I've been wandering into the world of Multiply or Release videos recently. It started as an idle curiosity: one showed up in my recommended videos, and I wondered what could possibly be so satisfying about marbles bouncing around a digital space to occupy a full 10-30 minutes. The answer is: a lot, in fact! I watched the full video, so YouTube recommended me another, and another, and another. Now they account for about a third of my recommended videos.
My personal favorite thing to do with these videos is to narrate them like I am a general, religious leader, or simple citizen in one of the nations that are attacking one another: justifying first strikes, delivering sermons on the wiliness of our enemies, observing military training programs, praying for mercy when a massive assault reaches our doorstep. There's something very satisfying about such a simple simulation of war, and certain situations are intriguing enough to be their own short stories. I think fairly regularly about the time one nation got a giant attack out the door immediately before being destroyed, and that single attack would go on to be the major deciding force in the rest of the war. A lonely titan, painting the ground the color of its deceased home nation's flag, while the living few try to reclaim space from the countless dead, knowing that any attempts they make can be taken away in an instant by that orphaned giant.
Anyways, this morning I got a recommendation for this fucking thing, and I'm pretty sure I'm in hell. This isn't a simulation of war, this is five slot machines all overlaid on top of one another. There are TWO roulette wheels in the same place. This is like the lament configuration of gambling. I haven't watched this video all the way through, but I'm pretty sure that if you do, it unlocks a new circle of hell devoted exclusively to high-retention content.
There are hundreds, if not thousands, of videos in this exact vein. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of people in the comments of each video discussing its highlights and making suggestions for how the rules should change. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of opportunities to get hooked, at which point the YouTube algorithm won't ever let you go.
I don't know if it's brilliant or horrible. I kinda wanna make a game like this, but I also know that nothing I do will be more addictive than what's currently on the market in the form of videos created for ad revenue.
