Blog: Oblivion pickup lines video is a hit!

After releasing Ye Olde Pickup Lines of Oblivion into the wilds of YouTube on Sunday, it's taken on a life of its own. In its first full day, it earned the #1 position for its category (Video Games - English) and about #50 for all English-language videos! At this writing, the counter is stuck just below 22,000 views - I expect it will catch up the stats overnight. Ratings (4.5 out of 5 stars!) and comments have been mostly positive, though I quickly learned to turn on approvals when the very first YouTube response contained non-constructive feedback involving donkey genitals. Kotaku, Joystiq and Dubious Quality all posted writeups - though apparently Joystiq readers have a strong anti-YouTube bias and seemed to miss the point that this is a viral video aimed at driving interest in this very cool game and its quirks and not a definitive study of bizarre and possibly illegal mating practices. Oh, and my own stats logs revealed many hits from Bethesda's intranet (hi, guys - great game!).

For the record, I used a DV video camera hooked to my receiver's analog outputs to capture gameplay footage from my Xbox 360. I then used a Firewire cable to download the raw footage to Windows Movie Maker. The original rough cut was 9 minutes, but I cut down the ladies and a few silly subplots to get the final running time under 5 minutes. Some people think it's still too long, but I just couldn't bear to remove the Patrick Stewart lines (pure gold!) or the workshop section (which at least two people found as funny as I did, based on comments). Along the way, I've picked up several suggestions for lines I missed and, ahem, certain activities I might enact should I decide to make a sequel.

On top of all of the YouTube madness, I just got offered a consulting position today, so I'll be going into business for myself. This will ensure I can retain a few free hours for additional video projects, should inspiration strike again.

Speaking of Oblivion, be sure to read today's news post and my recent Busy Gamer Review of the game...