Video essays about games used to be cool. Now it seems like thats the only video essays new people put out.
Why?
I'm assuming just because it's low hanging fruit and an easily accessible from of pop culture?
Regardless it's getting to be too much. It's no longer interesting if every other video is trying to be deep and analytical about video games.
I really like playing games, just there's too many video essays on them now.
tiktok stole all of youtube's normal people audience
nerds and geeks haven't moved on to tiktok because it's too mainstream/basic/CCP spyware
I'm not joking btw, it's what I've actually observed irl
You refuse to get on tiktok because it's CCP spyware.
I refuse to get on tiktok because short form, vertical, video content is awful.
We are not the same
- Show
Some people just love doing homework, and if they can do it while validating their nerdy hobby, they will. Plus people love having "background noise".
I think there's good ones out there for sure. Jacob Geller is cool. But a lot of it is just people summarizing things for 5 hours and not providing any real insight.
That'ds what I mean, Jacob Gellar used to be one of the few doing it and he's good and actually makes you think.
Then within the last few years it seems like every youtuber and their morher wants to make video essays about video games..
Also a bunch of people trying to get a job or "side hustle" probably. They picked video games because the bar for discourse for them is super low.
i was just complaining about this, i watch reviewers and there's an increasing amount of suggestions that look like review but are amateur, uncritical, and poorly made. you can't really tell the difference between a Warlockracy or Mandaloregaming and the witless imitators at a glance
Okay, can I ask you a history question while I have your attention real quick?
If you make a video essay about a show or movie you'll get copyright striked for including a few seconds of video or audio, if you make a video essay about a game you can include your own gameplay of it for basically the entire runtime
I mean thats a fair reason. I'm just disappointed I suppose gaming essays used to be a rare treat
Now it seems like everyone and their mother is a video game essayist
Treatbrain addled zoomer content creators have discovered that they can do video essays too?
i realize how precious this sounds but i think there's a difference between a video essay (like a video that tries to make some kind of point) and someone talking for 40 minutes, and i think a lot of the time people are referring to the latter even though it's completely different.
Because the rise of streaming directly competes with long form let's plays? If you want to talk about gaming related content its either streaming, let's plays or commentary.
Also let's plays "evolved" even more into these heavily edited 30 minute videos out of 2-6h footage and most channels can't afford that. Look at channels like Real Civil Engineer and say how are you going to make a "normal" video about CS or whatever while competing with a dipshit that edits his videos for 12yo children? You can't afford this much editing unless you're full time.
Should just stay away from algorithms man they’re literally designed to drive people to madness
Idk.. perhaps the algorithm, perse... no one knows what captivates the audiences attention, through there.
Tbh while video essays have definitely exploded and plenty of them are low effort, I don't think this is something I can bring myself to consider a problem. At least at the core of even the lamest video essays, they are writing something, trying to convince me of something, trying to express love of something, etc. As time passes I have a feeling this kind of content will disappear as it becomes more and more incentivized for a place like YouTube to stop offering to host your 3 hour essay about "Why Barney Was Darker Than You Remember" and shifts towards denser and smaller content forms to compete with its peers.
I mean.. thats fine. There's just enough people trying their hands with low effort video essays regarding video games, that to me, it's saturated now.
Video essays about music can be corny. Usually it’s just a documentary recapping someone’s life (full of inaccurate info) or “analysis” about why a rapper or singer is failing and it’s just based on vibes and 3 twitter screenshots and nothing factual
All of its corny at this point. Video game essays included
