YouTube Handles are coming

Here's mine, for the sake of clarity.

Hello everyone.

So I figured I should at the very least give you all who give a damn this update.

YouTube is releasing handles soon, and so now this one is reserved by me. I’ve added the underscores to help make sure it is unique enough to tell apart from any potential pretenders in the future. (If that ever becomes a problem… scammers know no bounds after all.)

I have to say, I considered changing my blog and channel name for a little bit while making this handle. Particularly because I am making a game right now, and have been considering if I am also going to be using this same name as my company name. But then it occurred to me that it doesn’t really matter if the names are different, because what matters is recognizability.

I need to be recognizable by those who are already watching my videos on and off, on a regular basis. And the name itself already works well enough as a company name, since the logo can be quite simple. I have an idea in mind already, but have not yet made it, so I cannot yet share it properly.

So JM40s_Game_Logs it is.

It should be easy to tell apart from fakes. It should be hard to mimic using O’s instead of 0’s. There are no 's in it as it’s just 0s. And most importantly, there are no numbers other than 40 to represent the word Forty in it as a pun on the Latin word Forti.

So if you ever see anyone using the name JohnnyManu40 in a game, that’s probably me. If you ever see any handles claiming to be me but don’t look exactly like the handle I have shown you already; it probably isn’t me.

This probably won’t be a problem for a long time to come, but I figure I might as well nip it in the bud as best as possible ahead of time, before that day comes; if at all.

But while you are here, what about that game I am making?

I can’t give too many details yet, as I need to get it trademarked first so I can protect my ‘intellectual property’ as best as possible first. But what I will share is this.

1. It will be a SNES style MMORPG. This is to make it super accessible for almost any kind of hardware, since almost anything a person is using today should be able to run it. If not, then it really is time for that person to upgrade somehow.

2. It will be free to play for anyone who subscribes to the blog. No purchase necessary. Yes, this means the game itself will have some sort of transactions enabled inside of it instead, like so many other free-to-play’s. However, I am doing it with a twist that should make it both very interesting for those who can’t afford to pay for games, and also can’t afford in game transactions.

3. It will have a hyper-functional economy in the game. Not just the usual bullshit you see with all the other games out there where there is a semblance of an economy that falls apart as soon as bots are used in it. People with a high degree of knowledge of economics will have a great time playing this. People without a high degree of knowledge of economics will still be able to have plenty of fun playing it, and learn some things along the way as well. OH, and one more thing… there will be a method included to allow for people to make a living while playing this game.

(C) Matt Groening? (Technically Disney owns it now)

Instead of fighting the gold traders, I’m going to employ them via a method I will not be sharing here, just yet. The reasons also cannot be shared yet, as that would be part of the trademark, the I.P, etc.

(C) Matt Groening ? (Technically Disney owns it now)

4. It will be based of the real world in many ways, but with some fantasy/mythological twists to make it interesting story wise.

5. This is probably the most important part. Death is not permanent entirely, but it does have its toll. Reviving a dead character will not be a trivial task. And… NPC’s can die too. You’ll understand why when I release the first Alpha play test after getting this trademarked.

This old comic strip from Matt Groening is probably the best one to explain my mindset on this. Death in my game will be permanent, mostly. It’s a game, so we need to bend the rules a little bit, right?

(C) Matt Groening? (Does Disney also own Life in Hell too due to The Simpsons?)

6. There will be many servers to accommodate many players, but the first days of release will be relegated to just a few servers, since I don’t expect millions of players off the bat. I expect tens to hundreds or maybe thousands of players at most. Due to the simplicity of the graphics and the game engine in use; I suspect having thousands of people on a single server should be doable. Possibly millions if ever it came down to it.

The game itself is already in production, but it’s still in its starting phases. I’m still drawing the overworld, some basic dungeons to test with, and some starting characters and NPCs.

And while I’m not hiring just as of yet, I will be eventually for the parts that I am just no damn good at. So if anyone is interested in getting into a indie project that aims high from the get go; let me know in the comments section below.

Finally. (Such a lie. When I say Finally, it hardly ever is… lol.)

There is a Discord being made available for the blog. It will be subscriber only. Once again, no purchase necessary.

I’m actually considering removing Stripe from my blog, because no one seems to really want to pay for anything like this anyways. I mean, who can blame them. It’s just words on a screen. Furthermore, I understand now that many people just workarounds to get past paywalls. Maybe if I started using the podcast function or the video function people might want to pay; but I highly doubt that as well.

So instead, I think I will just remove it. If I get enough traction on YouTube, I can get monetized that way anyways, and that will potentially pay more than any monthly subscriptions ever would.

Besides, people are mostly looking to save money lately it seems. So I can’t really blame them for not wanting to spare less than 10$ a month. Even I am looking at saving myself 10$ this month by getting bus tickets instead of a pass. Bus pass is 112$. Booklet of tickets is 33$ per booklet roughly last I checked. So 3 booklets should get to and from work each month, and save me 10$.

So I get it. Money is tight for many, and so I am thinking it’s best to just remove the paid function for now. I might reintroduce it later when it seems a better time to do so, but for now and the foreseeable future; the blog is free.

Donations will always be greatly appreciated of course though. I’ll probably put a link up to some way to donate straight to a bank account setup specifically for this. E-transfers are often free to send if you have a decent bank. I’ll just have to remember to send Substack some of it now and then for the nicety of them letting me use their service. Stripe was the way to do that, since they would take a cut off the top; but Stripe also takes a cut off the top.

So I want to make sure Substack gets its fair share too. I’ll have to work something out with them. Unless perhaps I don’t need to? We’ll see. Ultimately, bringing more people to Substack from the rest of the web is free advertisement of their service for them; so maybe they are happy with just that.

Anyways, thanks everyone for reading this far. Please consider subscribing so that you can receive these in your inbox. There are lots of people checking the blog out now and then, but not many subscribing, for whatever reason it may be for them. To each their own.

And since I did just tell my friend Mr.MacKay that doing a update to the current status of things like viewership is a good idea, I should probably follow my own advice, since it is the end of a month. Well… technically the first of the new month.

I could have just shown the month alone, but I wanted to share the whole. So I had to zoom out a bit. Sorry if it’s a bit blurry for some. But it shows the info.

See you all in the next one, when ever that is. I’ll be getting back to doing these entries more often here soon, now that I have my first month of my part time job behind me, and the employers seem happy with my performance. 2 more to go, and I’ll be past my probationary period, which will make it easier to not worry about things as much and I can focus again on this stuff more.

OH, and one last thing. You might have seen a picture I made for Mr.MacKay over on his blog. He commissioned some artwork from me for his blog, and so that’s been taking me some time to do as well. We’ve been talking a bit about some things, and you can find out more on that over in his blog. I won’t be sharing much about those things here, cause this place is about games. Not politics, law, philosophy or anything like that.

I might even be co-authoring an article with him that has to do with something that happened to me recently.

That’s a direct link to the post in particular with the image, and the details you might be looking for. I suggest giving him a subscription as well. You might not always like what he has to say on some things, but I think that’s true of anything said by anyone heard by anyone.

In the meantime, his commission for my artwork is part of what is helping make that game come to life. So I want to share it as much as possible, so that maybe others might commission me as well. Mr.MacKay is making that image free to use for anyone who wishes to do so. I only asked him to ask that people keep my initials in the bottom corner for recognizability. He graciously accepted my request.

I hope you all enjoy it.