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.

[Shirō Ishii]

A minute in he say's "Let me address some of the... Complaints... Of the assholish variety. That's not representative of all of you."

Yeah, he mad. Put more effort into your work, James. Then people won't give you shit.

2 minutes in and he shows off an Everdrive that apparently has every game ever made on the NES, SNES and Genesis. Then why even keep the carts except to use as props? So lazy.

Oh god, he's a Mac fag. I thought he just used Mac for editing but no, he is a true blue Mac fag. SMDH.

11 minutes in: he goes over the convenience of how he has the room setup for filming emphasizing "This saves me a lot of time." Not sure if he's self-aware of the meme or not. Then he complains that when a different angle is needed he needs to move all of the equipment around. Yeah, no shit. The filmmaking process requires effort. That's why Red Letter Media or Jontron film in a studio. If you don't want to film in a studio then suck it up and deal with it. How much does this nigger make from this shit? Maybe half a million a year, easily? Pay me half a million dollars and I won't bitch at all about moving some lights and cords. And he uses a teleprompter too... FUCKING JUST REMEMBER YOUR LINES! Or have your lines written down and off camera to reference. THIS MOTHERFUCKER CAN'T EVEN BE BOTHERED TO REMEMBER HIS LINES ANYMORE??? Fuck you, James.

That is Marlon Brando levels of laziness.

12:30 "When I'm short on time and trying to be as quick and convenient as possible." I think he is self-aware of the meme. That and he's become extremely lazy.

12:40 "I'll even set up a different angle when there's a good reason and if it's worth the price of time." Fuck you. He then whines that there's brand deals and he's contracted to two episodes a month and there's simply "Not enough time." Funny, because he used to do 2 episodes a month back during the Game Trailers era. Granted, okay, he's got kids now. But it's his channel, who stipulated you have to do 2 videos a month? Who put quantity over quality? You did, James. Fuck you.

I understand YT is fucky and favors people that pump out videos like no tomorrow. If so, then make a Patreon. James has hordes of drooling mongoloids who would give him their NEET bucks. Red Letter Media has a Patreon so there's no shame in it. I don't get him other than just being lazy.

13:00 he starts complaining about people pointing the basic couch shot and how lazy it is.

13:25 "As if I'm not aware. I'm a guy who makes movies." No, you made one feature and it was dog shit. Nice humble brag, faggot.

"We've had some dynamic shots like in Eco the Dolphin and the one continuous take in The Immortal."
Yeah, everyone hated The Immortal episode largely because of the one continuous take. Fuck you.

Then he complains about spending 100 hours on the Vegas episode. 100 hours gone to waste because the episode was dog shit.

If you can't tell, this video is really making me hate him and I've been watching his shit since 2006.

Thank you for watching this so the rest of us don't have to. This just sounds like massive laziness on his part (and probably is). I'm surprised that he hasn't gotten to 200 videos considering Scott the Woz reached it a few months back. There are just so many other, better game reviewers out there now and his stuff is just terrible in comparison now.

 

[BrunoMattei]

Thank you for watching this so the rest of us don't have to. This just sounds like massive laziness on his part (and probably is). I'm surprised that he hasn't gotten to 200 videos considering Scott the Woz reached it a few months back. There are just so many other, better game reviewers out there now and his stuff is just terrible in comparison now.

The fact he uses a teleprompter probably pissed me off the most.

I'm still editing my reaction post but this is the worst video he's made. Ever. It's pure entitlement and "fuck you for not liking my low effort shit." in a 22 and a half minute video. May this get down voted into oblivion.

What this video makes very clear is that the Slobs are NOT the problem with the channel. James is the problem.

 

[Shirō Ishii]

I went looked through the Facebook and youtube comments and the amount of ass-kissing is immeasurable. But of course, like every person who starts to become a lolcow, they just listen to comments like this:

100 hours went into 1 video? So you mean 2 and a half weeks, which would be one video a month give or take if you worked 40 hours per week like most people do in the U.S. As much as Mike gets shit on, he was the one doing the gameplay so it's not like he was spending a ton of time playing games back in the day like how most people initially thought he did.

I do look forward to seeing where this goes, especially as his viewer count dips and dips.

 

[FuzzMushr00m]

The BTS from the Shrek episode is pathetic, I've seen less embarrassing pornos.
Overall the video is an impressive collection of passive aggressive and guilt trippy copes: muh kids, muh medieval contraptions because I trip on tripods with muh club foot, muh time, muh covid, muh servers.

Best quote of the video: "Some people don't like Screenwave being involved with the videos. Do these people not want me to have any help? Do they want me to suffer and do everything by myself?"

 

[Travoltron]

It sounds like James had his own Voltage Vengerz moment the way you guys describe it!

 

[Pickle Dick]

It sounds like James had his own Voltage Vengerz moment the way you guys describe it!

The videos will be done when they're done, and will be released when they're done

Well, at least the output of new AVGN episodes has been consistent, though this only further makes my point he really needs to put the show on hiatus if he's so stressed out, and maybe have Screenwave be a little less involved in the episodes

Assuming he does go full lolcow in the near future, well hey, it took him 41 years of his before he became one, most become a lolcow before they even reach 30

 

[ExtremeZap]

Woof what a video.

James has no time because he uses an incredibly convoluted set up and spends days fiddling with cables.

Instead of outsourcing this to his hired help, he outsourced the CREATIVE part of the channel to people with personality of a rock.

There’s no coming back for this channel, up until a few hours ago I was all “get rid of the slobs and AVGN will be back!” Now it’s clear that James is an idiot, and the slobs are woefully unable to do what James is trying to have them do while he uploads huge data files all week.

 

[BrunoMattei]

It sounds like James had his own Voltage Vengerz moment the way you guys describe it!

Yeah, from 19:00 on he is eerily like Linkara in that rant.

Please god someone make a video compare and contrasting the two.

 

[Pringles Can]

What this video makes very clear is that the Slobs are NOT the problem with the channel. James is the problem.

After seeing this video my opinion on the slobs has gone from saying fuck them completely to saying fuck them mostly. Some of the video I got, but almost 80% of the video is just him putting his head in the sand while yelling "no time" and "Muh kids". Him 1 min in the video saying that people telling him he could be putting out better content are assholes tipped me off that james was gonna show his shitshow of a setup.

 

[Pickle Dick]

Some of the video I got, but almost 80% of the video is just him putting his head in the sand while yelling "no time" and "Muh kids".

On one hand, he does have an excuse that raising kids, especially in a pandemic, can be heavily soul rendering and time consuming on its wn. On the other hand, that is also an extremely flimsy excuse, and most content creators with children will at least attempt to find flexibility when it comes to making videos and raising children at the same time.

Not that I think James is at all a bad person for being so passive aggressive regarding that situation, but he does look super retarded when that is brought up. The case is either he's too stupid to know how to find flexibility between raising his kids and making videos, or that he's willing to be controlled by his wife and/or Screenwave because he's extremely lazy and is completely burnt out from AVGN.

Come to think of it, looking at Chris Bores's newer IG episodes, and bare in mind I still think he's a talentless hack, and he seems to be a little more into the games he's reviewing. He's a little older than James, and has kids of his own, and yet he seems to at least show more passion for the stuff he looks at. Not to mention he does side stuff like Puppet Steve, which he seems enjoy doing more than Irate Gamer, and he doesn't even complain about time (afaik).

 

[Pringles Can]

Come to think of it, looking at Chris Bores's newer IG episodes, and bare in mind I still think he's a talentless hack, and he seems to be a little more into the games he's reviewing. He's a little older than James, and has kids of his own, and yet he seems to at least show more passion for the stuff he looks at. Not to mention he does side stuff like Puppet Steve, which he seems enjoy doing more than Irate Gamer, and he doesn't even complain about time (afaik).

Thats my main issue with james. When Chris fucking Bores has gotten ahead of you, and shows more passion in what he does then there is a problem that is not just the camera angles. The contract he talked about said he has to do 2 episodes a month, so I get the burn out. Its just I would like to see him put something more into his show then below the minimum effort. We all know james is a pretty talented guy compared to most youtubers, it's just his contract and him not giving a shit that is getting in the way. At this rate I would not be surprised if his 200th episode was him reviewing some below average game with the camera angle being the one he uses in his latest videos.

 

[Pickle Dick]

The contract he talked about said he has to do 2 episodes a month, so I get the burn out. Its just I would like to see him put something more into his show then below the minimum effort. We all know james is a pretty talented guy compared to most youtubers, it's just his contract and him not giving a shit that is getting in the way.

It's not the first time he's been locked into a contract that said he had to do 2 episodes a month. He had that kind of contract in the classic era of AVGN when he was affiliated with GameTrailers and ScrewAttack. I think the difference is that he wasn't really pressured into completing episodes on time so he could receive sponsorship money, and (to give current year James the benefit of a doubt) had far more energy and passion due to his relative youth back then.

Like now, he eventually got burnt out of that schedule, and around 2010, he scaled back episodes to once a month, and eventually every few months or so. The difference was that GameTrailers and ScrewAttack were seemingly generous enough to allow him to continue partnering with them, and James wouldn't completely disassociate himself from those sites until around 2013 (the last episode that explicitly says it was done in partnership with those two was the AVGN Games episode).

 

[Pringles Can]

It's not the first time he's been locked into a contract that said he had to do 2 episodes a month. He had that kind of contract in the classic era of AVGN when he was affiliated with GameTrailers and ScrewAttack. I think the difference is that he wasn't really pressured into completing episodes on time so he could receive sponsorship money.

I found it weird when he brought up that people were hating him durring ScrewAttack and GameTrailers. Maybe I just missed it or did not care as much, but I do not remember them getting any hate asides from people being annoyed that the videos stayed up on their website for a year. I kinda remember people saying they were having problems getting onto the website to watch the videos. Asides from that though I do not remember even a tiny bit of hate for them. Compared to screenwave, people loved those 2.

 

[Stardust]

The most baffling thing for me was how backwards James is. The core complaint is AVGN has little to no soul, so Screenwave does the creative aspect leaving him to do the technical stuff, which is totally wrong.

Screenwave should be handling MUH FILEZ, cameras, and lights. James should handle creative aspects; ideas, script, and, well, the core aesthetic of prime AVGN. Instead, Screenwave pumps out agonizing scripts while James waits for his might-as-well-be-dial-up data files.

That is the killing blow. Mismanagement, whether it be egotistical delusion or stubborn ignorance, is it. Even if Episode 200 or Monster Madness are masterpieces, they are delaying the seemingly inevitable.

 

[Jan Ciągwa]

Just looking at this spaghetti-mess of cables gives me a bad OCD trip. Question - if you're using hack all-games-in-one cartridges, why not cut out the technical problem middleman and just play & record game footage on an emulator? Absolutely nobody cares outside of a minority of autists who spend more time (har) complaining about your work without even leaving views. It would solve all the problems with capturing gameplay, you'd just have to record a voiceover over the footage and bam, done.

I laughed at James' catalogue nerdishness - I thought that Guntwave does 99% of the actual work on AVGN episodes and James just watches movies while "working" but no, James actually spends weeks copying terabytes of obsolete footage and wastes time fucking around with spotlights, then complains that there's nothing he can do about it.

 

[José Mourinho]

Even though the video really isn't atrocious as I thought, it's still sad to the point I even wonder why people think James is better than Doug Walker or even Chris Bores in 2021 when we are in a sad state where even they are doing a better job compared with James. Even with the #ChangeTheChannel controversy and even how people in 2021 are obsessing over a blog nitpicking anything Chris Bores does.

I can go on but I'd rather summarize all my gripes I got from the video into these short points:

1. You don't need to let me know that the microphone is not turned on early in the video when I can still hear the audio clearly.
2. He's using Everdrive or custom cartridges to record footage for his gameplay videos, but I don't think it would take that much effort to at least, you know, just insert the cartridges into the consoles. I know this was later explained by him having to change the lights, cameras, etc. but this is just so terribly inefficient.
3. Who moves multiple files at the same time? This isn't really too big of a gripe for me but still inefficient.
4. I can understand using a teleprompter if you are not bothered to memorize your lines, but it gets me wondering if he later talks about the basic episodes from the past such as McKids which doesn't even involve his face, why can't he just do that to begin with.
5. James has to do 2 AVGN episodes a month due to contracts. Well this is gonna be torture in the long run if this goes on. And no, don't even tell me that James said he had fun in the video so this should be brushed off, if I saw all these settings and if I were to be put into his shoes I'd rather quit.
6. "I'm a guy who likes making movies": Please, you only made one. The 500-film filmography is embarassing since you literally think Castlevania 2 review is considered a movie lmao and no I don't fucking care if anyone brings up "um acktually a movie means...."
7. Please don't even compare "Super Pitfall" with the recent basic episodes. "Super Pitfall" already dissected tons of stuff about the games in contrast with the basic episodes we have now.
8. Okay what the fuck using your kids as an excuse? This isn't like you make AVGN episodes as a side job, this is literally your full time job. Imagine if I come up to work and gave a poor quality workflow and I give my kids as excuses. Would that be acceptable? Fuck no. You obviously don't need to work 18 hours a day as you used to to make a good quality episode either in 2021.
9. Why would you do this Shrek Onion scene yourself if you had a wife that actually helped in some of the early episodes?
10. James and the Screenwave crew are vaccinated and now are in person. I hope this time Screenwave crew would actually help James with the technical stuff but this is unlikely.
11. James asked us if Screenwave didn't help, we would be seeing 3 videos a year. Even though people here would say yes to that, personally for me given all this setup, I doubt these 3 videos would even be high quality as they used to.
12. James said he was given shit for working with ScrewAttack or GameTrailers. I don't even recall that and closest is just watching the videos on their sites when they were released, but that's about it, and even as such irrelevant.
13. You know, come to think of it remember when Mike, Kyle and Bootsy were actually involved in your episodes? If you really want a crew so much so why can't they help? I can understand Kyle not doing so anymore since he literally has a job on his own, but Mike and Bootsy? Not even acknowledging these at all?

Looking at all these points I've listed makes me feel there's really no hope left for Cinemassacre. I don't think James is gonna be a lolcow all because he addressed the criticism directed at him however. At the rate they are going with pretty low views for this channel, I might as well seek elsewhere. I'll still watch AVGN because it doesn't really take much of my time watching a 10 minute plus long video to begin with, but I'll still be disappointed at the sad state it was.

 

[Pringles Can]

Just looking at this spaghetti-mess of cables gives me a bad OCD trip. Question - if you're using hack all-games-in-one cartridges, why not cut out the technical problem middleman and just play & record game footage on an emulator? Absolutely nobody cares outside of a minority of autists who spend more time (har) complaining about your work without even leaving views. It would solve all the problems with capturing gameplay, you'd just have to record a voiceover over the footage and bam, done.

IIRC I belive james and mike have a hate boner against emulators. Something about how its "not real if you did not play it on the real console" or some bullshit like that. I do agree with you though, if james is so fucking worried about time then why waste time with this weird ass setup? It makes no sense.

Even though the video really isn't atrocious as I thought, it's still sad to the point I even wonder why people think James is better than Doug Walker or even Chris Bores in 2021 when we are in a sad state where even they are doing a better job compared with James. Even with the #ChangeTheChannel controversy and even how people in 2021 are obsessing over a blog nitpicking anything Chris Bores does.

If there is one thing that makes me disapointed more then anything, its the fact that the bar for James to beat these days is Chris Bores quality wise. I thought it was bad when the bar was Doug Walker.

 

[Jan Ciągwa]

I still can't understand why he needs to hoard literally gazillion terabytes of uncompressed past footage. My tweaker friend used to have fun with doing 3 backup copies on 3 separate drives when going off the rails with his "habit", because you never know when you might need those! But that was a result of paranoia - if James needs some past footage he can literally download one of his videos off Youtube.

 

[Clark_Ashton]

And this video is not a behind-the-scenes either, it's just a bunch of lame excuses to justify the atrocious state of this dying channel.

It's the video version of the email someone posted a few pages back. It was disappointing, I was expecting a step-by-step description of the actual workflow. But I guess he can't really do that considering that the making of every single video is an uphill battle.

 

[skykiii]

it was more or less to spite Nes cartridge rental stores

More specifically, in theory making the game harder meant a kid wouldn't just rent it and beat it in a weekend, but would have to actually buy it.

In practice, I think most kids would just keep renting the same game, or else get bored and try a different one. That's how I worked as a kid, anyway.

It wasn't just Battletoads. Ninja Gaiden 3 and The Krion Conquest both got hit with the difficulty stiffy when they came to America, and I'm sure they weren't alone. Ironically the Japanese version of Battletoads (and the later Sega Genesis port) significantly toned down the difficulty.