 Hi, so I thought it might be fun to talk about rumor, leak culture, my goal with certain types of videos of the channel, clickbait, all that jazz, not because I'm here to apologize for anything, I did do a kind of sort of apology video, kinda confusing because I didn't really apologize for anything, I just admitted I made a mistake in being a little too hasty about digital foundry's points in a video, but the reality is that there has been a lot of criticism I've noticed coming up with some of my videos, and I'm cool with that, but it also led me to want to have a deeper dive discussion into the content of my channel, leak rumor culture, clickbait, and then, well, from there going on to what kind of content I'm trying to make in my channel, both now and in the future and where I want my channel to be years down the road, because I realize anything I'm planning now, you gotta start looking at a roadmap for where you want your channel to be eventually, aka making content I'm proud of. So before we do anything, I feel like we need to come to a common understanding, a common ground on what these terminologies mean, and you can feel free to disagree with how I am about to define each of these terms, but one, not only am I giving you my definition of these terms, I'm using definitions that are definitively based on Merriam-Webster. Now again, you could disagree with the dictionary if you want, you could argue about cultural changes and how things are defined, and that's absolutely fine, but I can't possibly know how you personally are deciding to define a term, I can only know what the actual Merriam-Webster English definition is for these terms and explain the culture behind it and some of my videos and obviously moving ahead. Now before I do that, might as well remind you guys we are doing a giveaway, Monster Hunter Rise along with $2.20 Nintendo Switch, PlayStation or Xbox GIF cards, head down to the description or pinned comment to enter. Now let's just get into some of this, so firstly let's talk about leaks, because leaks and rumors often get confused on the internet and I find this to be interesting because the actual definition of leak isn't as definitive as people might think, so definition of leak 1A to enter or escape through an opening usually by a fault or mistake, fumes leak in as an example, obviously you can argue there's some implications there, B to let the substance or light enter out through an opening to A to become known despite efforts of concealment confidential information leaked out as an example, and then lastly B to be the source of an information leak. Now what's interesting about all of this is in order for a leak to be a leak, it has to be verifiable. So if there is a datamine of a game that exists and we get leaks out of that datamine, we get information from that datamine, we need to be able to verify that information by being able to datamine ourselves to verify it, just being told something from someone you trust is technically not a verification of information, as the information you can see for yourself, you can access for yourself, that is a leak. So as an example, when Nintendo servers were hacked two years ago, and we got all this information out, one problem with all those leaks at the time was that we couldn't get access to those servers ourselves to verify this information, so we presumed it was legit, but we technically couldn't prove that it actually was because we didn't have access to that information or the ability to hack those servers, so it's really hard to verify leaks in that way. But again, I think there are certain things that happen with leak culture and happen when you call something a leak, that's interesting when you're in a reporting situation. But before we talk about that, let's get into the definition of a rumor, and we'll talk about what the difference is between a rumor and a leak. So the definition of a rumor, I want to talk or opinion widely disseminated with no discernible source. So basically, you're making something up, or you're talking about something that might be made up, because you can't prove it, you don't know the source, there's no way to verify any of it, right, like that that's that that's the first definition, second definition is a statement or report current without knowing authority for its truth. So basically, I'm reporting on something that I have no idea if it's true rumor. That's what rumors are. You hear rumors when you're in school and you're in whispers about other people that you can't verify. You hear news out there that, you know, is on all unverified stuff no matter where it comes from, no matter how trusted the source is, you can't verify it. Hence, it's a rumor. It could just be made up BS. So like when I made that GTA bully, whatever video yesterday, it was labeled as a rumor. Right there in the title, but it got confusing because the person I had that made thumbnails put the word leak in the thumbnail and I didn't ask him to change it. That part is on me. I should have asked the thumbnail person to change it, but also, it's interesting because essentially, the difference between a rumor and a leak is that a rumor is completely unverified, whereas a leak needs to be able to be verified in some way. The problem is, most of us can't verify leaks. You get a screenshot of a game out. How do I know that's a screenshot of a game and not photoshopped? There's certain things you can do to maybe see if it's photoshopped. Could be a different editing program. Could be fan made. It could be an emulator running mods. It's very difficult to prove or disprove leaks. So here's the problem with leaks. You still have to trust someone without the ability to verify yourself, typically along the way. So say Kotaku reports, here's a leak for the new Assassin's Creed game. Now you could say based on prior leaks, Kotaku's probably right, but are you able to verify that those leaks are real? Of course not. So we're left here standing with our hands in the air going, how do we know the difference between a leak and a rumor? And this is what happens when you get confused about watching videos and probably why the person that made my thumbnail got a little bit confused as well calling it a leak when it was a rumor because I can't verify this stuff. You can't verify this stuff. Very few of us can verify this stuff so it's all leaks. It's all rumors or it's just all rumors. So you can always be on the safe side and call everything a rumor of course, but obviously leak seems to grab more attention despite the fact that we factually can't verify any of the leaks anyways. We just, okay, some of it's right. So we think it's correct, but maybe it's not. Same thing with rumors. How do we verify rumors when things come true? When things come true, a rumor turns from a rumor into a leak. Paintbrush 12 over on Reddit. The reason that people feel like everything he puts out there is a leak is because everything he says ends up being true so that once it's verified, once the rumor he puts out is verified as true, it becomes a leak. That's basically what happens. Leaks are rumors that have been verified. I think we can agree upon that, right? So basically everything starts as a rumor until it's announced. Right now, everything regarding Switch Pro is a rumor and you'll get some people out there that'll tell you, no, some things are a report. Are a report. Well, let's think about it. Bloomberg, Takahashi Matsuzuki puts out there that we're getting 720p OLED panels going mass manufacturing coming from Samsung 7-inch screen 4K, right? We get this information from Takahashi Matsuzuki. Do you know who his sources are? Oh, they're people at manufacturing. Okay. What people? Did you verify it? Can you verify it? Why are you trusting this person and what they have to say? Oh, because they work at a big outlet, because they have a track record. Okay. So those are good reasons to potentially put some validity behind the rumors, but they're still rumors because it's unverified. You do not have contact with his sources to verify that information. I don't have those contacts. Other people reporting on it don't have those contacts. So for us, it's still a rumor. It might not be a rumor to Takahashi Matsuzuki. For him, it legitimately is a report. But for anyone else that talks about it or brings it up as a news post, it's technically a rumor. So what do we do about this? Do we just start labeling everything a rumor? I don't know. I think to be safe, yes. But also, we have to talk about other things, like what is a report. Man, things get really confusing. According to the Meridian Webster, a report is to give an account of, to describe as being in a specified state, such as reported him much approved, to aid to serve as a carrier of a message. So all a report is just a message. They always say, don't shoot the messenger. Okay, I heard from some sources, some information about the switch. I put it out there. I'm just reporting. I'm just a messenger. I'm not the source of the information. I'm just the messenger, but I'm the one that's going to get in trouble when that information is wrong. You've got to be so careful about what you put out there and what you are first to report on. Now, we need to get into clickbait, right? Because I think most people are generally fine with rumors or leaks that are really rumors. What they're not okay with is clickbait. And this is where people get upset. So what is clickbait? Well, clickbait used to not have a definition in Meridian Webster many years ago, but now it's officially part of the dictionary. Here's what Meridian Webster had to say about it. Meridian, such as a headline, designed to make readers want to click on a hyperlink. Okay? Hyperlink is basically a link that takes you to something else, so pretty much every headline in existence. Okay? So every headline in existence is designed to make you click. So technically, by that first part of the definition, everything's clickbait. However, it does do an amendment on this and there is no separate definition. It says, make readers want to click on a hyperlink especially, not always, especially when the link leads to content of a dubious value or interest. So what's dubious mean? Because that's a very important term. Your dubious means, one, an unsettled in opinion. I was dubious about the plan, two, giving rise to uncertainty, such as a doubtful promise or outcome. So in other words, it means to knowingly create a headline that when you click on it, the information held within is not really about what you're talking about. Or the headline and the information within presents information in a way that is questionable. What is a rumor again? All right, unverifiable information, questionable information. By definition, every rumor is clickbait. So do I participate in clickbait as a channel? Yup, yup, I participate in clickbait. It's a fact. I'm a clickbaiter. Anyone who reports on a rumor that they are not the originating source for is clickbaiting you. It's really interesting to think about that, right? Because do you think Takahashi Machizuki is a clickbaiter? Do you think he's a clickbaiter? Do you think all the podcasts that talk about all of the rumors in gaming, do you think it's clickbait? When rumors were coming out about Bethesda being acquired by Microsoft, even though the rumors ended up becoming true and thus those rumors were leaks, before we knew they were leaks, people were clickbaiting you. Now I know most people out in the world don't view clickbait exactly like that. Clickbait is more of that bait and switch. Here's the title, the stuff inside that the content is not really about the title. You get a thumbnail that has a title expressing something, you put a famous celebrity in that thumbnail, but then that celebrity isn't even part of the topic at hand. That celebrity was just used to make you click, thinking that title was about them when really it's not about them. The definition is dubious and value, it's something that is questionable and rumors are things that are unverified and questionable. So I'm a clickbaiter, it feels weird saying it, but I also don't feel guilty about it. Here's the thing, on my channel I report on a lot of leaks and rumors. Lately, tons of rumors, everything for the last week has been a lot of rumors, whether it's the 35th anniversary stuff, whether it's switch pro, everything's a rumor. So there's been a lot of me reporting, aka being a messenger, on all of these rumors. And every single time I report on one of these rumors I'm clickbaiting people because the rumors are dubious in nature because they're unverifiable. I don't feel bad about any of it though. Because one, clickbaiting isn't illegal, obviously. If it was, the internet would just be like, you know, all that forward. So like, literally it's not against the law to do it. And two, it doesn't break YouTube's terms of service. And three, hey, I enjoy having conversations about rumors or leaks. However you want to label them, even though the leaks are rumors original or whatever. You know what I'm saying? It's easy to be frustrated by these conversations because people don't want to have conversations about things that don't exist. At the same point, people want to have conversations about things that might exist. So we end up in this interesting conundrum where it's okay to talk about this stuff, but it's only okay to talk about this in a way each individual person defines as okay. Some of you have zero problems with any of my videos and love the way that I do things. Cool. Other people's hate it, but then saw my podcast this morning featuring HMK and my good friend Eric Moore, and you thought the way we handled all that switch rumors and the conversation about it, that's how you do it. So don't talk about it during the week, but save it for a massive conversation video, summarizes all the information, and comes in with a lot of original thought processes. Some people prefer that. Some people prefer you just don't talk about it at all. You stick to the fact-based news. Use the problem with sticking to news that has nothing to do with rumors. The video game industry becomes a lot less interesting without rumors. Let me explain. The biggest news item of today would have been that Bethesda and Phil Spencer got together and other people from, you know, other id software and stuff from Xenomex, they all got together and they did a sit down round table. That's the big thing today. And the only real news to come out of that round table was Phil Spencer saying, hey, we made this deal to bring games and bring value to Xbox Game Pass. Essentially saying everything that isn't under a current contract with another platform and isn't legacy content, content that already exists on those platforms. All the scrolls online, it's already on PlayStation 5, gonna continue to get support on PlayStation 5. But all future games that don't have locked in contracts and aren't legacy are going to be exclusive to Game Pass. Anywhere that Game Pass is. So PC, Game Pass is probably gonna be part of XCloud and then obviously the Xbox Series X and S. That's the big news of the day. It's news that we've basically known for five months ever since it was announced. Ever since Microsoft did the intent to purchase Xenomex announcement for $7.5 billion we basically knew that this was going to happen. And yet here we are today where that's the big news of the day. Is it an interesting thing to talk about? Absolutely. But that would be it. If you're a Nintendo fan, is that what you want to hear? Oh, I mean, I did a news video earlier today. We did a summary of news. There was a single piece of Nintendo news in there. Basically sales data from Japan. Sales data can be interesting. I enjoy looking at numbers. But sales data isn't interesting to the whole of the gaming community. They want to know, when are we getting Breath of the Wild 2? They want to know, when are we getting Metroid Prime 4? They want to know, what's coming after Skyward Sword HD? They want to know, does Skyward Sword HD have new content? They want to know more about Mario Super Rush. But we don't get news officially like that often. And if we did, where are you going to get that news from? Nintendo. Because that's the only way it's not a rumor. Unless obviously some of their employees come out in public and say, like if Sakurai goes on Twitter and announces the next Smash character, you could take that for work and Sakurai is the one who's making the game. But stuff like that doesn't usually happen. It usually comes directly from Nintendo. So I can wait and just not make those videos. Not make rumor videos and just wait for the big news that you're already going to know before you watch my video. I have a report from Jeff Grubb telling me there's going to be some Zelda stuff, some Zelda information. Would you guys like to hear it? Would you? Or should I just not talk about it? Because it holds no intrinsic value to some people. This is the thing. It's a balancing act. I could sit here and just tell you sales data, call it a day. Or I have this really interesting cool thing that creates a nice conversation and builds hope and maybe hypes you up for nothing. Maybe it brings your hype down and you end up getting your expectations blown away. But it's a more interesting thing to talk about, is it not? Not just for you to listen to, but for me to talk about. Now at my channel, it's my channel, right? I can do anything I want. I want to start talking about PlayStation 5 stuff, Xbox, PC. I want to, you know, obviously kill it with Switch. Like I'm going to do all that. But I'm going to make the content I want to make. And I personally am really interested in talking about the possibilities. And you know what rumors do? They provide guidance on possibilities. So that's why I talk a lot about Switch Pro. That's why I talk a lot about Zelda 35th anniversary. I could just make discussion videos all the time and I do do that. But sometimes I might want to make a discussion based on a rumor. So I do that too. Now, this isn't what I only want to do at the channel. Now you guys might have saw the Nintendo Prime podcast. We had our two conversation videos and then three so far full episodes of the rebooted Nintendo Prime podcast. We've actually had like over 120 episodes at one point of the original podcast. But scrapped all that, rebuilt it from the ground up and now I think the podcast is better than it's ever been. And we're still building out. Technically, this camera right now is sitting where a new set is currently being built and will be finished up this weekend for the Nintendo Prime podcast. That's right. Just Built is getting more revamps and changes done to it to improve the quality of the podcast. That podcast is my highest quality ever produced consistently thing on this channel. And people love it. It's getting more views than ever. I love the quality is coming through and the viewership is staying a lot higher than the 500 views an episode we used to get. Now we're getting 2000 views an episode. Who knows in six months maybe it's getting 10,000 views an episode. But I want to keep improving the quality of that show. Here's the thing though. That's not the only high quality different from just my standard one off. Here's one piece of news. Here's one rumor. Here's one discussion video. I want to do more. Here's the problem of doing more. Every high quality piece of content like the podcast is time consuming. I have a job. I have three children. I'm in college full time. I had someone today tell me, while we were premiering the episode of the podcast, the latest episode, episode three featuring HMK, that I should just, hey, I would save time if I stop making three videos a day, did one video every two or three days, and combined all the news into one news summary video that maybe is longer, like 20 minutes or something. Right? Okay. That's fair. That's a fair ask. But to make that longer video would require a five hour chunk of time that day. To make each of my individual videos might only take an hour, but now I got to find five hours in a single day to step away from a full time job and step away from my kids and step away from college that I'm also in full time, not part time, full time. I got to find a five hour in a row slot to get that done. That's a lot harder than finding an hour here, a lunch break there. Deciding, oh, I can rush a project here at work and then put something at work on the back where I can take a half hour later and answer in a business email and then get a video out the door. It's a lot harder to do that, but you know what will make it easier. If you want to support me on Patreon, you don't have to. We have some stretch goals on Patreon, not just like the different tiers, the one, five, 10, 15, 20, 25, 50, whatever tiers I set up over there, some that get you on an episode of the podcast. What I have are stretch goals, a 500, a 1,000, a 1500, et cetera, et cetera. Each one of those stretch goals are things that are aimed to bring higher quality content to you guys. I like the new summary video I did today. I want to make those new summary videos better, more jam-packed with fancier editing and the best audio quality I can, the most informational I can, and do it in a way that has some entertainment value and really brings out my personality. I like that. But to create a video like that takes a lot of time. Time I can't afford because I have bills to pay. And frankly, making those kind of videos on YouTube right now, when you get like a thousand views per video and I make it two bucks, it's hard to justify that five hours even though I really enjoy it when I don't have that five hours. So the support over on Patreon, on Patreon.com, on Snapchat and Prime will lead to videos like that existing because then I don't have to care that the videos aren't getting enough views to afford me the time. I don't care about views, but I do care about time. So for me to take more time out from my job, I need to be able to compensate myself for that. Hence the stretch goals I paid you out. But long haul, that is something I want. The kind of new summary video today, I want to keep building that up, keep building it up, keep building it up, making it better and better every time I do it until it's a consistent thing you expect at a consistent time. You know Monday through Friday better or minimum, I can't, I'm a family man. I'm not going to bog down my weekends. Then I want to keep talking to my rumors. I want to keep making discussion videos, heck theory videos every once in a while. Highly researched theory videos, those are fun too. If you think about what game theory or the game theorists do, it's just a bunch of made up crap that's kind of connecting dots with a whole bunch of research and real life math and all that. Is any of it real and true, no, but is it entertaining? Is it fun to think about? Is it fun to talk about? Absolutely. And I don't want to make their kind of videos. No one can make their kind of videos the way that they do. Do I want to make more proving why Link isn't dead in Majora's Mask? Even though it's a pretty easy proof case because A.J. and I were just straight up saying he's not, setting that aside. Just stuff like that. You know, Zelda theories, Mario theories, timeline theories, that's all time consuming. I'm not a kid anymore. I'm not a teenager. I am now in my mid-life. I'm going to be 35 this year. I might only live till I'm 70. I could be halfway through my life right now with three kids, college, and a job. I have a fiance and I'm getting married next year. I have a house to maintain. My own house. Yes, my studio is in the basement of my house. Oh my God. I'm a typical gamer in a parent's basement except I own the house. Not exactly my parent's basement. It's my basement where I put my studio conveniently so my YouTube stuff doesn't interfere with my everyday life with my children because I'm a responsible adult. I take care of my family but I separate that separation of church and state. Here's what daddy does. This stuff isn't really important for you. So let's separate it up. I don't want my kids thinking, hey, hey, I'm going to grow up and be a YouTuber. You can try, but that should be more about if it happens and you get successful enough to do it for a living, it happens by happy accident rather than being a life goal you make for yourself because social media success far from guaranteed. That being said, I hope you enjoyed this video. I hope it was informative. I hope you didn't find me combative or argumentative. I just wanted to have an honest conversation about the culture around all of this, why I do what I do, the kind of videos I want to make moving forward, why I'm looking for support on Patreon because I really want to drive higher quality content including this podcast that I've heavily invested into by the way. The only thing we're really missing at this point is you see this microphone here? This is actually a really nice microphone. This is an AT2035 microphone. I love it. It was donated to us back in 2018 I believe by a guy named Be Righteous. Thank you so much for that. And these mics are still going to be of use forever on this channel until they stop working. But one thing we're trying to do in improving the sound profile of our videos is we want to go to the next step with the audio specifically for the podcast more than anything. And that next step for us are sure SMB7s, okay, they're $400 a piece. That's why during our live streams we're always fundraising for it. I'm not going to leave a donation link on this video, I'm not looking for handouts, you know, I'll probably buy them eventually on my own once I can afford them. But right now we've invested everything into the podcast, new TV, we got some new desks coming in, we got some new really, really expensive boom arms coming in that are just going to make our life much easier. Just a whole bunch of stuff, some remodeling we got to do, things are looking good. Just got this new lens on this camera, which I think is actually working pretty well with the monitor behind me. I know it goes in and out when the, because I have a rotating wallpaper back there on this giant monitor. By the way, this monitor is huge. You guys see this thing? That's one monitor. See, the lighting went weird. Like that's one monitor back there. You know, eventually I need to get a new camera. I want a camera that records a 4K 60, not 4K 30. I want a camera that has better lenses available for it as well. So anyways, there's a lot of things I want to do this channel to make things better, not just a higher quality audio, I want the content to be better. I want to hire a video editor someday who's just better than I am factually. Just like the guy I have doing thumbnails is just better at making thumbnails factually than I am. My promise to you moving forward is I will do better to try to delineate conversation pieces versus rumors versus news. How I'm going to do it, what templates I'm going to make for it, I don't know. Maybe it's just as much as the titles themselves. Maybe the beginning of every title will say news, rumor, conversation or opinion. Maybe that's what I do. Maybe I don't mess with the thumbnails much because creating consistent things with the thumbnails sometimes actually drives viewership down. But maybe I should make sure the titles themselves start with the obvious. So you might glance at it, then glance at the title and immediately right away in the title tells you if it's a rumor, if it's news. Conversation piece. Podcast. Although I probably won't change the way the podcast works because the thumbnail says Nintendo Prime Podcast in it. Anyways, you guys let me know what you think about this, we think about some changes, other stuff. Again, really amazing microphones. The sure SMB7 just have a better bass and a better midrange to really bring out the true sound quality of our voices, which is what I want to do on the podcast. And just wait till COVID's over and I can have people come to the studio in person and we can do interviews. Won't that be cool to get some indie dev interviews? I just found out that there is a certain studio in Wisconsin that Bethesda recently founded. Won't it be great to get one of them in? Someone from that studio in the interview? I live in Wisconsin. I think we can make this happen. Anyways, folks, I'm Nathan Robodance from Nintendo Prime, thank you so much for tuning in and I'm going to catch each and every one of you guys in the next video.