Did you know that YouTube videos of people playing videogames are so incredibly popular that the top channels are bigger than those devoted to most Hollywood and pop music stars? Yes, it's true. Among the biggest, for example, is a dude name PewDiePie, whose YouTube channel has over 30,000,000 subscribers. (That's more viewers than a lot of well-known TV shows!)
Why is this? In Janine "Iris" Hawkins' latest post for Paste Magazine, she explains how this came to be: "Let's Play videos are phenomenally popular among gaming fans," as she puts it to me. "Some are about skill, some are about speed, some are about humor, but others are just about relaxing. They cater to gamers who experience ASMR." I.E., Autonomous sensory meridian response, usually a pleasant tingling sensation. Yes, there are game-watching videos devoted to creating that soothing feeling. (One ASMR video channel, as Iris notes, has over 30,000 subscribers.) That in itself is fascinating, but as she goes on, this also speaks to a larger game industry shift empowered by user-generated content:
Ten—even five—years ago, the vast majority of video content available for games was marketing material. It was meant by its very design to get you interested in and excited about a product. As the production of video content has shifted more and more into the hands of fans, we now have access to both more content than ever before, and content much more varied in nature than we could have possibly imagined. Our game videos can be about speed, they can be about skill, they can be entertaining, they can be relaxing. They can even put us to sleep… And that’s not a bad thing.
Well said. Read the rest here.
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I heard mention of this AMR thing on NPR some months back - but I'm surprised its common enough to get so many people subbing to a gamer channel.
And when I've watched gamer videos the music has invariably been some kind of metal / techno thing. Never anything soothing. And also not of genres I've cared for. Often the music is so loud I can't hear the conversation...
Its interesting that it is so popular, but not too surprising.
If you put out a gamer vidcast, you likely do it with frequent regularity. And your message is not as obviously controlled. Follow most celebrities on any given social media platform and its very easy to tell you are really following their PR department.
Follow some random gamer though, and its likely that person ranting, off-script. "Reality TV" minus all of Hollywood's 'unreality'.
- I can see how that could become addicting.
Or its not reality but actual content - but again not 'produced' so you get the feeling that the impressions and opinions are genuine, they often come with 'off-script' moments that entertain, etc...
Celebrities need to produce "content" to maintain their presence. These vidcast people can just blather into a mic while playing a game. The pace is easier to keep up - allowing for large sets of followers, though I'm not sure I would consider most of them fans.
The only celerity I know of who can keep up with the pace of these guys, but in produced content, is Sizzla - the singer with 70 albums in the last 19 years. And he does this by hiding away in his own religious commune.
A few celebrities have turned to this format though, like Russel Brand who has shifted into doing a regular political vidcast. Which is an interesting way to see how different celebrities start to look once they move into the realm of 'off-scripted content'.
Posted by: Pussycat Catnap | Tuesday, September 30, 2014 at 09:09 AM
Pewdie is legend bc he enjoys it. He laughs and screams and giggles. Is infectious. Is fun to watch. He plays like we should play and so we love him (:
also is something that some the older more reserved natured players in SL can learn from him. He gets right into his character whether is a goodie or a baddie. A guy or a girl or a child or a toon. In the game he is his character. He just gets into it and goes full on. Kids and young people (and young at heart) love him for this. 30+ million of us. And bc he giggles and screams a lot (:
Posted by: elizabeth (irihapeti) | Tuesday, September 30, 2014 at 11:11 PM