I watched a bit of the dragons lair video and its not just the constant danger, it's also a constant change of environment, he is going into a different room every couple of seconds. reminds me of that old game WarioWare -- a massive flood of minigames in succession, designed to keep the focus of people with a.d.d. If you're bored just wait 4 seconds and it will change.
IDK how helpful I can be here, no exciting thoughts bubbling to the surface.
There is a subreddit here
https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterEveryLoop/ that focuses fun to watch videos that repeat
I, too, worry about all the ads for non-premium YT users, like you're saying that is the biggest constraint, unless the viewers are like .. under 18, broke, and bored, I would forsee a large chunk of them getting fed up with the youtube ads after the 10th ad .. the ads are repetitive and they come in batches of like 2-3 at a time, it's going to get old really fast. It's a big problem and I don't see any brilliant solutions around it.
There is an option of a massive undertaking of building your own game software that loads videos off a private server, and damn that sounds like an awful amount of work and a lot more upfront costs to get going, i don't think that is the answer. so it's still left with this problem of youtube ads and a lot of travel sections with nothing going on.
Lots of ads + lots of walking around without dialogue/characters/story= people going somewhere else, idk how to fix that.
Here's the best i can come up with rn -- Maybe if your videos of walking/location were a lot more dynamic the way that dragons lair is constantly changing locations for people with a.d.d., if your 2 minute videos had 12 differnet locations, and it changed every 10 seconds, then you that would help me to stay interested and it seems like you've gotten to the point where you can pump out locations and walking quickly. it would also help with the repeating nature of the maze, since the locations are faster you would be able to appreciate them a second time around
Sorry it took me a second to answer, kind of did a work marathon last 2 days.
The big issue right now is that I just have very limited control over the ads. I could probably make it work a lot better if I could dictate that I only wanted the super short 5 second ads. I could decide what ads had videos and which ones didn't when the project started, and then a year in they changed some legal stuff to where youtube can just do whatever it wants. End of an era. When google started out, they passed on a lot of money for ethical reasons. If it tilted the table, or screwed someone, Larry and Sergai just wouldn't do it. Now new blood is in charge, and over the last few years they've started to abandon those ethical positions. In example, Google had previously decided not to make the entire first page of search results for x just route directly to google owned stores. That's a rule they got rid of recently. It's a lot of small things changing slowly, but it's all going in a pro business anti consumer direction now.
Now premium youtube users should be perfect for Labyrinth, though of course it's an opposite demographic. People who pay a monthly bill to not have to watch ads, probably aren't the people that are desperate to win a single hundred. Premium users get an ad free game, and I get paid by youtube directly. Great. it's maybe 1% viewership, but every little bit helps.
The way the choice screens work, it makes it hard to make a video short enough that it's ad incompatible. I think it's like 30 seconds to become eligible, and the choice screen takes 20 seconds of during video time. So I'd have to make a 9 second video to fly under the ad radar. IDK, I might find clever ways to do this. Also, if a video has fewer than 100 views, google won't put an ad on it, so I could just swap out identical cog videos I suppose, seems like that would turn into too much maintenance
About building my own game server, or just making a conventional game. It was literally the first option available to me. But it's not available to me. Did you know a lot of TL (the labyrinth) is actually built playable inside Unreal engine. Like I could put it together as a standard controller driven steam release. The reason I don't is because........ Youtube pays for a lot of things I can't afford, in return for half of my profits or so. Everyone knows youtube, nobody knows "Unadvertised game engine #837494638476" So I'd have to pay for it to become famous enough for people to find it, install it, and learn to use it. Typically the price for this is 20-80 million dollars, for just US territories. If a game was really catchy and fun, like tetris for example, it still takes usually at least millions, and several years, to catch on. Bottom line, I could build my own game software almost overnight, it's no problem, it's just how would they ever find it? No money until they find it, no advertising until money, no one finds it until advertising. The cycle of "only the rich can earn money" is now complete. Also, what could be the best game on youtube, would not hold up so well competing against Apex Legends directly.
I think these early reels have probably given an incomplete impression of what gameplay should be here. The travel and exploration stuff is the "filler" and then the actual game is the events and choices and challenges, etc. None of that has been shown yet, or very little, so I understand your perception. Basically those sections are more difficult and time consuming, and right now bulking up is the main drive. So to clarify, I'm not expecting exploration to be the only gameplay. Unfortunately, for this unique formula about the maze and prize to work, there really does have to be a lot of cells. Like probably 3500 would be ideal, and I'll be lucky to produce and organize 400 and launch this year.
Almost every problem I'm dealing with is ultimately one huge workaround for not having the normal resources that business owners start a company with. Everything has to be done inside out and backwards, like an astronaut trying to eat a pizza out of a capri sun bag because everyone in the human race except this one guy has gravity available. That's how I feel about having the one career with no grants or business loans. You basically are forced to do everything wrong, because the right way to start a business, any business, is with a business loan.
About the flashing scenery, lol. I get it, your comment is valid, but I think I probably don't have to go full dragon's lair speed. Honestly, that's the fastest paced thing I've ever seen. I spend the first 4 minutes of every "better call saul" just watching silent black and white footage of a guy cleaning a cinnabon. The first 2 hours of "close encounters" is mainly just a guy eating dinner and chatting with people.
I think that even in previous videos, I'm changing the shots every few seconds. Average across all film is 7-8 seconds a shot, with the fastest director on record (Michael Bay of course) averages only a shot every 3.5 seconds or so. Dragons lair, is crazy, that's like 1 second per shot or event. For the record, those 2 boomers were paid 52 million dollars for 22 minutes and 18 seconds of animation, half the amount I made in one day, last year for 0 dollars. Their animation was better, like 6x better, but not 52 millioin times better. You could put a downpayment on a house for 3 grand in the year they were paid the 52 million.
Changing the whole location every 3 seconds is not going to work, that's insane. Think about it. There is no way to tell any kind of coherent story, so I'm assuming I just misunderstood what you meant. Changing to an interesting new shot every 3 seconds is now possible, and I was kind of showing off that new speed in the OP video, which you may note is the fastest I've ever made. Even Dragons Lair only changed actual locations every 15 seconds or so. It's more that a new "event" happened like every 2 seconds. That is certainly way faster than what I've been doing. Still, a lot of youtubers just talk about nothing for several minutes at the beginning of each video, and still become rich, so how do they have 2 minutes of leeway, and I only have 3 seconds? It's a different product, but still, feels a bit unfair. I'm going to try some of the things I've seen in DL though. I like the idea of the cat kind of constantly escaping danger passively. Like it almost falls off a cliff, but recovers it's balance and moves on, or a giant venus flytrap tries to eat him, and he runs, the plant snapping its jaws shut an inch from it's tail. That kind of thing. Regular escapes from danger to keep tension up.
I keep going on and on about how I'm making this part and that faster, and this is what it's all about, because at the speed I'm at now, I really could keep up with changing shots really fast. I wish I had just invented pong. Got the one line done, and now the ball, and one more line for the tennis court, ok time to retire! Boomer Power!
The computer I had to build and program to get a sliver of a shot at earning $2000 for every one million customers served.
Basically, I think the breakthrough I'm looking for on the gameplay end needs to be an economic (from the programming end) way to supply frequent dopamine pings. That's why I'm looking at stuff like "valediction screens" as a possible way to spike dopamine on a more regular basis.
In example, if I used only hand crafted, non repeating, payoffs, which are the best of course, it would be an impossible amount of work for one person, and you can see in the picture above, even funded game studios with a crew working together don't always do it. 16 screens like this, then a cutscene on the last level.
I think the big question is, how do I build "investment" in the game as it goes. RPG, you get a better sword every hour, so you're motivated to keep playing, since you have now invested in making the game easier to solve. TL already has a bit of that, but in my opinion, not enough.
Maybe you could find bonus coins throughout, that add money onto the prize if you do win. That would work, because the more coins people got along the way, the more motivated they would be to try and reach the treasure.
