I really don’t understand all this YouTube stuff. What’s the point? Who cares that TK Mantis sucks at fallout? How can one even suck at fallout? It’s a turn based game, all about your character’s skill, not your own. Also this guy looks like he has too much gray in his beard to care about this kind of stuff. I’m probably half his age and I feel like I’m too old for this crap.
It comes down to the fact that YouTube is an entertainment platform, and ultimately most young gamers with a casual interest or familiarity with fallout will mainly be searching for and watching New Vegas/3/4/76 content. These use gamebryo and creation engine and the action rpg aspect caters to a wide audience. It corresponds to Bethesda’s transforming of fallout and tes from crpgs to open world semi linear storied action sandbox games which draw in fps crowds and minecraft fans.
New Vegas has the sweet spot of live action shooting and complex roleplaying decisions and dialogue. Vats doesn’t simulate the meditated turn based combat in the classic games, but in those you can’t do things like climb up cliffs to avoid deathclaws. I think there is a bit of in the moment tactical decision making in fallout 2 as there often is in New Vegas. Such as which weapon to use, when to pop med-x, jet, and in fallout 2 shooting aimed or regular. It comes down to managing your ap and positioning when fighting melee enemies; you can use cover to safely heal and have a shotgunner waste his AP running to you on the next turn, then use your own shotgun. A different type of skill is strategic gameplay in which you acquire armor and resources before battle to survive, as well as your pathing through settlements to level up and maximize your survival on Ironman. I think that FEI is pretty good in that regard.
YouTube’s gaming market is infotainment. A sweet spot is to be knowledgeable about the game but also choreograph your content to be eye-catching, relatable, funny, cool, and digestible (I better not give ideas for the devs to add vore in Frontier). Listicles, meme videos, combat compilations, and short info videos seem to do well for New Vegas youtubers.
Most people can’t come up with absolute banger videos on politics of New Vegas and deep character analyses day after day, yet YouTube typically requires consistent uploads to keep a channel successful so you get stuff like “you can explore caves in New Vegas”. As stated most people want to just grill radroaches and not make the game political, so the 2 minute video about how great the plasma caster is will get better results than the 400 paragraph treatise on how the NCR is gonna fall.
I like videos that analyze the best builds at the granular level and crush max difficulty playthroughs, I suspect though dps and stats are good enough for most people without concatenating synergistic perks.
I agree in the sense that if you know a game like the back of your hand, it can help you make better content. If you hardly know the game your content will be limited. I also think that when you make commercial content, market appeal overtakes your passion for the subject matter. The high effort videos come from loving the game, whereas short obvious subject matters don’t scratch the surface. Again it’s a balance between having substance but also being approachable to newcomers.
FEI says that the best players should be ‘at the top of the industry’. I think his skill is very good but it would be better for him to make short, edited versions of the info streams. If they communicate the most of the idea in a couple minutes the views and subscribers would increase. Still, fewer people will watch Fallout 2 vs New Vegas. Coming from experience, Fallout is saturated and one channel is indistinguishable from another except the largest. People won’t stick around for 30 minutes or an hour.
I think TKS’ videos should reflect intimate knowledge of the game to show viewers interesting things they have never seen before. If his channel isn’t focused on gameplay it shouldn’t matter too much how good he is. Skill suggests your knowledge of the game world but is more important on a challenge run channel. New Vegas has limited lore and there are only so many videos you can make before you reinvent the wheel.
I do think that channels that pull off difficult feats or have great knowledge/skill are underrated and deserve more views than shovelware videos; they should similar recognition as good meme and lore channels. It’s just the most popular content appeals to a broad audience with a shallow impression of the game.
For analogy, Easy Pete memes are like a clothed player being shot with .22 caliber hollow points. The interest of the viewer will penetrate. If you make an iron man stream that ends by single turning Frank Horrigan with critical flare throws to the balls, it’s like those .22s hitting APA.
If I were FEI, I’d make 10 minute summaries of my challenge runs like his Navarro and Wanamingo videos. Also I’d do challenge runs on Olympus 2207 and other tcms. If fallout 2 was recreated in gamebryo I’d make content around that, since there would be a surge in interest and my expertise of the game over casual big youtubers.
I fear what the devs could do with Goris and Xarn though. Or if they discover Francis.
