Greetings,
And welcome to PHTM 23’ (YEAR OF THE DARK)
PHTM 23’ marks the second year since moving away from the “GG” brand, into the new “Phantom” brand era, whilst also kicking off what will be one of the most ambitious years to date. In 2021 (Year of the Phantom) and 2022 (Year of the Serpent), the goal was clear – take what we currently have and restructure under the “Phantom” wing. With that came the soft reboot of the discord server to “Phantom Society”, as well as moving away from online events under the “GG Circuit” label, and holding new and returning events underneath the recent series of PHTM 21’ and 22’ events such as “STRIVE For Glory Saga”, “Out For Blood Saga”, and “Year of the Serpent Events”. While some events were hit or miss, I remain committed and driven to continue building our series of PHTM events – with aims to garner even more attention and participation this year, engraving PHTM events as a core staple to the new, PHTM brand.
While I don’t wish to go into great lengths about every little thing, I’m currently working to bring to the table in PHTM 23’ (YOTD), there are a couple more immediate things I wish to touch on in this update, regarding things a bit more close to home.
Return of Live-Streams
First and foremost, livestreams will FINALLY be returning! It’s been exactly a month since my last stream, and though I was planning and did state streams would be going (dark) for a bit, I was definitely initially aiming for that to happen a bit earlier on rather than now – hence why YOTD is starting a month late, rather than the originally planned, April.
In PHTM 23’, streams will be changing a bit, but hopefully for the better. To start, streams will now be structured into seasons (something that I’ll go into detail about in a bit). Each season will have its own GOAL-LIST of game playthroughs I will be tackling (which yes, this means some of my current playthroughs will be shuffled around a bit, though NOT cancelled), general stream marathons and themed stream marathons, and other different type of content that will rotate in and out with each season. IRL/Just Chatting type of content will also be making more of a “pushing effort” to be present this year; I’ve always felt this type of content to be the most enjoyable to do/create, and though I still feel like 2019 was my PEAK stream year, especially for this type of content, I am confident that in PHTM 23’ I will finally ECLIPSE that milestone, and move up the ladder a bit.
Fighting Games will also once again, hold a bigger presence on the channel this year. As most of you probably already know, this year is shaping up to be one of the BIGGEST years for Fighting Games in probably over a decade. With Street Fighter 6’s arrival next month, and Granblue Versus Rising, Blazing Strike, Mortal Kombat 12, and even possibly Tekken 8 all to follow this year – it’s hands down going to be a busy time for fighting game fans, and I am not exempt. With that said, expect several streams throughout the week to include AT LEAST one dedicated block for a fighting game. I can’t promise crispy play with every game, but I do hope to stream LESS labbing/training room stuff, as I’ve always felt it makes for a boring viewer experience, and would be much better to focus on, at least at length, off-stream.
Now for the elephant in the room – tabletop games. Digital TCG and CCG games have without a doubt been some of the hardest games to garner new viewers for as well as retain viewers for as of late. Outside of 2017/2018 era with PTCGO, it’s become apparent that TCG and CCG stuff, at least on Twitch, is not nearly as popular in viewing as it once was. This has left me in an awkward position as throughout the past year or so, I’ve been more into HearthStone than I have been probably since I took a several year hiatus from the game back in 2015. Same goes for the Pokémon Trading Card Game as local events have now resumed, and playtesting online is now even more important for the first time in a good while. With that being said, the decision has been made to ultimately add in an entire dedicated stream session during stream days, when possible, to be sure that all of my stream time for a given day is not dedicated ENTIRELY to a TCG/CCG title, if I do decide to stream one. This however, can pretty much be said for any other genre of game, as adding in an additional stream session during the day gives me a bit more flexibility juggling between different games, while also being able to provide something for everyone. For at least this first content season, my streams will be on Twitch only; meaning any other games that I have been playing over on Facebook will be transitioned to Twitch for occasional streams, and all planned playthroughs for Facebook will now instead be recorded content over on my YouTube channel.
YouTube Content
Now speaking of YouTube, current on-going content on the channel will remain (mostly) the same. My main goal for this first season is to really just get back to uploading daily, and expanding into shorts (snippets from either recent videos or livestreams) as well. In addition to streaming more Fighting Games, I also plan to do much more FGC centric coverage on the channel going forward – with a lot of that mostly starting from now and Moreso with the release of Street Fighter 6. Lastly, to my surprise, YouTube also seems to be looking to get into the podcast game, as now they are offering a specific section for full podcasts to be uploaded. Luckily for me, the function has finally been enabled on my channel, so all G-SYNCH Podcast episodes will for sure continue to be uploaded onto the channel as soon as the episodes are recorded.
The G-SYNCH Podcast
While on the topic of the G-SYNCH Podcast, it’s also worth noting that I am about halfway (finally) through ‘Season 0’ of the podcast, which means the first official season is just around the corner. Things will be changing just a little bit as we transition into Season 1, which is now currently planned for this June. For starters, the podcast will now move to a recorded video format for a little bit before moving to a LIVE format. Obviously, audio-only versions of the podcast will still be available everywhere you can currently listen to them (YouTube, Spotify, Google Podcast, Soundcloud). In Season 1 I’ll also be FINALLY opening the door for rotating co-hosts for each episode, so if you ever felt like talking current events within the gaming sphere, metal/metalcore music, and other things digital entertainment related – feel free to reach out to me!
The Seasonal Structure
Lastly, as this announcement update already been a bit too long; I’d like to quickly touch on the new “seasonal” content structure for this year. Like most shows, live-service games, and other forms of content these days; new content is usually delivered and trickled out through the release of separate seasons. The same can be said for all things PHTM 23’ related going forward. Year of the Dark content will contain 3 separate, themed, seasons – with the first spanning from May-August. For the most part, this means ‘major’ content shifts for Live-streams, YouTube content, the G-SYNCH Podcast, PHTM 23’ Events, and even Phantom Society Discord changes, will almost always coincide with the start of a new season. Right now, I’m in the process of having a sort of roadmap graphic made, which will be updated throughout the duration of PHTM 23’ (YOTD), that will contain some of the more crucial happenings, for each season as they are unveiled – along with their respective themes.
All in all, there’s so much more I could touch on here that likely won’t even be read, so all I’ll say for now is to simply stay tuned throughout the next several days for even more announcements and information regarding PHTM 23’ content and this first season!