Who says we have to upload video's each week, or each month for that matter? Just upload if there is something you would normally create a video for.
The laws of Youtube do.
To be a partner of Youtube, you have to actively upload videos and maintain a good amount of subscribers. It's also the laws of common sense. If we're never uploading videos (aka whenever we basically feel like it), we won't attract any audience. We'd barely hit 100 views on Youtube either unless it was something like Ocarina of Time 2D which gets picked up by a gaming news site. Even then, we'd get about 100k views max, and that would just be on one really interesting thing, not the whole lot.
For example, (I'm not one to boast myself, so don't take it as that), I uploaded a video of me playing Alien Swarm on a Pallet Town map I made. It was simply that, a test. Wasn't planning on releasing it, never am. Wasn't even closed to finish and had nothing in it. It was number 1 on Reddit for a while and got featured on Destructoid (alongside another Alien Swarm video), and as of now it has 158,077 views. 85% of those views came back from June/July when it got featured. This was nothing but luck and timing. I released the video about a day or two after Alien Swarm came out, so Reddit and Destructoid picked it up as "one of the first maps made for Alien Swarm". I hadn't uploaded that video with the intention of getting any views, I just wanted to show it off to some people I knew. I got lucky and got featured on a game news site because it was at the right time (unintentionally).
My point is, it's easier said than done. You can go and upload a video reviewing some random Zelda Fan Game that nobody's ever heard of, but you're not going to get anywhere. Nobody's searching for "Zelda Fan Games" on Youtube, or anything remotely similar. If you look up Zelda Fan Game on Youtube, you'll find most of them have 500 views tops, some have 1,000, some even have 40,000, but these have been from over the past 3+ years, and the ones with a lot of views have the named "OOT2D", notice a pattern? Hell, the few Shadowgazer videos I've seen have at least 40k average, but it's three videos. Even that didn't draw much attention to ZFGC though. We never constantly had people signing up to go "HEY WHEN DOES SHADOWGAZER RELEASE?" "IS IT COMING OUT ON DS?", which is a sign that a 'fan' game is drawing.
I'm not saying Lunar's idea is a bad one, infact, I think it's a great one, but Zelda doesn't draw as much as say... Pokemon. That's why a place like Pokecommunity is alive and still huge with it's ROM hacks and fan games, where as some place like this is dying and is barely active.
There's nothing, and besides that, nobody's interested. Bolded for importance.This Youtube thing is something that's going to need planning and time, not something we can jump into right away. We need content and activity before we can even think of starting this, and I don't mean what we have now with some random small projects and the few people posting like we do. We need ACTIVITY and CONTENT. Actual projects, a few big ones and lots of small ones. We need activity to the point where you wake up, or come home and you have to wade through dozens and dozens of posts, and before you even finish there's new posts. That's what you call an active community, not a few more people walking in here and saying "Hi, I like this game."
This brings to me my point of why ZFGC needs to change in a lot of aspects, not just bringing in a bit more activity. People see this place and think it's just a board for old friends to hang around in and talk, they get intimidated. Staff is pretty much made up of active members who are all friends (not that a staff shouldn't be friends), everyone posting pretty much has 1k+ posts on average and the usual "this place isn't very active". It's also filled with a lot of dead mess (topics).
Hate to say it, ZFGC is a one-trick-pony. We've all witnessed the community grow around a singular project twice over. Once with OoT2d (abandonware) and then again with Shadowgazer (abandonware). The in-betweens have never been good. The forum only works when there's a big project for people to gawk at.
As bad as it may sound; fangaming is more of an introductory/hobby thing... Most people who started developing here have moved on to their own IP's. It's a lot more satisfying to make something that's truly your own. It's because of this that I agree with Porkchop on just removing "Zelda" from the equation. Frankly, Zelda has kinda sucked for the past 10 years anyway.
In my completely honest opinion, ZFGC should be done. It's the community that people pine for in these threads, not the subject of the community. We're limiting ourselves by being "Zelda Fan Game Central", and the community just doesn't exist anymore. Make something new. Make something different. Whatever community is still here will obviously be there too, so what's the difference. Right now it's just silly how this forum lingers and lingers when it could just die and have something better come out of it's remains.
This this this this this this this.
This so much.Mammy and I have had our differences, but I've never agreed with him so much on something.
This is also why I mentioned the "merge" with GDU a second time. I actually talked to Wally again after I mentioned it, and he said he wasn't really interested in doing a merge, he said he's got some of his own plans for GDU and I can't wait to see how they play out, and I'll be there to help him if he needs it.
HOWEVER, I still think that merge is a great idea, not for ZFGC or for GDU, but for the community. ZFGC doesn't revolve around fan games or even game development that much anymore, and hasn't for a long time.. 95% of the active people here are here for the community. There's absolutely no doubting that.
Now that I'm putting more thought into, no, not a merge. A migration of sorts however would be nice. Head over to GDU, check it out, maybe even sign up and start posting there. That's what it's there for, game development as a whole, and for a community. Wally's hopes (at least to my knowledge!) is for GDU to be what ZFGC used to be, community and development wise. A nice community where games are being made.
He's not trying to be some !@#$% who wants to steal the community away from this place and act like top gun. He wants to see his site boom into a place full of activity and game development. He's not ruling with an iron fist, infact, he's pretty lax on everything. It's not the most active place in the world, but it's getting there slowly.
This was our intentions with that whole NuZFGC deal back in '09. It wasn't to try and steal this place away, it was nothing but good intentions of getting this place up and running and to it's fullest again. To make it a new place, but also a recognizable home for everything it used to be.
In end... what's there to lose? Your staff position or post count?
Anyway, time for bed, please don't let this be a thread full of drama and personal vendettas when I wake up.