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C.C.Creations - Most Recent (Uploaded May 9th 2024, Reviewed 12/06/2025)

Before even properly analysing this video, I want to make the observation that CC Creations is my favourite Star Stabler youtube because they reveal new content before it arrives in the game.

I am not sure how they access the game files - it is not something I have tried to do. For each horse they "Reveal" they use different (often classical) music.

CC Creations always starts their videos with a spoiler warning addendum

Their videos are Timestamped and organized into different sections for ease of access for the watches. [1:24 PM]

OP watermarks their videos [1:26 PM]

uses a shallow focus lens

[1:28 PM]Goes through a meticulous level of care within the spoiler video, showcasing many different aspects of the horse that users may be interested in

There is sometimes a touch of personal fun and humor involved - such as including a section in this video for "long tail appreciation" as the American Saddlebred has an unusual length tail

OP also uses the same endcard for every video - an endcard that uses an outdated character model from the game.

Comments Synopsis:

While videos where the OP is more "present" have comments that have more of a direction towards the OP, these comments seem to be speaking to themselves or to one another. Something I didn't fully anticipate in this section of my research was the level of relelvancy the role of 'self' would have. I knew it was unavoidable but I did not know it would become nearly key. I bring this up now as it has been in the gameplay of StarStable that I have really enjoyed the American Saddlebred, and felt personal sadness to see a near-universal preference for a different breed (the Dutch Warmblood) when discussed in Global chat (when another user inconspicuously asked people to share their favourite between the two). The comments on this video reflect hte dubious response to this breed - with comments such as "It’s like a love hate situation right now I’m so lost". In this breed of horse in particular, there is also a discussion on "humane" treatment, as horses with gaited breeds can sometimes have the gait achieved through inhumane means - I am not particularly versed in my own understanding of this.

"Whew that's a relief it looks really good! They got the gaits spot on and humane lookin. 🎉 They look full of attitude 😂 The movement is very fluid hats off to whoever designed this model honestly.😂'

Another interesting feedback seen through the comments is a range of users being unhappy witht he "idle" animation being incredibly active. It is curious that users are against an active idle animation - would one not enjoy their simulate creature seeming more alive through its animations?

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Amelia Dreambell - Most Recent (at the time of 05/25/2024)

Discussed 12/06/2024

lots of quick-cutting and talking as the user, not as her "in persona" character

[12:44 PM]shader being used to modify and improve the colours

a little bit of a glimpse into the users real life - "i just got a new job"

sets a budget of $5000 Sc (an equivalent of approx $69.95 NZD)

self-satires the only thing on their mnind is "pixel horses, like a freak", shows a screenshot of their desktop which includes a still image of a horse and arthur morgan, famous character from another popular 'horse game' red dead redemption 2

faces the camera in "shocking" statement: "i already have all of them!" in relation to the shire horses

immersion breaking - "my landscapers are outside"

[12:55 PM]"my boyfriend is scared of spiders so i bought him a shirt with a giant spider on it" - op mentions boyfriend fairly often

[12:57 PM]"i just love horses, I love horses so much it makes it hard for me to distinguish if it's ugl or - ok, i hate that" (about a horses gait)

"I will probably never do this again"

[12:59 PM]"i guess it kind of makes me feel guilty, like im bragging"

[1:00 PM]very quiet piano music in the background

[1:01 PM]includes an outro with exit music, other videos, and names

Comments Synopsis:

Some information about observations made in the video. For example: OP mentions not knowing why the welsh ponies have "little braids" in their hairs and a commenter discusses that it is a tradition in horse showmanship to add a plait for the welsh ponies to define face structure. Comments are often talking at the OP and expressing love and admiration. Some users

Current Synopsis:

An interesting video that seems to sit along the trend of 'haul' and 'shopping spree' videos that are popular on YouTube (especially in relation to clothing - or at least that's what my algorithm dredges up for me, which makes sense). The "relaxed" style of OP's dialogue sits at a contrast to the clear effort put into editing the video. Even on a more "relaxed" video (in contrast to her 'RRP' videos that use plot, framing, et cetera), her video is still using cuts and editing to appear more seamless and audio effects for humor and atmosphere.

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One could say that I have been taking my ethnographic exploration very seriously in my deep exploration of StarStable, by playing it nearly every day. I go from being a completely anonymous fly on the wall to participating in small levels with the chat presented in the tab on the side - mostly to ask where "champions" are or when another user asks a question of me - sometimes wondering where I purchased a horse I am riding or piece of clothing my character is wearing.

Recently, players have been needing to end their statements in the chat with (water) to supposedly get around the broken chat filters. I do not know if this is a genuine need or if it is superstitious behaviour. It is often hard to tell with this society of users.

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Today's learning.

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04/06/2024 Data Analysis Test - Abigail Pinehaven, most recent

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Enxc98D9d-I&t=391s Abigail Pinehaven - Most Recent: 11 months ago - Abigail has moved onto other horse games moreso than starstable

Massive change in quality. OP greenscreens themselves in front of content they are producing

doesn't begin the video with "hello everyone!", instead begins with "hello friends!"

has lore in a slightly different way to Amelia Dreambell. Amelias lore is a world that they hae crafted - abigails is the 'Sporkle' horse that refeatures in may of their videos. Sporkle first came from star stable and featured in many videos , art works et cetera. She became a symbol of abigail pinehaven

an interesting thing has occurred with the starstable pintabians in that they are near-identical to their previous models. Normally star stable aims to iterate upon and improve their models, but clearly there was a different intention with these models. Is it because they know about users like abigail? There is also a consistent trend of 'pintabians' being used for racing - they were previously the fastest horses in the game but i think this stat has been nullified.

The Star Stable name generator has a pre-specified list of names or combinations of words that you can use as names. OP doesnt want to use the word 'sparkle' for their horse 'sporkle' which i dont understand but I appreciate the honesty

uses playful background music

very emotive and chatty while talking to viewers

final notes of the video were criticisms about SSO and the retroactive tack fitting issues - which is a sentiment that has been issues by many users.

User also mentions that she uses custom shaders - which changes the colouring of the game while playing.

'training streams' and her custom discord - could be worth joining to see more of OPs content?

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04/06/2024 Data Collection - Experiment 3, Abigail Pinehaven, most viewed

Abigail Pinehaven - Most Viewed: Much older than the other videos I have collected so far for this (published 5 years ago)(I imagine will be one of the older ones holistically but not 100% sure yet)

Uses an intro before her video. 'OP Productions'

begins with 'hello everyone!' which I BELIEVE she still does now five years later (will need to check to confirm)

talks to her horse in the video when emulating a realisti roleplayer

there's so much lag in the video. I don't know if its from the older video, older youtube, older star stable. It is funny to me. "mum can i have some star coins" - taking on a childs perspective. Her voice also "sounds" considerably younger than recent videos.

uses others voices - pretty fluctuating qualities - all sound quite young

satirises the "original" player - a trend 'we' still see where players hate new trends within star stable and remise of what there used to be. It is funny because since the publishing of this video, the game itself is nearly unrecognizable.

Another "character" in the video references another popular star stable user who has since passed away. It is bizarre that something so playful and inconspicuous has aged and become bittersweet.

the editing is not fantastic - Abigail has come leaps and bounds.

outdated terms like "drama llama"

She credits her actresses at the end of the video which i think is very sweet

video includes an outro

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22/05/2024

Initial Coding + Data Collection for Amelia Dreambell + Most Popular Star Stable Video

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20/05/2024

Adding notes and mementos to remind myself of concepts.

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20/05/2024

Data Collection: Experiment 2 - Amelia Dreambell's Most Viewed Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asJlO7rfBCg wanted to do this with the data scrape of comments but at the moment the code for scraping comments is down so we are making do with just an analysis.

Even before the video: the level of detail the user puts into their thumbnail is insane

[10:19 AM]86,325 views Premiered Jul 4, 2022 - most popular Star Stable video.

OP has used over 3 different models for her 'Reinleigh' (spelling?) horse. A 'thoroughbred', 'lusitano' and selle francais.(edited)

[10:23 AM]superimposing other images on top of their video, using 'snapshot' sounds

something OP doesn't have yet in their videos but develops is a shallow depth of field - to obscure other players and make their own roleplay more realistic.

Talks in great detail about the horses, giving them sires/dams

often includes an element of drama - 'Max' the horse here is rearing and behaving dangerously

OP's videos have a consistent lore

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16/05/2024

Some sentiment analysis too, though I will probably want to do this manually? It depends how good I can get at NVivo as to whether the learning curve will save or cost me time. This is not something I can predict right now.

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16/05/2024

SUCCESS.

Success at importing CSV data into google docs which should not have been the contest that it was.

Now I feel excellently smart and excited for the project ahead. We will see how long this "steam" and momentum keeps for but for now: I am ecstatic.

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14/05/2024

Experiment - YouTube Comment Data Scraping

+ Decide on ideal platform for clustering ideas and notes. Tagging system clusters within a site like Tumblr.

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14/05/2024 'Character Analysis' of User Profiles

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08/05/2024

A small "eureka"! or "Brain blast!"

When reading the coding section of Kozinets data analysis entry in his book, I worried once again about my netnography. Is this even what I am doing? But i realised that I can 1) code youtube comments once I learn how to scrape them (if the website to scrape them is truly down) and I can 2) code across videos, both within a) a user and b) inter-user dialogues to see what is common and novel to be found. I need to re-look at the other observation techniques also mentioned by Danielle and: more importantly: need to chart a systematic viewing process to begin truly starting and watching my netnographic processes and beginning my research and coding.

Wendy McCai: Reflexive Thematic Analysis

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03/05/2024

Not needing to scrape: wanting to scrape: scrape, scales, et al

So I did what I could from the netnography text which was: less than I had hoped as the YouTube scraping website mentioned (ytcomments.klostermann.ca) no longer exists - or may be simply temporarily down should I wish to be more optimistic about things.

The rest of the 'coding data' exercise presented in the book could be played with, however, and I have once again tried to play with NVivo. It is one of those cruel softwares that feels much smarter than I am (one would think I would be used to this by now). As is, I was digging around with saving the Netnography dataset as a PDF and letting Nvivo aut-collate code. It also spits out pretty graphics. Suddenly, without reading 15k YouTube comments, I have a clearer picture of what the 'Epcot' video may have been about:

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01/05/2024

Going through the netnography text.

I will eventually need to make a smarter tagging system (or as netnographers love to call it - coding system) within my blog alone as I begin to build my proper netnography - which needs to start happening. It's the fifth month now - we are almost half way through the year. i should be almost half way through my netnography. It is time to critically re-examine my timetabling and re-assess how I am going to get things done in the timeline I wanted or anything close to it.

Kozinets has provided an exercise in his textbook to follow - P. 335 - Which I have time now to begin to look at.

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19/04/2024 DATA COLLECTION EXPERIMENT NO 1 - THE DATA:

OP begins her video with a disclaimer about her expertise as an equestrian with 17+ years of experience. it is unclear if this is related to the youtubers true experience or to her invented persona. [10:31 AM] my sisters barn and my barn - an extended lore in her video [10:33 AM] she talks to her audience in terms of the world she has invented - not in terms of the 'real world' [10:35 AM] OP gives her horses attitude 'problems' and 'growth' [10:36 AM]

[10:36 AM] OP even frames and talks about her boots and her characters 'poor financial decisions' to buy them - using blurring to focus on the boots and blur out the rest of the barn.

Modd — Today at 10:37 AM

[10:38 AM] talking about horse hair-care products that are not in the game - editing them with photoshop to use horses from star stable in the product images

Modd — Today at 10:50 AM talks about her horse in a 'chad era' and calling her horse in a 'dough boy era' [10:53 AM] completely constructed booth

[10:56 AM] COMMENTS SECTION: -Users talk about the horses -SOME users say they love OP's videos -what kind of horse is _??? -Hi https://www.instagram.com/nektarfeed.sso/ an entire instagram for fictitious food

Brief Analysis:

This is one of my favourite users to explore in terms of this netnography because of the quality and effort that OP puts into their videos. The world that they have constructed is insane to me, and the viewership reflects that it is appreciated - video was uploaded approximately a week ago and has garnered 8k views. What is so appealing about watching a made-up world? And I say this FEELING THE SAME APPEAL. Watching these videos is deeply relaxing - it brings a similar-but-different joy from playing the Star Stable game itself.