seriously can someone please tell them to find any other pop culture medium?
A Brief Analysis of Lego Star Wars for the GBA (5h12m)
Like honestly, how the fuck do people think of these topics and drag them out for so long? You ain't Jacob Geller, kid.
Side note - another genre of video that needs to die is "zoomer with glasses and vocal fry talks about a social issue they learned about through Twitter while lofi plays in the background".
A lot of RPG essays are people going over literally every quest in the game which is why shit gets expanded to 12 hours when they should really just be talking about core themes and relevant examples from those quests. Or standouts among them that represent something especially well/poorly.
You don't need more than 1 sentence to say that the quest that wants you to kill 12 rats was because the developers needed an excuse to make you kill 12 rats. No, there isn't a deeper reason. If there is, it most definitely isn't worth talking about for 10 minutes.
At least the angry guy screaming about games finish their point in five minuets, and they only manage to repeat themselves about half as much as a 30 minuet video essay
YouTube should bring back videos only having a 5 minute maximum. Not for efficiency or data usage, mind you, but so these fucking dorks learn to edit shit down. I do not have the time to watch multiple 30~50 minute essays on whatever the fuck and I'm a terminally online, unemployed, NEET.
It's like these videos keep getting longer and longer.
i wonder if the long videos do better because people just leave them in the background and let the commercials play
Actually true. It used to be when people like Jacob Gellar or Noah Caldwell Gervais, put out long form critiques, they were a rare treat.
Now everyone and their mother wants to make 30 minute plus videos talking about video games. Rarely do books get the same sort of analysis.
i dont mind video games. I enjoy them, i just dont want everything i consume to be about video games
From what I've seen, a good 80% of that "analysis" tends to just be filler in the form of a dry recounting of the events of the game. If you apply that kind of "analysis" to a book then all you really accomplish is creating a shitty abridged version of the book.
Anything other than video game treats would be nice.
The treatbrained im sure are in hog heaven, myself not so much
There is probably some reason video games lend themselves to the medium of videos better than books
Fuck that. I'm discussing the ancomm subtext of Kao the Kangaroo in concrete poetry.
I did, its way too oversaturated with that type of content right now.
That just means there's an overall increase of high quality videos due to sheer volume while you can ignore the shitty ones
Sucks that it isn't better. But if you're judicious with your "unsubscribe" button then you can curate a personal list of good ones easily enough.
I get almost all my trash these days from /c/videos. I'll sub if I like it, but if I watch a second video and don't like it I drop the channel.
The best ones always always always branch out.
Take Jacob Geller for instance. While he does usually come back to Video Games as a baseline, all of his recent videos have long sections about movies, TV, and modern art that is related to the subject he's talking about. Plus even when he's talking about Video Games he's very rarely dwelling on the most popular titles (except in his video, Analyzing Every Torture Scene in Call of Duty — All 46 of Them, which uses CoD to reflect on the media's depiction of Torture writ large) and is almost always talking about small arthouse games instead.
Anyway I love video essays and listen to a shitload of them, but regularly cull my subscription list of people who have run out of things to say.
Haha, I came into this thread to have a "...but Jacob Geller!" moment. I really love his videos.
What? You don't like someone's barely edited in either script or post production 5 hour video about How GBA Wario Ware Was Fun with nothing at all to say and a voice so grating there's so way they ever played the audio back to themselves?
I want a 7 hour analysis on Ty the Tasmanian tiger for the gamecube next
I rented that once! Wario Ware for GBA, I think I could genuinely give people a solid 45 minutes on but thar includes development history, the game itself, how it kinda changed what Nintendo did with Wario and my own childhood experience with the game and how it relates to my continued appreciation for arcade style games. If I wanted to go a bit over an hour I could go marxism about it cause the core concept of the game is thst Wario is greedy and is releasing shovelware at full price.
I think video essays are funny because 99% of it is only ever about pop culture, pop history, and pop philosophy made by people who recently studied the subject
Honestly before video essays became trendy and I was in high school, I thought about continuing to do essays after school. I should’ve done it if I known that everyone would make a substack.
Thats exactly what it is. Treats have saturated everything.
look, peoples are allowed to have fun, i like video games a lot. i just really wish people would stop wringing this format of video essay dry.
i loved video essays and still enjoy a good Jacob Gellar video, but no i dont want to listen to some dude recount the story of witcher 3 in its entirety and call it a "video essay"
There are actually good video essays dotted around but most are "let me read off the synopsis of the game for 3 hours or narrate every cutscene and conveniently forget to do any analysis" type shit that fucks me off. Like that's not even an essay its just describing the plot.
I don't need every single frame of the game narrated to me to hear your shitty opinion hidden away at the end.
The good stuff takes time to write and edit so those creators only output a handful of times a year. Slop essays are all universally garbage but they're easy to identify and not listen to.
Maybe i should put together a post with all the good essayists.... ooooorrr make a video essay on video essayists
You hit the nail on the head with most of these essays on video slop
Always a disappointment when the video you click on turns out to be one of these
I guess not everyone can be a Grim Beard or a Dungeon Chill or a tangomushi
Please don't use that gif again it makes your comment so annoying to read
Clearly this oversaturation means the format is bad and you should dunk on it indiscriminately
Yeah maybe i should just let go and become completely video game treat brained
Video essays can be good when they rise above the level of "let's talk about this currently relevant game for two hours because that's what the algorithm wants" but they very rarely do. They also very rarely rise above "a written essay that has some background visuals that might serve as examples for whatever is currently being said, but that are mostly just there because it's easier to monetize videos than text".
is this about Joseph anderson? felt the video he released today wasn't great, but probably most of his fans are just grateful they get new content and his deadpan irony for the first time in 9 months. Was really rolling my eyes when what felt like 15 minutes he just listed the order he explored the DLC areas and the order he fought the bosses.
Vaush watches Joseph anderson. i knew to stay far away when i find out Vaush watches something
People are making videos about video games? Im shocked!
Why would you be shocked?
Theyre just more numerous as of late and most of them are garbage.
The treatbrained love the shit i suppose.
It was cool when they were a rare treat, now its getting oversaturated just like "angry nerd" videos
The people I watch who make vids like these and have for ages are still Makin good vids idk what the issue is haha
What makes you obsessed with video games? honestly curious.
Where did you get that I'm obsessed? Lmfao
I like long form content I can listen to over the course of hours in a work day which I can tune out of for a few minutes if something comes up at work and not lose my place completely, and long form video essays about video games are a popular type of video from the creators I follow.
What makes you so aggressive about this? Honestly curious
im not genuinely mad lol. Sorry if it came across that way.
Yeah the excess number of people doing video game essays now, has saturated the genre to me.
if you enjoy it though, im glad you have something you like. i prefer Jacob Geller because his videos change up the topic from video games every now and then.
I can only watch so many different "video essays" on new and popular video game before i go crazy
Oh yeah Jacob geller is my number 1, but I've got a list now of probably over a dozen who have quality in the same ballpark as him, and often who are far more politically radical than he is
I definitely do not go looking or watching video essays about <newest thing!> lol
Most videos are trash, I don't browse so much as collect creators
