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Episode 144: Creative Content Creation w/ Dequan Pt 2
128 Plays3 years ago
Welcome back to the Goblin Lore Podcast and welcome back to our special guest DeQuan Watson (one of the hosts of the Color of Magic podcast). In part two of this series Hobbes and DeQuan and continue the discussion Content Creation and the need for Intentionality when approaching your work. Last week left off with us moving into a discussion about the changing nature of Content Creation especially in the wake of the SCG announcement cutting back on their competitive content in particular. Hope you all enjoy!
We also are proud to have partnered with Grinding Coffee Co a black, LGBT+ affiliated and owned, coffee business that is aimed at providing coffee to gamers. You can read more about their mission here. You can use our partner code for discounted coffee!
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Again we would like to state that Black Lives Matter (with a link to where you can offer support both monetary and not).
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As promised, we plan to keep these Mental Health Links available moving forward too. For general Mental Health the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) has great resources for people struggling with mental health concerns as well as their families. We also want to draw attention to this article on stigma from NAMI's site.
If you’re thinking about suicide or just need someone to talk to right now, you can get support from any of the resources below.
- National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-TALK (8255)
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- International suicide hotlines: A comprehensive resource list for people outside the US.
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- Trans Lifeline (US): (877) 565-8860
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You can find the hosts on Twitter: Hobbes Q. at @HobbesQ, and Alex Newman at
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Transcript
Introduction and Recap
00:00:29
Speaker
Hello Podwalkers and welcome back to the Goblin Lore podcast. Today we have part two of a episode with Daquan Watson. Part one we posted last week really got a lot into looking at content creation in ways that content creators can market themselves. We left off at the end of that episode kind of talking about, well, where do we go from here, especially with
00:00:53
Speaker
the move by Star City Games to cut down on their competitive content, letting go a lot of writers that had been writing for a very long time, and with some questions about organized play, we were wondering what does content creation look like moving forward. So that's where Daquan and I are going to pick up today's episode.
Evolution of Content Creation
00:01:15
Speaker
Before we get to that, I want to just say that this episode again is sponsored by Zencaster. So Zencaster is a recording software that you can use for your podcast. It'll do both audio and video at 1080p. It is probably the thing that has helped save this podcast in terms of
00:01:37
Speaker
the amount of episodes that we are able to put out because it allows for post-production using their pro model. It actually auto-levels, it records guests on their end so you don't have to worry about people recording their audio and sending it to you or kind of any of those things that can really just take up a lot of your time as a content creator.
00:01:58
Speaker
So if you go to zen.ai forward slash goblin lore pod or use the code goblin lore pod, you can get 30% off of your first three months of a pro subscription. Highly recommend checking them out. We also want to say thank you to the grinding coffee company. We've been very fortunate to be paired with this just amazing coffee company that really supports LGBT.
00:02:21
Speaker
and minority rights and really the rights of gamers and just kind of really focuses on that for charity events for their mission statement in general and we've been lucky enough to partner with them for going on almost two years. So we just want you to sit back and enjoy part two with Daquan.
00:02:41
Speaker
So now that we're 40 minutes in, I want to say that we've now finally managed to make it around to the topic that I originally pitched to you. So I think – Hey, did you get permission to hijack the show? I told you. I can go forever. I fully expected this. Well, and even within this, the topic that we initially discussed has shifted because that's what happens in life.
00:03:04
Speaker
I always joke that this cast does a really good job of being like awkward timing. That's part of our strength. We put out a social anxiety and how to deal with an episode the week that the lockdown happened. And it was basically like, here's how you might feel comfortable going to your first magic fest. Here's ways to deal with stress as it comes up. Here's what to know. And then like two weeks later, we're like, don't go out anywhere or talk to humans. It's not that black or white, but it is really just, we laugh at timing. And one of them was,
00:03:34
Speaker
When I initially thought of this episode was to do with content creation, was the shifting landscape that we were seeing in the wake of the SCG announcement of eliminating most of their pro-player content. I was thinking of it when you were talking about people like Paulo or Gabriel Nasif.
00:03:55
Speaker
They didn't have to sell anything else. I actually think that that's, Gabriel is somebody that I think of because of even just the yellow hat and how he does kind of entertain when he was doing Arena early on, is somebody that had an understanding a little bit of how to market himself. For sure. Because what we saw was, it was like the earth ended when SCG said that they weren't going to be doing these competitive, paying basically their competitive
00:04:23
Speaker
writers any longer, right? They were eliminating most of their staff. Let me interrupt for a second. Yeah, I think it only appeared to end to those that were active on social media. And that's a very specific statement, because what the average player doesn't matter, it's funny, we were just talking about this earlier, me and my wife is that
00:04:45
Speaker
There's too often people don't understand that your world is not everybody's world. And it's very easy on social media, because when you're on social media, you're engaging with the most engaged
00:04:59
Speaker
in the thing that you are interested in, right? You are the most enthusiastic of enthusiasts or fans. But the reality is, I go to game, well, pre COVID, I went to a bunch of game stores, talked to owners, whatever, literally have had conversations with people, magic players that don't know what a game nights is, or they'll ask what's who's the professor, you know, whatever. And you're talking about two of the biggest YouTube channels in the magic space with literally like, I think 600,000 subscribers each. Yeah, you know, they get 50 to 100,000 people for video or whatever.
00:05:29
Speaker
People going to stores daily, buying boxes of cards, have no idea who these people are. And that's why when that ended, I was trying to explain to people, this isn't that surprising.
00:05:41
Speaker
When COVID happened, and I had private conversations with people and said, this is going to be bad for people when they discover that these companies can live without that organized play. Not saying we don't want it. It does have a purpose and it's a good promotional tool and all that. I think it needs to exist, but it's not as important as the people online think it is.
00:06:02
Speaker
There's retailers I know right now that have actually, well, one, they cut out their game space entirely for a while and brought in more retail stuff. And most of them have said they're not going back to the same size game space
Impact of the Pandemic on Magic
00:06:13
Speaker
they had. They're probably going to be at 50 to 70% the size because they figured out ways they can make money without having to deal with, well, for honest, just being honest here, a lot of cases rude or cheap players on a day-to-day basis.
00:06:29
Speaker
So what's funny to me is I did not feel as caught off guard even as somebody who was active online when it came to the SCG kind of announcement, partly because of the reasons that we'd already seen with all of the changes to OP and organized play. And there's a lot to be said, and we're having this discussion, the hilarious part being right after there's an announcement that the Pro Tour is coming back.
00:06:54
Speaker
But there had already been kind of a feel that there, even in the circles that I am in on social media, that there was kind of this changing of the guard, that I think that the pandemic hastened in some ways people's recognition that what Mark Rosewater talks about when he talks about the kitchen table player who spends most of the money, kind of what you were saying, that, you know, 95 plus percent of players are not necessarily engaged online.
00:07:23
Speaker
There had always been this belief that, you know, that organized play and F&Ms and that I think people always wanted to believe that that really was what was driving. And I think that it's been hard for people to see some of their favorite pro players have to kind of now struggle with the fact that what they have been doing is not necessarily what they're going to be able to keep doing as a career.
00:07:47
Speaker
Yeah, one of the things that we saw a lot, and again, this is why I tell people you have to look outside your space sometimes, but this has been something that's been happening in multiple gaming spaces. There's esports teams. Well, first off, Wizards shouldn't have been paying for the pros to begin with.
00:08:07
Speaker
And the way I say this, if you look around using Riot as an example, they're not paying yearly contracts to the top players. Those people are getting paid by private companies, by endorsement deals, by esports teams, you know, where Riot runs the tournaments and has a lot of prize money, but they don't pay individual people. Right. And if magic or actually, let
The Changing Business Model of Magic
00:08:30
Speaker
me be more specific. If the player players as personalities were that marketable, other people will come and pay them.
00:08:38
Speaker
A good example is like Seth Manfield still has some private deals and with the esports thing and whatever, still makes plenty of money, right? Some of these other players, again, were very good at the game, but they weren't personalities and they weren't streaming and they weren't writing. So it's like, what is Wizards return on that investment? There's literally nothing there. But when you look through the pandemic and say like, okay, we didn't even have really any organized stuff. We didn't have people going to F&Ms, but we still made 30% more in sales this year.
00:09:09
Speaker
You know what I mean? Like you look back at that, whatever that ended up being, probably three, $4 million they were spending to promote and pay and whatever the MPL and the rivals, and they kind of go, what did we get for this money? At some point they're going to go, you know, there's probably a better way for us to do this. Now, admittedly, they did not handle it the best and there were other things we could have done. However, I still think the ceiling is nowhere near as high as the people think it is that are complaining about it.
00:09:35
Speaker
Well, I mean we've seen. So one of the things that I think that I noticed which was already starting to happen and the pandemic is the clear catalyst that made it explode was web play and being able to do things like commander gameplay.
00:09:52
Speaker
And I mean, we think about this with the fact that it allows people to be able to play magic across the United States, across the world in a way that doesn't have some of the issues that we might have with something like, let's even just say MTGO, as we know is kind of an older program that has not had as much kind of support. So we now have people at home with webcams
00:10:20
Speaker
good knowledge and know-how of technology that really want to see their friends. And I saw that space start to take off. And along with that space, I started seeing a change for streaming to be more about personality, right?
00:10:37
Speaker
I mean, when I think of streams before, it was people testing for big events. It was oftentimes on MTGO, there wasn't necessarily even face cams, and there wasn't necessarily a need to entertain. You needed to play. You needed to be able to maybe teach. But when people can come along and be very entertaining and offer a different product that magic hasn't seen,
00:11:03
Speaker
Yeah, I think one of the first signs was Wizards went out and bought spell table.
00:11:10
Speaker
And I remember people freaking out about it, and they came to me and said, what do you think about it? And I was like, I think it's great, honestly. So you should be happy about it. One, it says that Wizards is already aware of tabletop play, which I already knew because I've seen the numbers at Wizards. Tabletop play is going nowhere. Even now, it makes double what digital play does. So no fear. Anybody who keeps saying they're trying to destroy retail stores and they're trying to get rid of paper, they don't know what they're talking about. I can tell you 100%, that's just a terrible narrative. We need to stop saying it because it's just wrong.
00:11:39
Speaker
but them buying spell table speaks to that because they knew, okay, let's make this as good as possible because it's going to be a benefit during the pandemic, right? They knew they were still gonna be able to move paper products. They knew they were gonna need something quality for people to play with each other. Maybe, maybe not. They had the foresight that people are gonna use it to make a lot of Commander content. I don't know, but it fits that space. The other thing is, and again, this is something else I noticed during the pandemic early.
00:12:05
Speaker
is people weren't going to just tune in for serious top level play for two reasons. One, they weren't going to be going out to play anything competitively. So who cares, right? Because they're not going anywhere, right? The other was they were going to be bombarded with negativity all day, whether it's people getting sick from COVID being locked down, you know, job issues, whatever. So being somewhere they can have an escape is going to be better.
00:12:33
Speaker
So people who were able to entertain, people that were able to just help for a while, I was even giving people a space to vent a little bit. You know, some people in my chat had like dealt with COVID, you know, just saying like, ah, I got a relative that's got something going on or whatever, just so they could have some place to hang out, commiserate, you know, whatever. And even that was important. And I understood that early on after like,
00:12:53
Speaker
my fourth or fifth, I would call like post COVID stream, you know, was, all right, I need to be on time available. I need to think about how I'm going to present some stuff because I'm becoming people's kind of escapism for two or three hours a couple times a week.
00:13:09
Speaker
and just keeping that top of mind on like, what am I gonna talk about? How long am I gonna linger on some topics? And that makes a big difference. And I think all of that played into this transition of some of the personalities making more money than the pros. Yeah, and I think that that was shocking for a very specific set of people. Yeah, I mean, the people I think that we'd always heard kind of the idea that believing that pro play is what
00:13:39
Speaker
kept magic alive and what made magic grow to be what it is. And I don't know, there may have been a time when that was correct. I do think that we are much further from that time than a lot of people would like to pretend to be. I think like all things in life, it's for a lot of people, perception is greater than reality, right? So you hear the names of Finkel and Kai and LSV and Palo Vitor and whatever.
00:14:06
Speaker
but that's because you're engaged and you hear them, you're like, oh, well this must be important and this must be a big thing, right? But at the end of the day, if you go and ask any business owner, except for maybe the one or two stores that their whole business model was doing organized play, they'll tell you that like, oh yeah, most of my business, they'll probably tell you 70, 80% of their business comes from just a person who walks in, buys something, walks out. Doesn't even use their game space at all, right? But if you're not in business, you didn't see it that way.
00:14:35
Speaker
you just saw what you saw at tournaments and at Grand Prix and you saw these huge numbers at events and you're like, oh, obviously this must be what's driving the game. It's one part of it, but it's not near the driving force that people thought it was. This is one of those things that's making me kind of think about when I am able to return to playing in person, it does start becoming those questions of if stores start removing gameplay,
00:15:00
Speaker
what some of us are going to do.
Adapting Retail Strategies
00:15:02
Speaker
I mean, most of them aren't going to flat out remove it. But here's the thing. How many times did you hear or see online the discourse from players going, I don't want to play at that store. They charge five dollars for effort and they should be making the money off snacks and whatever, not from entry fees. Right. And I'll tell you with my store, I never ran a single of it if I wasn't making at least a dollar, dollar and a half per entry fee per person minimum. If I wasn't doing that, I didn't run the event. We would find a way to price it in a way that that was possible.
00:15:30
Speaker
because you're still paying for employees, maybe you're paying for a judge, you're running your especially in Texas, you're running your AC is harder because you're putting another, who knows 30 to 70 people in your space, right? Like all those things have costs, but you had so many stores that were trying to
00:15:46
Speaker
to
00:16:03
Speaker
Yeah, I probably should just charge the 5, 8, 10 dollars I need to charge. And if people don't play, they don't play. If they do, great. I'll just up my prizes or whatever for those players. But we should have this entry fee. So you're just going to see that model change for a lot of people. And I was thinking, too, you're going to know that what I think of is.
00:16:22
Speaker
Like we here in Minneapolis, we like to get together and we like to go play cube. We like to do something that does not involve kind of any entry fees necessarily. Right. I mean, I would say that we tend to be the type of people that are maybe they're going to spend more money on just other stuff because that's the players we are. But I think a lot of people were used to just having a game space to be a place maybe to just go in and not spend money.
00:16:50
Speaker
Yeah, but I would say a lot of the industry has gotten very creative about their entry fees too. A lot of them aren't even necessarily charging you outright. It's like, they'll say, okay, we have like a $3 table fee for the day if you're not playing in an event or whatever it is, but they're giving you store credit for that same amount of money.
00:17:07
Speaker
So you know, you spend your $3 you come in, let's say eight or nine times during the month, you've got 27 $30 saved up, you can still use it to buy whatever you want, right? You have $30 credit at the store. So a lot of them are just using as a way to say like, okay, if you're here using space, I'm not using the space for something
New Players and Changing Formats
00:17:25
Speaker
else. But if you're still giving us money, you're going to make a future purchase, this is still fine. And I think that's a good compromise. So
00:17:35
Speaker
This week that you and I are recording this, we got an organized play announcement. And I think that people were apprehensive as they are before every single organized play announcement. Once again, we are talking in the context of the engaged people that maybe you and I see online. Because this could have a great impact on
00:18:00
Speaker
Well, as you and I are talking about it, it isn't necessarily the case, but it is for a lot of people. I mean, it is the perception. And it made me think, right?
00:18:13
Speaker
In the wake of this, do you think that we're gonna see people just expecting that content creation is gonna revert back to articles? And that's gonna be the main primary driving force. Competitive play is gonna drive some of what the competitive world is seeing or do people need to prepare for even with an announcement like this that pro play is back and a pro tour is back and there's a clear pathway at this point to how to get there
00:18:43
Speaker
That ship's kind of sailed. Creation in the way that it used to be. Well, from the way it used to be, yes. I'll agree with that. But the thing we have to look at is we're targeting a different group of players now.
00:19:00
Speaker
the, all of those guys that were long in the tooth, it was the Grog nards, the diehards, the tryhards, you know, those are the ones doing all the grinding, whatever. But now we're going to have this group of players that let's say from 2018, 2019 had just started getting good enough at the game that they were like, well, you know, let me try a PTQ, you know, and then these people who started from then until today that have never had a chance to play in a big major event.
00:19:28
Speaker
that the romanticized idea of just playing a big paper tournament looks like fun to them. So these players don't know the old way. They hear stories and maybe you see some footage here or there, but they're not really entrenched in it. They don't have that nostalgic vibe and pull to it. So the way things are marketed, talked about, whatever, are probably just going to be different. But I do think from a content perspective,
00:19:54
Speaker
Yeah, we're definitely gonna have room for people to write articles and such, you know, because there's gonna be people saying, well, I wanna know what the best standard deck is, the best modern deck is, or pioneer, right? Because I've got some tournaments coming up in the next couple of weeks. What are people saying about the format? What cards are hot? You know, one of the things I was telling people, even before the announcement, I was, and people thought it was crazy, but I was literally telling people like, look, these cards that are expensive right now, where you're talking about Meat Hook Massacre,
00:20:22
Speaker
Um, you know, gold span dragon, whatever. I said, you need to get those now before the announcement comes out because we wizards basically told us kind of half of what the announcement was going to be several months ago. Like there was, they wanted to qualify our system. They wanted to have some big events still, you know, but they weren't making any announcements till the vision of what the world was with COVID was a little better.
00:20:45
Speaker
Yeah, I think the application was always there. The in-person play would be returning. Absolutely. And that's why the whole narrative of it, like just going away and wizard killing organized play and ball, I was like, y'all are just ignoring the thing they literally just told us. But I can tell you from having been at Wizards, they're just risk averse. So anything that was potentially going like, if they would have had an event, a Grand Prix, and that would have been a super spreader event.
00:21:09
Speaker
They they would have freaked out. Yeah. And you're talking about Vegas was like the nice toe in the water. Yeah. Yeah. But that wasn't run by Wizards. Well, right. Right. And that's why I try to tell people like people while flesh and blood did it. Well, this company did it. Like, yeah, sure. But they're they're taking an opportunity to get exposure and, you know, whatever. Wizards doesn't need that right now.
00:21:32
Speaker
It's more harmful for them being a bigger company if something goes wrong. The upside is too small compared to the devastating downside. Now that we have a little bit of a clearer picture on, you know, we got a handle on COVID, places are opening up a little bit, you know, whatever, now we can start talking about organized play. And I think the announcement overall was very positive for a lot of people.
00:21:56
Speaker
Prior to going into this, I was anticipating that these big events, whether we had a pro tour, whether we had kind of something to replace it, our events were going to become more like I think a dream hack has been showing kind of recently with these kind of like mini cons.
Major Events and Cultural Sensitivity
00:22:14
Speaker
And even the magic fest were starting to become that way that it was almost going to be. Yeah, there's a tournament.
00:22:22
Speaker
but it's almost like, you know, a convention started in a tournament broke out versus the model that had been before, which was, okay, we have gameplay space for everybody else. Yeah. Think about it though. That kind of makes sense, right? Because if you say in any game on the planet, you know, let's say 80, 90% of your players are going to be casual. It's like, okay, let's make sure there's plenty for all those players to do. So there's still a draw. We can still draw more people for our vendors because what people know is those vendors really help pay for the space.
00:22:51
Speaker
vendors that at large events like that pay handsome sums of money, you know, sometimes to the tune of like $10,000 for their space. So the more bodies and the more casual people get in so they can recoup their costs is huge. So that benefits everybody to run it like that more than just like, okay, we're gonna have
00:23:09
Speaker
our players come in for the main event and you're mostly going to be targeting those players selling just the hottest cards or whatever and hoping they sell you stuff that you can sell later, right? This opens it up much more. And honestly, casual players spend more money. Well, I was just gonna say, you know, we've seen the game night's effect on magic cards. We've seen it be in real time, just like cards that
00:23:34
Speaker
This is the reason we're going to discuss the reserve list. Organized play is not the reason we're going to be discussing it. It's going to be EDH at this point. It's going to be more casual play. So that's always made kind of sense to me that I think that is something that's important for us to be thinking of.
00:23:52
Speaker
Oh, 100%. And I think that's why the idea of when I saw the announcement, I literally kind of read through it and went, yeah, this all checks. Like, there was nothing there. Literally, I read through it. I went, I went, yeah, there's nothing surprising here. You know, I said, if you were surprised by anything in here, you honestly are not aware of what the state of everything looks like. And like you said,
00:24:15
Speaker
Some things have not been handled well in the past, and I think that there is always this fear of getting burned, even if it is what you were expecting. Sure. But I mean, we've also had video games come out that were blowing up people's video cards. So I mean, I mean, we things happen, you know, I mean, like, yeah, the thing that I will tell you, the thing that bothered me.
00:24:38
Speaker
is I did see somebody, and I wish I could even remember the person's username, but because I, you know, I would call them out since they posted publicly, but they were sitting and complaining like, Oh, well, they're still just going to find a way to screw this up. I'm like, Okay, cool. Based on what? Right? This is literally like, they basically gave you 95% of what you asked for. Right? I mean, they didn't have like a team event, and they didn't have full fledged Grand Prix, though, we're getting pseudo Grand Prix, right? But
00:25:05
Speaker
That's really kind of all that wasn't in the announcement. So I'm like, so they gave you 95% of what you want and you're still going to sit here and pardon my French, but just bitch about it. Right? Like, why did you even roll out of bed? Go back to sleep and start over, right? You just woke up to be mad at something. And one of the things I tell people all the time on our podcast that we push is we're going to bring something up. We're going to talk about it, complain about it if it's bad, but we're also going to praise it if it's good.
00:25:33
Speaker
And this is one of those things that I only think from the way it was laid out, the structure of the whole thing, the morning announcement, the afternoon follow-up to the Q&A, whatever, the whole announcement was handled very well.
00:25:46
Speaker
We talked about that on the show with, you know, so we did the whole two-parter on the Killian Lou story and kind of the model minority. We kind of had both Brian and Michelle on who have been on a couple of times. And one of the things that we had talked about on that episode was we want to revisit this. We were nervous about Kamagawa because, you know, at that point there was only rumors about it.
00:26:13
Speaker
when Kamagawa hit and we saw the amount of thought that went into it. And you touched a little bit on this actually two years ago.
Diverse Content Creation Strategies
00:26:23
Speaker
Well, going on two years ago with the show when you came on and talked about this idea that like change that people want to see are going to take time, right? Absolutely. They can be in the works and the effects are not going to be out yet. And this was one of those areas. So when we came around to Kamagawa, nervous. Yeah.
00:26:43
Speaker
As soon as that first Q&A happened and they admitted to cultural consultants and they put that person front and center, we were already planning on getting back together to record when Kamagawa came out and we started out with like, hey, we need to acknowledge that this is something that they did well, right? Absolutely. We can't just harp on them for all of Strixhaven and then just come at this at a different angle and ignore it. We need to admit.
00:27:11
Speaker
This is where they improved. Like, is there still room to grow? Sure. I mean, other than just like the cultural impact that they got correct, like everything top to bottom on the marketing has been amazing. Beautiful. The whole anime trailer thing with like that, that was ridiculous, but like really cool. Like they literally checked all the boxes you could want.
00:27:35
Speaker
culturally, flavor-wise, look, feel. And I'm the one who didn't even like original Kamigawa. Like, I mean, seriously. And I'm looking at this and going like, yeah, there's nothing to complain about.
00:27:46
Speaker
Well, I think that was, you know, being a lore based podcast, War of the Spark, it was kind of the point where our show shifted because of, as you said, like story got taken away, then the way that we got it wasn't great. So it was like, we got everything. We got even the announcement that they were going to be doing story ahead of cards. Because what was happening was when story went to the wayside for a while,
00:28:10
Speaker
previews basically ruined any story that there was, you know, the cards were basically the set was spoiled. We knew kind of the story beats before we actually read a story. So yeah, we it's always one of those things that I want to acknowledge when people do good things as much as I also am going to be frustrated when they don't
00:28:30
Speaker
So I love to hear that you guys take the space to actually do that. Yeah, also talking about like cultural things they're doing. I don't think people are even aware they're about to have a D&D adventure book come out. I believe it's a book of like 13 adventures, if I'm not mistaken, that are all written in a new world setting within all ethnic writing crew.
00:28:51
Speaker
like top to bottom. Like so when people are saying like nothing's happening at Wizards and you know they just hired this whatever they her job is for cultural director or whatever just as a figurehead and like no things are happening but Wizards is a humongous ship. Ships don't turn fast. Like it takes a while. Yeah.
00:29:14
Speaker
Well, Daquan, you know, it's really funny because I kind of expected is we would have a pretty wide ranging discussion. And that's why when you made a joke about hijacking the show, I was like, yeah, I was already planning on that, or expecting it, hoping for it. This is me and my love of chaos. I mean, that is what I just bring people on with what we want to talk about. And then I know that there's going to be
00:29:37
Speaker
handing over of the range because I'm bringing you on for a reason. I just want to thank you for taking like that much time to even discuss how maybe people can start marketing themselves if this is a space that you want to be moving into and knowing that the landscape has shifted a lot. I really do think that it still has as you and I are discussing this from you know
00:30:01
Speaker
If you are going to be marketing in yourself thinking of that why and right now it might not just be I am a very good player. That's not necessarily going to be what's going to separate you. And even with this organized play announcement, it's still going to take these other questions that I think a lot of creators have not taken the time to think about. Oh, for sure. Even with the organized play thing, there's going to be a lot of angles you can cover.
00:30:27
Speaker
You can be the person who's doing the top 10 from the last weekend's tournaments. Somebody who's curating all this stuff online. You could be the person who's talking about the top deck in each of the different formats. You could be, well, honestly, just for being a standard arena content creator, I'm probably gonna get more views as more tournaments start. As people just looking for decks and ideas. There's going to be a lot of space for a lot of people, but you have to be willing to
00:30:54
Speaker
fairly and honestly look at the landscape and figure out where you're going to fit in. And how much time is going to then go into upfront investment on that? Correct. Just the amount of hours that are going to be spent.
00:31:07
Speaker
just thinking about these things, setting up marketing yourself, setting up how you're going to be selling. I think of it as if you want to do a podcast, this is one thing that I will throw out there for people because I've been asked sometimes about starting one. We didn't even put out an episode until we had two or three reported.
00:31:25
Speaker
Yeah. So people had stuff to follow up on after they listened to the first one. Right. And we did not want to be caught with like, Oh, cool. That was fun. Okay. Now we didn't get one recorded. Now we don't have something consistent. As you said, a lot of people, we were, we were kind of told by, uh, I think like the manna pool, Chewy from way back in the day of mountain energy content creation, uh, you've hit 10, you actually are a podcast in some ways. Um,
00:31:52
Speaker
we're, we're like 100 something now. And it's blowing my mind. So yeah, this is something else that like, when people come to my especially like my magic content, my gameplay content for the first time, they look at it. And they're just like, you know, I get a lot of comments of people going like, Oh, man, your stuff so different, or Oh, it looks way different than other stuff people are doing. And I said, what people don't realize is that's because I've literally stolen ideas from around the internet from a ton of different
00:32:19
Speaker
categories, creators, maybe not identically, but like a technique they use or something that I have brought in because I literally have set aside three to four hours every week just to find creators, a whole subject space, whatever, I know nothing about and just see how people are marketing it. Matter of fact, if I can have another couple of minutes here, oh my gosh, I have so, I have so, I may need to be back on the show. I have too much to talk about. We said from the very first time, it is always an open invitation.
00:32:48
Speaker
But one of the things I did at the beginning of the pandemic, I literally thought about what industry can I think of where somebody makes content, but they won't be able to do that thing, right? Because if they can make content, I can make a change of content. So I went looking for somebody who did stuff for cruise ships. Because I'm like, if you go on cruise, you absolutely are not going on cruise if you're in the pandemic, right?
00:33:10
Speaker
It was one of the first things I could, I'm sure there were other things, but it was one of the first things I could think of. I'm like, what industry is just going to be destroyed? I'm like, okay, let me think of something in travel that's unique. And I found an older gentleman, and I wish I could remember, it was like two years ago, but
00:33:25
Speaker
I was watching okay what is he doing okay he's he's following some of the news he's talking about the history of cruise ships like he's pivoting into this other stuff. In making it even more educational other than talking about like destinations and deals and whatever and still getting his views so like okay cool let me try to do an angle of that.
00:33:44
Speaker
but magic related, right? How can I turn this into some more educational stuff that other people aren't doing here in the early goings of the pandemic so they get something that's not just pandemic related, but still engaging, right? But that came from me finding a different space and understanding what other people are doing because nobody's taking that angle in the game space. So I become the one that's doing it.
00:34:10
Speaker
But I have to set myself time to research that to even know that that's out there.
Mental Health and Content Creation
00:34:15
Speaker
To make it work. Once again, you are doing something completely non magic related. From the outside, right? Like if somebody wants to be asking you what you're doing, it appears so far from magic. I mean,
00:34:28
Speaker
We had an easy pivot and I'll be honest about it because part of it is we were going to be talking about it because we were now going to be talking about how do you deal with this? How do you cope with it? There was a lot of elements of our show that were already set up for, okay, we've been in this lane. Now, how do we discuss about what you can do in a world where magic is shifting and how people are playing it? And we're also looking at
00:34:52
Speaker
how mental health is being impacted by something very real. More recently, we took it to the next level and kind of looked at teletherapy, for instance, because while that may have existed beforehand, I wasn't doing it. It was very specialized. It was very kind of niche for people to even offer teletherapy. We sure in the hell weren't doing it at the VA. If we were, it was to some very remote rural areas and it was well underserved.
00:35:18
Speaker
But guess what? My job overnight completely shifted to 95%. Even at this point with me being back and us being quasi open, I got people that are risk aversive that aren't coming in. So it makes sense now that this is a wider topic to discuss. So for us, it was kind of like, okay, great, we have a pivot. And that's a good space though, you know, because I did a couple of those videos.
00:35:47
Speaker
One, because I was out on a camping trip and I specifically made a point that I'm going to record something here so people see that I'm not just at my computer, right? Even though people saw me every day making content and I literally have not missed a day of content since February 1, 2020.
00:36:02
Speaker
right? But I wanted people to see it like, hey, even I'm making adjustments. So I'm not just sitting at my computer every day, like you might see a video from me every day. But I've pre recorded some things, I'm making sure I'm giving myself time, basically giving other people permission. Because you know, sometimes you just need that example.
00:36:19
Speaker
of somebody saying like, it's okay to go do something else. Right? Here it is. You know, I went and did a video with the professor where the actually he was like the only person I think I engaged with for at least a year and a half. Literally, we got together, we talked about it online, we talked about matter of fact, we did three videos, but one got eaten by the technology gremlins. But we talked about different subjects we were going to do. We quarantined for 10 days, we both got COVID tests.
00:36:46
Speaker
I drove to visit them. We did two days of content, and then I drove back. That was literally it. But it was about what is the future going to look like? How do people deal with being away from their friends and whatever? And how do we deal with this weird time as gamers? And doing that whole mental health talk, because I think, again, some people just needed to hear it from people that they knew or appreciated or whatever. So they had the example to say, it's OK to feel a little different. It's OK.
00:37:15
Speaker
do things differently right now because the world is different. And I think that was hard for people to accept, but it was big as we started seeing more creators saying like, hey,
00:37:26
Speaker
It's all right. Things aren't normal right now. You don't have to pretend it's normal. Yeah, yeah, you cannot be okay. It's okay to not be okay. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, I am most days. I mean, that's one of the things that I wanted to talk make sure that I get a chance to talk about as a mental health professional. I'm very open about my own mental health. And, you know, I always kind of find it funny to
00:37:47
Speaker
I think that within my field, there's often this perception that, you know, like, we're not going to have bad days, or we're not going to let it impact our work. And it's just such bullshit that it's just funny to me, because it's like, obviously, you know, we did our teletherapy, teletherapy episode, people were talking about like, well, you know, for me as a patient, it's difficult, because I might be tempted to be looking at another window or be distracted. And I just want to always be like, yeah, it's not just you. Like,
00:38:12
Speaker
Yeah, sorry to say, but your provider probably is also going to be likely to be distracted or have those things happen. And that is a thing that is different that we're navigating in a world of therapy now. That was the thing I had to work on while making content is like, like I said, even having the awareness
00:38:29
Speaker
that I need to be present for people that need to unwind from their COVID world. Right. But even then there were times that I'm like, you know, I've got something going on on the side or somebody's responding to an email or sending me a message. I'm like dealing with that while I'm streaming, but you know, knowing that like, I need to give these people my proper attention. Right. So like, but you're still kind of like in that space of like, ah, how much of myself can I give? Right. And you, and I think that's been hard on creators too, is understanding that
00:38:57
Speaker
you know, it's okay to just say, Hey, guys, I'm not streaming tonight. You know, I'm not feeling it. I'm a little tired, whatever it is, right? And honestly, I think you do yourself more service to say, we're just not going to put out our normal content today, for personal reasons, then instead of doing it and one being miserable getting through it, but to just not putting out a quality product for your audience, like nobody wins if you do that. Yep, you risk damaging your brand enough that doing it
00:39:28
Speaker
And I will say, one of the things I've been most excited to see in the last even six months, more so, is people saying that. Like, hey, you know what? Like, I'm not in a good mental health space right now. I'm taking tonight off. And, you know, we'll talk about the idea that, yes, you got to have a consistent product. Like, that's something that's important.
00:39:48
Speaker
But the people who have that consistent product that are then willing to say like, you know what? Yes, but tonight's not happening.
Intentionality in Content Creation
00:39:54
Speaker
And to just not make necessarily excuses for it, not to explain it away or try to just push through. It's making a difference to have these conversations. I mean, it's what I, yeah, I just am excited to see. I think the one thing creators need to understand is you always control your narrative.
00:40:12
Speaker
whatever it is, don't let the tail wag the dog, right? Like, you are in control, you decide what's good for you or not, and your audience will follow. If they're going to be upset, and I tell people a time, like, matter of fact, I had somebody the other day, try to explain to me that, like, well, if you do this this way, and this thing, you'll get more viewers faster, whatever. I said, that's cool. But that's not the audience I'm trying to cultivate.
00:40:35
Speaker
So if it takes me an extra month to get that extra thousand subscribers on YouTube or whatever, then I'm okay with that because I know the people that are here understand my messaging. They're here to support me. If I'm into a thing or into a product, they're going to be more likely to support it or buy it or whatever, right? I'm building a particular audience. I'm not going to push myself into doing things I don't find entertaining or I don't find beneficial just for the sake of hitting numbers.
00:41:00
Speaker
Because in the long run, I'm just going to end up maybe, maybe I don't even know if it's true, but maybe I might have a little more money. But I'm still going to be miserable producing that type of content to feed that audience. So it doesn't do me any good in the long run. The trade off between it, you know, there, there, there is something that is very, very real. Like, yes, more money allows for flexibility and freedom. And there also is you putting out a product that you enjoy and that is going to not weigh on you in some ways to put it out. Yeah.
00:41:32
Speaker
No, I think it's a tough narrative because I do think people are likely to take every negative comment to heart. And you just can't when you're a content creator. Understand that if you're doing everything purposeful and you have a reason for everything and there's a long-term strategy and whatever, then you're doing what's necessary for your plan.
00:41:56
Speaker
And not everybody is going to agree with every action. It's impossible. You know, like if I get 300 comments on a YouTube video, well, I know that at least 10 or 15% of them are probably not going to like what I did. They're going to complain about something in my video. Like, unless it's a consistent complaint, then I can't really do anything about it. I just, you know, matter of fact, I think it was somebody said, well, sometimes I don't like it when you take as long to make a decision in your video or whatever.
00:42:23
Speaker
But I politely explained to him, okay, I appreciate the input, but I have had a lot of people specifically comment that I take longer to explain all my thoughts and everything else. So they understand why actions are happening. And sometimes that causes me to play a little bit slower because I have to process, plan, then communicate those things in exact words. So the listener can actually understand what's going on in my head before I make the action, right? Because it's just the speed of arena. So it's going to feel a little slower.
00:42:47
Speaker
And that's okay. Like if that viewer doesn't enjoy my content because of that, I have to accept that that viewer is going to have to go away because he's not into my educational style of content. And that's okay. Like there's going to be way more people that are. And that's fine. And that's for everything, right? People have to understand that like YouTube gets whatever the dumb number was I saw that day, something like
00:43:08
Speaker
10 billion views a day or some insane number. Like there are plenty of views to be had. You know what I mean? Like it's not a zero sum game is what you're saying. Yeah. Oh my gosh. That's the other thing. Like we got to get over this whole like combative. This person's only getting views for this reason or I'm not getting views for this or whatever. Like everybody can get views.
00:43:32
Speaker
Like everybody can get followers, subscribers, whatever, likes, and whatever. There's so much interaction online that nobody is even going to get 1% of the pie. Hell, you're lucky to get one 10th of 1% of the pie. You would be, and you would be the biggest content creator in the world if that happened, right? There's so many interactions to be had just because somebody else is getting something, isn't the reason you're not getting something.
00:43:57
Speaker
We have to understand how to compartmentalize stuff, grade ourselves appropriately, and say, okay, what can I do better or wrong? Or honestly, there's people, and I'm going to admit, people I don't like watching, but I still at least look and go, let me see what they're doing to get their audience. And is that something I can do, but still get the audience I want? Because they're doing something right for some sector of people.
00:44:21
Speaker
And is that a sector that I want to have eyes on my product? Exactly. And again, that comes down to doing that research and analyzing because just copying that person might get me an audience I don't want in the long run or that I can't entertain in the long run, right? Like again, not talking about CGB's audience being bad, but if they want a certain style of play or a certain personality on camera, over time, I'm going to be miserable trying to pretend to be something I'm not.
00:44:50
Speaker
So it's not even worth it for me to worry about that. If they come over naturally because, you know, cross-pollination or whatever, and they like my stuff, great. But I'm not going to go out of my way to mimic CGB to try to build the same audience he built.
00:45:03
Speaker
And I would say that to me that makes sense in terms of this idea of intentionality because by doing it, you would run the risk also of potentially losing some of your audience that you have that you actually value. Absolutely. And I think that our biggest thing that we're harping on this year to date four months in is intentionality. Like everything we've been talking about.
00:45:24
Speaker
On our episodes, it's been an undercurrent that's been consistent is intentionality and value system. Honestly, it started with us talking about just a new style of planner and this idea of a planner that's not just a to-do list but really is purposeful.
00:45:41
Speaker
It was created for that reason and there's a reason that it appeals to Alex and I is because there's an intentionality to it that really forces you well if you choose to use it it encourages you to be intentional and to kind of explore your value system and I think that
00:45:58
Speaker
I would love to see a lot more discussion about people's value system and what their priorities are. Let me talk about, this will probably be the last thing so I can let you close your show. It's already into two parts. We're fine. This is one of the things I talk about when I consult with people that kind of blows their mind. So if anybody's wondering like how serious I am about what I do.
00:46:21
Speaker
When I started, before I started streaming, I would literally watch. I tried to set a time aside to do about an hour and a half to two hours of just flipping through different streams of people playing a magic, but a few other games. But I tried to focus on magic knowing that, okay, I'm probably gonna be playing arena once I made my mind up. And I looked at different time zones and different times throughout the night. And I wanted to know who's on, how many people are on, what are the average views, whatever. And I just kept a little spreadsheet. I wish I still had it.
00:46:48
Speaker
But even going through there, I'm like, OK, well, who are people watching during this time? Who are people watching during this time? And what I realize is, OK, there's fewer people to compete with if I get on after prime time in the US, which works out because I'm on the West Coast. So if I start streaming at nine o'clock, a bunch of the people that are on at seven and eight in most time zones in the US are either done or they're coming close to finishing, which creates two things. One, I had less competition.
00:47:15
Speaker
And two, there's a chance I get some of those people that raid me because they see that I'm on or whatever. So I get an audience. The other thing was understanding who was on during that time now that I've chosen my time slot. And what I realized is that's actually the right time for being just after work for a lot of people in Australia and New Zealand.
00:47:33
Speaker
So I started researching what's going on in Australia and New Zealand because I knew some of them were going to come into my chat so that I could actually communicate with them on things that matter because they're English speakers. They're probably going to be watching some English streams and magic.
00:47:47
Speaker
And literally, like coincidentally, a couple months later, I think is when those fires started in Australia. So I tried to keep up on topic, ask some of them about where they live. And I'm like, Oh yeah, I saw this on a map and you know, whatever. And what happened is I also learned a lot about, as a matter of fact, fun fact, they're natural animals, like kangaroo in Australia, but not because it lives there, but because it always moves forward.
00:48:10
Speaker
I was like, it's one of the most beautiful things. You know, like, but this is stuff to communicate with them things out. I learned that it's okay to call people from New Zealand Kiwi because I had to ask, I'm like, is this an insult? Because like people say that here in the States, but like, you know, we're dumb Americans sometimes. Like, I don't know. And they're like, yeah, everybody says Kiwi. I'm like, all right, cool. But what happened is I was able to cultivate an audience right off the bat because several of the Australians and New Zealanders
00:48:37
Speaker
came in and started hanging out. And they're like, oh, there's other people from Australia here and other people from New Zealand here. And it just became a normal thing. And I still have some of those people as regular. Some of them are subscribed for like a year and a half or two years now, you know, because they've been coming in. But it's that level of intentionality to say, OK, not just when am I going to stream, who am I likely to see during this time that I may not know about? Because obviously I know about Americans and everything going on, but it's who else might be watching.
00:49:04
Speaker
And even that level helped me ramp up. I never, after month one or two, I don't think I had a stream with less than 10 people on my stream. And if you read all the stats and whatever, they tell you some insane number, like 90% of all people that stream on Twitch never get more than five people. Which sounds ridiculous to me that like you would stream for more than two or three years and not get more than five viewers, but it happens for a lot of folks. So yeah, a lot of stuff I do when people think I have a secret sauce.
00:49:34
Speaker
You know, because they look at my numbers on Twitch and on YouTube and whatever and like, how are you able to do this? And I was like, I actually had somebody yesterday accuse me of buying views and subscribers because there's no way I could have that many in two years without having a bunch of connections or whatever. And I'm like.
00:49:49
Speaker
No, that wouldn't do me any good. Anyway, they would all get blocked or whatever and I'd end up getting banned by YouTube. What would that do for me? People's perception of how those things really work versus how they just be dumb. It just be for bragging rights for something that doesn't even make money because they wouldn't be active, engaged viewers. So why even bother doing it? But I get it because people struggle and they look and say, there's no way you could do this. I said, no, there's understanding and there's things it's
00:50:16
Speaker
It's not an accident. You don't like sure you can get lucky and sometimes the right person shares the right thing. I don't know. Oprah talks about you or whatever. And everybody goes and watches your YouTube video or whatever it is. That'll happen. But that's a one in who knows 100,000 thing. Like it's just not likely to happen. But there's a lot of little things you can do to give yourself a chance. But it's all about intentionality. Like you're saying, understanding your message, understanding your goals, understanding your audience, like all of those things matter. And
00:50:46
Speaker
You can, I guess you can shortcut it if you have an understanding of everything you're doing. If you're just flying blind and just making it up as you go along or whatever, it's going to be way more difficult.
Conclusion and Contact Information
00:50:56
Speaker
There you go. I'll stop there. I was like, that is a great place to leave us. So do you want to tell people where to find you again? Yeah, you can find me everywhere on social media at Power Dragon P-O-W-R-D-R-A-G-N. I'm a ridiculous follow on Twitter if you want to come by. I have content up every single day on YouTube. And I also have a podcast called Color of Magic, where we talk about
00:51:20
Speaker
major issues that affect people at and away from their gaming tables and computers from all different aspects that aren't just talking about what's going on in the games, but around the games. You want social issues. You want other places to get some of that. They are a great resource. So well, thank you to Kwan. And once again, you are welcome back at any point because the conversations are always going to go long. And that's great for us. Yeah, I'm good for content of nothing else. Like I said, it's I'm glad people enjoy listening to me because I like to talk.
00:51:53
Speaker
And that's our show for today. You can find the host on Twitter. HotzQ can be found at HotzQ, and Alex Newman can be found at Mel.com. Send any questions, comments, thoughts, hopes, and dreams to at goblinmoorpod on Twitter, or email us at goblinmoorpodcast at email.com.
00:52:11
Speaker
If you want to support your friendly neighborhood gospel, the task can be found at patreon.com. Opening and closing music by Vindergotten, who can be found on twitter at Vindergotten, or online at vindergotten.bandcamp.com. Logo art by Steven Raffaele, who can be found on twitter at steveraffle.
00:52:34
Speaker
Goblin Lore is proud to be presented by Hipsters of the Coast as part of their growing Vorthos content as well as magic content of all kinds. Check them out on Twitter at hipstersmtg or online at hipstersofthecoast.com. Thank you all for listening and remember goblins like snowflakes are only dangerous in numbers.