Ceave
patreon
September Update.
🕑 Added 2024-09-30 15:00:14 +0000 UTCHello you, exceptionally exceptional Patreon people!
I hope that all of you are having a wonderful week and that all of you find some money below the cushion you didn’t know you had!
The Celeste video is out and I’m super happy with how it turned out - this one was one of the hardest to write so far - so many rewrites! - but in the end I think it was worth it.
I don’t really have anything newsworthy to share this month, so I thought I’ll just waffle a bit about some stuff that happened in the background while producing the video, that you otherwise would never get to hear me waffle about.
So first: computer catastrophes!
A while ago I mentioned that my old PC broke down and that it was finally time for me to replace the old lady.
As is tradition the new computer arrived broken.
It was a really strange and hard to track down problem - basically the computer would just lose electricity for a moment after a random amount of time - meaning that the PC just rebooted out of the blue about once an hour which made it pretty much unusable.
So no big deal, I got in touch with the seller and we started this long and intimate email friendship.
So after writing about two dozen mails with my new pen-pals and doing all sorts of testing they come to the conclusion that the power adapter is faulty - and thus they decide to send me a new one.
A week later it arrives - I swap the parts and, zawang there goes my PC rebooting itself again.
Turns out the power adaptor wasn’t the problem.
So back to pen-paling with my newly gained friends and trying to figure out what is going on.
They come to the conclusion that they need to see the patient themselves and that I should send it to their PC-clinic.
And thus I sent the PC back to the seller so that they could take care of it in a good session of PC-quantum healing. (At least that’s what I believe they did.)
In the clinic the crystal pendulum told them that it was probably the motherboard that was faulty so they investigated it, did some Liu Zi Jue to get its Theta back in line with the universe, and - just to be sure - also replaced it.
(Again - that’s what I assume they did.)
Anyway, the PC just returned and I’m hoping that now everything runs with it being all new mother-boarded and stuff.
I don’t know yet if the PC is working as intended now but I can already feel that its aura is much cleansed, so that’s something!
Why am I telling you all about the adventurous adventures of my PC?
Well, because all of this meant that the Celeste video was once again edited on the PC equivalent of a vegetable.
Additionally I had to attend a funeral about two weeks ago (not a person particularly close to me). Attending a funeral always sucks, but it sucks even more if the funeral is on the other side of the country and takes place during the biggest flooding catastrophe in the history of your country.
If anyone wants to spice up their next train ride - I can absolutely recommend doing it during a flooding catastrophe!
Much water, less train!
To round the month up I also caught covid - and even though it was a pretty mild course of the disease, my lunge still feels like someone poked a hole or two into it and none of all those things are even the most annoying thing that happened all month.
The most annoying thing has to do with … taxes.
Of course.
You see, most people watching my YouTube videos are in the US, yet I am here in Austria.
Meaning I’m kinda earning money in the states but I’m also kinda earning money in Austria.
So both the United States and Austria want to tax my income.
To prevent this Austria and the US have signed a double taxation agreement.
So far all of this is no big deal - I had to confirm my Austrian taxation number once to Google and everything worked as intended. (I’m being taxed by the Austrian government.)
Until recently.
You see, I married a while ago and took on the surname of my wife additionally to my own surname (which is quite common in Austria).
Recently I realized that I had not yet changed my name in the Google set-up, so I decided to do so to make sure that I don’t run into any problems with it along the line.
What I did not realize however, was that changing my name in the settings also deletes my taxation document.
So fixing this is not terribly difficult, I just need a signed document from my government - but getting this takes a while and until I have this document I am being taxed by the US and my home country at once.
We are not talking about any significant amounts of money here, but it is still something that I need to take care of, and something surprisingly tedious to fix.
That’s the bad side of this story, there is however a good side to it as well.
You see, the next time I read a story about how a US police department used all their public funding to buy a margarita machine I legitimately get to be upset at how wasteful the US government is spending my hard earned tax money - which is something at least!
I’m not really complaining by the way, stuff like that just is part of working self employed, I’m just gossiping a bit.
So what’s next?
Well, next we will try a smaller video for once.
I’m not entirely sure how to structure those yet and it might take me a couple of tries to figure out the format, but I’m cautiously optimistic.
The first thing I want to take a look at, is the question why 3D platformers fell out of grace and afterwards I want to take a look at Echos of the Kingdom, which I find exceptionally mediocre so far.
I hope to have the next video out within roughly three weeks, though there could always be something that slows me down.
You never know, if you don’t have to attend a surprise wedding while severe forest fires are going on afterall.
As always a huge and gigantic thank you to each and every single one of you!
Your support really makes a difference!
Comments
CubicMathTime (check out my channel)
As a current teenager, I am very baffled by how adult gamers pour so much time into monotonous tasks in games that are often not memorable for them, and I also do not understand why people take sports seriously whatsoever. The games I enjoy the most are precisely the games with a lack of structure, like This is the Only Level. I pretty much only buy games if I think I will enjoy the moment to moment experience, and the second I am not enjoying a game I cut my losses and look for something else to play. I hate multiplayer games and the majority of story-driven games bore me. I search out almost entirely platformers, puzzle games, and puzzle platformers. I may very well be the exact opposite demographic of a lot of the bestselling games you mentioned. I wonder now if this is a phase that I will outgrow as I reach adulthood. Will I become an advocate of the structured, the repetitive, the balanced, and the competitive, or will I always be most fascinated with the niche, the inspired, the brief, and the fantastical? I can’t answer this question, but one thing I know is that if Astrobot was available on PC or Switch, I would buy it in a heartbeat, and the reviews from my friends have genuinely made me consider saving up for a PS5. I will conclude this message by bringing up Crystal Seekers on Scratch. This is a 3D platformer made by one person over the course of five months, built entirely in Scratch, a 2D game engine that runs at the speed of fingernail growth, and released entirely for free on Scratch’s website. This game is some of the most pure fun I have had in a long time. Despite the assets being extremely blatantly copy pasted, and despite moving the camera manually, and despite the limited moveset, I played Crystal Seekers for multiple days because of its great gameplay concepts, expansive levels, and speedrunning aspects. I would have easily payed $5-$10 for that experience. So I sincerely hope you are correct that 3D platformers are not dead. Because I’m fairly certain that I will remain a lifelong fan.
Martian Turnip
Behind the Ceaves, brilliant!
Xanathar865
100% agree with this, one of the best parts of this patreon is those fun little glimpses into what goes on behind the scenes (behind the Ceaves?)
Xanathar865
Man Patreon didn't notify me about this update so I'm a little late, but it's always great to hear from you! I absolutely loved the Celeste video btw, it made me really want to go play the story again, even though it's been so long. The problem is because of the game's excellent difficulty curve the base game just feels too easy now, so I might try to find some mods that make the base game including story a little more difficult.
Jehan
Weirdly enough neither YouTube nor Patreon notified me that how had uploaded a new video or posted a new update, and the only reason that I found out was because I was checking my spam folder and I happened to see an email from Patreon saying you had posted. Anyways as always I loved the video, I was hoping to see you mention Farewell especially since the message of the video was learning how to accept a negative thing in your life but I understand why you didn't because it would have taken way too long to explain. But the video was incredible, Celeste is one of my favorite games and I'm glad you covered it, can't wait for the next video!
Dingle Dee
Really hoping Astro bot has kicked the industry back into the 3D platformer mindsight but it's death was pretty clear with the amount of 3D platformers on the 6th Generation. From weird to just bland. Just in case this is helpful. Outside of the decline of Crash and Spyro, Nintendo also ended up with an uninspiring one in the shape of Mario World. You have what felt like the height of licensed games, a birth of new mascots vying to be the next icon, Dr muto also which is just a bauble. On the other hand the momentum for the next gen was the 360 and the only 3D platformers they push outside of Psychonauts I can recall are Blinx, Toejam and Earl 3, Voodoo Vince and Grabbed by the Ghoulies which all felt had pretty underwhelming reactions. And the lad into Kameo which was where I think people truly turned on them. Although writing this up maybe I'm wrong. Maybe 6th gen just soured up the audience enough for the actual backlash in the 7th. People were still mocking sonic games at this point but it wasn't until Sonic 06 that it felt like 3D platformers were shelved as as second tier pickup outside of Mario Galaxy
Obi
Was sagst du da dazu dass du nie wieder in die Mausefalle kommen wirst :'( Hätte geglaubt das wird das größte Problem in den letzten Wochen gewesen sein.
Illyon
I'm very excited to see how the shorter formats are going to turn out. Pacing will probably be a bit different, but a video covering a very time-efficient topic has every reason to be just as interesting.
Jonas
perfect!
Stefan Maier
I plan on using the Gaming channel more in the future - we'll probably have a bunch of videos there soon that kinda tie both channels together!
Nathan Berry
Really enjoyed the Celeste video, it was a really compelling take on the symbolism I hadn't really considered. I've been wondering, with all the issues that there have been with youtube not pushing the Perspective videos, have you considered doing community posts on the 'main' channel whenever you publish a new video on the perspective channel? I know you talked about how posting both types of videos on one channel didn't work, but would just letting people on the main channel know there's a new video with a community post have any detrimental effects? or are you just not sure. Either way, keep up the great work, and good luck with any computer issues.
Stefan Maier
Thanks for letting me know and sorry that I messed this up! I'll fix it for the next video! Patreon sometimes combines all notifications and then it's extremly easy to miss that someone upgraded. If this happend to someone else just shoot me a message on Patreon!
Shiver407
Mr ceave, I upgraded my membership from the normal fuzzy tier to the shiny fuzzy tier a little while ago, and I only see my name in the normal fuzzy section whenever one of your videos end. I just wanted to let you know just in case if anyone is in the same boat, but I really don’t mind at all. Anyways, your videos have really helped me cope after I deconstructed my religion a while back. It was a scary process, but you made it a little less terrifying for me with your insightful videos. I appreciate everything you’re doing, and plenty of others do too.
Stefan Maier
Loved every second of it. It's where we'll start the video! (:
Jonas
Oooh if you are looking at 3D platformers for your next video, you kinda really wanna look at Astro Bot (which is going to win this year's GOTY award, 100%). Did you get the chance to play it?
Regola
Sounds like you never have a dull moment despite of everything D: Hope everything will turn alright in the end. Also, I found the Celeste video awesome, maybe my favorite one up to now. I really liked the pacing and the writing despite not having played the game myself and just knowing two or three things about it.
DraCoral
That's very exceptionally exceptional PC journey! I'm very glad to see your latest Celeste video, and as a gentle-person-in-general, I'm really impressed! I love your voice, accent, and your exceptionally wide view about gaming & gaming industry. keep on your amazing work! P.S. I really love your accent so that I read your patreon posts with your voice playing in my head.
Patreon Potato
To add to the computer fun, there's a trend among motherboard manufacturers to pump ever more power into the processor to maximize performance. This is supposed to help sales because then your motherboard gets a higher place in the relative performance ranking of motherboards. Of course the consequence is that this approach consumes more power which generates more cost for the end-user (but not the manufacturer!). But also it means that there's more power flowing through the system. Capitalist incentives to optimize cost also mean that the components handling that power have to become cheaper. And cheaper components tend to have less safety buffer e.g. for power spikes or when a production run happens to be worse. Pair this with recent components having a pattern of very short, very steep power spikes or other fun bugs (e.g. Intel 13th / 14th gen) you may get this kind of behavior.
RPG Hacker
Told ya PCs were only invented to put is in our place. Here's hope that this new one is finally the one to rule them all! I'm actually greatly enjoying Echoes of Wisdom so far, so I'm looking forward to learn what problems you see with it. I mean... I do see some flaws with the game myself, but none that would prevent me from being super addicted to it so far. Also looking forward to watching the Celeste video soon. Already got it saved to my Watch Later!
Jan Krause
Hope your second PC will work fine. Alles Gute aus Deutschland :)
Martian Turnip
I may be in the minority here, but the behind-the-scenes peek of the utterly mundane details of your creative process (whether it's new pen-pals or multi-country taxation excitement) is part of why I look forward to your regular (or not as regular) updates. You put a great spin on what seems like utterly infuriating experiences. Looking forward to the next video (with hopefully less potato computer!)
Jose Schroeder
Wow YouTube totally suppressed your video, didn‘t get recommended to me anywhere eventhough I‘m suscribed and have watched every single one of your videos… damn
AsherCinemaYT
That sounds tough! Great job on the Celeste video! Keep up the good work bro 😎👊
