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.

[Kulee Baba]

He can't. No time to retire AVGN.

But seriously, like I said earlier, James really can't afford to retire AVGN. Not even remotely because its his bread and butter.
It's because without AVGN, James is nothing.

He tries to make short horror films, but he's not really good at it, his ideas really sucks or plainfully average. Remember that the lights out guy started way after James, but he got to be a director of films way faster.

his film production knowledge and skill is extremely very, very, very poor. I dunno if he is the one that add effects or not on the videos, but post production effects have come along way, but James is still stuck doing it crappily. The green-screen are too obvious because he didn't color blend/grading properly. I think he didn't even bother learning or evolve his knowledge on effects other than the rudimentary knowledge taught in school.

He may say its cheesy effects for the sake of B-movieness, but I think its laziness and James' poor film and post film effects knowledge.

So, yeah, James can't quit AVGN, its his only claim to fame.

Compare AVGN to another successful viral colleague of his like Ashens. Both have similar subject matter, goofing on silly Children's Products particularly video games. Both do low budget videos. But when Ashens makes his full indie movies for his die hard fans he doesn't try to direct the damn thing himself because he knows his talent lies in his personality, not his technical skills. Note I've never watched an Ashens movie (so it's not an endorsement) but you can clearly tell that his movie is run by someone who has proper experience behind the camera.

When a Youtuber relies on himself you get the AVGN movie and of course the Nostalgia Critic messes.

 

[northstar747]

eh I think your being harsh

The CA NC crew where basically doing "home movies"

that era of youtube is over

The SW crew sucked with rental reviews and I maintain that that a well edited sub 20 minute panel about a movie can be entertaining like the RLM gang.

And at least James isnt a streamer

 

[misterduckford]

eh I think your being harsh

The CA NC crew where basically doing "home movies"

that era of youtube is over

The SW crew sucked with rental reviews and I maintain that that a well edited sub 20 minute panel about a movie can be entertaining like the RLM gang.

And at least James isnt a streamer

yet
the night is still young

 

[Rhysuu]

Wow, I just watched the Shrek episode and it was really fucking bad. Like embarrassingly bad. You can tell the person wearing the Shrek costume was not James, they're shorter than him and don't have his cadence. They also tried to draw the tattoo on him in case there were any frames where you could see his full arm and it looks terrible. Why couldn't James just show up? Why even try at this point? I really don't like Screenwave but honestly it feels like they're more dedicated to AVGN than James himself.

 

[PeriodicTrouble]

Wow, I just watched the Shrek episode and it was really fucking bad. Like embarrassingly bad. You can tell the person wearing the Shrek costume was not James, they're shorter than him and don't have his cadence. They also tried to draw the tattoo on him in case there were any frames where you could see his full arm and it looks terrible. Why couldn't James just show up? Why even try at this point? I really don't like Screenwave but honestly it feels like they're more dedicated to AVGN than James himself.
View attachment 2007360

James doesn't want to leave his house because of Covid. It was shot by 3gi, the people who did Shrek Retold.

 

[BrunoMattei]

I don't get why he doesn't go back to reviewing classic horror. He clearly has a passion for it, would be easier to produce, and there is so much material out there for him to work with.

Editing is a bitch. Although, he has the Screenwave guys to do that for him. I guess it's either laziness, not having the passion he once had, or the fear of random copyright strikes or all of the above.

 

[Maurice Caine]

I don't know why James can't just straight up say "Hey I don't really like doing the AVGN that often and I hope you guys can understand that I want to try new things"

I think the problem is though, James is good, or at least was good at playing the AVGN, but was mediocre to bad for everything else he did. Board James was good but sorta declined at the end with it’s plotholes, James and Mike Mondays also had the same issues and Rental Reviews failed badly due to the fact nobody liked the Screenwave slobs because they tried way too hard to be funny. The AVGN was the golden goose, but even it turned shit-brown after a long while. I personally think he should’ve ended the series after the Rob the Robot Episode as that would make for a good finale. But of course since it was giving him money, he continued on anyways which led to it’s decline.

The reason why Red Letter Media or Jontron for example are better at what they do is because they spend time and effort with the writing, reviewing and critiques they use in their videos. James on the other hand just sticks to one plot dynamic and simplifies it when it becomes too challenging for him. He doesn’t want to put effort into his videos anymore, hell it’s partly why the Nerd rarely ever leaves the couch in the newer episodes. Because that would just make James actually work hard for once.

I really liked his movie reviews and Monster Madness. He could stick to doing that more often.

 

[starborn427614]

I really liked his movie reviews and Monster Madness. He could stick to doing that more often.

Whenever you have James talking about old media you're pretty much always gonna have a good time.

 

[Maurice Caine]

Whenever you have James talking about old media you're pretty much always gonna have a good time.

You Know What's Bullshit was pretty cool too but he clearly had to dial it down for [CURRENT YEAR] and that means you can't swear anymore.

 

[Clark_Ashton]

Whenever you have James talking about old media you're pretty much always gonna have a good time.

It depends. When it's old media he actually consumed at some point and is passionate about, it's pretty entertaining. But when he talks about franchises he never watched and only read about on the internet, it's kind of stale. See: his video about the longest film series, where at the end he confesses he has never actually seen a single Charlie Chan movie. Which doesn't prevent him from being opinionated about it.

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

It occurred to me earlier today, but remember the Deadly Towers episode, the one that was written by the fans and IIRC arranged into a coherent (and extremely funny) script? I'm pretty sure crowdsourced AVGN with a competent editor could make endlessly funny AVGN episodes until James is 100 years old. No skits or guest characters necessary, just shoot the footage and put James on the couch and hand him a script and you'd be making actually good content again that is exactly like classic AVGN.

Maybe checking this thread still makes me disappointed over the Shrek episode's sheer waste of potential. I'm not even a fan of Shrek and never was, but I'd love to hear AVGN go on about all the random video games they made for the franchise many of which are terrible. Obviously AVGN is founded on 80s/early 90s nostalgia, but by reviewing Shrek and bringing up 00s Nintendo shit like those movies they had on GBA or the Game Boy Player he was clearly tapping into early 00s nostalgia. I'm pretty sure that era is to most AVGN fans what the NES (or at latest, SNES) was to James. Finding a way to tap into 00s nostalgia might actually work for AVGN (but you need better writers than Screenwave). Works in character too, since the AVGN is there to play shitty games from the past to warn people about them and now there's a whole new generation of shitty retro games.

 

[Exbein]

It occurred to me earlier today, but remember the Deadly Towers episode, the one that was written by the fans and IIRC arranged into a coherent (and extremely funny) script? I'm pretty sure crowdsourced AVGN with a competent editor could make endlessly funny AVGN episodes until James is 100 years old. No skits or guest characters necessary, just shoot the footage and put James on the couch and hand him a script and you'd be making actually good content again that is exactly like classic AVGN.

Maybe checking this thread still makes me disappointed over the Shrek episode's sheer waste of potential. I'm not even a fan of Shrek and never was, but I'd love to hear AVGN go on about all the random video games they made for the franchise many of which are terrible. Obviously AVGN is founded on 80s/early 90s nostalgia, but by reviewing Shrek and bringing up 00s Nintendo shit like those movies they had on GBA or the Game Boy Player he was clearly tapping into early 00s nostalgia. I'm pretty sure that era is to most AVGN fans what the NES (or at latest, SNES) was to James. Finding a way to tap into 00s nostalgia might actually work for AVGN (but you need better writers than Screenwave). Works in character too, since the AVGN is there to play shitty games from the past to warn people about them and now there's a whole new generation of shitty retro games.

You mean, fans can write episodes of AVGN for free? He doesn't need to pay Screenwave? SHHHH!!!! James may hear about it! He might ditch Screenwave too. I mean he already stab Kyle, Bootsy and Mike, don't make him stab the Screenwave crew too

 

[José Mourinho]

Deadly Towers is actually considered to be one of the classic AVGN's weakest episodes but even then I actually liked it, since the game is good enough to give the fans content to mock (e.g. sword coming out of his crotch)

Even as such AVGN can review modern games and still does it well if the game is worth mocking, but then again I don't recall much. My issue with Life of Black Tiger review has less to do with how he reviews the game but how awful his skits are.

 

[White Devil]

That Shrek video was awful and finally caused me to unsub after about a decade or so. I'll still watch this thread but I honestly think there's no hope for AVGN anymore. James is obviously just phoning it in and has no passion for it whatsoever, but it's the cash cow keeping his lights on.

Like others have said, I think it would be best if he just moved to something he actually cares about, like reviewing old movies and horror stuff. He clearly wants to do more original and experimental things (like that one AVGN done in a single take), but the Nerd is like a shackle around his legs preventing it. He should just kill it off and try something different.

 

[José Mourinho]

That Shrek video was awful and finally caused me to unsub after about a decade or so. I'll still watch this thread but I honestly think there's no hope for AVGN anymore. James is obviously just phoning it in and has no passion for it whatsoever, but it's the cash cow keeping his lights on.

Like others have said, I think it would be best if he just moved to something he actually cares about, like reviewing old movies and horror stuff. He clearly wants to do more original and experimental things (like that one AVGN done in a single take), but the Nerd is like a shackle around his legs preventing it. He should just kill it off and try something different.

The sad problem is that he actually tried something different, be it a music video which he actually worked on for the past year or actually making movies (e.g. the AVGN movie which some people speculate he can end the series with the movie hoping it will be successful enough for him to branch out more to movie making) but they fall flat.

AVGN is what brings him the views and money and sponsors now, and his Shrek vid got more views compared with his music video, and that Shrek vid is newer. Naturally, this would have to get James to continue doing AVGN forever until he probably finds one that strikes but very unlikely. Kinda like Doug Walker and Nostalgia Critic.

 

[Pickle Dick]

That Shrek video was awful and finally caused me to unsub after about a decade or so. I'll still watch this thread but I honestly think there's no hope for AVGN anymore.

Oh come on, the Shrek video wasn't that bad, it was certainly more watchable than the Life of Black Tiger episode. The problem with the two videos, of course, is that they're very heavy in skits and contain very little reviewing.

I'm not going to tune out completely from AVGN for a while, but I'm not going to be too impressed with his next reviews until he does one that tones down on the skits and is full of information (I was actually pretty pleased that he briefly covered the GBA Video and UMD movies in the Shrek video, I was wondering when he would do that).

 

[White Devil]

The sad problem is that he actually tried something different, be it a music video which he actually worked on for the past year or actually making movies (e.g. the AVGN movie which some people speculate he can end the series with the movie hoping it will be successful enough for him to branch out more to movie making) but they fall flat.

AVGN is what brings him the views and money and sponsors now, and his Shrek vid got more views compared with his music video, and that Shrek vid is newer. Naturally, this would have to get James to continue doing AVGN forever until he probably finds one that strikes but very unlikely. Kinda like Doug Walker and Nostalgia Critic.

Oh come on, the Shrek video wasn't that bad, it was certainly more watchable than the Life of Black Tiger episode. The problem with the two videos, of course, is that they're very heavy in skits and contain very little reviewing.

I'm not going to tune out completely from AVGN for a while, but I'm not going to be too impressed with his next reviews until he does one that tones down on the skits and is full of information (I was actually pretty pleased that he briefly covered the GBA Video and UMD movies in the Shrek video, I was wondering when he would do that).

I just didn't like it. Not liking the Shrek franchise at all could also play a biased factor but I just don't feel the Nerd videos are worth watching anymore. I only liked those and Board James, and well Board James is long gone. You Know Whats Bullshit is castrated, and nobody likes the reviews he did with the Fatsos. Like was mentioned previously, his Monster Madness videos are great. It seems like his only enjoyable content the past few years have been what he does on Halloween.

 

[Raging Capybara]

Stolen Meme

 

[Smug Chuckler]

It was weak and short, plus he could have reviewed other Shrek games.

And yeah I think the Deadly Towers one was the first one I didn't like (but it was decent compared to the current ones) mostly because it didn't feel like ye typical avgn episode.

The worst one I think was the Halloween one where James did it in one take.

 

[Mr. ShadowCreek]

I like these videos of James playing his daughters levels. I actually very get into it. Whenever he's dodging enemies or objects I flinch or jump a bit. Considering his kids are about 7 or 8 and 3 or 4 these are very impressive. Though I'm sure James or his wife gave a helping hand.