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Harrow
Jun 30, 2012

Hello this is a thread to talk about videos about video games. There have been attempts at threads like this before but perhaps "right before a big Tim Rogers video drops" will be a good time for a thread like this.

I'll start with a few specific videos I really like that I want to recommend, then a list of channels:

Tim Rogers (Action Button)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xb-DtICmPTY

Jacob Geller
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQNeYbBiCKw

Folding Ideas
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RxQRswLAmI

Review and Analysis:
  • Tim Rogers (Action Button) - Long, extremely idiosyncratic reviews of games mixed with personal essays. Tim has a lot to say about (and also not about) any game he reviews, and personally I think his style is really entertaining.
  • Jacob Geller - Focused, well-written and edited analyses about games and general topics. He also makes non-gaming videos, like this one on the Jewish tradition of the golem. Aside from the video linked above, I especially like his video on Dark Souls 3.
  • Errant Signal - Infrequent but good discussions and retrospectives on games. I especially like his horror game videos he usually does each October.
  • Noah Caldwell-Gervais - Long, detailed reviews of games, with a calm, down-to-earth presentation. Not the super nitpicky style of long review, like Joseph Anderson. He just has a lot to say.

Game Design
  • Game Maker's Toolkit - Mark Brown makes videos discussing game design, based on his own observations and interviews with designers. Great primer on game design for lay people.
  • New Frame Plus - Videos all about video game animation, with overviews of general animation principles and occasional close examinations of specific animations from specific games.
  • Video Game Animation Study - Also about video game animation, with a stronger focus on examining specific games, or game series through multiple generations. This video on the animation of the Mega Man series is great.

Gaming News and/or Variety Topics
  • Kyle Bosman - Formerly of Easy Allies (and formerly of GameTrailers), now making a weekly "discuss a recent topic in gaming" series called Delayed Input. Generally pretty entertaining.
  • James Stephanie Sterling - I mean, you already know Sterling. They're still tirelessly calling out the increasing levels of bullshit in the games industry while wearing fancy outfits.

Harrow fucked around with this message at 15:07 on Oct 27, 2021

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wuggles
Jul 12, 2017

I like a good YouTube. Here’s Kyle Bosman

https://youtu.be/M9Qlt7ZwpxI

grieving for Gandalf
Apr 22, 2008

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFLvYY9CRYs

Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48JbcPmaBQ0

if you're a fan of rambling about ps1 era forgotten vaporwave bizarro trash, thorhighheels is the channel for you.

channel also contains extremely good reviews of the yakuza series

PunkBoy
Aug 22, 2008

You wanna get through this?
While waiting for Tim's Cyberpunk video, I rewatched his review of Forza Horizon 4 for Kotaku, and I think it's low-key one of my favorite videos of his. It actually got me interested in a racing game, and I love how the anecdotal parts build up to the heartwarming ending.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMWeeFZZVq8

Simone Magus
Sep 30, 2020

by VideoGames
Something about Jacob Geller rubs me the wrong way

I really love:

Writing On Games

https://www.youtube.com/c/WritingOnGames

Razbuten (his series where his wife who has never played games plays games is very good and the reason his channel exploded)

https://www.youtube.com/c/razbuten

Folding Ideas doesn't talk about games that often, but his WoW and Fortnite videos are great (and his non game stuff is amazing)

https://www.youtube.com/c/FoldingIdeas

Simone Magus
Sep 30, 2020

by VideoGames

Dr. Fishopolis posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48JbcPmaBQ0

if you're a fan of rambling about ps1 era forgotten vaporwave bizarro trash, thorhighheels is the channel for you.

channel also contains extremely good reviews of the yakuza series

oh heck yeah, ThorHighHeels absolutely rulez

Harrow
Jun 30, 2012

Simone Magus posted:

Folding Ideas doesn't talk about games that often, but his WoW and Fortnite videos are great (and his non game stuff is amazing)

https://www.youtube.com/c/FoldingIdeas

His WoW video is one of my favorites. It helps that I just am generally interested in MMOs as a genre and how they've developed over time, and it's cool to hear a perspective on what classic-style MMOs offer from someone who'd been playing the same game for its whole lifespan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RxQRswLAmI

Simone Magus
Sep 30, 2020

by VideoGames

Harrow posted:

His WoW video is one of my favorites. It helps that I just am generally interested in MMOs as a genre and how they've developed over time, and it's cool to hear a perspective on what classic-style MMOs offer from someone who'd been playing the same game for its whole lifespan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RxQRswLAmI

honestly i could listen to him talk about anything. he should do audiobooks, he has a fantastic voice.

wuggles
Jul 12, 2017

I can’t believe Tim Rogers turned out to be real

The Dark Souls of Posters
Nov 4, 2011

Just Post, Kupo
who?

Harrow
Jun 30, 2012

Oh boy this is going to be an interesting one. Is it like a CYOA format or something?

beer gas canister
Oct 30, 2007

shmups are da best come play some shmups they're cheap and good and you like them
Plaster Town Cop
I recently read the first chapter of his novella about the experience of having a photographic memory. It's well written and quite affecting. It certainly explains why his Tokimeki review sounded like a gigantic Dr. Manhattan monologue.

Vermain
Sep 5, 2006



It'd be remiss of me to not mention my favorite long-form video game essayist in this thread, Noah Caldwell-Gervais. Noah has a very strong novelistic style of writing that, combined with his presentation (a folksy "guy talking over a few beers" tone and a relatively barebones garage band-style recording setup), lends a warm atmosphere to his analysis that really draws you in. He's well read, has a lot of penetrating insights into the themes and flow of games as narrative experiences, has a wonderfully understated sense of humor, and is surprisingly candid about his own experiences when it comes to how he relates to the games he covers. Some of his old videos are rough around the edges - Noah hadn't quite mastered the fine art of audio mixing until around his Mad Max video - and there's next to no fancy editing, but the overwhelming majority of them are highly listenable and endlessly enjoyable.

If you want a good introduction to him, I'd say his video on Tyranny is a good place to start. It's pretty short (by Noah's standards, anyways) and has a lot of good discussion about Tyranny's themes of language and symbolism as a means of power and control.

Glazius
Jul 22, 2007

Hail all those who are able,
any mouse can,
any mouse will,
but the Guard prevail.

Clapping Larry
Errant Signal has been going for a while, though they don't update often I've always appreciated what they had to say.

Simone Magus
Sep 30, 2020

by VideoGames

Vermain posted:

It'd be remiss of me to not mention my favorite long-form video game essayist in this thread, Noah Caldwell-Gervais. Noah has a very strong novelistic style of writing that, combined with his presentation (a folksy "guy talking over a few beers" tone and a relatively barebones garage band-style recording setup), lends a warm atmosphere to his analysis that really draws you in. He's well read, has a lot of penetrating insights into the themes and flow of games as narrative experiences, has a wonderfully understated sense of humor, and is surprisingly candid about his own experiences when it comes to how he relates to the games he covers. Some of his old videos are rough around the edges - Noah hadn't quite mastered the fine art of audio mixing until around his Mad Max video - and there's next to no fancy editing, but the overwhelming majority of them are highly listenable and endlessly enjoyable.

If you want a good introduction to him, I'd say his video on Tyranny is a good place to start. It's pretty short (by Noah's standards, anyways) and has a lot of good discussion about Tyranny's themes of language and symbolism as a means of power and control.

i love his stuff generally but i found his latest video to be kind of a miss... and it's 8 hours long

Simone Magus
Sep 30, 2020

by VideoGames
"I had convinced myself a glitch was cinema."

(USER WAS PERMABANNED FOR THIS POST)

Harrow
Jun 30, 2012

I posted this in the more popular Tim Rogers-related thread (am I bitter? no, not at all, definitely not, I mean I made this one first but...)

I highly recommend watching Rogers's FF7 localization series that he did back when he worked for Kotaku. He goes through the first disc of FF7 and compares the Japanese and English scripts to talk about the choices made during localization, it's cool stuff: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsiJPoHlPqEEA07AKMQ2Hm2oRLiGkR_uJ

Harrow
Jun 30, 2012

Also I updated the OP with more of the recommendations people have posted. Keep 'em coming! I always want more video games Youtube to watch.

Doctor Spaceman
Jul 6, 2010

"Everyone's entitled to their point of view, but that's seriously a weird one."
Mark Brown of Game Maker's Toolkit does breakdowns of specific mechanics or elements of games / genres. He's got a few longer series, such as one looking at the dungeon design of Zelda and Metroid series (with some related games like Castlevania, Hollow Knight and Dark Souls) and a current one where he attempts to actually make a game.

Here's one of my favourite videos of his:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwV_mA2cv_0

Harrow
Jun 30, 2012

Oh yeah Mark Brown is cool. I’m enjoying his new series about trying to make his own game.

That reminded me I should also add some of the channels about video game animation to the OP.

exquisite tea
Apr 21, 2007

Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."


These days Innuendo Studios is mostly known for his various thinkpieces about the alt-right movement and gamergate, but his take on the original Life is Strange is, I think, maybe the only analysis video out of dozens that truly understands what the game is about.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19xgdLF5agU

I also really enjoy this analysis of Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice from the perspective of someone who suffers from psychosis in their real life. Courageous and deeply personal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52flQkqj5gs

Dr. Fishopolis
Aug 31, 2004

ROBOT

Harrow posted:

I posted this in the more popular Tim Rogers-related thread (am I bitter? no, not at all, definitely not, I mean I made this one first but...)

this is the better thread by far op

ziasquinn
Jan 1, 2006

Fallen Rib
I love a super long video essay. The longer? The better, IMO, Mostly cause I like to keep one type of content on while I'm burning away a work day, rather than jumping around in different episodes or something. IDK. I listened to these once.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtrAx-rVgco

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htYR2GdA7OE


Part 3 for Witcher 3 is on the horizon I guess?

Harrow
Jun 30, 2012

exquisite tea posted:

I also really enjoy this analysis of Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice from the perspective of someone who suffers from psychosis in their real life. Courageous and deeply personal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52flQkqj5gs

This video was extremely good, highly highly recommended viewing

ainda_
Oct 9, 2021

We Are All Us
We will heal the world.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZNHQYK6vNkWyfUkrESL49Q

Unnatural History Channel does vids filling out the ecology and evolution of fictional animals, mostly Monster Hunter monsters. They're honestly very informative about real-life biology, evolution and ecology too, the guy knows his stuff and the videos aren't like insanely long like they could be.

Colorspray
Aug 30, 2007

Surprised civvie11 hasn't come up. His videos are informative and hilarious. Unless he milkshake ducked.

Please tell me that didnt happen.

Here's the first video covering Amid Evil that got me started on his stuff. They really did quote him on that on the steam store page

https://youtu.be/UxCISDFGPaw

SilkyP
Jul 21, 2004

The Boo-Box

Tim Rogers is gaming's David Foster Wallace

Muscle Tracer
Feb 23, 2007

Medals only weigh one down.

Here's a great video about game animation, specifically in Guilty Gear and DBZ.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZsboyfs-L4

itry
Aug 23, 2019




Harrow posted:

Game Maker's Toolkit - Mark Brown makes videos discussing game design, based on his own observations and interviews with designers. Great primer on game design for lay people.

Had a look at that channel and came across a fairly recent video examining the Clockwork Mansion level from Dishonroed with the designers of the level. Pretty neat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIZTk4QRRFE

kliras
Mar 27, 2021
I recently came across Modern Vintage Gamer which does a fantastic job of explaining the actual technology and, as always, copious tricks game developers had to use to make games look presentable.

The look of games older than a large decade can't really be recreated well without emulation, so it's even more fun to see people fiddle with original hardware and reveal things I didn't know like how much the PSX relied on dithering to overcome limited colours for rendering the mist in Silent Hill and things like that.

The production value is top notch, and I will always love someone for not making an 11-minute video instead of a three-hour one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bi-Wzl6BwRM

The intersection between art and technology with videogames is always fascinating.

Play
Apr 25, 2006

Strong stroll for a mangy stray

exquisite tea posted:

I also really enjoy this analysis of Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice from the perspective of someone who suffers from psychosis in their real life. Courageous and deeply personal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52flQkqj5gs

I'm actually replaying this game right now so this is great! First and only time I played it I was living in Vietnam and played it on some lovely laptop, it looked and sounded terrible but I was dealing with some stuff so it was still impactful.

Now though, on ultra on my nice gaming pc with high def headphones on the experience is completely different. Nothing quite like that game before or since.

Apes-A-Poppin
Dec 3, 2015

Simone Magus posted:

i love his stuff generally but i found his latest video to be kind of a miss... and it's 8 hours long

Glad to see Noah mentioned here already. His videos pulled me back into video games some years back. I think the Kentucky Route Zero one is the best analysis on the game there is.

That newest ie. Resident Evil video was so long that I didn’t really get a grasp on it - it perhaps felt like a miss because of that for me. I also saw some fans/freaks complaining that he didn’t get into to the nitty gritty of some of the plot details and yeah, I don’t think that was his point either.

Vermain
Sep 5, 2006



The RE video was intended to be a broad-strokes overview of the series, specifically tracking its evolution in both gameplay and in presentation. It was highly interesting for me - someone who's never played an RE game in their life - as a broad analysis of how the series came to prominence (especially at a time where 3D graphics were just at the point to feasibly simulate a genuine moment of terror), got drunk on its own success, fell into complacency, and then eventually reinvented itself as one of the top video game horror franchises in the modern era. I can definitely understand someone being disappointed if they were looking for a more focused analysis of the themes and gameplay elements of the series' big ticket entries, though.

Vermain fucked around with this message at 17:52 on Oct 28, 2021

Selenephos
Jul 9, 2010

It was a miss for me because he had really weird opinions on the Resident Evil series. Like, he acts like every game starting from Resident Evil 4 until Resident Evil 7 was a complete trainwreck with no redeeming qualities and an entire 10 minute segment of his video is just a rant talking about how godawful RE4, 5, 6 and both Revelations games are to the point even those who weren't as keen on the action heavy RE games found it a bit much.

But Noah's videos are like that to me anyway. Sometimes they're great and hit the mark and sometimes he comes to really weird conclusions or misses the mark completely.

Vermain
Sep 5, 2006



Mr. Fortitude posted:

It was a miss for me because he had really weird opinions on the Resident Evil series. Like, he acts like every game starting from Resident Evil 4 until Resident Evil 7 was a complete trainwreck with no redeeming qualities and an entire 10 minute segment of his video is just a rant talking about how godawful RE4, 5, 6 and both Revelations games are to the point even those who weren't as keen on the action heavy RE games found it a bit much.

But Noah's videos are like that to me anyway. Sometimes they're great and hit the mark and sometimes he comes to really weird conclusions or misses the mark completely.

Ah, that's totally fair, then. Youtube's comment section makes it hard to see competing opinions and perspectives unless you really dig deep down, and most other people I know don't have the patience to watch a full 8 hour video. v:shobon:v

Selenephos
Jul 9, 2010

His Cyberpunk video also kinda irritated me even though I broadly agreed with his points because he seemingly had no idea that it's an established setting based on a tabletop RPG from the 80s and not a CDProjekt Red original creation. Like huge chunks of his video were "why did CDPR make the most cookiecutter cyberpunk world and tropes ever?" and pointed to examples which were part of the setting since the 80s.

Harrow
Jun 30, 2012

New Mark Brown video pointing out something that you probably felt if you've played Metroid Dread:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pop-cc9kmY

Glad to see another Boss Keys episode, too. If you haven't watched them, his original Boss Keys series is about the dungeon design of the Zelda games.

Voxx
Jul 28, 2009

I'll give 'em a hold
and a break to breathe
And if they can't play nice
I won't play with 'em at all
Nerrel does an assortment of deadpan videos. Topics include mostly emulation, hardware, and late game reviews. His channel started with him documenting changes he was working on for a Majora's Mask HD texture mod which has recently come to a finish:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovknYMdIP9I

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Waltzing Along
Jun 14, 2008

There's only one
Human race
Many faces
Everybody belongs here
Scott the Woz has to be on the first page. He doesn't shill. He doesn't have sponsors. He doesn't beg for money on Patreon. He doesn't ask for likes and subscribes. He focuses on Nintendo and tells jokes, some of which are good. His videos usually come out once a week on Sunday.

And apparently he is getting a TV show soon.

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