SluggoTV: Back On The Air

The story goes like this: Once upon a time, I had a YouTube account with 150 videos, over 2000 subscribers and millions of views. I don’t know how people found me; I simply posted Guitar Hero and Rock Band videos and they just showed up.

Then there was the Great YouTube War, waged by music companies like Warner and Universal and Sony. To many people, YouTube had become a giant music library where you could listen to almost anything for free, and the record companies sought to get videos containing their artists’ music removed.

Guitar Hero and Rock Band videos were a prime target. Many members of the GH/RB community who’d had spent years uploading videos of their perfect 100% runs, world-record high scores and optimized Star Power paths were now getting demands from YouTube to remove Video X or Y or they’d be in violation of their terms of service. The better your audio, the more you trouble you were in, as YouTube’s tech would find it easier to match to something in its copyright library.

Unfortunately, I hadn’t been keeping much track of my videos (many in HD with digital audio capture) when YouTube started sending me emails demanding I remove some outdated Guitar Hero: Aerosmith videos. Hence, when I didn’t see the emails and the videos didn’t get removed, they not only banned my account permanently, but banned that email account from signing up for another YouTube account.

I was extremely disappointed when I found out, although I can’t say I had much urge to do more videos beyond Guitar Hero: Metallica — by then, the rhythm game craze had started its downward trend and the videos clearly weren’t as popular as they once were. But they still represented a lot of work, and it was frustrating to see my channel wiped away without a trace.

Undaunted, I’ve launched a new YouTube channel where I’ll be uploading new videos, named SluggoTV. The first uploads are a start-to-finish video walkthrough of Portal 2 (more on that shortly), but I also suspect I’ll be uploading a handful of my old GH/RB videos for nostalgia’s sake (while also disabling audio on a few to keep them within YT’s copyright guidelines). I’ve also got a few ideas for some WoW videos, but mostly I’ll be treating this channel the same way as my previous one: as a place to experiment with various video ideas to tie in with game commentary. It took a week or so to get back into the swing of recording/editing/uploading videos, but now that I’m back up to speed, I’m hoping to upload some on a regular basis.