"angry" gamers/critics

[c-no]

What I found really irritating was Walker's argument that he was helping The Room by giving it exposure, as if the movie was not already a massive cult smash, as if Walker found it toiling away in obscurity, plucked it up, and declared that he would do for it what MST3K did to Manos.

Only exposure he gave to it was letting his fanbase actually know about it. If I'm not mistaken, said fanbase wouldn't be much compared to those who did see the movie before even knowing who Doug Walker even was.

 

[HarryHowler]

At best, Doug probably helped increase The Room's profile to people outside North America, since he's got a pretty decent-sized international audience and The Room, IIRC, had only been released in the US and Canada until that point. Even so, I doubt that's a huge amount of people.

I get the feeling that the argument Doug was trying to pull was "Well, my review didn't cost you any sales of your movie. If anything, it probably gained you a few extra sales, so you had no good reason to send me those legal threats." Though that may be giving him too much credit.

 

[waffle]

It has always fascinated me to no end that Doug chose his entire The Room debacle as his hill to die on as far as fair use goes. The original DMCA was probably faulty, but damn if he didn't do everything he could to end up being the one more in the wrong at the end of the day.

I can't believe that these "multi channel networks" or whatever the new lingo is don't all have a lawyer on staff just to fight DMCA stuff. Lawyers are a dime a dozen now a days.

 

[Henry Bemis]

What I found really irritating was Walker's argument that he was helping The Room by giving it exposure, as if the movie was not already a massive cult smash, as if Walker found it toiling away in obscurity, plucked it up, and declared that he would do for it what MST3K did to Manos.

The Room was just starting to break into the mainstream around the time Doug covered it.

(Lupa's review - which came first, and was much closer to being a review and not a point-by-point synopsis - was more entertaining. I still use the phrase "the French Borat.")

 

[Twinkie Magica]

The "angry" video game critic thing was more popular in 2006. Remember, when 20,000 views on a video was considered enough to make you one of the most well-known youtubers?

I honestly think now that it's more about just regular let's-players that have watched too much Pewdiepie and Markiplier. What these kids don't know is that you have to have an actual sense of humor and a basic understanding of how to edit your videos.

 

[RJ MacReady]

The "angry" video game critic thing was more popular in 2006. Remember, when 20,000 views on a video was considered enough to make you one of the most well-known youtubers?

I honestly think now that it's more about just regular let's-players that have watched too much Pewdiepie and Markiplier. What these kids don't know is that you have to have an actual sense of humor and a basic understanding of how to edit your videos.

I feel the emerging popularity of streaming among established (let's say pre-2010) gaming critics in the last few years is an effort to compensate for the swing toward the fast and loose ethos that made PewDiePie and Markiplier big. It's hedging their bets. Incidentally, I can't immediately think of any gaming critics who seem to enjoy streaming, but the formula for ad money is how many eyeballs you've got on you and they know this.

Though to be fair, streaming as an activity and as a component of a career has blown up globally since Twitch took flight.

 

[Arctic]

Long and slightly autistic rant incoming:

I think the thing that made the "Internet reviewer" community crash and burn was the whole focus on "personas" and "characters". The AVGN "character" was simply a minor exaggeration of James Rolfe's own personality, to make the review a bit more entertaining. He never went further with it than that. Then people like Doug and Linkara started coming on the scene with their own characters, and at first it was very similar. But Doug took it a bit further in having the Nostalgia Critic rage over minor things that didn't annoy him personally. Since this was 2008, people still found it funny and nobody complained.

Eventually, people started seeing the "characters" as completely seperate from the reviewers themselves. This was when people started dropping major spaghetti. Linkara and Spoony started doing really complex and spergy storylines. Reviews would get interrupted every five minutes for some shitty costume fights. At this point, their viewerbase slowly started shifting from relatively normal people to TVTropes-dwelling autists. This went mostly unnoticed by the reviewers themselves, who were absorbed in their little crossovers and clique drama, oblivious to the changing public opinion.

The cliques were another part of what killed the whole thing. When everybody is on the same website, you can't criticise each other without causing drama. Especially when you're a community of thin-skinned neckbeards. This paved the way for a decrease in quality, until finally they were uploading shit like Spoony being drunk for four hours. Reviewtopia was by no means better. What didn't help was that by 2012 they had basically run out of relevant material to review. Eventually the drama just became too much and the community started eating itself. If someone didn't have the bright idea to start posting their videos to Youtube again, I'd say all of them would be unable to pay the rent by now.

 

[RJ MacReady]

I don't think the troubles (and arguable decline) of internet reviewers as we know them are caused by any one issue, but I'd gamble that the excessive personae and "storylines" put an expiry date on a lot of these people.

Basically, money and popularity by the sheer numbers provided by the internet aren't good enough for these people, and reasonably so. E-fame conceivably isn't the same as "real world" fame as an entertainer because the tangible influence of the internet famous is usually limited to a niche (if we're talking physical spaces: conventions) and besides the intense competition, fame on the internet naturally comes and goes very fast. So it follows that so many of these critics have ambitions to extend their territory into the "real" world: making films, aiming to score TV appearances, etc.

Of course, when their internet personae and storylines (which tend to be impenetrable to anyone other than their more loyal fans) have a symbiotic relationship with their humour and criticism (which could otherwise stand alone) it makes them harder to access for anyone in the "real world" whether it's an audience or an exec deciding if they're gonna be on TV. Like Arctic is suggesting, I think this in part explains James Rolfe's continued success: he has a talent for drawing a line between James Rolfe and the Angry Video Game Nerd.

Lots of critics, especially CA folks, don't have those social skills and theory of mind. Additionally, they might not realise this, but they tend to know when their efforts to venture into the sunlight aren't working out, and this makes them slide deeper into their niche.

 

[Fraudius]

I know Red Letter Media has already been mentioned in this thread, but I really think their arrival on the scene didn't help the angry critics' longevity. The RLM guys were both funny and were doing real, credible reviews of films. Imagine that, critics doing actual criticism. What novelty!

 

[YI 457]

The RLM guys were both funny and were doing real

Were? Are those hack frauds dead?

 

[RJ MacReady]

Were? Are those hack frauds dead?

Still very much alive and popular.

Anyway, regardless of how good RLM actually is, I'd still agree that their emergence put a squeeze on angry critic types because they captured an important audience: people interested in comedic reviews as entertainment but who don't want it steeped so heavily in subculture or a fabricated persona.

Don't get me wrong - all critics of this kind necessarily exaggerate, but the appeal of seeing men like Doug Walker make funny faces and yell at the top of their lungs has always been finite.

 

[Adamska]

I know Red Letter Media has already been mentioned in this thread, but I really think their arrival on the scene didn't help the angry critics' longevity. The RLM guys were both funny and were doing real, credible reviews of films. Imagine that, critics doing actual criticism. What novelty!

Were? Are those hack frauds dead?

I think that Plinkett guy killed them for leaving him up on a mountain to die. I can't wait to see him get off his fat lazy fucking ass and give us what we want too, the fat homo. No one liked Half in the Bag.

And what I think lead to the death of internet critics is mostly on them. They were unable to recognize what type of market they were trying to tap into, they were unable to keep in their spaghetti (with examples like Linkara's porn folder being a great example), they got lazier as a whole and put less effort in their craft, and they appealed only to the stupid autists they accidentally attracted due to Autism working like gravity AND radiation. Let's not forget to mention they all utterly buttfucked any chances of networking efficiently with people, mainly because they acted like crybaby elitists like what you'd see in high school. Let's not forget to mention how they didn't understand the likelihood of losing all that money and presence due to the fickleness of fads and changing demographics. Finally, and most damningly, they failed to find a good "same but different" approach.

 

[Henry Bemis]

Anyway, regardless of how good RLM actually is, I'd still agree that their emergence put a squeeze on angry critic types because they captured an important audience: people interested in comedic reviews as entertainment but who don't want it steeped so heavily in subculture or a fabricated persona.

I can't be sure, but I think the (intentionally) forced nature of RLM's "sketch" material - usually quickly discarded in order to get to their reviews (i.e. Half in the Bag) - is a jab at Channel Awesome and its imitators.

Like, twenty seconds of Mike Stoklasa making awkward banter and segues does more to justify a guest presence than an elaborate three-minute set-up.

 

[Adamska]

I can't be sure, but I think the (intentionally) forced nature of RLM's "sketch" material - usually quickly discarded in order to get to their reviews (i.e. Half in the Bag) - is a jab at Channel Awesome and its imitators.

Like, twenty seconds of Mike Stoklasa making awkward banter and segues does more to justify a guest presence than an elaborate three-minute set-up.

Another thing that I really love about them is how self-depricating they can be about themselves. That genuine ability to laugh at everything, including themselves, makes it a lot more fun IMO.

That and actually getting into the review fairly quickly and focusing on it over plot helps. Mainly because they tend to do more of their skits and storylines as actual short series or films. That was always something I think that the other critics should've done if they wanted to do a story (Linkara). That'd also give them a secondary video series that they could profit off of rather than putting all of it, the story, the review, the ego, into one basket.

 

[Jewelsmakerguy]

That was always something I think that the other critics should've done if they wanted to do a story (Linkara). That'd also give them a secondary video series that they could profit off of rather than putting all of it, the story, the review, the ego, into one basket.

That's (one of) my main issues with the reviews on Channel Awesome. The plotlines feel trite and lazy. That they take up almost half of it at times doesn't help.

And when they do get to the review, it's often just as bad as the skits that comes with it.

 

[RJ MacReady]

I can't be sure, but I think the (intentionally) forced nature of RLM's "sketch" material - usually quickly discarded in order to get to their reviews (i.e. Half in the Bag) - is a jab at Channel Awesome and its imitators.

Like, twenty seconds of Mike Stoklasa making awkward banter and segues does more to justify a guest presence than an elaborate three-minute set-up.

I'm not sure how much of it was rumour or just /tv/ bullshit, but I remember reading that CA's leadership has been in tension with RLM in the past. Supposedly Doug Walker sought out crossovers or collaborations with them when things were looking south for CA and RLM was emerging as a moneymaker (which they declined, repeatedly) and since I imagine RLM has the restraint to not state they have an issue with CA, that kind of humour could indeed be a laugh at their expense.

Overall, I got the impression RLM takes pains to keep their distance from CA. I'm also not entirely sure RLM even considers CA to be their primary competition?

 

[YI 457]

Supposedly Doug Walker sought out crossovers or collaborations with them when things were looking south for CA and RLM was emerging as a moneymaker (which they declined, repeatedly) and since I imagine RLM has the restraint to not state they have an issue with CA, that kind of humour could indeed be a laugh at their expense.

Actual response?

 

[Sinner]

The NC has a Mad Max Fury Road review and of course, its MEDIOCRE.

http://channelawesome.com/nostalgia-critic-mad-max-fury-road/

Why can't the NC just wait until the actual home video release, instead of getting his stupid pals to act in skits? Why doesn't he focus on more points beyond Fury Road's feminism? (I get it, people are angry that Fury Road had too much Furiosa, but not because she was a woman, it was due to her dominating overall in a film called Mad Max) Why does the NC think that getting a chubby person to impersonate Furiosa is a good idea? (No offense to her body, but...) Why do the car chase scenes look like shit?

 

[TyrannoNinja]

Why does the NC think that getting a chubby person to impersonate Furiosa is a good idea? (No offense to her body, but...)

Maybe he doesn't have all that many female actors to work with, so he goes for the most convenient option? Though to be sure, he does seem to have dabbled in a little bit of SJWism...

 

[RJ MacReady]

Why can't the NC just

Because it's Doug Walker.

He thinks he's the next Spielberg.