On the Patreon, I'll have a lengthy Q&A vid going up very soon as well as revisiting one of my older videos and giving commentary on how my views might have changed over the years (I've done the Blighttown, Zelda and E3 vids so far), and it's been a lot of fun! If you feel like supporting even just a dollar a month, you'll be helping more than you know. Anyway, I'm away to work on the Hitman VR vid and I'll be back soon! Thank you so much!
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Hey! Just the usual bump for this in case you missed it! Finally got around to making a video on MGS2—possibly my favourite game of all time—and I'm very happy I got to talk about why that is. What's your favourite MGS game? Let me know in the comments and I hope you enjoy the video!
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In-depth analysis and opinion pieces on games, their designs and their narratives.
Business enquiries: hamish@writingongames.co.uk