What makes me really sad is people who think this is the height of Let's Play video quality. There are quite a few higher-quality channels out there. http://lparchive.org/ is a good place to start. A few recommendations: Frankomatic (adventure games), Bobbin Threadbare (adventures and others), SimplySimon (Mega Man games), Deceased Crab (indie and lesser-known games), retsupurae (specifically their adventure game MST3Kings such as King's Quest 5/6), and Video Games Awesome (miscellaneous games streamed blind but with very high production values and an interactive chat).
I also highly recommend the annual Speed Demos Archive charity marathons, especially the races and challenges. For instance, several top Super Metroid players racing for 45 minutes and finishing within seconds of each other, or players completing Punch-Out and Super Punch-Out blindfolded.
Just a guess... you were born before 1982, right? I think most of this really is just an age gap. I don't think that PewDiePie is the height of Let's Play quality (and definitely not any of those you listed) - that honour might as well go to Scott Manley playing Kerbal Space Program - but he's not as terrible by a long, long stretch as some in here make him out to be.
> "content quality black hole", "I intensely dislike it", "WTF are kids watching these days"
You know, there's a reason he's popular. And sure, 80% of his output aren't going to match your quality filter. But the remaining 20% will. And, if nothing else, he's a cultural influence. Here's an idea: Turn off your brain and just watch some highly rated or very popular ones in the background. Can't be worse than the vast majority of TV you (and I) watched in the 90s, all things considered.
Edit: And, if nothing else, two decades from now whoever is going to be working with you as a statistical inevitability by then when you're older will have grown up on PewDiePie (or one would hope, something a bit more educational) in the same way that you did on The Simpsons?
These are video games are. There are no intellectual video games. Games are cheap entertainment targeted mostly to teen boys. Kind of like all those reality dating tv shows targeted to teen girls.
Please have a quick look through, I don't know, the last 100 videos and find me your typical Field of Gears of Duty War Call Battle. Even when he ventures into something in FPS land, the most recent outing was Shrubbery Simulator. And it was a funny game concept to see - it was entertaining.
And sure, The Simpsons was from the beginning targeted towards a young male audience as a cheap form of entertainment too, but how does define the potential of the work?
No intellectual video games? Please, spare us that train of thought.
> No. I'm not a fan of "mindless" entertainment when there's so much that I don't have to turn off my brain to enjoy.
I don't mean it in the sense of being mindless entertainment, it's more off the get rid of your preconceived ideas of what constitutes entertainment and at some point you may well hit on a hook of some sort. Even if it's not with PewDiePie.
At some point the chasm between what's popular and what you have trained yourself to enjoy becomes so large that you'll be in a bubble and miss out on a shared global cultural experience. I think spending 2 or 4 hours a week just to keep up with pop culture from around the world is pretty damn important, and PewDiePie is a part of that. As is at least knowing about 非诚勿扰, stupid as it is. As is following the world cup in Brazil.
Speaking as someone who is in their 30s, I couldn't care less about the silly voices, the endless repetitive churning out of videos about the same indie games (God knows I'm still watching Bisnap do endless playthroughs of Risk of Rain and Binding of Isaac) or the clearly very young fanbase. Those things don't really bother me.
Now making jokes about rape and the holocaust? PewDiePie can go fuck himself.
> Now making jokes about rape and the holocaust? PewDiePie can go fuck himself.
OK, I can't find anything on Google on the latter, and only something on the former from three years ago. If you're saying that with 1 billion views in the past three months alone and across dozens of hours of content in that time there's a possibility that someone might interpret him something he said as making jokes about the holocaust, then yes, I believe /that/. But I'm not sure his intentions are evil or that he is a bigot or a hateful person.
When I was a kid, I always promised myself I would never become one of those lame adults that said things like "kids these days, look at the junk they listen/watch etc...!".
PewDiePie has single-handily made me break that promise. WTF are kids watching these days????
I have a 7 year old son who loves nothing more than youtube videos of a guy playing Zombies vs. Plants and commenting on it.
Of course being a kid his video time is strictly limited.
But the fact that he would choose that activity on his iPad vs. playing all sorts of games makes me think there is something huge there. Huge as in the future of mass entertainment.
You know all those cheesy Sci-Fi books and movies where new sports are invented and masses of people cheering them?
This is the future. PewDiePie is competing with Formula 1 racing, World Cup Football, and prime time TV. He's got more people watching than most TV shows.
In some ways this this is just classic entertainment - good looking guy being funny, doing funny stuff. Take out YouTube and video games and it's the same formula for entertainment we've seen in the last 100 years.
A colleague of mine told exactly the same story about his ~8yo son (even down to the game being Plants vs. Zombies). I thought he was exaggerating until I observed my 7yo nephew, who would spend the whole day watching MineCraft videos from YouTube if possible. Despite not really even playing MineCraft.
I don't understand the appeal at all, but you're almost certainly totally right that there's be something huge there.
My son and all of his friends, ages 5-7, all love evantubehd and stampylonghead and I just don't get it. The weirder part for me is then they pretend they are making youtube shows when they are playing.
For me, the only surprise was that the guy is from Perth - my number 2 guess - instead of Sydney's inner west or south or Campbelltown, which was my #1 general area guess.
To be fair, many of us used to watch He-man and a variety of other really bad tv before the internet came along. Now, there's just way more options to waste time.
It gets worse though. My daughter likes to watch some girl make up stories with barbie dolls and other similarly sized characters. Every one of the videos I've looked at has millions of views, so she's not alone. It's a little weird.
I'm close to 30 (oh my, can't believe I just said that) and I still find some of his videos amusing. It's like any type of tv-show, sitcom or movie: we all like different things and have different humor. His channel appeals to a lot of people and he's probably inspiring a lot of people (hopefully).
PewDiePie is an interesting case. The YouTube gaming community envies his popularity so much that nearly every gaming commentator has tried to emulate his tactics: face-cams which overlaying game footage, exaggerated reactions to on-screen content, merchandizable catch-phrases, and nicknames for viewer fandom.
Some have been nearly as successful as PewDiePie (Tobuscus is one), but PewDiePie has effectively created a content quality black hole on YouTube.
Welcome to the lowest common denominator. No sarcasm, no cynicism, it simply is what it is.
If you want something more, there's a ton of that, too. On the internet, the LCD doesn't have to crowd out the "better" stuff (for whatever personal definition of "better" you may like)... there's bandwidth enough for all. Which eliminates the biggest reason to hate it.
The same "I can't argue with it because it works" logic can be used for startups who "growth hack" their way to success even if it means harassing their users with interrupting modals and deceptive links. That doesn't make it unimpeachable.
These exist? I mean, obviously the 'growth hacking' exists. Is there an example of a startup who managed to build a real business solely on the basis of these tactics? One that 'you can't argue with'? I wouldn't call Groupon a real business.
None of these examples are unqualified successes. Neither Reddit nor RapGenius have business models yet that are making any money. LinkedIn made roughly $5,200 per employee last year.
Well, I guess you can say LinkedIn is not a success (and with a PE of almost 1000 I like to be indignant-on-the-Internet, too). But if you ask most startup founders if they'd feel getting to LinkedIn position is a success, I think you'd get a resounding, unanimous, yes.
Ditto for reddit. Not sure how well the RapGenius people have made out but it seems they're doing well.
Remember, being a viable business is different than being successful. Twitter hasn't turned a profit, but the people that started it made off quite well. Splunk still loses cash left-and-right, yet is considered solid.
If I came up with a money-losing idea that got millions of users, never made a dime, and I sold it for even $10M, I'd be very happy with my "failure".
I don't watch that channel obviously but he's having fun and entertaining lots of people.
I can't find anything wrong with that to be honest. It's not about making money for me, it's about how you make money. He's not scamming anyone, he's just providing content and people choose to watch it. And it's probably still better than most of what's on TV.
Not to take anything away from this young man (and Maker Studios) success here, but I thought it might be a good time to point out how YouTube math works. If his channel generates $4 million in ad revenue, Google/YouTube keeps about 45% and issues a check to Maker for the remaining $2.2m. Maker then takes another 10-30%.
Still a substantial sum in the end, but I felt the title may potentially be misleading.
> The 24-year-old Mr. Kjellberg, who created PewDiePie five years ago, has parlayed his persona into a brand name that pulls in the equivalent of $4 million in ad sales a year, most of it pure profit.
If it's $4 million "mostly profit" I would take that as what he gets before taxes. If he pays his taxes in Sweden I think closer to 70% of that would disappear.
What do you mean, 'disappear'? I'm pretty sure taxes charged on income doesn't just flow into government and then suddenly vanish without a trace.
> The 24-year-old Mr. Kjellberg, who created PewDiePie five years ago, has parlayed his persona into a brand name that pulls in the equivalent of $4 million in ad sales a year, most of it pure profit.
And I'm pretty sure the title isn't misleading - it's $4 million after YouTube's cut, which seems to check out, having cross-correlated other sources.
'disappear' was probably a wrongly used word. It's money that will never be his, the income tax is paid to the government and they use it like any other tax money.
There are different levels taxation in Sweden if I recall correctly the upper level takes out 70% of the income, that is income earned after $200.000. So if I understand it correctly that would mean he needs to pay $2.660.000 in taxes on those $4 million.
I could be wrong though, but that is my understanding of it. If he's got a corporation where the money goes, that's an entirely different thing. My assumptions are it's a sole proprietorship or equal to that.
Right, so there's a 57% income tax. But if it's a sole proprietorship he also has to pay the "employer tax" or whatever it is called.
I know nothing about taxation in UK, but I guess it also depends on where he has his company (if any) registered. Either way, it's a lot of money even if a lot of it is tax.
Here's a video with some interesting theories about how PewDiePie, and other gaming channels, are so popular because they're effectively hyper-tuned for Youtube's promotion algorithms:
I'm a 32-year old who has recorded some LP videos and who, not recording anymore, still watches other 30-some playing Minecraft on YouTube… :) I don't particularly jive with PewDiePie and the like but I watch others like Etho (ethoslab), BdoubleO (bdoubleo100) and a slew of others… :) It's fun!
As a developer-designer, I've had a few ideas around potential services around this stuff that I wish I had the time and resources to execute because I can totally see this market exploding right now… :)
Kjellberg maybe the biggest personality, but there is a significant group of people who make a decent living out of doing this.
I do strongly believe that this will become a major genre in reality television/entertainment. And I am not taking into account the other universe called DOTA here.
Well I'm glad he's getting rewarded for his original content. I no longer have time to play video games anymore, so this guy, along with Robbaz, Day9 and GameGrumps are pretty much the only way I get my gaming fix.
I'm also really interested in apps/games (ex. strawpoll.me) that let viewers participate in their stream. Seems like a good use case for meteor.
I also highly recommend the annual Speed Demos Archive charity marathons, especially the races and challenges. For instance, several top Super Metroid players racing for 45 minutes and finishing within seconds of each other, or players completing Punch-Out and Super Punch-Out blindfolded.