Saturday, November 28, 2015

Codex of Aegis State of the Union -- 2016 edition

Okay, yeah. I get it. It's still like, the very end of November of 2015. Well guess what, buddy -- that means its two months until 2016, which, if its good enough for EA Sports, its good enough for me as well.

Basically, for those of you unacquainted, the State of the Union is basically the "New Years Resolutions" of the Codex of Aegis group, except it never actually happens on New Years. This is basically the details on everything Codex of Aegis related, and what to look forward to in the future about it. Think of it like Christmas but for some shitty series of blogs and youtube channels you don't care about as much.

However, before we continue into the future, you must always look to the past. Or something. Let's look at last years(?) State of the Union to see what we made and what we didn't:
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"Codex of Aegis

First off, in the last post I hinted at the idea of a Codex of Aegis compilation ebook, with extra features, commentary, and the rest of the works. It was originally slated for Winter 2014, but it never came out -- and that was purposeful on my part. To make sure I would have enough content to work with in making the book, I decided to set a point in which I finally start making it after I upload X amount of stories. Well, as of today, the X amount has been reached -- so I'm now announcing that Codex of Aegis will go on hiatus while I'm busy compiling it. I plan to add the following:


  • All stories from the blog's inception up until today's
  • Commentary/critique on each one
  • A special "Astuka Looks Back" section
  • A few chapters to a book that was originally going to be released in 2014 but will now be later
As for price and release date, I'm still working on it -- though I hope to finish by at least Summer 2015."
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Besides the Summer 2015 release window, everything about this part is *relatively* still correct. I'm not going to spend much time on this because the big book update/preview post is still up and updated as far as possible.  Well, except the whole Summer 2015 part. But I promise guys, it's coming Winter 2016. Probably. Maybe Spring 2016. Promise.

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"
The Blogs
As Codex of Aegis will be busy hibernating, I intend to start updating this a lot more. I already have 2 posts planned for next week with some ideas for more. I also plan on starting another blog for more dumb clickbait stuff, since apparently that's "in". So that means there would be 3 blogs: one for stories, one for nonfiction kind of stuff (this one), and finally the new blog (which might end up being monetized, but I don't know)."
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So what ended up happening was that Codex of Aegis was hibernating with the occasional progress post,  but Astuka's Blog isn't really as active as I intended it to be. Whoops. Still, I feel like enough content is put on here to justify an occasional visit, and from what I've seen of analytics it seems that the view count is pretty constant. As for the clickbait site, that was put off fairly soon after The Best of the Youtube died out. The idea of putting on someone else's stuff just isn't what I wanted to do, anymore at least. I found that the most fun I really had doing Best of the Youtube was doing my own commentary over what I thought was dumb, and the community's reaction to it. Not just rereleasing dumb videos for a bunch of views. But yeah, no more clickbait. Sorry.

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"AstukaGaming

Recently there has been some talk internally on making AG season 2. I can't say yet that we're dedicated to making it, but I have made the AstukaGaming channel an "official Codex of Aegis" channel, and plan to do the same with Best of the Youtube tomorrow. As always, the podcast will keep going, and I'm thinking of legitimately doing some "casual streaming" on astukari as time goes on."
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 Interesting enough, AstukaGaming is the only part that has gone beyond its goals (though I guess now the whole thing would be called "astukari.". Though there has been no AG season 2 and Best of the Youtube is, of course, dead, astukari is expanded a great deal. There was the short astukari show, the details of which will be described later -- the podcast continued and added in the Link to the Past, which hopefully more of will be made soon, and many more hopeful additions to the channel. 

Well, that's all for the past. Let's look toward the future:
Codex of Aegis

As the compilation book is still being worked on, it's likely that Codex of Aegis will stay dormant for some time, mostly because if I add anything I feel like it would ruin the value of the book itself (hopefully I'll figure out some way to fix this problem in the future). Instead, I'll try my best to work on the only real thing I can work on on that site, which is the Guardians of Enthia stuff. I plan on making a page on there that's dedicated to the series -- it will have chronological links to all the chapters as well as some stuff for the wiki, as well as any additional stuff I've done for it (including the Astuka Looks Back stuff).

Astuka's Blog

This blog will... well, it will probably stay exactly the same as it is now. Whenever I have something I plan on writing that doesn't fit on Codex of Aegis or Astukari, I'll probably just put here.
Astukari

Astukari, as a channel, will continue its normal functions. Astukari as a mini-podcast, however, will likely stop functioning due to the fears I had for it going in, which was content. Since the podcast was biweekly, I feel like making Astukari weekly would be the only way to give it enough merit to exist while still having time to generate content for it, but unfortunately the content side didn't really work out.

AstukaGaming

Like I've mentioned previously,  AstukaGaming is, and still will be, the gaming stuff between me and Vaughan as well as anyone else we decide to bring along, assuming we do bring anyone else along. Anything that's not gaming -- or does not have more than 2 people -- aren't considered to be apart of AstukaGaming. This may change in the future, however, depending on how convoluted/confusing it gets.

AG Podcast

The AstukaGaming podcast is the AstukaGaming podcast. Seriously. It will keep continuing as normal far towards the foreseeable future, giving you the best in week-old gaming news in fairly biweekly intervals.

Link to the Past 

Though its been some time since our Battlefront 2 LttP,  we have no plans to stop or cancel the series and once we find another game that is common between the both of us we'll probably make another LttP episode -- however, until then, nothing is planned.
Endurance Run

Those of you who occasionally view the youtube channel may notice a new series is up called "Morrowind Endurance Run". This was my way of finding an excuse to frequently and casually do twitch streams as well as regular uploads -- Morrowind is a fairly laid back game that takes a lot of time to beat. If I stream the game fairly regularly for, say relatively 45 minutes every few days, it would ideally increase my activity on Twitch and Youtube. Plus, its fun to do and in my opinion actually entertaining in these first few parts. I would recommend!
Videologica Obscura

Though just a simple concept for now, Videologica Obscura is the name of a show that I've been brainstorming for quite some time now. It's, at its core, a kind of review show -- only for the most obscure, weird, or just plain dumb shit possible. Basically the commentary works a lot like it did in BotYT, where I'll either record gameplay myself and then record some commentary in post or, if the game is too obscure, find some gameplay video and commentate over that. I do plan on editing this a lot more than I did for BotYT, however.

The Best of the Youtube

F

Extra Life

In case you didn't know, early this November we did our third annual Extra Life. Honestly, it wasn't as good as the others, and I think its due to this that I'm going to change the formula in the future. More updates on the changes will be discussed in the future.