 So, hi everyone. This is a bit of a different video. It's not a channel update. I had thought about doing a channel update in general because, well, you know, people sometimes like to know where the channel is going to go in the future. But I don't really know that I have any concrete plans at this moment beyond what we're already doing as a channel. There's nothing major going to be changing around here, probably for a while. There is some plans I have for the set to change things up a little bit. I also have some plans for future content that's more long haul, not necessarily based around news, although we're going to keep the news going and all that. I have some long off-pipe dreams as well. But honestly, today's not really about that. The other day I put a post up on our community section because I took a moment to sit back and look at the last four and a half years of this channel, both statistically, and just from a perspective of how far the channel has come. See, this channel actually came into existence around July of 2008. At the time it was called the Zelda Informer YouTube channel. It was a YouTube channel that represented the, well, the ZeldaInformer.com website at the time that eventually grew to become one of the most popular Zelda fan sites in the world before a new owner that bought it in 2016 shut it down in 2017. But that's neither here nor there. I have a long history at that website and at this YouTube channel. In fact, the very first video uploaded at this YouTube channel was about the merging of Absolute Zelda, which was my website at the time, and Zelda Informer. So I've literally been part of this YouTube channel from the very beginning. And in fact, almost every piece of content that's ever been published at this channel came either directly from me or with my encouragement or with my approval because I was editor-in-chief. So I kind of controlled all the content decisions, especially on YouTube. So the thing is this channel has been uniquely whatever I felt like it needed to be for a long time. I took YouTube for granted for many years. Didn't really think it was a serious platform beyond just a simple way to host videos because I attempted to host videos on my own and it was just stupidly expensive. Bandwidth prices are a real thing. So, yeah, this YouTube channel just was kind of there for us to put up videos that we were making for Zelda Informer, the website. And then in 2017, after I kind of got the boot from Zelda Informer off the new ownership who wanted to close the site down, I negotiated gaining full control of this YouTube channel because they had another YouTube channel for the website that they were quote-unquote merging Zelda Informer into. They merged it into Zelda Dungeon. And the Zelda Dungeon has a YouTube channel with over 100,000 subscribers. So what the hell did they need a channel with 22,000? I took over the channel, announced that it was becoming Nintendo Prime and immediately lost 4,000 subscribers. Not really shocking in so much. One, I didn't have great production quality in my videos. The audio sounded really horrible. And let's just say I wasn't exactly confident in front of the microphone or presenting my best self forward. I am Nathaniel Ruffeljantz and you probably recognize me because I've been all over this channel over the last seven years or so and I always say, hey, I'm Nathaniel Ruffeljantz. I am the editor-in-chief of Zelda Informer.com. And while I am, technically, until April 30th. I looked like a roly-poly-oly shell of myself at the time because I was kind of in a funk, not really sure what I was going to do with this YouTube channel. Fast forward four and a half years. And obviously this YouTube channel has come a long way. Obviously from 18,000 subscribers to 75 on the verge of 76,000. Probably on the verge, I mean, based on current projections of 100,000 subscribers sometime in the next year. I'm not really sure if we'll ever get to that. I don't want to take a gift horse in the mouth and assume anything. Everything that we're doing at YouTube could be literally gone after this video. YouTube could yank it from us. I could make some big controversial mistake that causes me to get canceled by the internet or something. I have no idea because I don't know what's going to happen in the future. I only know what's happening now. And throughout this journey, it has had obviously its ups and downs both personally, professionally with my work outside of here and obviously my college and as a parent and obviously as a content creator. There's been a lot of growth, a lot of mistakes and there's probably going to be a ton more mistakes to come in the future because as I tell people, I'm human. In fact, I've already made a mistake in this video. The studio light isn't on. So there might be a shadow over my face. I apologize about that. Let's no, we're not we're not doing the backwards hat thing. We'll just angle this thing up a bit and hopefully the one light I have here is getting enough of my face. The thing is I never really planned for YouTube to be anything. This was just something I was doing for fun. If it happened to make some money cool and for a long time when it was making money safe in late 2017 into most of 2018, a lot of it was just through fan donations. We had a lot of, let's just say, really drunk Splatoon to live streams in 2018. I was pretty insane, maybe a bit irresponsible and you know, life moves on. The thing is I was making some content and some content I really believed in a lot of discussion videos and a few news ones but I really never took YouTube as this big serious thing. It, to me, was always just something to do for fun and still to this day when people ask me, you know, how to become a YouTuber, I say first off, don't look at it as a career, look at it as a passion project that if it happens to take off and do a career, that's great and I still to this day, I don't do YouTube for a living. This is not a career for me at least at this time. Is there a path for it to become that way? Absolutely. But it's not there yet. So I've been through my ups and downs. I've had health issues over the years. I've had my bouts in 2019 when I lost my job and went on a bit of an e-bagging streak on my channel thinking, hey, you know what, screw it, I have an audience. Why not shamefully, you know, or unabashed, ask the audience for financial help? Which really wasn't the correct way to go about things. I had other avenues I didn't explore yet at that time and it was just not really right for me to do. But it is what it is. That's what my 2019 was. It was a lot of reflection, a lot of needing to get help and just a lot of issues in general. And then you get into 2019 or 2020 and that's obviously when I started refining myself. I found myself as a content creator. I found myself as a dad, as a parent. I became a better parent in 2020. I became a better boyfriend in 2020 and I just became a better person. And I don't really have an explanation for exactly what happened. It was just more like something clicked one day. I hadn't felt myself in a number of years and just all of a sudden, I don't know, over the course of some therapy and just some self-reflection, I ended up, I don't know, the guy you see in front of you today that has a lot of fun, wears a pig mask sometimes, throws a tinfoil hat on, does some fun things on live streams. Delivers you daily news content. Does crazy things like spend $650 to get a Nintendo Switch OLED early just to end up breaking the damn thing and then promising to fix it and giving it away, giving away another Switch OLED. I've done so many giveaways in the last year plus that I can't even count them all. I know I have a number of tax purposes, but it's been like $10,000 plus with the giveaways, which to me is just insane to think about the amount of stuff we have given away in the last year. And really, the giveaways are kind of funny because there's comments that happen sometimes where people are like, you should stop doing giveaways, giveaways just give you temporary subscribers. And the thing is, that's not really what the point of the giveaways were. Yeah, I do make it a requirement to be subscribed to win all my giveaways, but the point of those giveaways was just to give back. When I started doing monthly giveaways, there wasn't an intent to grow. I had already accepted the fate of my YouTube channel in 2020 as, hey, look, I'm just gonna have this super small audience, this core audience that likes watching my content. I just enjoy making and moving on. I'm in college, I have a job, everything's all good. I'm just doing YouTube for fun now. And I got in a little bit of a rhythm, a bit of a flow and found a way to continue to do YouTube while balancing everything else in my life. And I just decided to do giveaways, which was basically, hey, I'll take the little bit of money YouTube was making and I'll just put it back into the channel and give back to the community. I also felt a little guilty about some of the e-bagging in 2019 and that was a little bit in the back of my mind as well. I wanted to show love to the community that had so graciously shown love to me over the years. So that was the original point of the giveaways. The reason I required it to be, that you to be subscribed wasn't because I necessarily was trying to grow the channel, believe it or not. It's because I wanted to make sure that whatever I gave away actually went to someone who enjoyed my content. And I, you know, you can enjoy a person's content without being subscribed. But after having done giveaways in the past where I literally let you enter through any method, you could subscribe, you could follow on Twitter. There was no requirement to subscribe for some giveaways. Sure, I would get a lot more giveaway entries, but most often a majority of the people that entered would never come back. In fact, some of the times I would draw a winner for some of those giveaways and they wouldn't even respond. Showing that they're not even someone that really watched my content. So the idea of making you guys or making sure that you're subscribed to the channel really wasn't about the growth. It was just about making sure that this is someone who actually watches my videos. And of course, you're always going to get those people that they subscribe just for giveaways and they unsubscribe when they don't win. Okay, yeah, that's, I mean, that just comes with the territory, but there was never a point to really push subscribers. I actually thought the channel was pretty done growing. I thought we were gonna sit at like 30,000 subscribers and just kind of stay there. Obviously, fast forward a year, that hasn't been the case. We've gained, you know, what, 40,000 plus subscribers since then and the channel has obviously been doing really well. 2021 was a huge year. We actually started turning things around in 2020 towards the end of 2020, but in 2021, obviously things have been absolutely incredible at this channel. Just revenue-wise, it's made more than it's ever made before. And that's crazy to me, even though I've pretty much taken almost every penny it's made and put it back into the channel. It's still crazy to me. Like, how were we able to do all these giveaways? Well, because we've been making more money on the channel in the last year, so there's been more money to be able to afford the giveaways. But, and to afford the six, I mean, how do you think this thing got paid for? Hello, with channel money. So, the thing is, I am, told myself, I'm not gonna cry, I'm not gonna cry. Not gonna cry. I really like making YouTube content. I hope this comes through in the content I make. I hope this comes through in the way that I present my content. The way we have fun on live streams together, which, by the way, my live streams are meant for adults. There's still some shots that go on, but it's a lot more under control for the most part. We have dancing and lots of fun. Honestly, my YouTube channel is a bit of an escape. I find that I enjoy making content on YouTube, one, because I get to talk about gaming, something I am passionate about. Two, I get to connect with a bunch of like-minded people who happen to also enjoy gaming. And three, there's just something fun about creating content that seems to make people smile. Every time I see a comment that says something to the camera, hey, thanks, Nate, for this video. You just made my day. Hey, man, I really love your energy. Hey, this is just so awesome keeping you. Even the comments that are critical and point out the things I make mistakes, I appreciate it because these people care enough to watch the video and then correct me, because you can easily watch a video, know someone made a mistake and just move on. And yeah, some people are a bit harsher about it than others, but still, I appreciate that feedback. It's an honest conversation we have back and forth, and I'm not gonna say sometimes I'm not a little stubborn. I'm human, I'm stubborn. No one likes to be wrong, and there might be some internal justifications for some things, but that doesn't mean that I'm right with those justifications I make sometimes. So the thing is, I really like doing this. And I've had a dream, I'd say a realistic dream, a dream for a couple of years, where I had it in the back of my mind that I enjoy making content so much on YouTube. This is just kind of what I want to do. I'm in my mid-30s, I have three kids. I haven't graduated college yet, I'm on my way. I have another job, and reality is this right here is what I want to do. We're not there yet, okay? This isn't a video announcing that, hey, I'm doing YouTube full time or anything like that. We're not even close to there yet, okay? I got three kids, realistically, even though the channel's made more money than ever, and most of it's gone back into the channel, even if I stopped doing all those giveaways and kept the money, and that's for the family. My men might be able to afford groceries for half a year. It's pretty expensive for a family if I have to eat. I just wanted to say thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you. People often wonder how I find the ability to make videos, sometimes multiple videos a day. How do I balance everything? How do I force myself to make time for this? And it's really because of you guys. You guys make me smile every day. You guys remind me who I am every day. If I'm feeling down, all I know is I gotta get myself together, pick myself up, put together a great video, toss it out to you guys, and immediately the community's just gonna be so uplifting, and that's just such a wonderful thing to look forward to. We've really built something special here. No, we're not at the level of some other channels that I also feel have built something special, but that's okay. We have our own way of doing things in our own community. This isn't, this is like a weird channel, right? It's like most of my videos, including this one, can seem very family friendly, but then like you'll tune into a live stream, and I might be cussing. I might be drinking and throwing back shots and talking about weird, I don't know, sex related things with my fiance. There's so much crazy things that happen at this channel. It's such an adult gamer parent reality channel. It's just a lot of fun to create this different vibe that you get from so many other Nintendo based channels where they're really focused on just, hey, we're gonna be super family friendly and inviting for all, and I don't mind the children watch my content, but I also am very careful to explain, especially during live streams, that my content is not meant to be done there. Maybe a day arises where I need to take my live streams away from my YouTube channel, onto a different YouTube channel, onto Twitch or something else, but I don't really wanna do that. I like keeping our community together. I honestly am so appreciative of you guys uplifting me every day that I don't really know that I'll ever stop making YouTube videos, no matter where life takes me. I don't know that I'll ever stop doing giveaways no matter where life takes me. I wanna bring smiles to people's faces. I make content that I'm passionate about and I don't create the best produced videos. They don't have the greatest editing, the greatest thumbnails. I'm not like spawnway walking around super buff and like really in shape and skinny. I'm a chubby 35 year old man. I know what I am. Yeah, I'm trying to lose weight and I struggle with it, but I know what I am and I own that. So I just wanna say thank you really for just being you. You guys are why I continue to do this when there's been every logical reason I'm ever ain't not to. Now that those logical reasons seem silly in hindsight, considering where the channel's going and where it might head in the future. But thank you. Sincerely, you guys have sort of become the escape for me that I used to turn just to video games for, but this sort of escape here on YouTube just feels so much better than just simply sitting alone in a room playing a video game. So while I still play games and I love them, I love making content on YouTube even more. So thank you for watching. Thank you for coming to my live streams, for liking, for subscribing, for entering giveaways and being disappointed when you don't win, for chastising me and criticising me and calling me a fat ass and everything else in between. Thank you. You guys bring a lot of entertainment and a lot of smiles to my face every day and I don't know that I could ever show enough gratitude for that. So I'm gonna catch you guys in the next video, hopefully a live stream tomorrow night as well. Yeah, this has been a special journey we've been on and hopefully we're just at the beginning of, I don't know, wherever this YouTube journey is gonna take us. All right guys, I'm Nathaniel Rumpeljantz from Nintendo Prime and I'm gonna catch you in the next video.