How One Game Rocked A Community - The Story Behind Hunt Down The Freeman | TRO

hello ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the right opinion the home of eight wack with too much free time and recently i've been the recipient of shocking allegations that i am frankly astounded anyone would suggest these are of course the allegations that i am in fact not a gamer i know my friends i am as outraged as you are once again the pineapple on pizza loving heathens have the audacity to cast out on my gamer credentials needless to say i would be crying at the club if it was open so i guess i will have to debunk these claims by taking on another game topic one which will serve as indisputable evidence my unflinching gamer status but first let's talk about another curious video game that serves as the backdrop for today's subject [Music] half-life it's a video game for gamers like me who wish to immerse themselves in a first person shooter with a bit more depth with the first being released in 1998 the second in 2004 and further successive installments being released in 2006 and 2007 as well as some additional expansion packs in between the first game focuses around an individual by the name of gordon freeman who like many people triggers an alien invasion when an experiment that he's running opens up a dimensional rift in time and space obviously antics ensue and he finds himself up against a diverse plethora of enemies in his mission to return stability to this facility and the plans alike obviously my synopsis of these games will remain relatively short so i don't spoil it for anyone planning to play it themselves but generally speaking it's considered by many to be one of the greatest games ever published and this is the same story with its successor half-life 2 which follows our good friend gordon a couple decades on after the events of the first it incorporates many elements present in its predecessor while adding new features and improving on existing ones in spite of their shooter status the series was characterized by its heightened sense of ambition with valve president gabe newell stating that if half-life 2 isn't viewed as the best pc game of all time it's going to completely bum out most of the guys on this team but gabe need not have fit it was released to universal acclaim from reviewers and audiences alike and is also regarded as one of the greatest games of all time after the success of the first two games the developers decided to further metamorphose their approach with the plan to release a trilogy of episodes continuing the story from the lens of our protagonist and a new non-player character by the name of alex vance a lovely young lady who was present in the previous game who is now receiving a more prominent role as a companion to mr freeman here the first two episodes released a highly positive reception however it wasn't quite equivalent to the random appraisal that the previous games had received though this did not appear to deter them episode 3 should have completed this trilogy and was planned for release in christmas 2007. haver was initially postponed and then cancelled following a sequence of delays and changes to company trajectory since then there has been a lot of speculation as to when the long-anticipated half-life 3 will be released in fact as i'm sure many of you know there is an infamous meme revolving around people's rather excitable nature to seek confirmation on the game's announcement indulged by many throughout the industry on wikipedia there is a page exclusively dedicated to documenting unreleased half-life games it seems that in spite of their revered status within gamer society the hype surrounding prospective half-life projects precedes them the series had elevated itself to this cult level status and wherever there's a devoted fan base there's typically market potential combine this with the desire for simply more half-life content yet a significant lack of it in the decade following the uncompleted trilogy and people were longing for a savior holding out for a hero to give them what they wanted and from the darkness came an unlikely salvation but was it the one we needed or the one we deserved ah mitchell look i can explain you lied to me no that wasn't the deal he he told us which place betrayed me you used me you [ __ ] up my face this is hunt down the freeman it is a fan-made spin-off game of half-life released in 2018. its plot unlike other half-life releases follows the character mitchell shepard a member from one of the groups hostile to freeman in the first installment as he attempts to track down i'm subsequently slay our hero it is a revenge themed first person shooter developed and published by royal rudeos entertainment whose ceo is joe connors however the credit really must go to the director producer and writer birken de nizi aaron who also goes by the name of frank presumably because his full title is a bit of a mouthful the game's release was met with denunciation and appropriate from all ends of the industry spectrum alongside controversy surrounding many aspects of the game's development however that does not make it particularly exceptional in the grand scheme of things many video games are embroidering their fair share of for all so why are we here today the jobs thought it'd be a great idea to ask a bunch of youtubers to voice for the game and somehow i wasn't the worst [Applause] my fellow americans oh no you see hunt down the freeman ran a very interesting marketing strategy which included the decision to take the daring step in casting youtubers amongst their ensemble obviously given youtube's performative nature this may have made sense on paper however it didn't quite translate in practice like they know the way we are they know our weaknesses those creatures can be many things but they're not stupid do you know something we don't black ops well i guess i do well maybe you should open your mouth and start talking the aliens are coming we've been compromised split it out corporal oh colonel we are so [ __ ] following the release this led to a tidal wave of publicity where castigation was fused with a peculiar amusement and curiosity at how such a disaster piece came into being it became the target of critics and commentators alike whose coverage enshrined the game's status amongst audiences causing many to wonder exactly how this happened well today my friends i attempt to unpack that mystery and the controversy surrounding the most ambitious crossover in modern history comrades i suggest we waste no more time on idol chatter and cut into the meat of this juicy juicy joint friends let's hunt down that freeman to understand the beginnings of this curious case we should probably go back to 2016 because as i'm sure you're aware a game can often take many years to grow from its humble roots and on down the freeman was no exception nonetheless its origins are a bit of a mystery in a way because they begin with the man birken hailing from the glorious turkey initially not particularly proficient in english although having active accounts only sprung into action in the latter half of the 2010s not too much is known about him prior to them the tommy wiseau of video games per se and i'll tell you these similarities do not end there when our good friend birkeny had the idea for hunt down the freeman he was motivated he was driven and he decided to assemble a crack team who could help bring his vision into fruition there was clear development going on behind the scenes in 2015 a tweet in august of that year has birken announcing work on a new game and although it's mostly quiet after that we can pin the day that it was officially announced to the 5th of july 2016 the day after american independence people were going to be in high spirits and there was surely no better way to maintain this morale than to launch hunt down the freeman's indiegogo crowdfunding project to garner further attention it was also posted on steam's green light feature greenlight is a now retired system which allowed indie developers to pay a nominal fee to announce upcoming projects with users subsequently voting on their sentiments towards the game in the indiegogo and green light pages there were links to what we can assume was a trailer some gameplay and an interview that was posted a few days later accompanied by some screenshots there is a version of the trailer still accessible on another channel which demonstrates the quality being displayed here god sent him to us to save us we have a hope now the one they called the free man when the hunt down the freeman's page was listed on greenlight the response could probably be evaluated as lukewarm at best the concept may have been interesting but many people express reservations over various aspects of the game ranging from qualms with creative choices such as the cutscenes an issue which are dissecting a bit to concerns encompassing the actual legality of such a game our good friend birkin here was kind enough to open a q a thread where he would discuss anybody's queries however almost immediately he ended up in a rather obstinate debate with the user over the liability of such a venture they ask if our friend frankie here has permission from valve to set up the game in the half-life universe and he responds stating that valve lets people use their ip source mods the person then points out that he is marketing a standalone game and birkeland responds with it is still refers a mod this back and forth continues until it is established that hunt down the freeman is both a mod and a standalone game but this interaction would not have inspired faith in prospective investors he was subsequently flooded by further questions over the legality and soundness of the project in question and shortly after birkin decided to make a post addressing people's doubts this post began by attempting to address misgivings surrounding the budget as observed 100 000 was quite a lofty goal and although that would be modest for many developments people weren't exactly expecting a triple a release here however it appears that there was a reason birkin had expertly estimated the figure of a hundred grand you see the trailer that we viewed was made with half-life 2 assets the budget in question would allow the developers to purchase their own assets as well as licenses for the content you see birkin didn't want this to just be another mods in his own words he wanted it to be a professional game now if you ignore the irony of professional being spelled wrong it is hard to deny that berkan possessed a lot of ambition and faith in his idea and believed he could convince the audience that this was a worthwhile investment he clearly believed it himself and he continued to advocate for it over the coming days in spite of these scoffers and the skeptics he appeared to hold that outlook that if you're dogged and persistent enough then you could sell water to a drowning man there was little doubt about it birkin had confidence coming out of his ears however sales isn't just confidence it's about having knowledge of your product and knowledge of the demographic you're going to be marketing it to and first impressions are a lot so the fact that his post appeared uncertain on particular characteristics and technicalities of the game you did more questions than it did answers one of the most acclaimed facets of the original half-life series were its choice to diminish the use of cutscenes in favor of scripted sequences which allowed the player to maintain control of their character this was a bold decision at the time but it worked creating a more seamless interrelation between the plot line and the gameplay with the previews of hunt down the freeman it seemed that they were going to be relying more heavily on cut scenes to tell the story which many seem confused by now obviously a game can take the creative liberties that it feels comfortable with and on principle if it helps create a better product then so be it however in the original the lack of cutscenes wasn't just any old creative decision it was a decision that for a long time was identifiable with the series and if a game alienates itself from a franchise's distinguishable elements then what appeal does it have to the consumer who is familiar with the established universe and these cutscenes have an opportunity to tell a story that ortella emotion that normally in gameplay cannot do there's nothing wrong with providing a new spin with new features and new ideas but for many fans you also need to be in touch with the spirit and the mantra of what made the original game successful and birkin was having trouble latching on to that this issue was most illuminated in an interview a few days later with the creator from the community although passionate driven with ample ability and experience with the half-life games he had trouble justifying the fundraising heck is this guy now it's quite possible that you could make the best game po ever i'm not saying that you can't do that i'm saying that people will say well i'm not gonna give money to somebody that i've never heard of how would you address those people and now we have opportunity to give people something really really beautiful but that that's the thing that's why people ask why it's hundred thousand dollar oh my god you want hundred thousand dollars people people people gets really um suspicious like why you want that much firstly ten percent of the money goes to the tax and in the go-go so there's only ninety thousand dollars left and fifty thousand dollar of that just goes to the licensing the game and there's only forty thousand dollars there's that's forty thousand dollars we have to make all the characters all over again and it's not like he doesn't have a point here with the boldness of such objectives you need a lot of money but the boldness here bordered on temerity for many prospective supporters and for some with no track record in publishing game mods let alone half-life mods people needed more than his word and even then his word could have been a bit more convincing we have to get new textures and we have to get voice acting like voice acting is not really cheap it was clear that there was still lots of work to be done but birken was ready to put in the hours [Music] that's why i like to announce that we're gonna make in a playable demo for hunt down the freeman i i i was thinking about it but i wasn't sure should i do it or not i see that people didn't understand and question the cutscenes and how it's gonna work like in like there's so much different it not look not like a half-life game and it's not like a half-life game to be honest i'm not telling it's oh it's gonna be exactly like half-life because i'm not giving you just new levels i'm giving you a whole new game when you're fundraising for an idea which hasn't been fully manufactured yet trust is a huge constituent people are giving you money on the back of what they believe you can do rather than what you've done those with a reputation to produce results may have a bit more success on this front however someone like birken simply couldn't win over people with a couple videos and screenshots and even then what was currently shown was unlikely to resemble the finished product as birkin intended to use the capital to purchase new engines tools and models all the preview and trailer really gave fans was a look at the possible storyline and some design concepts for many that was simply not enough however birkin was conscious of this and following the onslaught of audience concerns announced the development of a demo to provide users with further confidence in his ability and potential he discussed this in the days following the initial green light post and even in the aforementioned interview however the official post declaring this was made on the 11th of july just under a week after the indiegogo page went live most responses to this were actually pretty positive with many expressing anticipation for the upcoming release however there were also very few replies and it was clear that at the time general interest was dwindling many clicked onto the page saw there was very little there for them and moved on unfortunately this was a major miscalculation on the marketing front you really need to put people in with the preview content to maintain interest and what was there simply was not sufficient which led to a lot of users dropping by and not sticking around they didn't seem to have a plan beyond the immediate community either appealing to a fan base is not the worst idea but unless those you appeal to aren't desperate then they're unlikely to blindly throw their money at it even those brainwashed individuals may support the game or the developments but as an outsider pledging to alter the fabric of what made the original successful birkin was barking up the wrong tree at this point the only possible vindication could be found in the impending demo release if it was high enough quality then it could be used as a springboard to show the capacity of the team behind this vision so come september the moment of truth was upon us and birken finally finally had the chance to show those who doubted him what he was really made of in interviews he had championed himself as a perfectionist even citing his chronic perfectionism as the reason that he hadn't released any previous mods so have you made any mods yourself have you created any maps or any mods before yes i did uh actually i did this like last five years but i'm a a person that's when i create something it has to be perfect and if it's not perfect it cannot be outside so finally we were able to have a sample of birkens perfection what flavor had he you achieved you're so cool with your stick bullying citizens you didn't see what i did my brothers did the captain did you couldn't know anything we lived through to put it nicely it was an acquired taste now it wasn't the worst thing ever witnessed to man by many standards it was an average playthrough but that was that it was also not the saving grace the project needed and there were glaring gaps in the competency which would have put off many people who may have approached the demo with an open mind we are under heavy fire ally combining forces are dead the truth is that this content should have been released alongside the fundraiser this would have given them more time and allow them to iron out any blemishes that were too conspicuous in too many places the output just felt rushed and maybe it was given that they were struggling to hang on to subdued interest from the gaming world even with that in mind it probably would have paid dividends to spend a bit more time touching up certain elements because this is a long-term investment users won't expect a demo to be perfect but as a showcase of the talent behind birken's team there was very little content that would inspire hope in audiences and certainly not enough to encourage them to give up their hard-earned cash and after a few months the indiegogo project sat at a measly twelve dollars of its a hundred thousand targets a number that in spite of all the criticisms still surprised me because i assume that something of this scale and mild publicity would at least have some people donating for the hell of it but my assumption was incorrect and in spite of all the names attached to this project the time invested and the confidence of its lead all progress was brought to a halt and the team seemingly disbanded there was one silver lining to this cloud though and that was that the game had been green lighted through steam's process nonetheless if there was no team to take it forward then this detail was frankly meaningless however as i'm sure you know this was far from the end of the story you see some say you can't keep a good man down but that's not entirely true because the moral content of one's character doesn't come into it if they're dogged enough and regardless of birken's nature he was a man on a mission and was already preparing to renew his efforts once more enter stage left royal rudeous entertainment royal rudius entertainment or rre was the company set up to carry hunt down the freeman forward from its previous shortcomings with that in mind it seems that it was being established shortly before the demo was published and the crowdfunding campaign brought to an end the twitter account was set up in august 2016 and although it would be a year until another promotional campaign would be launched birken was working hard making sure that this time hunt down the freedom would be a resounding success a now deleted article published in a turkish magazine technology disclosed the development in january 2017 which appeared to follow a tweet interaction where an employee stated they were part of the project once again by the occasional tweet it seems that birkin chose to keep this venture predominantly under wraps likely causing it to fade from people's memory and allowing them to return to their lives of blissful ignorance alas all good things must come to an end and at the end of 2017 both birken and royal rudius entertainment ignited their social media presence to announce the ton down the freeman was back and more powerful than ever but nobody was quite ready for the tricks that birken had been hiding up his sleeve not even some of the tricks themselves yes it seems that they were in for a bit of a shock but like much of this story even if you knew what was going to happen it would still manage to subvert your expectations in a way the fact that birken's original fundraiser had flopped so terribly enabled him to move rather seamlessly into what we can assume was his plan b if the project had originally received moderate support with some people's expectations resting on it then the outcome could have been very different the developers would have needed to keep public donors in the loop with the progress and this could have led to a consistent stream of scrutiny which could have accrued the game some lasting notoriety if people became dissatisfied with the product instead by keeping financing and labor behind closed doors it allowed them to operate and recruit without their previous reputation hampering them this was particularly vital to their subsequent marketing strategy which employed a fresh approach for what it was attempting to sell though at its core was a technique not unheard of yes our good friend birken was working behind the scenes on a team that would make the game a hit but would it make the game goods well sergeant mitchell in the flesh or rather his remains after a few tweets foreshadowing the launch of the long-awaited game a teaser was posted on january 6 2018 with arguably the most infamous character from the original series g-man providing exposition for the game's protagonist i do have to admit i'm impressed that you made it back alive from black mesa even if it wasn't our intention to begin with alongside came a few statuses from those involved promoting the game now a lot of developments and employers do not have the strongest social media presence even birken's following was quite derisory however the game received a significant signal boost from a few creators many of whom had been recruited by birken to voice characters in fact the cast appeared to include pyrocynical i hate everything closely crazy and keemstar some of whom posted rather wrote comments about their involvement accompanied by a link to this steam page this provided an extra helping of publicity for their operation and doing its reaction was broadly positive this is mainly because it focuses on one of the game's strongest assets the g-man whose voice actor does a pretty good job at emulating the original inflections and intonation however if you look beyond this there were already a few cracks in the visage that should have been caused for concern firstly the scripting in general just felt a bit clunky even if it wasn't our intention to begin with yet you are still here you should have just died there but here you are at this point he goes from being this foreboding trailer narrator to verbally tripping over himself in what appears to be outward annoyance of the fact that our protagonist is still alive i don't think this was the intended tone i think they were moreover attempting to use repetition to ingrain the message of the premise however its usage is excessive and comes across as rather graceless in its delivery another less noticeable yet probably more telling red flag is the g-man's pronunciation of black mesa alive from black mesa now although a more subtle mistake the fact that nobody involved had corrected the voice actor and ensured another take of an otherwise simple line to me seemed like a failure in elementary diligence they had more than ample time to prepare this and they were still falling at basic hurdles all in all this would understandably cause reservation amongst people more familiar with the half-life series however whereas in the past much of the fandom had controlled the general verdict on the game here they were outnumbered by those slightly less aware of the details and taken him by the hype and perhaps the inclusion of their favorite creators i don't think it's the audience's fault that these flaws may have been overlooked at the time it's easy to analyze it with the enlightened glory of hindsight if i was a casual viewer i probably would have missed it as well what this does tell us though is that birkin and his team hadn't become any more rigorous when it came to quality control they just found a new way to drown out the incoming criticism not too long after the teaser its steam page was erected with the previews posted there as well forecast was sunshine and rainbows for the team behind the half-life spin-off as the music teaser was also released to audience anticipation however it wasn't all plain sailing yes many detractors were still present amongst the community most notably the lambda generation twitter account representing the quote ultimate half-life community over the next three weeks royal rudyard space down and addressed accusations regarding general quality control and more importantly their use of stolen assets in their newest trailer and in previous versions of the game most notably their 2016 demo one former team member made a public statement chastising birken and his management for the organization of the game expressing fear that it could permanently damage the reputation of future half-life titles on the same day royal rudius posted a statement rebuffing these claims asserting they had obtained all necessary licenses for assets used in the upcoming release and holding that although the 2016 demo had used unwarranted placeholders they had since rectified this i'm going to say further discussion of this for later they ended up in a couple more unconvincing interactions where they attempted to distance themselves altogether from the 2016 demo as well as claiming that birken was not party to the inception of royal rudy's entertainment however most of this remained within the community and rre vowed to press on with the promotion of their game uploading an official trailer at the end of january i heard you're looking for a man [Music] a man in an orange suit a man with a crowbar gordon freeman it was this video that some issues began to appear more evident mostly relating to the rather substandard audio mastering was gone now it's back a gift for the captain do you recognize it god help us no god will stay away from this one they had reused lines from the teaser and the additional voice clips wouldn't have inspired much confidence either with ig's phrases having vocal acoustics which did not remotely reflect the setting in fact i questioned if anyone had even put his audio through a single filter i just don't understand why it's such an important thing the captain needs to see it these were school boy errors which becomes even worse when you consider that the trailer is meant to show the good parts with this upload the reception was strikingly more negative and although some people were still excited there was a trace of reservation and straight-up cynicism from many viewers however the curiosities still remain and with the release date set for february the second there was only a few days until the masses would finally have their say on this enigma however team burke wasn't as ready as they said they were this was a triumph i'm making a note here huge success yeah this game sucks it's hard to overstate my satisfaction holy [ __ ] the game does not work everything about the game is is a huge mess we do what we must because so fast forward to the game coming out everyone hates it except the ones who are dead [Music] [Music] what do you think you're doing well i literally just finished portal 2 minutes ago and you can't just go barging into people's monitor troll i won't when you finish your damn video do you even know when the deadline is yeah it's a week from now right no the deadline was a week ago what just finished the damn video i already sent the audio i'll be watching you until then i'll be watching you until then hello and again welcome to the aperture science computer aided enrichment center hunt down the response is edited by lucky me and chloe [Music] as the date loomed many waited with baited breath to see what this game would bring us however on the 31st of january just before the second trailer was uploaded an announcement was posted by a good amigo berkan regarding the status of the game he thanked people for their support but also acknowledged one of the prevalent concerns voiced by many regarding the file size he expresses sympathy and says that they've been working on a solution however we'll need more time to implement this and thus will be delaying the release by six days this is formalized the following day on the steam page with the date being moved back to february the 8th okay so just under a week gamers have seen far worse delays in their time and people were willing to wait a bit longer if it allowed the developers to make a game more accessible for users however come february the 8th and another post was published stating that they will be deferring released once more this time to perfect the game in hopes that it will be primed for application rre also made the tangential comments they didn't realize they had 50 levels until a few hours ago which i think is an attempt to hype up the game but just makes them seem more incompetent like you didn't plan how many levels you were gonna have so although bemusing it was also believable given that some dips in quality had been seen in certain previews so people once more shrugged their shoulders and bided their time the new date was set for february the 15th and as it came around you can probably guess what happened another delay oh joy this time it was bound for the cause of this postponement as they were to test and approve the game before release how inconvenient it likely surprised many people that this had not been arranged in advance but given the organization of the project thus far i suppose it wasn't beyond belief that they just tacked this onto the end of an already shambolic [Music] rigmarole [Music] nonetheless the post in question seemed to be their flimsiest explanation yet and there were only so many times they could tantalize their patrons in such a way however this time they pledged it would be their final delay and that february the 21st would be the day of reckoning so the day came around the time was upon us the court of public opinion was in session we could finally find out no never mind it was delayed again at the trajectory this game was on this video wasn't going to be a retrospective it was becoming such a circus that even members of the team were beginning to publicly vent their exasperation at the handling of the launch however we were spared further suffering on the 23rd of february when the game was finally unveiled on steam to a triumphant fanfare was it worth the wait it also fairly obviously nicked a lot of its new content weapons and level architecture from asset stores and other mods as again some of it looked competently made but it's all been dropped into the game with the care and precision with which turds are placed in the bottom of a budgie cage the kind of thing where you walk into an over large room and there's just 12 zombies arranged in a neat row because i guess the people in this room were doing the [ __ ] hokey cokey when the aliens invaded i've never been so happy to see the ending screen of a video game and about the only positive takeaway i can see from this whole thing is that i'll never have to play it again and hopefully this video will serve as a warning to other sunny gyms thinking about picking it up hunt down the refund indeed uh-uh no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no you do not deserve to use this map no [ __ ] [Music] oh unfortunately not it was as awful as possibly feared maybe even worse with the most embarrassing aspect being the excess of bugs which many would have hoped parts of the extended deadline were set aside for the game would regularly crash cut scenes were missing audio levels were skewed it was practically unplayable on release it was so bad you wouldn't be unreasonable in thinking it was all one big ruse to hoodwink fans out of their money and it wasn't just the unintended errors that were noticeable either why don't why don't they have textures on their eyes hello captain captain why are they all voiced by me i don't know i don't like that hey shut the game up shut the game up there's a gas leak that can blow a half of us all the way to hell with the [ __ ] match remember no weapons wait a minute i thought you said no weapons yeah some some gasoline come alright guys there was lack of competence exhibited in multiple technical areas including storyline map design controls visual textures scripting audio mastering and voice acting my god the voice acting two words president keemstar [Music] my fellow americans as your president and commander-in-chief it is with a heavy heart that i'm informing you that we have made a strategic decision [Music] [Music] they even changed the plot to what was shown in the trailer the guy who was originally gordon freeman was now a masked man so the plot has even less relevance to the original half-life series undermining a fair bit of the intrigue behind the premise i mean i could go on but it was a terrible game and it was wholly rejected by the community and casuals alike you didn't need to be a gaming connoisseur to recognize the absence of quality royal rudius would make a few more posts responding to the issues present in their title implementing a day one patch which allegedly fixed the in-game glitches though many reviewers disputed this however outrage didn't just end at the audience with some members of the development team clearly upset by the hackneyed job carried out by rre how their work was treated by the direction team and more specifically birken an interview with kotaku the head of pr gabe sumner claimed that the wrong version of the game had been uploaded to steam but others had their own explanations the most outspoken advocate on this issue was an individual by the name of telby he was the sound designer on hunt down the freeman like many others a facet of the game which wasn't met with glowing praise he was also the person who had previously aired his annoyance at the numerous delays however had defended the game and even elements of the management in spite of his recent criticisms this time that nuanced perspective was buried six feet under with him ripping into birken and the management from practically every angle telling a story of narcissism and ineptitude of the highest order it frames our director in chief as a guy with far more confidence than his ability permitted and this is pretty in line with previous portrayals but here it's been to a dramatic detriment of the game with many employees work like tell these here being completely compromised now of course this may be what a disgruntled employee says but it fits in with birken's established reputation and would explain a lot of technical shortcomings telbe also alleges that many of the delays were publicity stunts which once again may also explain why the game doesn't feel like it's been polished alongside some of the rather unconvincing excuses they put out in the past the creator of hunt down the freeman he acted upon that naivety a naivety of thinking you can make a game like this and actually pull together investors and people and developers to work on it so while it really is just an overestimation an over extension of what one can meet his own goals with and it created an interesting result and i think it's something to take note of another more emotionally reasoned insider response was that from a guy by the name of dredel who'd also worked on the game contributing to some of the sound design as well you know god bless him birkin had an idea and he tried to bring it to life it doesn't always hit the mark and there was a lot of external forces at play i'm sure both with investors and who knows what but you know there still is a respect there for someone trying to create something and then also still getting to the point of releasing it which most people don't even get to here kind of what to say about berkeley on a personal level however also sincere concern to express given the state of the product when the customer is happy the game makes money you're able to pay off investors and etc and they've come out and said that they have investors this game is not going to sell it launched broken it launched unplayable this game is unplayable and i'll talk a tiny bit about it and as we go forward but i'm actually a little scared for it i think that they might be in some serious trouble right now like money-wise potentially if they can't get these issues resolved alongside that he had steam criticism to bestow onto the creators behind the doomed enterprise exposing the incompetence exhibited during much of the process there are a couple things that keep you grounded when working on a game one of them is a game design document now when i was approached to work on hunt down the freeman a year and a half ago birkin was pitching me on the game and i didn't really understand what he was talking about it didn't make too much sense to me in my head i was just kind of going yeah yeah yeah and i had this weird feeling about everything felt like something was not right so when he was asking me to do some work for it i was pretty adamant about getting the game design document um and i will tell you that there was no game design document it all the ideas sort of came from the head of the creator with minimal minimal minimal scripting work done i'm sure and so it reflects as such when you have 60 independent contractors all working for you and you have them each do once one piece uh without even knowing what it's going to you know contribute to the overall consistency and conjugality of the story you get a [ __ ] you get this to be fair the some firm but pretty fair advice still wishing the team the best but also hoping they would act in the interests of those who had offered their money and time to the game there is only one way that is to one take down the game from steam it is unfortunately an unfinished game and a very poorly designed game and if you want to create a product of value you're going to have to take this down and completely redesign it it just is not up to scratch issue a statement with 100 honesty about the shortcomings both with communication within the team and outside of the team you know to the community and then spend a solid two years of hard development in order to get this game up to any kind of presentable state to the point where it's playable and at that point you still probably might have a 10 chance of success i mean the damage is kind of already done but to the reputation of the company raw rudious entertainment and to the game itself uh which has very negative reviews right now would birken heed these words of wisdom well not too long after birken would make a post on the steam page i mean it's signed rre team but i'm 99 sure it's birken mainly because of how defensive it is basically the post claim that towards the end of development the team were hounded by false allegations from those within the community which pressured them into pushing through production and releasing the unfinished game turns out this only escalated the persecution they were facing and this has upset them a lot as no one has even asked them for their sight this community is just concerned with drama drama drama drama disgusting however in spite of all this they were committed to working on the game and continuing to improve it that's what this says about their character they wanted to repair that lost trust however before they had the chance to do that they were to be hunted down themselves that's it i've been watching all day and all you do is play play play i'm shutting all of this down right now yeah they're very faint at this point in the story you can barely hear them that's because i'm a [ __ ] and i don't see the biggest warning signs coming from a mile away colossal sent me a thing like every word equals this much money want your payment i was like i don't want your [ __ ] payment allegedly uses assets stolen from the gary smart workshop i told burke and i was like please delay this please delay this several months i haven't actually been paid as of now so i gotta just explain this to people what it was like working on it uh how much of a disaster is turned out to be people don't tend to hold mods or fan-made spin-offs to unreasonable standards we're all aware that studios have a greater capacity to manufacture high production value content at the same time we're also aware that funding doesn't solely dictate the quality of a game there are many great indie games that were built off the back of budget's most moderate with this in mind the indie developers who tend to succeed in this area are the ones who are aware of the limitations that such financial constraints may breed and have the ability to work with mine to their pecuniary blueprints birken was clearly not one for limitations and his grasp far exceeded his reach the amount of money he was working with was still well below that of a proper corporate fund adventure yet it was constantly hailed as the magnum opus of this budding businessman in this context many considered him to be the tommy wiseau of gaming attempting to create something that his ability clearly didn't enable him to now there are a lot of parallels that can be drawn to tommy wiseau and the room in this intriguing tale however one of the stark differences that i would draw is that the room is entertaining in its dreadfulness and hunt down the freeman is considered by many to be painstakingly boring most people consider the cut scenes to be the most entertaining inclusion however even then it's just immensely cliched lines that will have you uprooting all the delicate follicles on your beautiful beautiful skull your name who are you mitchell mitchell huh yes mitchell a name with many meanings for some the meaning is a gift from god for others who is like god which one of you mitchell are you a gift from god sent to save us or perhaps you are god himself come to doom our worthless lives perhaps he's cursed i always saw you as a hero after that day hero you're talking to a villain my dear the hero inside of me died many many years ago when i was young the room obtained its status by proxy of its own merit even if that merit was its own catastrophe in comparison hunt down the freedom of milly used the fame of its youtuber cast and employed a cunning marketing strategy which built hype within fan bases and managed to overcome any vocal descent from communities intimate to the series nonetheless you can hype up the pudding all you want the proof will always be in the eating therefore although the game was released to more publicity than would be expected for a title of that stature it was similarly berated by almost anyone able to formulate an opinion online bringing into question those associated with the project as with telby there'll always be some finger pointed when a game drastically underperforms but this will typically amount to a lot of conflicting testimonies that don't leave the inner circle of those invested however at the same time by giving prominent roles to creators who had large platforms and media followings berkum ran the risk of being publicly implicated if the project went haywire particularly given these were not just any old youtubers but the fabled commentator commentators can be quite concerned with their public image given that their narratives are often loaded with moral principles and beliefs and therefore in light of this failure a couple sought to explain their position on the game while also sharing their thoughts on its caliber i was approached by a guy telling me that he was making a half-life mod and that i could voice act in it i thought hey what could possibly go wrong hello captain stories told were pretty similar people were invited onto the project they thought why not and subsequently regretted it while observing all the amateurish direction exhibited by management basically it crescendoed from little tiny alarm bells just in the distance can you hear that way back there can you hear that over there yeah they're very faint at this point in the story you can barely hear them that's because i'm a [ __ ] and i don't see the biggest warning signs coming from a mile away from the get-go i had to sign a uh a contract which was a gmail or like an email with the the details of the contract within the email and signing it was replying to the email with my name the most informative video on this saga is the upload by i hate everything who documents some of the rather dodgy practices employed by birken including out of context lines to be recorded that was sent over skype and a contract that was validated by replying with the person's name so my character was asian and at first they were also supposed to be american have an american accent so an american asian so the alarm bell is getting louder uh you do realize i'm english right i have a very very noticeable english accent he was convinced i could do it so i tried it for him with with none of this direction or context i did i did the lines that i was given in this american accent then weeks go by and i get some feedback yeah we don't want to do the american accent anymore just do whatever you want pretty much and i'm like oh okay then i'll just be english then it's a lot easier for me so then when it comes to the final product and i'm skipping through the cutscenes like what is this and and i find both the american and the english lines are in it do what the hell you got to do but i'm not going to be a part of this however regardless of who was talking about it the consensus was the same that birken was in way over his head and that he did not harness the creative skills to bring together such a vision and on top of the fact you're hiring youtubers as voice actors expecting this melancholy overdramatic dark edgy drama kind of thing kind of tone very serious tone that requires a good writing and b good actors to perform said writing that the two biggest pillars are already they've already collapsed and i don't know how that kind of oversight can be overlooked unfortunately in spite of the defiant steam post birkin had the car stacked against him it is of course very easy in these circumstances to blame the guy at the top and i'm sure there were oversights which went beyond his responsibility but ultimately when you credit yourself as the creator writer producer director and refer to it as a birkin-denizzy aaron game then you have to accept that at least some of the buck is going to stop at you false hope i know the director i mean he i told him i was making this video i was like man i gotta just explain this to people what it was like working on it uh how much of a disaster it has turned out to be because it just seems weird otherwise like people are seeing or hearing my voice in this game and they're like wait is that what is he doing in this i hate this game i don't want it i don't want to hear that and he he was he was adamant that the game it was the wrong version that released and it was a it was a broken version and they have a better version that should have gone up and i'm just like well that's even worse to do that that's even more of an unprofessional move birkin had reached out to creators begging them to hold off their videos with the pledge that the game would be fixed as soon as possible but unfortunately given that many of the changes he had already promised were not in place there was little trust in his word and those were the people he actually had contact with in the coming weeks and even months plenty of outsiders lined up raring to rank on the game for the reputation it had acquired and using the information posted by his critics the youtube connection may have aided its marketing at first and there was no denying the attention it was receiving but if birkin was hoping to become the darling of the gamer world he was gravely mistaken initially when i was making this video i gave the developers fair warning and in response they told me to not make this video because they're bringing out a patch that would fix everything he said it would drop uh let let's see oh yeah four [ __ ] days ago i don't think these guys are scam artists i just don't think they're artists at all the consensus was clear the crater burdened the blame and after further updates in one final attempt to curb the criticism birken cut the steam price of the game in many ways in spite the sheer incompetence and the publicity it spawned birkin appeared to care greatly about what people actually thought of the product and even with his reputation thoroughly dragged through the mud was attempting to find some sort of path back to redemption many acknowledged this and even with the number of people bothered by the game most creators tended to mitigate their criticism towards birken playing down the idea that he had acted maliciously in any capacity i can't say for certain in reading stories from the inside and watching one interviewed film just before the playable demos release with a burke and deniserian the game's director and writer is malicious or incompetent so many people i work with on this progress only couple people know the real real concept of the game because i didn't know who i can trust and who i can't and i don't really like to bring it forward one of the posts i will link to in the description states that they don't want things to get incendiary so i'm leading to saying that it's a case of stupidity rather than cruelty if only because i like to believe that in people however not everyone subscribed to this point of view stating that some details were simply not excusable by ignorance what do these details entail well let's go there now and i'm just looking at it thinking oh you poor man he's so nice he's very nice man just wanted to make a game just wanted to make a fun game for people to [Music] enjoy [Music] poor old birken all he wanted to do was bring a game to life for the adoring devotees and sure maybe he didn't quite have the ability to fully realize his vision he still had the noble list of intentions correct well some would disagree instead arguing that birken was a cynical charlatan seeking to capitalize off a community's nostalgia for a revered franchise how would one prove this well it's difficult to prove intent beyond a shadow of a doubt and most people here clearly worked from the assumption that birken was not acting with malice which is completely valid however if a person perpetrates various shady deeds with awareness of the possible consequences then many would argue that they lose the benefit of the doubt we would typically grant them this was the case some argued for birken now producing and publishing a subpar game isn't sufficient evidence of a crooked character his bumbling approach can explain a lot of failures but some felt the certain actions had crossed a line some felt that birken must have known how awful his game was before release and pushed on with it in the pursuit of dollar regardless of the cost what would make people think that well first of all let's go back to steam greenlight the former system to help indie developers release their game on the corresponding platform in spite of some success stories there were also flaws which had made it pretty unpopular with a fair few from the gaming community one of these being how easy it was for some bad actors to take advantage of the voting system and the rather unscrupulous standards in place for example you could implement bots to simulate the impression of more support than you were actually receiving thus inflating your vote count and the possibility that your game would be approved this is what some claim the team behind the game were attempting to carry out in an archived link numerous bots ascribed to the site csgohappy.ru are listed as members of the game's greenlight page implying that they have been bought by the team's management and used to inflate hunt down the freeman's support rather than earning it on its own merits now green light itself was discontinued in 2017 and replaced the new system known as steam direct therefore if this was the case it would have likely happened in 2016 when they were attempting to cultivate publicity for their unsuccessful crowdfunding project nearly all these bots have since disappeared from the page but their significance remains as some concluded their presence was indicative of the campaign that birken was attempting to run another prominent controversy is relating to the use of their assets now we've already discussed the unlicensed use of certain content in their 2016 demo and royal rudius's rather futile attempts to distance themselves from that controversy as well as their supposed vindication from other development teams however many contested that these dodgy dealings were still present in the official release with one user going as far as to write up a whole list of all the alleged stolen assets used in the game once again if true it would show a conscious disregard for the profession and other creators who work in the field with little care as to what went into the game it would also contradict the public statements that had been issued previously signifying additional dishonesty and paying further credence into these cynical theories to supplement this it was also claimed that when brought up people were being banned from the hunt down the freeman steam forms with one user sharing an image in which he left a pretty harsh comment and being banned for slander now the comment was strong in its sentiments but it's not slander because as any culture spider-man fan knows in print it's liable anyway with that in mind it's not really libelous either the only possibly dubious comment is the claim that the developers have admitted that it's a cash grab themselves something which i don't believe birkin has done even then they'd have to prove that some guy in a steam from trash talking has damaged their reputation and i really don't think they needed any help with that so with these in mind some began to draw the conclusion that burkham wasn't just some sincere fool but someone much more destructive and rapacious with no concern for who he affected in the quest for success including many of those he worked with however these allegations weren't exactly an open and shut case either when it came to the stolen assets debacle a pretty thorough response was published onto the hunt down the freeman forums going through each individual claim either appearing to disprove the original poster or placing the burden of proof back onto them although the dispute intercepts the much of the use in this game as lazy they assert the developers likely had a licence to use most of these assets in the official title and in spite of the fact that there probably was illicitly acquired content in the 2016 demo it couldn't really be attributed to them as it's a separate company now as noted i don't entirely agree with this and think that accountability can be extended to previous projects where there has been consistent involvement to certain individuals but i also don't think it's the biggest deal if they have changed their ways and although that's debatable many didn't think it was fair to consider the assets stolen this was echoed in gabe sumner's response to another post where he also appears frustrated at the continued resurfacing of this claim he also repudiates the notion that bots were used in the green light system saying that it was probably someone trying to set them up i'm not entirely sure what stake a person would have in buying box for the hunt down the freeman greenlight page but people have done stranger things to set others up so i suppose it's not impossible though somewhat suspicious in fact according to gabe the only illegal thing that rre has done is not pay him and other employees as well but other than that we're all good wait what i must admit i am somewhat surprised by the nonchalance of such remark but it seems these grievances could never impact a lot of the personnel's commitment to the game and even its tainted honour i do hold a mild level of admiration for that but it's hard to ignore a lot of the criticisms that people raised at the same time with all the opinions of those actually involved in the game almost all of them seemed hesitant to say that the project or its director were ill-natured so what can be said about it [Music] there is a story here and a man at the center of it you see while all the youtubers and reviewers ragged on the game obliterating its fragile reputation in front of the braying public with those associated scrambling to salvage their personal investments a certain individual had gone surprisingly quiet birkin denise aaron like voice acting is not really cheap like i voice that you know i play some mods and there was voices that the programmers and level designers did and i mean it's okay but you know you want the best i understand that i i want it to be perfect in a rather angry steam post the half-life youtuber bollocks claimed to have invested 50 000 in this venture which would at least explain the rather strange comments of support during the promotional operation this was however disputed by gabe and looking at her positive comments they do seem pretty ironic though once again i'm not really sure of the point of all this but it's a weird subplot that reflects the landscape in the server some members of the team converged waited and vented frustrated by the lack of game revisions and communications on birken's part maybe it was out of shock maybe it was out of embarrassment maybe he'd come to the realization there was little he could do to repair so much of the damage inflicted at this point birken's world was only as good as his actions if you look at the evidence and accordingly compile a list of his errors misdeeds it begins to look quite damning for our turkish friend under his administration people's work was misused or discarded the organization was on par with tanacon his contributions in the script and direction were abysmal the release was botched and he continuously promised patches and updates many of which people felt he didn't deliver i don't know if it's been sorted out since but some people weren't paid and many felt ignored and mismanaged in hindsight this shouldn't be a surprise given how under qualified birkham was love him or hate him he didn't have a clue on how to put a game together now i think it'd be fair to conclude that in spite of the copious number of issues you could raise with his conduct that he hadn't acted out of avarice or malice in part because so many people who worked with him defended his character but also because this would be one hell of a project to carry out just to make a quick buck especially considering how you have to also pay valve i do think that birken's will to accomplish his vision was at the expense of common sense and subsequently those who fell victim to the reality many of them were upset with how their work was treated many were harmed by the backlash of the game in general many felt their reputation was on the line and while birken gave the workforce and the audience very little to appease the situation these wounds only deepened people who seek to criticize him on this basis have pretty strong grounding and you can't really defend it perkins team deserve better however birken clearly wasn't just some talentless hack and a framing of such would be a discredit to those who believed in him yes birken clearly didn't possess the skills to turn out a high quality game but as noted this should have been quite obvious when you look at the facts from a detached perspective when put to the practical test this was continuously exposed the initial demo was rejected unanimously by fans with the series need i remind you he raised twelve dollars while courting for support of his concept virtually every preview was beset by multiple faults and his attitudes towards workplace professionalism would probably raise a few eyebrows to say the least however in spite of all this he managed to assemble a team of over 60 people raised enough money to buy the necessary licenses create and market a game by presenting others with a vision that persuaded them to give up their valuable time and money he was essentially selling tickets to the hindenburg after it had crashed and it all came down to one thing belief it's by virtue of the fact that birken had so little going for him on a technical level which is a testament to his skills as a salesperson with a project he seemed to legitimately believe in he started from a losing position and argued his way into a winning one a good salesman can sell a good product a great salesman can sell a bad one whether that's justifiable amount of money is irrelevant it doesn't matter whether it's 10k 100k or a million nobody knows you and i think that's one of the problems that people have got but as you've already said you're going to be releasing a mod nail that's is that because of the kind of response you've got from the community well actually i get the exact response i was thinking because this some people some people love that some people hate it and these haters actually made the game more popular right now because hate is a a fast way to make people know about this because they just go around and tell everyone hey dude look that dude make a half-life game like that's crazy and it's just make it more popular yeah basically bombardment accenture birkin was silent probably for many reasons most of them not positive however the truth remained the birken had probably done the best he could with his relative skill set and in time animosity fates and your merits are noted as much as hunt down the freeman makes birken accountable for its failure his role as a driving force behind his inception is undeniable and the credit his colleagues give him for his passion is also beyond doubt it seems they weren't the only people who recognized this either because in 2019 birkin was hired by activision blizzard as a production coordinator with the company knowledgeable of his role in hunt down the freeman this announcement was met with shot from many some still insistent that he wasn't fit for the job others believing he had not a tone for his previous errors such as payments something which certain individuals claim is still outstanding nonetheless that comes down to what those who actually worked on the project have to say which right now isn't too much all in all with a few exceptions i think many involved were almost embarrassed that they didn't know better that they were won over by a dream rather than the reality which is possibly why they were also reluctant to lay into birkens management because they may have all felt somewhat complicit in that with that said birken was a headstrong guy and i think it would have taken more than a simple intervention to make him reevaluate what he was creating i believe that was shown up in the steam post where he basically blamed the haters for the resulting mess because at that point it was more than just a few people telling him it was a lost cause in the twitter replies of his announcement he depicted hunt down the freeman as a learning curve which i think is fair but it was also quite a costly one and i hope he took any chances to clear the air with those he worked with and compensate where he could because in spite of the mess it was the game probably landed him his current job and that was in part thanks to the fact that a lot of people who could have thrown him under the bus chose not to and in all fairness he didn't throw them under the bus either and i respect that however whether colleagues have moved on to greener pastures or not in regards to what they learned it will likely be a bittersweet experience for some and just a bitter one for others with this in mind i think it's time to wrap up this tale for the ages [Music] in many ways it was true hunt down the freeman was an unmitigated disaster yet at the same time it was an unparalleled feat it really shouldn't exist and to be honest people would probably be better off without it but with what people were working with the fact that the game happened at all is a borderline miracle and i feel its failures have almost enlightened many in a way the buyers although inconvenience were probably mildly entertained by the fever dream that such a game represented while also being informed on bad financial decisions the youtubers lives have since gone on colossal may have even uploaded a video since then for them it's a funny albeit slightly embarrassing story no one really blames them for what was obviously bad casting and i doubt it will harm their career prospects if they ever wanted to dabble in acting again the posse i feel most sympathy for is those who worked on the game there are a lot of talented people who clearly felt that the title's representation of the work had distorted their efforts and besmirched their credentials add in the further issues that many of them complained about i really wouldn't blame them for wanting to forget this dumpster fire nonetheless hopefully enough times elapsed and allowed those associated to find new opportunities i guess the moral of the story is to ensure that even if a person talks a convincing game that you sometimes have to look at their record to deliver on such commitments the same advice can be passed to investors whoever they are yet the man who had the most learn was birken but sometimes the best lesson is to know your limits birken is clearly an enthusiastic guy with infectious energy but that's not always enough and he'd need to educate himself a bit if he ever wanted to enter the creative side of games production again hopefully his new position plays a bit more into his comfort zone while allowing him to pick up new skills along the way hunt down the freeman was a case of too much too soon but as a strange twist of bait it worked out for him and i hope he doesn't forget that as mentioned there are many similarities between the room and hunt down the freeman particularly their respective architects but hunt down the freedom was unexceptional on paper and most of the execution too a substandard revenge shooter consisting of mostly mundane or repetitive gameplay with somewhat cornerly written cutscenes spliced in between it was destined to be a flash in the pan but birken hyped it up in every way possible with the youtubers he brought in being front and center of this elaborate plan what he said to them we may never know but it quickly manifested itself into something greater incorporating famous names into your cast isn't some avant-garde strategy but the inclusion of these creators just makes the experience all the more surreal particularly commentators many of whom are specifically known for their voices it's hard to hear them as anyone else the only youtuber who should voice act at all really is me okay what do you think that's that's quite something come on my clients will be very pleased okay okay okay what do you say to 200k that sounds acceptable uh in fact it's quite low my rich buyer probably would have paid a lot more even fantastic yes okay okay i'm proud of it just leave me alone i like it anyhow the youtube connection initiated a domino effect inflating coverage with many people harping on its flagrant issues and mean potential tarnishing yet immortalizing its status within gaming and online cliques alike in a way it highlights how easily we are influenced sometimes yet also highlights the strength of our own influence at the end of the day hunt down the freeman certainly stuck in people's memories you could go as far to say it has a pretty decent half-life [Music] please spare me speaking of there's a lot of questions as to what this means for the half-life series itself and possibly other mods i'd honestly say not too much hopefully though i do understand the concern there was another half-life mod released a couple years before hunt down freeman received pretty mixed reviews in the community at the time i think some were worried that it was outlining a pattern of people trying to hazardly invent content to fill in gaps the previous games left however i think hunt down the freeman's reputation as a bad game with youtubers involved has superseded its reputation as a half-life spin-off i can understand how it may make prospective developers more tentative to act on personal inspiration but i don't think fans and gamers in general who as noted at the start probably welcome innovative projects would be put off by this creation i think it's a natural outcome with fan-made content some of it's going to be pretty good and others will leave a bit to be designed the difference with hunt down the freeman was its scale and with that the game just transformed itself into a meme that transcends simple categorization at the center of the story a man who comparably rises above the realms of human understanding embodying the purest form of dream-stimulated idealism a driving force behind a vision in spite of that vision's many imperfections he made it happen for better and for worse some may not acknowledge the true influence that he exhibited but there is no way this game would have existed without his presence it seems quite improbable that the hunt down the freeman franchise will bring us a sequel and the developers have confirmed this also many have moved on and probably would be difficult to convince to return there is a parody account that claims to be carrying the baton of the franchise forward though i wouldn't hold my breath every now and then the company twitter will post a meme or share an interaction they even mention their community which is entertainment in itself i doubt there'll be many new updates and it seems the team has embraced the meme status since but if you really want to see where it is now it's eight dollars on steam which may still be a bit overpriced especially when you can buy among us but it's your money if you buy it after this video and find out it's not the life-changing experience you'd hoped for then that may be on you if you want to play a recently released critically acclaimed half-life game and have the resources then half-life alex came out this year for virtual reality consoles it also covers events in between the first two games in the series so clearly the developers must have been inspired by our good friend birken i have expected alex to pop up in front of me and save me from the [ __ ] game it's hard to say exactly what valve has in store for the half-life franchise and with investment from many in its universe it's natural that some want to offer their own contributions but making a video game or a mod is more than just aspiration it's about knowledge ability and experience and scaling your goals with mind to them equally if it's just your mod then have a blast it's your life but if you're going to involve other people and make promises to them remember what they're giving up as well and do your best to honor it with your own talent and commitment otherwise you may end up with god this you and god bless the united states of america few things are certain in the story of half-life however there is one thing i can guarantee that being that i am a gamer so stop doubting my credentials for [ __ ] so yes that was the video i hope you enjoyed i want to give a big thanks to my editors who've done a fantastic job thank you so much i love you all a lot really makes difference when you have such reliable people working for you thank you guys they'll all be in the pinned comment go and check them out we support them we support them i suppose i have to mention my patrons i want to give a big thanks to 10 patrons up on screen right now i also have to thank my 50 patrons we have devon shiro chigo amanda and hypercube caroline and some hollow blue tree and pokey siren and the 100 patreons christopher carrass such charming names thank you so much guys you really make a difference just thank you from the bottom of my heart hey we're doing all right we're almost at the end of 2020. it's almost over we just got to get through a couple couple more hurdles election it hasn't been the most fun for me personally at points and obviously if you've been following my posts on instagram or my youtube community posts you'll know that i've been having few health issues and i want to thank anyone who sent me messages of support it really makes a difference and it keeps you going it keeps you pushing forward and that's what i plan to do so thank you guys and i hope everyone else is taking care of themselves too and social medias they'll be in the pinned comments you know that by now if you've got this far at least okay guys i'm gonna wrap this one up here take care of yourselves i'm the right opinion and i'll see in the next one [Music] you

Channel: The Right Opinion

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Id: nSx3Ekx2hTM

Length: 75min 17sec (4517 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 20 2021