It has been a very long time since I last updated my Yahtzee critique blog, and for good reason. I have lot any and all interest in covering his material. Perhaps it's because there is just so much worse stuff out there. I've already talked about at length about how pleasantly surprised I was at how Yahtzee is willing to stand by his own opinions, even if I don't necessarily agree with him. He's not a backstabbing, hypocritical liar like a lot of other current and former contributors on The Escapist (I'm thinking specifically of Jim Sterling, Extra Credits, and Moviebob) and his opinions are, to put it simply, not taken all that seriously outside of his core group of fans.
It's simply not really worth my time or effort to criticize Yahtzee. Sure, he has terrible taste in games in general, but he also isn't directly contributing to the cancer killing video games, where individuals think that it's perfectly fine for them to stream content they don't own for profit, all the while not putting out any original content of their own. I am talking about, of course, the Let's Play community in general. But at the moment, my eyes are on Video Games Awesome Live, a show run by a group of canadian schmucks who don't know the first thing about Video games.
One of the things that really drove me to this show in the first place was the set up. Instead of simply showing game play footage with a couple of voice overs, they have a video recording them on the couch, with the gameplay sitting in the corner, with a visible chat feed below. At the time, I was busy looking for some Ace Attorney related noise to play while I was working, and came across their video.
I didn't have an immediate dislike of them. They seemed like a normal group of friends playing a game together, and I honestly had fun watching them react to my favorite bits. But over time, the producer of the show, Frasher, began insulting the game. "This is so stupid, guys." He would keep telling us, over and over again, as his girlfriend, Becky, reassured us that they actually LOVED the game.
One of the things that bother me about this show is just how willing they are to lie to their viewers about how they feel about anything. There are times when you can tell they are promoting a product (Octodad, Transistor, and various other indie games come to mind) and when they aren't actually profiting from a game at all. This latter bit has become especially pronounced in recent years, now that YouTube and game companies, particularly Nintendo, are finally starting to put these kinds of people in their place.
This has led to a situation in which Video Games Awesome HAS to cover Nintendo Direct ("Because we're fans, just like you!") Despite not actually being paid for them. This has led to a bit of an icy attitude towards them. Frash has always been openly 'critical' of Nintendo in that ridiculous, Shokio-esque way of always acting disappointed by everything they announce, but he was willing to play Nintendo games on his show and pretend to have fun, while he was getting paid.
Not anymore.
These days, the vast majority of big Nintendo titles don't even get a show. Xenoblade, Codename S.T.E.A.M, Majora's Mask, Kirby and the Rainbow Curse... The only videos I can think of that they did cover was for Mario Party 10 and Splatoon, both of which they shit on. Mario Party 10 is kind of understandable... I'm not the sort of person who outright hates the game, but it could have been so much better.
But shitting on Splatoon, one of the most innovative shooters in recent memory, Nintendo's biggest new IP in years, and the game that's getting people worldwide to buy Wii U's? Are you fucking serious? I was planning on writing an entire blog post about just that video: there was so much wrong with what he was saying. One of the very first things he did was complain about the tutorial... for a game in a new IP that he's never played before, and then went on to struggle with the controls for the rest of his time with the game.
That video was a huge reason as to why I decided to expand my blogs into covering e-celebs in general, and not just Yahtzee. Virtually all of them are cancerous, tasteless scum who will attack good, even great games just because it's not profitable for them to do otherwise.
I'm not the only one to feel this way: threads about these guys have been popping up on /v/ for a while now, usually late at night, and they're always met with the same, scandalous, "How big of a faggot IS this guy?" With examples popping up throughout the playthough, demonstrating his incompetence at playing the game, his opinions on why the game isn't worth buying and why they don't make any sense, and just plain stupid shit they complain about. The threads always get deleted eventually (Supposedly, moderators from their forum come on and try to do damage control which leads to the threads being deleted, but I haven't seen any of that firsthand) but there really is an underground movement of people who are sick of their shit outside of their bubble. It's not quite at DSP levels, but that's probably because they don't insult their fans at every given opportunity.
They're certainly not someone worth respecting, at any rate.
If you want to put a stop to them, it's up to you. All you have to do is talk about why they suck, and why they absolutely should not be watched. Everything they've done is on camera. It's not exactly hard to demonstrate why they're hacks.
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