James Rolfe / James D. Rolfe / Angry Video Game Nerd (AVGN) / Rex Viper and Cinemassacre / Screenwave - Now with not much grieving about a 41-year old man still making videos on YouTube. We're the balls on the dick.

Which videos do you like the most from Cinemassacre?

  • Angry Video Game Nerd

    Votes: 1,812 63.5%

  • You Know Whats Bullshit

    Votes: 143 5.0%

  • James and Mike Mondays

    Votes: 96 3.4%

  • Board James

    Votes: 443 15.5%

  • Monster Madness

    Votes: 270 9.5%

  • James' movie reviews

    Votes: 90 3.2%
  • Total voters
    2,854
Tism the Return said:

New James, new Raid sponsor ad.
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I'll just share the bullet points when I was watching this video.

  1. "Play it, daddy" part at the start made me cringe.
  2. Did he just use the same Raid ad as the last one? Come the fuck on.
  3. 2:40-3:02: According to James himself, his daughter sees him trying out the levels and when she noticed something was wrong with the levels and tried to fix it, James stopped her and wanted to keep them for a video. End of story.

There's nothing else. When you watch one video about him playing his kid's levels, you pretty much seen all of them. The levels are mostly just spamming the same object over and over or involving yourself being blocked to actually beat the level because you are stuck due to bad level design. It might be fine for like one or two videos but when you make like FIVE OF EM, it's redundant and the icing on the cake is trying to slap a tiring RAID sponsor on it to take advantage of this. And the bigger icing on the cake is reusing the same ad you used in your previous video.

We're not getting any new AVGN episode this month from the looks of it, and it's close to end of February. Optimistically maybe James is just taking much more time to make the 201st episode to be far better (and given that the slobs at Screenwave are probably staying away from interfering from his videos, maybe we really are getting 3 episodes a year like what he said) but I doubt as such.

If this is what we're getting when James is running the channel all by himself, then I think we've pretty much seen all of it at this point. I of course don't like the direction the channel is going, but part of me just feels I cannot blame him. We all wanted James to make videos based on he wants, and preferably having as less Screenwave slobs involvement as possible being seen in the videos mainly because last year was a terrible disaster for Cinemassacre, and we got it. It's a slight improvement compared with last year's for sure, but not quite saying much. It's just sad to see now that we went from James making videos with the help of his friends (especially Mike, Bootsy and Kyle Justin), to him being together with the slobs at Screenwave, and finally now to him himself all alone. I'm obviously certainly not saying James should bring back the slobs to his videos and I am for sure nobody wants that at all, but it still won't change that it's depressing to see the channel now being in the state like this. All we are seeing is just James using his YouTube channel all alone just to earn money just to feed his family most likely for the rest of his life at the age of 41, and soon to be 42. After the disaster that was going on last year, the last thing you would even do is doing the same shit as last year making the situation even worse, so what you would do is trying to make videos that are safe and take as less risks as possible to avoid backlash, and for this alone even though I actually understand why he did as such, I'm still disappointed. Even if James goes ahead and clears up the bad blood that is going on for Bootsy and (debatably) Kyle Justin and (probably debatably) Mike, there's no reason they should even return to Cinemassacre to begin with unless it's some brief reunion, because sooner or later people would still have to move on from Cinemassacre one way or another.
 
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I’m new to the farms but I’ve lurked this thread now for quite a while and honestly seeing James devolve into a lazy husk of his former self really depresses me. A lot of you probably remember but back during the golden age of AVGN James was legit putting out better content than actual TV shows at the time. Something about the way he talked about stuff felt so real and down to earth in comparison to the fake “gamer/nerd” TV shows of the mid 2000s. While his AVGN stuff from 06-08 will always be classic, I personally think his “Godzillathon” is some of his best work. Guy not only introduced me to Godzilla but also made me a huge fan. James to me used to literally embody what made the old internet so great; exposing people to new and unique things in a way that you couldn’t do on mainstream TV.

While it’s already been discussed at length the big problem with James is that he got old and refused to update his style in any meaningful way. Like if he wanted to continue the AVGN he seriously needed to push into covering stuff from the early to mid 2000s. Unfortunately it’s obvious he doesn’t give a shit about that stuff as evidenced by some of the episodes covering PS1/PS2 games. While I don’t particularly like Scott The Woz, he definitely filled in that niche of covering video games from the 2000s/2010s and in my opinion he’s pretty much supplanted the AVGN.

I’m struggling to think of what James could even do that’s new and creative while also still within his comfort zone. Him giving surface level takes on random movies and shows isn’t going to cut it. A million other nobodies already do that better (but with much less success). Like what other skills does James even have? What new or interesting things could James even talk about? The more time goes on the more I’m starting to see James as a bit of a hack.

The behind the scenes video from a couple months ago hilariously demonstrates his ineptitude when it comes to modern video creation. Even the movie seemed extremely amateurish in terms of filmmaking which honestly surprised me at the time. I had always thought James at the very least understood basic film making techniques to make films visually interesting and engaging. I took a film class in college as an elective and one of the first films they showed us was 12 Angry Men. Over 90% of the film takes place in one room yet it’s still entertaining and engaging due to the editing, cinematography, script and actors. The whole purpose of that lesson was to demonstrate that you didn’t need a super high budget or scenes with Kaiju shooting laser beams to make an entertaining movie.

All James needed to do was make an hour and a half film about a crazy video game nerd addicted to playing shitty games and he fucked it up. Further, his ineptitude and mediocrity seeped into his online content which he has now dragged out over the last decade. He really needs to either completely rebrand and be smart with his online business or throw in the towel and get a real job to support his family. I didn’t even mention the Screenwave guys but honestly that’d just be more preaching to the choir. Sorry if this turned into a rant but I needed to get this off my chest.
 
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José Mourinho said:
2:40-3:02: According to James himself, his daughter sees him trying out the levels and when she noticed something was wrong with the levels and tried to fix it, James stopped her and wanted to keep them for a video. End of story.
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So now he's exploiting his kids for content? I knew the well for ideas was dry, but damn.
 
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Gru said:
Edit: "lots of times she'll be designing a course and then she'll make me play a little bit of it, and she watches me play it, she sees the problems and then she takes it back and starts fixing it and then i say nonono, keep it, Daddy needs to use that for a video."

are you kidding me.
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Fuck, James…
I was willing to look past any “muh kids/family” excuses because as a father, taking care of his family should be top priority, and if he had to choose between family or making videos, he should absolutely choose family (he would be able to do both if he learned how to manage his time, but that’s a different discussion).

All that goes out the window when you actively use your kids as part of your videos.
 
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Content drought aside, it's pretty obvious James is trying way too hard to go the inoffensive route after all that's happened this year. Reducing Screenwave's involvement is a start, but other than the VHS video (which I found to be good by how insightful it was), James is making content that is so average to the point of laziness (using his kid for content aside...). It's not like James is incapable of making quality content on his own, as he's shown himself able to so in the past otherwise, but is this really the best he can do? I would like James to focus on doing more videos like the VHS video over any reviewing content, especially if that's what he says he intends to do. Let's hope he keeps that promise (rainbow).

That being said, I wonder when the next AVGN episode is gonna come out? I wouldn't mind the upload schedule for new AVGN episodes this year to come out sporadically compared to the previous few years (especially if it means they're higher quality than whatever was put out last year), and it's somewhat traditional for a season premiere episode of AVGN to come out in March. And what would be the first thing the show reviews this year? I don't even have a clue at this point.
 
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xXx: State of the Union said:
So I stopped watching AVGN seriously around the time the movie came out, and only dip my toes in for funny shit people tell me about. So I just found out about James story about finding Steven Spielberg on AOL and I'm fucking dying. James is such a retard.

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I can see why he was in special Ed
 
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Jan Ciągwa said:
Watch it in hour-long spurts or write down timestamps for later you lazy nigger.
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I can't argue with you there that's a fair point, dude.

Pickle Dick said:
Content drought aside, it's pretty obvious James is trying way too hard to go the inoffensive route after all that's happened this year. Reducing Screenwave's involvement is a start, but other than the VHS video (which I found to be good by how insightful it was), James is making content that is so average to the point of laziness (using his kid for content aside...). It's not like James is incapable of making quality content on his own, as he's shown himself able to so in the past otherwise, but is this really the best he can do? I would like James to focus on doing more videos like the VHS video over any reviewing content, especially if that's what he says he intends to do. Let's hope he keeps that promise (rainbow).

That being said, I wonder when the next AVGN episode is gonna come out? I wouldn't mind the upload schedule for new AVGN episodes this year to come out sporadically compared to the previous few years (especially if it means they're higher quality than whatever was put out last year), and it's somewhat traditional for a season premiere episode of AVGN to come out in March. And what would be the first thing the show reviews this year? I don't even have a clue at this point.
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James would really be better off finding a successor to buy time and then transition over into something different. Hey I will try to pass on my audience, do some editing work, and provide whatever resources I can.

People will bitch and moan and not everyone will switch over to the new guy. However, picking a worthy successor, nurture the talent, and then fucking off on your own terms is a far more dignified end than the current trajectory.
 
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He needs a new team at the very least; he's going to lose the tiny bit of motivation he has left if he's forcing himself to write and film this shit on his own without someone else to bounce ideas off of. Collaborating in itself was never the problem, it's that the slobs were bringing nothing of value to the table.

Problem is, I have no idea who else he could get to work with him at this point, I doubt he'd have a good dynamic with someone younger because Cinemassacre's output is absolutely a product of its time, but the demand for two or more middle-aged dads rambling about games and films from when they were kids is probably borderline nonexistent.
 
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Fatty is taking a break from being on camera lol I'd imagine it's extremely related to what's going on at Cinemassacre.
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Rhysuu said:
Fatty is taking a break from being on camera lol I'd imagine it's extremely related to what's going on at Cinemassacre.
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lol he's coping. even James who aged debatably bad with hair loss never said insecure shit like this.

as long as you're not becoming an bald egg head like Doug, you should handle stuff fine. but if this means James will make next episodes on his own, I'm good with it.

now that I think about it, next episodes may be better when it's only James, but AVGN was at its peak when Mike was helping James.
 
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