Things which never happen...

So a couple of months ago I wrote a state of the union update where I said I was going to lean into the channel's gradual stagnation by starting to treat things more as a pub conversation about stuff, and so I threw away all traces of professionalism to make a couple of cosy chats about games, starting with something about Transport Tycoon Deluxe, and...

Well okay, I'm always going to do fairly well out of Transport Tycoon but that tends to swiftly drop away even if I move on to other Chris Sawyer games let alone anything more distant and... er...

At this point I have a problem because there are probably some expectations here. I have to consider carefully exactly how I want to dash those expectations violently against the rocks of my own inherent distractibility and inability to keep to a single theme.

Moment of clarity: putting out a channel retrospective is probably too self-indulgent a move.

I need to work out how much of these sudden, unexpected breakout hits is a latent audience which is absolutely down for seeing me talk about transport management games and how much is the slightly more informal, casual style - therefore while I'm expecting a nosedive in the viewing figures, it can't be a situation where I'm trying to work out whether it's because I stepped outside transport strategy or because I stepped outside the notional remit of anything the channel has ever done before.

We've never had a channel retrospective or a Non Computer Thing so it makes the most sense to return with one of my retro programming videos, which was next off the queue anyway. I enjoy doing these and I like the idea that December's video ends up being about something techy and maybe a little DOS-focused regardless of what happens to the DOScember hashtag.

That is likely to set the tone for 2026, based on the outcome of said release:

1. If it does reasonably well and seems well-received then I'll treat this as a sign that I should do more transport game and Chris Sawyer stuff, on the basis it's healthy for the channel without forcing it into one niche.
2. If it gets an overwhelmingly hostile reaction then that will be a sign that I should steer clear of topics which bring a lot of people to the channel who want to actively prevent me making anything else. (Not watching is fine; I don't expect people to be interested in all the same things I am. Being angry that I am interested in it, on the other hand...)
3. If it absolutely bombs then, well, back to the total creative freedom plan from the 6K state of the union I guess.
4. If it's another huge breakout then I'm going to crawl under the table and sit there rocking myself while I panic about what to do next.

My expectation is for option 1 to be the most likely outcome by some overwhelming margin, followed by 3, and 2 such a weird outlier I'd start by checking how many people saw this blog post. As to option 4... well, it lives in the walls and there's a surprisingly catchy song about it.

The good news is that everything suggests the more easy-going, natural style where I try to make things more like a pub conversation (disregarding that a pub conversation tends not to be largely scripted and entirely one-sided) is the right approach, even if I'm not quite ready to branch out into wider topics yet.