Lasersniper15 YouTube
SSoHPKC, AuzaBlade49, ProtonJon, the kings of Let's Play content on YouTube. I won't lie, I was enamored by them. These were people who had, through hard work and perseverance, made playing video games their job. As much as younger me wouldn't admit it, I wanted to be like them. So, when I was 15 years old I created the Lasersniper YouTube Chann... Lasersniper is taken? Uuuuh, Lasersniper15...SWEET not taken! That's how the Lasersniper15 YouTube Channel created.
May 16, 2010
The Name
I love Star Wars, and as a teenager I LOVED Battlefront 2 (THE ORIGINAL) growing up. Particularly being a little campy son-of-a-bitch while playing against my brother. I was the laser sniper, and as such that was my gaming handle for...well ever really.
Especially after I blatantly found and stole this awesome art from Kuk-Man on DeviantArt. I eventually got my own version done, but I have been neglecting to credit this person for years and I sorely need to.
The iterations morphed and changed over the years, but, but the core concept remained true.
2010-2011
"Original" Content
As I said above, I was influenced to join YouTube because of the popular Let's Players & the big YouTube boom of the 2010 era. As such, my content wasn't the most... unique. I'll say one thing for younger me, he was persistent. Uploading a surprising amount of content, 102 videos, in the first 10 months. Unfortunately, I did have long gaps still and I rarely finished a series.
Mario ROM Hacks and the family trip vlog I did were my only completed projects. I am still kind of proud of them to this day. Mid 2011 I had a mini-crisis in my life...school. As such the channel was shelved.
2012-2014
Playing With Friends
At this time I had started to come out of my shell a bit and started playing and recording with people online. I met some good friends, like Vigil & Matilda "Xylinder" from the Dead Worker's Party Network, friends I started shows with, such as Jacob Vorland & Morgan Maurer, and reconnected with some people I already knew, like Adolph "Okininja".
Playing co-op games with them like Portal 2 & Minecraft kept me consistent for an entire year. Not just with those video projects, but with my own singe player experiences. It was a fantastic time playing and I am reliving memories just writing this.
But if I am going to be honest, it was never really good. My persistence was not paying off in any channel growth, so I dropped the channel once again.
2015-2019
The Slow Crawl
I continued to upload content, it got varied over the years but I still uploaded. Single-player content, horror games, random Minecraft "ramble Vlogs", and even some group gaming sessions with the Doge Gaming crew. Not a content creator group, just a bunch of random people on discord that hun out occasionally.
I continued just because I felt like I...had to? No, I did enjoy making the videos but there was a lot of passion lost to it. I kept putting things out with sparks of interest here and there. I even started the "Discovering Alcohol" series on this channel. It was eventually moved to the Michael's Mind channel, but I was experimenting.
My attention slowly moved to streaming more and more, and yet the channel seemed to grow faster when I wasn't actively posting on it.
That fact alone excited me for a bit, enough that I actually started posting Mario ROM Hack Reviews in a format I had wanted to for YEARS. But then it kind of just sank in that my effort felt...wasted on YouTube.
I quit in Feb 2019 and haven't looked back. Even though some of my recent videos have been my most successful thus far. I am almost tempted to pick things back up again after writing this page, but with YouTube raising its monetization requirements, I really can't afford to go back and try again. I am fine with this being a closed chapter of my life. It was fun while it lasted.
