I still firmly believe that Phil's enjoyment of games has been eroded by turning it into a business. He looks at games as a way to make money to the point where he can't just sit down and enjoy a video game anymore. For other gaming channels on YouTube, you might see two to four playthroughs being rotated over the course of a week. Phil marathons it because it's like a machine to him. You can look at other channels and compare them to his, and see a stark difference between philosophy, attitude, and execution of their businesses.
The biggest difference I can see between the channel I'm thinking of for comparison and Phil, is that Phil is far too transparent about it being a business to him. He constantly whines about his financial situation and begs for money all the time. He talks about how he doesn't stop his gameplay to do shoutouts and address subs/donations, but it's the same thing when you dedicate the start of every single stream to do plugs and shake the cup for money. When you sit and whine for a half-hour to your viewer base about getting more money to stay home and play video games all day as a job, two things are pretty likely to happen. Either your viewers will start tuning you out or showing up late to miss the one-man telethon, or they'll just leave altogether. The start of your stream is the chance to hype up the crowd; the moment when the band comes on stage and says, "Good evening, Internet. Are you ready to rock?" Now just imagine for a moment if the bass player came up and asked for donations for 30 minutes before they got to their set list.
Going back to the other gaming channel I had in mind, they don't do that. They shoot the breeze a little, show some personality, and prepare to get things on a roll in a timely fashion. Are they making gaming their job? Of course they are. But they're not making that the focus of the product they're selling. They're having actual fun with each other. Cracking jokes, going crazy when something genuinely impressive or crazy happens as they play, and generally having a good time doing something they really enjoy. It helps that there is more than one person there in most cases; but Phil still has trouble when with someone else. He doesn't play off other people well, and his stuff he's played with Leanna tends to be fairly representative of that. It really comes back to the fact that this is far too much of a job to Phil. Record a game, turn it into money. He's lost sight of the fact that people call it playing games. Not manufacturing them into cash.
Somewhere along the line, I think he lost his passion for just playing games.
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