So, I’ve mentioned in my previous blogs about me doing a lot of research into YouTube. I’ve been trying to grow the audience for Nerds Without Pants, and it’s been slow going. Basically, I’m bad with keeping up on social media, which is how so many other (much newer) podcasts have grown leaps and bounds ahead of NWP. But I think we are an entertaining show, and I put a lot of work into producing it, and I want to carry that over into YouTube.
The funny thing is that, until very recently, I barely watched any gaming stuff on YouTube. I found a lot of it annoying, with loud, obnoxious commentary that’s rarely backed up with facts, and tons of clickbait style offerings.
Now, I’m on YouTube every day, especially since I no longer have TV stations to watch. It’s been an interesting education for me, seeing what I like and what I don’t like, and comparing the views on those videos. Basically, I am confident I will not have much of a following on YouTube. I’m not a very entertaining speaker, and my opinions with video games definitely put me on the “outside”. I’m that guy who was fine with the ending of Mass Effect 3, doesn’t understand how people expected No Man’s Sky to be anything more than it was at launch, and hated everything about all sides of Gamergate.
With that being said, I do think I have a level-headed approach to video games, and I also have something that a lot of YouTubers seem to lack: history. I’ve seen videos where people far younger than I are trying to talk historically about games and it comes across like they’re reading from Wikipedia. That’s not to invalidate their video; after all, fifty years from now the only way people will be able to talk about the NES will be to go to books and various archives, because no one who was there at the beginning will be around. However, I’m glad that I’m old enough to have lived through most of what we consider the video game age. Working 8 years in gaming retail gave me access to games at such a level that few people can hang with my knowledge. And I think this is important in having an informative and fun channel.
I know that I can’t stand the popular “let’s players” out there. I find guys like Markiplier, Jack Septic Eye, and PewDiePie to be infinitely grating on the ears, and I honestly can’t understand the entertainment value of yelling into the mic and treating every moment in a game as jaw dropping or surprising. I really dig what Game Grumps does, mainly because they play off each other in the way that I admire the Giant Bomb crew. Boogie2988 was someone that I initially hated, because I had only seen his Francis character. I think that boogie’s commentary on the industry is fair, balanced, and entertaining, but I find the Francis character to be an insult to gaming and only perpetuates a very tired stereotype. I’ve also come around on Jim Sterling, a man who irritated the hell out of me back on the Destructoid podcast, but offers wicked insight on the video game industry, and I love watching him play truly dreadful games like the recent Black Tiger video.
I want to avoid the angry, ranty side of YouTube gaming commentary. I think it’s played out and tired. Plus, there are plenty of people out there doing that thing if you want it. I want the Nerds Without Pants channel to entertain, educate, and enhance the hobby of gaming. And I want to do it with high production values, like My Life in Gaming, which is one of my favorite channels. I’m actually hoping to move into the field of audio and video editing as a career, and I’m learning video from scratch for this.
If you listen to the podcast what are some things you’d like to see in the video channel?
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