July 2018 Channel Update

June was fun and July wants to kill me. It’s going to be in the 90s all week. So to start off I will not be streaming this week. I will have reruns for this week on twitch. YouTube we will be having more BFA content and overwatch videos hear and there.

Battle for Azeroth Prepatch should be hitting live really soon so you know I will be doing videos about that. Also with Prepatch hitting soon beta will be more locked in and I will be doing videos about things going on in BFA beta. I’m sure we will have other updates from other blizzard games as well.

So that will be July I will also be doing videos about iOS 12 when things are added or changed in the public beta. We are just like 6 weeks away from Battle for Azeroth. So I’m supper pumped about that and just counting down the days. See you guys next time.

June 2018 Channel Update

June is here it’s time for fun in the sun and more youtube videos. I’m making a few notable changes this month. You might have noticed at least one of them right now, while the other you will see next week.

Since I started doing YouTube under cybermikeb gaming and then when I changed it to life, I’ve always done let’s plays. Whether I wanted to or not I’ve done let’s plays over the last few years and even though it’s easy content to make, I’m not always completely into it. So I’ve decided to stop doing lets plays on this channel. I’m not saying I’ll never do them again but if I do I’ll probably do them on my twitch channel.

Now that I have a few days open I’m going to change my upload schedule. I’ve been doing 5 days a week for the last few months. Now I’m going to be uploading 3 days a week to allow some breathing room for each video. I will have videos Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

Finally I just want to say that I connected my instagram account to my facebook page. You can follow me on instagram im cybermikeb. Also I figured out how to change my page from being cybermikeb gaming to now its cybermikeb life. 

So that is about it for June. I will have a lighter upload schedule, no more lets plays on youtube, and follow my on instagram. If you all wanted a TLDR. As always look forward to WoW, Overwatch, HoTs, and a little of hearthstone content coming this month. So until next time bye!

April 2018 Channel Update

It’s April which means it’s time to go over what will be happening this month. We will be finishing up Rime this week and we will be starting up a new let’s play at the end of the week. We will be playing the bonus episode of Life is Strange Before the Storm. We will also have a new hearthstone expansion coming out this month so look forward to a pack unpacking video. 

We will also have GG Blizz and byte size news this month as well. I probably should also talk about my move to TWiTCH. Once again Ive switched from youtube gaming to TWiTCH, mostly it was because I like the tools like reruns on TWiTCH. Ive been enjoying the switch and I think this will be my streaming home for while. Thats about all for April, as always I will let you know if anything major happens during the month, here and on social media.

March 2018 Channel Update

February is now in the books and we had a pretty good month. I launched to new shows GG Blizz and Byte size news. These shows are on the channel every other Monday from each other. I also just finished up my Bear With Me lets play.

Bear with me was such a good game, it was a lot better than I thought it would be just being some indie game on steam. This game made me cry twice, (though that seems to be a running theme lately). I would highly recommend anyone to play threw it, or you can watch my play threw conveniently in a playlist below.

Now that Bear With Me is done that means I need another game to play, I have decided on Rime. I don't know much about the game other than it is a action puzzle game. I normally try and find games I haven't herd too much about. The first episode should be out on Friday and this should take me threw March.

With that all out of the way I probably should touch on the monetization issue. As of Febuary 20th my channel and a lot of other channels lost their Youtube Partnership due to the new policy for becoming a youtube partner. I wont be making any money off ads and I'm no longer part of FullScreen. Though they are still letting channels that were effected still use some of their tools. Ive gone over this in depth more in another blog post.  Over all this wont really change anything on this channel I just wanted to give you all a update.

This month should be a good month filled with plenty of content grate gaming and plenty of tech news. As always if things change I will let you know here and on social media.

Byte Size News Joins the Line up

This week I’m launching yet another new show, this time it’s a tech news show called Byte Size News. I will be doing this show opposite of the blizzard show GG Blizz. Byte size news will go over some of the tech headlines of the past week and will be around 5 minutes or less. So enjoy this pilot episode.

GG Blizz

Today I’m announcing a new show on the channel called GG Blizz. This will be a bi weekly Blizzard news show. I will go over the past weeks Wow, heroes of the storm, hearthstone, Diablo, and Starcraft. Enjoy this weeks pilot episode.

Thank You Fullscreen

At the end of last month YouTube announced changes to their partner program, and as a result anyone with lass than 1,000 subs and 4,000 watch hours in the last 12 months are losing monintization. This goes into effect February 20th. Also on that date my fullscreen contract will be terminated. 

With that being said, nothing is going to change on the channel. Being such a small channel I never have made much money. Over the 3 years or so I’ve been part of the partner program and fullscreen I’ve made $8 and that’s thanks to fullscreen. 

I also have to give fullscreen credit for how they have handled this whole thing, this really out of their hands and they have been nice enough to let me and others effected by this still have access to some of their tools. For me my most used tool is epidemic sound, which is were I get all the music I use in my videos. This has been a cost saver for me as a creator. For the views I normally get on a video the service would cost me around $15 a month. For fullscreen to continue to let creators who they will no longer make any money on after the 20th is extremely kind. 

Now this isn’t another YouTube the company is being terrible and here’s why post, I already did one of those and you can check that out here. This post is to thank say thank you to fullscreen. They have been a grate MCM and have always been helpful when I’ve had issues with YouTube or with some tool on their site. I’ve learned how to be a better creator thanks to their tips and community. My channel only had 10 subs when I joined I’m now 332 strong and growing thanks to the fullscreen community. I truly feel that is fullscreen’s best tool, their community. 

It was a post that Panser/ Tradechat made on her Facebook page now 3 years or so ago about fullscreen, so I have to thank her for that. I also want to thank pinsky for pretty much always being around in the community and being a face to a otherwise faceless company. 

This isn’t really the end of anything really I will still have access to some of the fullscreen tools and access to the community. I just wont have a contract with them until I meet the the new guild lines for the YouTube creator program and reapply with fullscreen, which I will do the second I can. I just wanted to take a moment to thank them and making the upside down topsy turvy world of YouTube just a little bit of a better place.

February 2018 Channel Update

January is already over and its now February, that means its time for me to update you all about what is going on. Last month we finished up 2 lets plays, Grim Fandango and Life is Strange Before the Storm. Both grate games. We also had a bit of news from beloved games such as World of Warcraft and Heroes of the Storm. 

So what is their to look forward to in February? Well we have the current lets play of Bear with me which started this week. If you want to get caught up I'll leave the first episode at the bottom of this post. News is already poring out about World of Warcraft Battle for Azeroth, I will be making videos on that stuff. Like always I will be streaming.

Thats about it for this month if something else happens I will as always let everyone know here and on my social media. So until next time bye!

My Thoughts on the Youtube Partner Program Changes

Late Tuesday night after I was done streaming, I started seeing things about changes to the Youtube Partner Program. Course this is never good and this was the worst change yet. The TLDR is in order to be a partner channel you will have to have 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watched minutes with in the last 12 months to be considered for the partner program and Im losing partner status sometime in February. 

Wow where do I start with this… Well lets start at the start of the year with Logan Pulls controversy and Youtube taking actions agents him and saying they would be making some changes. This already signaled to me that wasn't going to be good for anyone. Now we know what changes they made and they make no sense. Mostly these new rules just punish smaller channels that you know don’t film dead body’s and are just trying to make a living. 

Like I said before the new rules are 1,000 Subs and 4,000 watch minutes within 12 months. The second part of this is actually fine. On my channel im just shy of that watch minute requirement, but the 1,000 subs needed is just wrong. I think its a well known secret that youtube subscriptions mean nothing. I currently have about 330 subscribers to my channel and 86% of my views come from non subscribers and only 13% of my views come from subscribers. Now im just a very small channel but I watch a lot of big youtubers and I’ve herd similar things from them as well that most of their views also come from non subscribers.

I know why they put the subscriber numbers as a requirement, they need a way to let the advertisers know the audience size and its part of youtube algorithm. In reality though the number means nothing, watch minutes mean way more. 

For me it has nothing to do with the money I already wasn’t making money since the last changes, and even before that I didn’t make much a few cents here maybe a dollar there. What it really is about them opening the program to just about everyone and then because of a few big youtubers and poorly placed ads now the small youtubers have to pay the price and have the rules changed from underneath them.

I know life isn’t fair but if I agreed to one set of rules and Youtube changes the rules after I think youtube should be stuck with me unless I brake that agreement. I feel its wrong that they are changing the rules, I feel the channels in the partner program should be grandfathered in. I also think they should drop the the subscription portion of the rules and have it be just the 4,000 watch minutes maybe even up it a bit. Though lets face it Im talking into the void of the internet and youtube isn’t going to listen unless its coming from one of its advertisers.

New Year some new changes

Happy new year to everyone. Its 2018 now and its been months since I last did a channel update. A few things have changed since Auguest which I think was my last channel update. Ive been streaming more on youtube and have gotten lots more subs on the channel. I just want to take a moment to say thank you to everyone who shows up to the streams and watches my videos. Be cause of this I did make a streaming schedule which I will link to here. Its always subject to change so keep an eye on it.

Now that I got that out of the way, lets talk about some little changes you will see this year. The first one you might have noticed shortly after Xmass I started using a new intro video. When I bought Final Cut Pro I also got motion. I learned basics on how to use it and ended up making this quick intro for my videos. I just felt it was time to have my own instead of using the Full Screen Arcade intro. Im still with Full Screen / Arcade im just not using their intro anymore.

On to games now which are pretty much the meat of this channel. I should be finishing Grim Fandango in the next week or so. Once that is over I will be getting back into Life is Strange: Before the Storm. That will be the last episode in that game, and I cant wait to see the end. Though we kind of already know coleys fate. As far as PTRs for blizzard games are censured we have 7.3.5 PTR for wow which maybe on live by the end of this month. We also have Heroes of the Storm PTR which has a new hero on it right now. Im sure as we get threw the month more stuff will be announced for other blizzard games.

Thats about all for now I just wanted to do updates again and will try to do them again every month. So until next time bye!

Streaming Schedule

So people have been asking if I could make a schedule for streaming. So here it is:

These times are always subject to change so follow me on twitter or like the Facebook page, I will always post any updates. If I need to change times or days around long term I will update that on this spread sheet: http://bit.ly/2BrvuWS . All times are EST since that is my time zone. I will also say most holidays I will probably not stream but once again look to twitter and Facebook for announcements. 

I hope this is useful for everyone.

August 2017 Channel Update

You know whats fun, putting out one fire for two more fires to pop up. Last month I talked about how I fixed the problem I was having with my computer and the power supply. Then I started getting blue screens and red screens again, this time it was the graphics card. So I did a RMA and it was still under warranty and sent it back. Im currently waiting for a replacement card. Until then Im using the graphics card that came with the computer and its fine. I can't play games and record at the top graphics settings but it works. 

Well then a week or 2 later and while I was doing LFR with my guild my computer crashed and then it kept crashing before I could even login to windows. I was able to start in safe mode and use a program to look up the error the blue screen gave me and some of what I looked up on google said bad RAM might cause that error. I did a memory test and got a error before the test froze. Then I took one stick out and did the test, it passed just fine. Then I took that stick out and put the other one in and the computer wouldn't even start. So I contacted the manufacture and did a RMA and sent back the RAM today. I put the 8 GB of RAM that came with computer back in. 

As of right now everything is fine and I'm just waiting on replacements at least until more fires pop up. In this time I have been doing my Fable 2 lets play which ended today. I do love that game I think its the best out of the three. Now that is over and I need a new lets play to do. I was going to do Watch Dogs, but then I saw Bayonetta in the games with gold. I do own it on the Wii U. Bayonetta is going to be the lets play, another game I have played and love. I have no problem replaying this game. Its so funny and at times over the top its grate. 

The 7.3 PTR video will keep coming as well. Argus is so much fun and I can't wait for it to be polished and live. So if you want to see the PTR and don't want to play it check out some of the 7.3 PTR Exploration videos.

The last thing I want to talk about is Vlogging. Its something that Ive tried doing in the past, but I really don't do a lot of interesting things daily that warrant a Vlog. So I decided I still want to do a Vlog so I'm using the Clips app on iOS to create a random vlog for footage from threw out the week. The first one I did came out nice and I will be posting them on Mondays. 

Thats about all the updates for this month. If something comes up I will be sure to keep everyone up to date.

June 2017 Channel Update

May has come and gone and it's time to talk about some updates. The first one you might have noticed is I've been streaming on twitch and not YouTube. I feel like at this point twitch is a better platform for streaming games and other things, but don't worry im still going to export the stream videos to YouTube after I'm done. I've also started uploading my videos to my twitch channel along with YouTube. I had YouTube mark one of my Heroes of the storm videos as unfriendly for ads, I had them review it again but I was still pissed so I made the decision to upload to booth platforms.

Now let's talk about Starcraft. Last month I talked about playing the original Starcraft since it was being made free, well I did play it and you can see how far I got. It just wasn't fun to me and instead of pounding my head and being miserable playing it I just decided to stop and playing something else. I don't mind getting stuck and being challenged I'm currently playing Portal as a let's play on the channel and I've definitely have gotten stuck on that, but it's a game I'm enjoying so I don't mind pounding my head figuring out how to get to the next level. It just comes down to fun and I just wasn't having fun playing Starcraft so I moved on to something I would have fun with. 

Now on to this months let's play, well I haven't decided yet. I have a game in mind but we will see if I can get it or not. That's about all I have for updates, if anything else comes up I will be posting it here. 

May 2017 Channel Update

April was a interesting month, with the launch of heroes 2.0, starcraft and the passing of a grate wow youtuber. I guess I should start off with the bad news. If you havent heard already the youtuber known as Hayven Games has passed. I did a blog and a video about it as soon as I herd about it. The blog can be seen here and the video below.

Lets move on to the current lets play, Blizzard finally released the original starcraft fro free. When I saw that I downloaded it and started playing. I have not ever played anything like starcraft before. So this lets play has been interesting for me. I will keep going threw with this lets play threw May.

Last but not least Heroes of the Storm 2.0 has come out. I did a few videos on it while it was in PTR. The day it launched we also found out who the next heroe coming to the nexus is. I also did a video on that. Im enjoying the new loot create system and I think its going to be a good thing for the game.

So that was April lets hope May will be better.

My Thoughts on Youtube Partner Changes

The other day Youtube announced that they will be using the requirements to their Youtube Partners program to 10,000 lifetime views. This means if your channel has 10,000 lifetime views then you can apply to the Partner Program and be able to monetize your videos. If you have less than 10,000 lifetime views Youtube will not put adds agents your channel and you can not monetize your videos. 

This new rule will also apply to current Partners, like me. I know I among other smaller youtubers were probably freaking out. Cause when I saw this I went to my creators app to see what my lifetime views were and Im only at 6K. So as of the other day my videos no longer have ads on them.

My feeling about this is that it will be a discouraging for any real creator that wants to make videos and maybe get payed for them. Its even more discouraging for people who have been making something from the Partner Program. I also feel like the story of them doing this because copy righted content and other types of re uploads is kind of bull shit. They have tools to take stuff like that down and I have been part of the Partner Program for almost 2 years plus Im signed to a MCM (FullScreen) so if I was doing that kind of thing I would have been had my channel taken down long ago. I mean I get a copy right clam cause I laughed in one of my videos last month. I fought it and the claim was taken off but I’ve had other similar stuff happen and it didn't get taken back.

Truly for me the monetization was a show of progress of how far Ive come since I started long ago when I didn't make anything from the ads they placed on my channel. I will still make videos cause I love doing it and Ive always said I would do it even if I didn't make money from it, and let it be clear Ive never gotten a dime for any of the videos Ive made. My MCM requires I make $50 to get a pay out. But I still find this discouraging and I think their are others under 10K lifetime views that might feel discouraged as well. 

I just wanted to vent about this, Im still going to make videos as I always have and on a lighter note I hit 300 subscribers last night so that brought a smile to my face.