Are YouTubers Ruining Retro Gaming?

[StopDrop&Retro]

Ummm, yes? I don't really understand the question. This is how life works. Did you have to buy a house or a car or that wedding ring for your wife? Who asked you to do those things? And now you mean to say you have to PAY for them!?

 

Absolutely false.

 

I just crossed twenty eight thousand subs, I don't monetize and I don't have plans to either. Like many things in life, it is a choice. I choose to make videos as a hobby because I've always wanted to share something with the world and have an audience that enjoys it. The operating expenses are incredibly small and I've even thought of making a video that shows off just how shoestring cheap my setup is. It just takes a lot of time, which has its own value, but I'm happy to spend it.

 

I've seen too many channels go to shit because they decided to monetize. It leads to creators making lame content just to chase views. It leads to paid content that clutters up the channel. It leads to creators signing up with low level multi channel networks which are consistently proven to be nothing more than scams. And it leads to the worst phenomenon of all... creators making videos complaining that they're not getting enough views. It makes my blood boil. I cannot think of a more selfish way to tell your audience that you have no idea how content creation works than to whine about how you feel entitled to a certain number of views per video. It shows that they no respect for their audience's time and no interest in making better content that would get more views.

 

Sorry I went off on kind of a rant right there but my overall point is that monetization is a choice, something I wish more creators would choose not to do.

[AtariLeaf]

 

Absolutely false.

 

I just crossed twenty eight thousand subs, I don't monetize and I don't have plans to either. Like many things in life, it is a choice. I choose to make videos as a hobby because I've always wanted to share something with the world and have an audience that enjoys it. The operating expenses are incredibly small and I've even thought of making a video that shows off just how shoestring cheap my setup is. It just takes a lot of time, which has its own value, but I'm happy to spend it.

 

I've seen too many channels go to shit because they decided to monetize. It leads to creators making lame content just to chase views. It leads to paid content that clutters up the channel. It leads to creators signing up with low level multi channel networks which are consistently proven to be nothing more than scams. And it leads to the worst phenomenon of all... creators making videos complaining that they're not getting enough views. It makes my blood boil. I cannot think of a more selfish way to tell your audience that you have no idea how content creation works than to whine about how you feel entitled to a certain number of views per video. It shows that they no respect for their audience's time and no interest in making better content that would get more views.

 

Sorry I went off on kind of a rant right there but my overall point is that monetization is a choice, something I wish more creators would choose not to do.

 

I agree with this. You can tell the monetized channels because they are always putting out videos but most are like Seinfeld episodes - about nothing. I also hate their in video commercials hawking whatever product is sponsoring them like 1950's live tv shows suddenly talking about laundry soap in the middle of show.

[spacecadet]

 

Absolutely false.

 

I just crossed twenty eight thousand subs, I don't monetize and I don't have plans to either.

 

That's your choice. How much did your camera equipment cost? What's paying for that? How much does all the stuff cost that you feature on your channel?

 

If you want to pay for that out of your retirement fund or the money you get from your day job or whatever, that's fine. Many of us need our YouTube channels to be self-sufficient to even run them at all, because we don't have extra money to be putting into a hobby like YouTube. And this attitude that "oh, YouTube should be kept for the vlogger who just sits and talks about stuff in his house" is ridiculous. YouTube's a business; YouTube channels are a business, and there's nothing wrong with that. You don't have to use it that way, but what you can't do is tell others not to use it that way. Because that's really the way YouTube wants it at this point, and it's their service, not yours. (If you don't think YouTube wants it that way, check out their Creator's Handbook sometime.)

 

Just as nobody's forcing me to have a YouTube channel, nobody is forced to watch a monetized channel. In fact, if you're against monetization, I encourage you *not* to watch my channel because you will just drag my CPM down. But this argument against monetizing at all is just stupid. YouTube literally wouldn't exist without monetization. YouTube gets the money to run itself from the ad revenue monetized channels bring in.

 

Right now, if you don't monetize, YouTube runs ads on your channel anyway unless you opt out of that. I expect that eventually that will no longer be an option; the only option will be whether or not you choose to take a cut of YouTube's ad revenue. Right now, those that don't monetize *and* turn off all the ads on their channels are literally leeching off channels that monetize - we're paying for those channels' hosting and bandwidth with the revenue we're bringing in to YouTube.

Edited July 15, 2017 by spacecadet

[StopDrop&Retro]

 

That's your choice. How much did your camera equipment cost? What's paying for that? How much does all the stuff cost that you feature on your channel?

 

Didn't I just explain that I pay for it out of pocket and I have no problem with that? Do you go to car shows and ask the owners "hey, you did make sure hot rod magazine paid for that engine block and the gas to get here, right?" In this world a lot of people spend money on things because it is their hobby. It makes them feel good. Enough to the point that money doesn't even enter into their minds, it's about the enjoyment they get from being part of and building a community. Many people have this very strange worldview where they believe that if you can make money off something, you must.

 

 

If you want to pay for that out of your retirement fund or the money you get from your day job or whatever, that's fine.

 

This literally made me laugh out loud. Dude, YouTube doesn't cost that much, if it does then you're not doing it right. I can easily pay for all of the equipment I use with less than half of my last paycheck, and I'm not rolling in money.

 

 

Right now, those that don't monetize *and* turn off all the ads on their channels are literally leeching off channels that monetize - we're paying for those channels' hosting and bandwidth with the revenue we're bringing in to YouTube.

 

You're welcome, I'll take credit for that.

[Keatah]

Nobody should have to pay for equipment for youtube. A smartphone (which everyone already has) is more than sufficient. And if you're into photography, you likely have a DSLR or similar mid-range camera at your disposal.

 

And.. I'd rather watch a non-ADHD 360/480 show as opposed to a stupefied 1080p over-edited vid full of camera shake.

[Keatah]

Right now, if you don't monetize, YouTube runs ads on your channel anyway unless you opt out of that. I expect that eventually that will no longer be an option; the only option will be whether or not you choose to take a cut of YouTube's ad revenue. Right now, those that don't monetize *and* turn off all the ads on their channels are literally leeching off channels that monetize - we're paying for those channels' hosting and bandwidth with the revenue we're bringing in to YouTube.

 

That's ok. And there's a few easy tricks to not see any ads at all. regardless of what youtube tries to serve up.

[mbd30]

I like retro gaming Youtube videos. My only concern is driving up prices for those of us who enjoy collecting cartridges and playing on real hardware.

Edited July 15, 2017 by mbd30

[keepdreamin]

I like retro gaming Youtube videos. My only concern is driving up prices for those of us who enjoy collecting cartridges and playing on real hardware.

You do realize, by purchasing games you're contributing to the rise in prices, right?

[+Random Terrain]

That's ok. And there's a few easy tricks to not see any ads at all. regardless of what youtube tries to serve up.

Adblock Plus on Firefox is all I need for that. It eliminates normal ads and video ads.

[Asaki]

I like Retro Game Room I don't watch much else retro related...maybe a few minutes of a "Let's Play" if it shows a decent amount of gameplay.

 

 

I get the sense that most people in this thread are responding to the title, not having watched the video. 8 minutes is a lot to ask of my puny attention span.

That's me!

 

Also, 8 minutes is a lot to ask when you're working 60-hour weeks =|

[phoenixdownita]

Ummm, yes? I don't really understand the question. This is how life works. Did you have to buy a house or a car or that wedding ring for your wife? Who asked you to do those things? And now you mean to say you have to PAY for them!?

BS, you don't have to MONETIZE your hobby, you WANT to, and that's it.

Or it is your JOB and at that point it's professional and all the "community hugs", "I'm doing it for you all" it's a bunch of crap.

 

I bought a house (and a modest one at that) to have a roof over my head and all the nearby caves were taken, I bought a car (also modest) because I couldn't walk 1H every time I had to go to the grocery shop (I did it a couple of times and I thought I could do better with my time) and I bought a wedding ring because she wanted one due to the way these things have traditionally been done (happy wife happy life, so she wants the ring she gets it, as MK said "simple as that").

 

Also I am not attacking you personally, I really don't care what you do on YT I am just fed up with all the people that believe they are making the community (any community) a great service by making YT videos .... if you enjoy doing it keep doing it, the MONEY part is when is straddles the line unless as I said it is your JOB.

[Osgeld]

well, on the topic of money, I know the money I spend on my hobbies, is made by doing my hobbies

 

its not a lot, I wish it was much more, but it keeps me from going nuts on the household budget, and I feel good knowing that if nothing else I can sell something, and someone actually wants something I made

[phoenixdownita]

well, on the topic of money, I know the money I spend on my hobbies, is made by doing my hobbies

 

its not a lot, I wish it was much more, but it keeps me from going nuts on the household budget, and I feel good knowing that if nothing else I can sell something, and someone actually wants something I made

...and I am pretty sure it is clear to your customers that they are actually buying something rather than paying you for a more powerful scope or soldering station or SBC etc... etc..... it's indeed a money transaction and I am sure you are also well aware of it when you build/sell the umpteenth gizmo.

 

That I am fine with, there are no blurred lines.

[zetastrike]

The thing that gets to me about youtube gaming stuff is that it tends to promote and encourage hoarding and collecting over playing and enjoying. All these game hunting and collection showoff videos combined with the limitless amount of gameplay make it nearly impossible for someone to just step back, take a breath, and enjoy what you have. It instantly becomes about what you're after next instead of focusing on what you just got.

[phoenixdownita]

The thing that gets to me about youtube gaming stuff is that it tends to promote and encourage hoarding and collecting over playing and enjoying. All these game hunting and collection showoff videos combined with the limitless amount of gameplay make it nearly impossible for someone to just step back, take a breath, and enjoy what you have. It instantly becomes about what you're after next instead of focusing on what you just got.

Luckily there's plenty of flahscarts and modchips. Very few consoles don't have a solution.

So wrt the actual games hoarding is usually an SD card away (or stack of CDs), now once you realize that then you start hunting all the consoles ... and that is exhausting and silly (I speak from experience).

If one has to go that route I can only suggest to start from older and move to newer, I did almost the opposite and boy was I more and more disappointed as I moved backward in time .... lots of money, lots of trouble involved into making them run/play, lots of warts to deal with and in the end a resounding "meh!!!" ..... after all the systems I ended up enjoying the most wrt retro are the Genesis and the SNES, don't get me wrong there's plenty fun to be had on Saturn/PS1/N64 but that's what I "discovered" about myself ... YMMV obviously.

[Keatah]

The thing that gets to me about youtube gaming stuff is that it tends to promote and encourage hoarding and collecting over playing and enjoying. All these game hunting and collection showoff videos combined with the limitless amount of gameplay make it nearly impossible for someone to just step back, take a breath, and enjoy what you have. It instantly becomes about what you're after next instead of focusing on what you just got.

 

The speed. The Quickening. If you're not fast enough you are left behind. And then you are no good.

[thadsilverfox]

I am thankful for these so called retro gaming youtubers. They allow me to see the games beforehand so I don't waste time and money purchasing games that don't have potential replay value to me. Keeps my collection very small and manageable.

[Torr]

All the negative comments about hoarding/overbuying/etc... are true, but that is what EVERY commercial on TV does basically. It's been the North American way for about 60 years at least. Make the populace spend money on shit they don't need. I don't agree with it either, but that IS our society.

 

The only think I think "ruined" retrogaming is youtube AND ebay.

 

Once upon a time many people had games and were willing to sell them cheap because they WERE rather worthless.

Untill a bunch of youtube reviews go up, that people see and that influences their ebay sales prices, which influences every seller who has no idea what they have and have to look it up on the internet.

 

WHY IS THAT?

 

People who supposedly make a living as a merchant, and somehow don't even know what there own product IS or what it's WORTH

That's just... illogical.

But you see it... ALL the goddamn time.

Edited July 16, 2017 by Torr

[vidak]

It seems sensible to me to conclude that retro gaming prices have skyrocketed due to the increased exposure of retro gaming on youtube, but is it possible to get any hard empirical evidence on whether that is true? Because the increased prices of retro gaming objects may have come about for another reason. Just because youtube and ebay events seem to correlate doesn't mean that one event caused the other. You need hard evidence to prove that is true.

 

I remember what I bought 5 Megaman cartridges for in 2012, and I just checked the prices of individual carts on eBay. I have absolutely no hope of ever affording to collect original carts in boxes unless I double my income. I wonder what the real causal factor in deciding eBay prices for retro games is. I wonder who we can ask about this issue.

 

On Youtube and retro gaming... I think it's dreadful. Youtube is all about making money. Google designed and implemented a central algorithm driving the exposure of youtube videos to viewers. When it comes to making value under capitalism, economies of scale are all where it is at. Big channels make the most money for advertisers the most efficiently, so they are promoted ahead of small channels. The search engine on youtube is built into this exposure algorithm, so you will only ever find the videos Google wants you to find on youtube.

 

Because youtube is all about making money, it's all about quantity over quality. It's all about hocking and selling commodities instead of developing an artform. The research says you will only get subscribers and likes if you ask, but the research never questions the morality of this practice and how disrespectful it is.

 

Whenever media platforms get controlled by the Hollywood-industrial complex, they become centralised and the content of their media becomes thin and meaningless. I was watching the Simpsons episode from Season 5 where Homer goes into space (ALL HAIL THE INANIMATE CARBON ROD!!), and it satirises how idiotic and cheap cable TV was in the mid-90s. Youtube is exactly the same because it is no different in organisation from cable TV in the mid-90s. All the successful channels are monetised and plugged into the centralised structure of networks and marketing agencies. The appearance of independence of "content producers" (I hate that term) is an illusion. You just work in your own home now for less pay. All my favourite Youtubers work insanely long hours on their monetised channels for much less than they should be receiving.

 

The problem with Youtube is capitalism. If we had a platform geared more towards collective ownership and virtuous personal characteristics, we would have a much friendlier and less cut-throat world of video gaming.

 

PS. I mean look at the way Atari started. Atari was a huge multi-million dollar company, but their platform was almost completely open. Single people could program a game in a matter of months for the VCS2600. There was no lock-out chip copy protection, and the costs of production for games was very very low. The small game development companies that sprung up around the VCS2600 were organised along communist lines, with everyone pulling their weight and being justly rewarded for their efforts. Capitalism got in the way of the openness of the Atari days. It turns out having a tight-fist and a centralised hierarchy to game licencing works a lot better (see Nintendo and the NES).

[Austin]

Nobody should have to pay for equipment for youtube. A smartphone (which everyone already has) is more than sufficient.

 

If you want absolute shit quality, then sure.

[Skippy B. Coyote]

To elaborate on my previous post, there are good number of fairly high profile retro gaming YouTubers I subscribe to. MetalJesusRocks, Classic Game Room, Radical Reggie, and John Hancock to name a few. I watch almost all their videos, but it occurs to me that how I feel about them really comes down to whether or not I already own the games they're discussing in any given video.

 

If they're talking about a game I already own and like then my feelings on the matter are always "That's awesome that they're doing a video on this game, more people should know how good it is!". But if the video in question features a game that I know I want but don't own yet then my reaction is generally "Oh great, now it's going to jump up massively in price."

 

Case in point: I've been meaning to pick up a copy of Wendy: Every Witch Way for the Game Boy Color for a few years now but was never in any rush on it because it had always been a $8 to $12 game for the last decade or so. But then over the course of the last year a few very popular YouTubers mentioned that it was a "hidden gem" in some of their videos and now it's selling for $30 minimum. This sort of thing seems to happen with most obscure games that popular YouTubers bring up in their videos, and it creates this annoying sense of urgency when it comes to collecting where I feel like I have to rush to get copies of all the obscure games I'd like to own before a YouTube personality mentions it and causes the price to quadruple.

 

Luckily the systems I mainly collect for (the Game Boy and Game Boy Color) aren't terribly popular so they haven't seen as much price inflation across the board as some of the more universally appreciated systems, but they don't escape unscathed. I'm still ticked off about Shantae jumping up to $300+ for a loose cart, and I know I better put down the $75 for a copy of Kid Dracula before the YouTubers take notice of that one too and it suffers the same fate.

 

 

It seems sensible to me to conclude that retro gaming prices have skyrocketed due to the increased exposure of retro gaming on youtube, but is it possible to get any hard empirical evidence on whether that is true?

Indeed it is possible. https://www.pricecharting.com features a "Show Chart" option for every game tracked on the site which will display a graph of the average sale price history of the game all the way back to 2008. All you need to do is take a look at when a game began to spike in price and do a YouTube search to see if any of the major retro gaming YouTubers did a review of it around the same time. For the sake of being a decent human being I'm not going to provide any specific examples of "who caused which games to jump in price", but it's not difficult to put two and two together with a little research.

Edited July 16, 2017 by Jin

[Keatah]

If you want absolute shit quality, then sure.

 

I'd rather have more in-depth quality content than 4K hollywood editing.

Edited July 16, 2017 by Keatah

[Keatah]

I think ebay prices are somewhat self-perpetuating. Newcomers can reference past sales and say hey if this sold at $20.00 maybe I can sell it for $22. That's only $2 more. So no big deal. And then it happens again and again. Soon you're up to $25 and then $30. It only stops when people stop buying.

 

I've watched Apple IIgs acclerators move for a very reasonable $100 - $200 10 years ago. Today some of them move at 600 and up. That's the accumulative effect of what I described above.

[high voltage]

LGR thrifting is good, his UK equivalent is good too. MetalJesusRocks, Classic Game Room, Radical Reggie, John Hancock are good. Everyone who talks positive about ATARI is great, of course.

 

And Top Hat Gaming Man the best (even if the likes the rubbish ZX Spectrum):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF5aYeV_SSc&t=2s

 

But for the most part, these guys are really irrelevant.

Edited July 16, 2017 by high voltage

[Keatah]

PS. I mean look at the way Atari started. Atari was a huge multi-million dollar company, but their platform was almost completely open. Single people could program a game in a matter of months for the VCS2600. There was no lock-out chip copy protection, and the costs of production for games was very very low. The small game development companies that sprung up around the VCS2600 were organised along communist lines, with everyone pulling their weight and being justly rewarded for their efforts. Capitalism got in the way of the openness of the Atari days. It turns out having a tight-fist and a centralised hierarchy to game licencing works a lot better (see Nintendo and the NES).

 

Well, yeh, anything that gets commercialized and monetized becomes dumb and stupid. Focus is shifted away from putting coolness into the product to expending effort in marketing and selling it. R&D and art and creativity become unimportant. And then cost-cutting comes into the picture and products devolve to the point they become disposable and break too easily. Or till it becomes uninspiring.

 

Commercialization and monetization are good till they're pushed too far.