Welcome to my brand new website. This is something I've wanted to have for at least 7 or 8 years now after that garbled mess of a Wordpress site broke haha
This time around I'm using Wix (not sponsored) and thanks to the detailed re-branding Joe from Yogscast did for me earlier this year with hex codes and all, I've been able to whip up something pretty decent looking.
I know what you're probably thinking
“Why do you need a website? You're just a YouTuber...”
Well that's a little blunt, but sure, let's explain this. Initially I felt compelled to make a website for 2 relatively petty reasons:
1. Frequently Asked Questions
I don't know if it's because of lockdown or if minds are just getting more curious nowadays but I get so, many, repeated, questions! I've tried to ignore them or let moderators answer them on my behalf but then I'm labelled as 'ignoring the chat' which isn't fun, here are some examples of the day-in day-out queries:
"What do you think to x game?"
"What equipment do you use?"
"Why do you only post Fortnite videos?"
Let's tackle these in order.
Rather than doing a chain of tweets as I have in recent months acting as quickie reviews for games I've just played or events I've recently watched like Minecraft Live, I've instead decided to fire up a blog again where I can dump those thoughts.
The bar is set low. I'm in no way trained as a journalist so these will be very amateur posts and I won't be doing scoring systems. This is solely to document my experiences so if anybody asks they can have a quick read.
Equipment. This is most broadcasters biggest FAQ and I'm always happy to answer this one as it's likely an aspiring creator or an established one wanting to refine their craft. I have a lot of gear though. So having it all neatly laid out on a single web page is going to be a life saver!
I don't just post Fortnite. On my main channel, yes, that's the case and things will remain that way until that trend dies down but as it stands, it makes bloody good money and I've got a kid now so it's probably best we save up for university now because at this rate, Uni will be £100,000 a year!
Getting back to point. I do upload games other than Fortnite, I actually utilize my second channel (thank you for 100k on there by the way, 16 year old me who made that channel would be equally as stoked as I am!!)
Its been a real nice mix on there lately and very 2014 - 2018 vibes with Minecraft, Survivalists (new Escapists game), Marvel's Avengers and a game literally called Littlewood!
Stream Schedule
This is the other biggie. I hate the current schedule tab on the Twitch website. When your channel is live it's not apparent to most how to navigate to it (you have to press the channel's avatar just fyi) and once you finally get there, the schedule only shows your plans up until the Sunday of that week. Ew.
That means, every Sunday evening or Monday morning you have to remember to pencil in your schedule for that upcoming week. Why? Well because if you forget to do that then your audience is presented with a repeated schedule implying they're in for a carbon copy of the week before..
The 1 week display is semi-bareable but the fact it's coupled with no ability to schedule further ahead is game over. God forbid you'd want to input an entire week's holiday in the near future and inform your audience more than 24 hours before.. Just, blah! IT SUCKS!
(before you get snarky, yes, I've submitted feedback via the official channels, it got a ton of upvotes on there but nothing's changed. It never does. They're like YouTube in that sense..)
As a variety caster I tend to go with the flow and no two days are the same so a schedule isn't a huge necessity for me but highlighting key game releases and special events like the Minecraft Championship would be hugely beneficial to me.
Improving + Future Proofing
Those 2 reasons should make things a little easier for the both of us (you the viewer and I) but there's a third party that I started to consider when designing this website... Companies.
Having a website and presence that looks professional / slick, showing off my skillset (a more in depth "About Me" page is in the works which will act like a portfolio of sorts) will sooner re-assure any big publisher or developer that their work would be well showcased in my hands. Or so I'd like to think.
I've had the pleasure of working with basically everybody at this point Nintendo, Team17, Sony, Microsoft, Bungie, the list goes on.. but having no portfolio to share may have given others in the past enough doubt to look elsewhere. Now we can fix that!
Then there's the future to consider. One day, when all of this dies down and I'm not making enough from ad revenue or memberships to pay the bills (I'm not naive, we all know this isn't forever), I'll have a solid bed of previous clients and info to share with my potential employer to land the gig I go for. This is the most adult thing I've ever written, becoming a dad has changed me 😒
Woah...
I didn't expect this first post to be so wordy but these were questions already raised on stream when I showed off the draft site and it bared repeating again.
There's absolutely no kind of schedule for blog posts, they're going to be very sporadic as I'm not looking to add any extra responsibility to my days.
See you on stream and thanks for the ongoing support!
PS. We do have new merch coming soon which I'm stoked for, we've yet to put the new logo on anything and we've had it 9 months!!