Let's Players originating from Something Awful - ft. VoidBurger, General Ironicus, Bob Kamoc

[proteus4994]

Admittedly, I used to think their early stuff was okay during my teen years, even if they provided precisely nothing when it came to useful info or tips on making better let's plays or whatever.

To be fair to slowbeef (and myself), both of us gave a LOT of useful tips/info/criticism about how to make better LPs. They were just confined to the Sandcastle thread on SA. Doing it as part of a retsupurae would have been shouting into the void, none of them gave a fuck about trying to make better LPs or they wouldn't be using a camcorder in a dimly lit room or UNREGISTERED HYPERCAM 2 to begin with.

Now, granted, later on as Youtube videos generally got better and the low-hanging fruit were trimmed, it probably got more nitpicky and anal, but in the early days (when I participated in RP) I feel like they honestly were targeting really shit LPs with little-to-no chance for redemption.

Edit: That being said, I always felt we were a bit too harsh on BillyMC. It's maybe the one thing from those days I regret.

 

[A Random]

What's wrong with picking on the kid who wouldn't get more than McDonald's for Christmas for sucking at Lost Levels?

 

[OwO What's This?]

Hey @proteus4994 you got any deetz on the slowbeef & Dave_O thing? Best I can guess, slowbeef only entertained the Retsutalk political debate with Dave_O because he was so sure Trump was going to lose.

 

[proteus4994]

Nah, was that recently? I haven't talked to either of them in years.

 

[Aquinas]

yeah i imagine it was.

 

[whatever I feel like]

Retsupurae's big sin to me wasn't that it was mean or abusive, just that it wasn't funny. The original content (bad LPs) was not engaging to me at all and there just weren't enough jokes that worked well to make the videos worth viewing. The only one I liked was that British guy who told the goofy alternate Mario 64 plot (and then stopped like two levels before the end, leaving it unfinished.)

 

[proteus4994]

Retsupurae's big sin to me wasn't that it was mean or abusive, just that it wasn't funny.

That is a completely fair take and if someone finds RPs unfunny, I sure as hell can't argue against that.

I take issue with the whole "you should have been giving constructive feedback" because I don't think that was ever our job, but "shit wasn't funny"? Hey, fair enough.

 

[Rokto]

That is a completely fair take and if someone finds RPs unfunny, I sure as hell can't argue against that.

I take issue with the whole "you should have been giving constructive feedback" because I don't think that was ever our job, but "shit wasn't funny"? Hey, fair enough.

Dunno about that fam. When I see a bunch of grown adults getting buttblasted at some video at the internet and ripping on it, I'd expect those kekbears to at the very least elaborate on what's wrong with said video exactly. Instead all I ever got from Retsu was a constant stream of salt and projection from le ebin creators of lets play or whatever participation trophy slowbeef etc attached themselves to. To be fair I couldn't really tell who was who on the Retsu vids and I've never could be arsed to do so you get a free pass on that I suppose.

 

[proteus4994]

Dunno about that fam. When I see a bunch of grown adults getting buttblasted at some video at the internet and ripping on it, I'd expect those kekbears to at the very least elaborate on what's wrong with said video exactly.

I like to think it was pretty obvious most of the time. If a dude is recording his TV in a dark room with a camcorder, do you really need us to point that out?

 

[NoStinkingBadges]

I like to think it was pretty obvious most of the time. If a dude is recording his TV in a dark room with a camcorder, do you really need us to point that out?

Honestly I always preferred wrongpuraes to retsupraes since bad/silly games are more fun to rip on than the same autistic shit all over youtube, but now cashbeef and dollarbetus don't do those anymore either so...

 

[Strange Looking Dog]

I liked the content towards the middle of retsupurae best, a lot of the earlier videos were full of spastic vitriol (genuine or not, hard on the ears), and the new videos are boring. Some of the middle content is pretty funny though, especially the wrongpuraes and various non-lp riffs.

 

[Cyber Bowling]

Some of the RP's were pretty funny, but I think with the sheer number of them it was sometimes hard to keep the jokes fresh. It was probably easier to enjoy them when they were being released with a delay, but if you're just watching them in a playlist they kinda blend together, but then there are a few that have some gimmicks to them which stand out more. That's why I always preferred Chip's RP's, there were a lot less of them, but it felt like they had a lot more personality, though even a good number of those end up falling flat. I will at least give them credit for finally dropping the format instead of trying to beat a dead horse even further like a lot of other internet personalities do.

 

[BuckBumble]

Nah, was that recently? I haven't talked to either of them in years.

DaveO was a Bernie or no one voter that decided he'd take Trump over Hillary. RetsuTalk 83 he mentions this and talks about politics. It's "polite" in so far as civil discussion happens but you could clearly see neither of the two were comfortable about this.
The comments section had a complete nuclear meltdown declaring DaveO to be the scum of the earth, with typical "CISMALE PRIVILIGED WHITE MAN DAVEO IS HUMAN TRASH!" buzzwords actually being thrown around.

Also according to one later comment:

Yeah for anyone crossing their fingers on whether Dave O will ever come back, don't hold your breath. While Slowbeef and Dave O have been following eachother on twitter, Dave O got pretty annoyed and pissed off at the 1 or 2 comments Slowbeef made against Trump and decided to unfollow him, then Slowbeef realized this and unfollowed him back......So while the video may seem like a nice chill podcast, Dave O is surprisingly shallow and mean against people who speak out against Trump

Well that might be true. Either that or he realized slowbeef was a massive sycophantic chode but who knows what happened.
I know "Friends don't let each other talk about politics" is a thing but I'll never cease to be amazed at seeing people unperson former friends for being on the "wrong" side.

 

[RJ MacReady]

Edit: That being said, I always felt we were a bit too harsh on BillyMC. It's maybe the one thing from those days I regret.

The best part about Billy is that he ended up having a small, unironic fanbase because people came around to his genuine personality. AFAIK he never minded the RPs at all.

 

[BlueSpark]

I like to think it was pretty obvious most of the time. If a dude is recording his TV in a dark room with a camcorder, do you really need us to point that out?

I think you're giving yourself (and Slowbeef and the rest) too much credit.
In most cases of the early Retsupurae videos (I think all, actually, but I'm not watching them all to confirm) the audio quality of your commentary was abysmal, to the point you were barely audible in many instances.
Example:

Recording your voice whilst watching a video is a lot easier than playing a game, recording audio from said game, recording video from said game and recording yourself commentating then synchronizing all of those.
Diabetus's first LP (I think? He's purged a lot of his old videos) which also features Slowbeef and some rando has worse visuals and audio than a lot of camcorder LPs:

And then there's Slowbeef's first video LP, which is tedious as hell and features him rambling whilst stumbling around a maze and he didn't even record the game audio:

On top of all this there are other factors too as to why someone would record their TV/monitor with a camcorder instead of using capture hardware/software, like not having capture hardware, not having the PC specs to record whilst playing etc (and the fact that a lot of the LP-ers were teenagers whilst you were all adults with jobs).

Edit: Formatting.

 

[zap2theextreme]

The best part about Billy is that he ended up having a small, unironic fanbase because people came around to his genuine personality. AFAIK he never minded the RPs at all.

I heard he's like the heir to the Lays potato chip company or something. Billy MC owns

 

[Manah]

Diabetus's first LP (I think? He's purged a lot of his old videos) which also features Slowbeef and some rando has worse visuals and audio than a lot of camcorder LPs:

Audio, maybe; The one guy had an awful mic. But visuals? Are you sure you're not just talking about how bad the graphics in the game are...?

Honestly I always preferred wrongpuraes to retsupraes since bad/silly games are more fun to rip on than the same autistic shit all over youtube, but now cashbeef and dollarbetus don't do those anymore either so...

I was going to say it hasn't been THAT long, but I checked and apparently it's been about 4 months since they last did one...

I liked the content towards the middle of retsupurae best, a lot of the earlier videos were full of spastic vitriol (genuine or not, hard on the ears), and the new videos are boring. Some of the middle content is pretty funny though, especially the wrongpuraes and various non-lp riffs.

Yeah, I'm pretty much the same. I give the benefit of the doubt in that I think some of slowbeef getting worked up a lot was just to contrast Diabeetus' more deadpan personality.

The odd kickstarter video for when they felt like uploading something but didn't want to put a lot of work in? I can get that. 30 of those videos that are just saying "this is pretty dumb"? Makes me wonder if they're even really having fun with it anymore.

 

[BlueSpark]

But visuals? Are you sure you're not just talking about how bad the graphics in the game are...?

No, look at how blurred the video is.

Makes me wonder if they're even really having fun with it anymore.

I've been wondering that, too. Diabetus in particular seems like he doesn't care and Slowbeef seems to just be continuing to fuel his ego and make money. But those are just my opinions.

 

[PLB]

I think the only reason retsupurea even exists anymore is that slowbeef doesnt have to edit so its super easy money for him to make and looking at the views they just get more views on the kickstarter videos than any video game stuff they do getting at least 20k views but more often about 35k compared to the 7k views they got on the last video of the most current "LP" they made (sure series get viewer drop off but the first had 25k).
One of the major issues with the vg videos they have made over the last year is they are mostly fmv games with terrible audio that they then talk over, its exactly the same problem they had with some of the early RP vids where you cant hear the thing they are trying to take the piss out of which is were the humor comes from you have to be able to understand both but they dont care enough (or are truly incompetent and dont realise) to put subtitles of the game audio in while editing or spend time finding something that works better with the format. Im honestly surprised 7k people watched the ps psychic detective series that was unwatchable with how difficult it was to make out the game audio.

edit: As an aside for context their cobra videos got 160k for the first and 70k views for the last part, harvester got from 160-70k, the billy mc first rp got 200k views and the latest got 130k, sonic 06 got 250k-45k(although that is a 50 episode serries) and darkseed 2 had 265-135k for the long episodes and 115-70k for the shorter episodes

 

[proteus4994]

I'm not gonna defend early LPs because my first LP was shit. However, SA always had two pretty simple rules.

1) Use capture software, not a camcorder

2a) Be competent at the game or
2b) edit out your failures

I'm not saying SA always had master-level LPs even in 2006 and SA was the bestest LPers ever. But there were some degree of quality standards. Hell, you could even violate rule 2 as long as you were funny about it.