I really don't know how the game has changed since release but if it's too gamey then that'd probably ruin it.
A ton has changed, guy has been hard at work. I like a lot of the changes in-concept, and they make it better as a game, but the one-man-group charm is kindof lost. Running a ghost around a table while everyone else freaked the fuck out was really amusing, but that's a good way to get killed anymore. Some of the newer maps and map reworks are great, though.
I found Chris and Zach as a Freshman in HS in the early 2010s through Hellbenders and have been following since and I think a decent amount of their fanbase has a similar story.
I think what makes it seem worse than it is is just how genuinely chronically online most kids are at this point
I get that they, of all LPers, probably have one of the older audiences because their starts weren't from just doing LPs. However - just because they used to do stuff on Newgrounds and did early Youtube animations, how does that prevent young people from finding them and then doing the parasocial shit that young people do with literally everyone on the platform?
There's no barrier to it. The channel has grown and grown and grown, and I have to imagine everyone that knew about them from NG/ early youtube... already subbed. Sure, a lot of people might be coming over from Smiling Friends, except that Smiling Friends is like Rick and Morty - it's just as massive among zoomies as it is among older people. Given just how much time kids seem to spend on the internet, it just doesn't add up to me for their channel to be as big as it is without a huge portion of that being teenagers and kids.
And being real, that's the smarter demographic to target for easy cash, anyways. I don't know where the fuck these kids and teens get money (youth employment stats have been in the dumper since well before covid), but they've got tons of money to toss out to patreon and on expensive merch. All you have to do is let a deeply autistic coomer monologue about things he wants to fuck and it prints green.