"Zero Punctuation" and "Dev Diary" by Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw - The only thing worth watching on The Escapist
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- Sep 29, 2022
I skipped to around 6:20 (the end of the video, the last TWO MINUTES are sponsors and other bullshit) and Yahtzee laments AI can't make dirty insults, probably the faggot would applaud that Internet AI is cucked when it comes to making observations about human nature.
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- Sep 27, 2023
Don't really have much to say about this one, but the tangent at the end about "Donkey Kong being sexualized": I do know that this isn't the first game DK says "Oh Banana" in that tone. I forgot where he says it, but this definitely isn't unique to this game.
Otherwise, yeah a strangely decent review. Maybe Yahtzee is in his element when he makes fun of baby games, cause his recent Shadow The Hedgehog game review he still did under Zero Punctuation by the end was fine too.
- Joined
- Sep 16, 2018
They were literally given a second wind by yatzee and are determined to burn it to the ground a second time, that is actually incredible.
I assume yatzee gives zero fucks as long as he gets paid without having to do any behind the scenes work which is why he agrees to this, but even he must be self aware enough to realize that these retards are treating him as a golden goose and burning the company to the ground.
The escapist collapsed because it failed to build itself up as anything other than the site that hosts yatzee, and now second wind is speedrunning the same with a bunch of dogshit shows nobody cares about ontop of burning goodwill as rapidly as humanly possible with stunts like this.
95% of their income is generated by a guy playing with cardboard cutout shadow puppets once a week, how the fuck are they burning this much cash?
Harman Smith
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wtfNeedSignUp
kiwifarms.net
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- Dec 17, 2019
It's more that the business model of having sites with content creators died out (since it's easier just moving to youtube by yourself, such as most of their contributers), as well as The Escapist sticking its dick into politics for no real sane. The Escapist stuck gold with Yahtzee since he is too lazy to do the shtick on his own.
I haven't played Astrobot but from what it sounds like the new Donkey Kong is yet another platformer that plays itself for maximum dopamine. Issue is that the people who bought a 450$ console for one game are expectedly acting cult-like.
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- Oct 6, 2016
Just had a random flashback: Remember when Yahtzee ran a flash game competition and the results were so shockingly poor that he never did it again?
don't not shoot the Press
kiwifarms.net
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- Mar 12, 2023
For the last three months they've been trying to get back up to 45K month on Patreon(currently at 40,597 Dollars).
It's crazy how much they are pushing the Patreon with apparently more pushes to come later this year.
It's crazy how much they are pushing the Patreon with apparently more pushes to come later this year.
It's also funny how they still haven't figured out that their channel, has seen basically zero growth and that it's obvious what works on and what doesn't. But for whatever reason, they insist on burying their heads in the sand.
You know what would be really funny? Is if a bunch of the existing subscribers used that discount code to retain their subscription at a 20% cut, just screwing them even further. Lets say 1/4 of their subscribers did this, losing 20% of basically $10k, their revenue would just take another $2,000 hit for basically no reason.
Also, only a 12 hour fundraising stream? They've got a bunch of people on their channel they could swap in and out over the course of a 24 hour period and do an actual subathon like any other channel tends to do? Sure can't do the gift subs on patreon but it's still a possibility. Of course maybe they know that's a terrible idea considering they've been streaming for over an hour now and still only have 300 viewers.
edit: Holy shit I still had the stream open and they just got chastized forcing Jack to have to apologize for misgendering a character(Grinderbin?) from Adventure is Nigh(their tabletop rpg thing?) due to using the wrong pronouns. Great fucking audience that's definitely going to be throwing money at them.
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- Mar 10, 2025
I think it might be time for bookies to start taking bets for Yahtzee joining 'Third Time's the Charm,' another Nick Cucklandra masterclass
wtfNeedSignUp
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- Dec 17, 2019
I wonder if that 45k is some magic number that their sponsors have decided as their minimal support before they remove support. The sanest option is just to fire the least performing person in the team to make the windfall but they are too privileged for it (plus will likely cause a shitstorm with the type of people involved).
- Joined
- Sep 29, 2022
I think one of their main problems is that a lot of ZP's back catalog still holds up and is still enjoyable. Is anyone buying the Blu-ray collection of the 2024 videos? (It's a one-run item but don't worry, there's still stock).
A lot of SW's issues is that they seemed to be in such a hurry to screw over the Escapist that they forgot how to run a business themselves (their budget suggests as much, IIRC they LOST real money on freelance work). Problem is Yahtzee won't always be the main draw and they need to compensate for that, and constant e-begging usually turns people off or just makes you a laughingstock to throw peanuts at.
A lot of SW's issues is that they seemed to be in such a hurry to screw over the Escapist that they forgot how to run a business themselves (their budget suggests as much, IIRC they LOST real money on freelance work). Problem is Yahtzee won't always be the main draw and they need to compensate for that, and constant e-begging usually turns people off or just makes you a laughingstock to throw peanuts at.
They must be deathly afraid that the minute they fire the "least performing person in the team" they'll run to Reddit to have a tell-all Q&A that would make Second Wind look even worse.
grump
kiwifarms.net
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- Apr 14, 2016
These youtuber stables survive by finding James Rolfe types (and really Croshaw is James with smugness, offputting cynicism and politics cranked up 10 notches) with massive popularity but are simultaneously too lazy to expend the minimal effort to assemble their own dedicated team. Then proceed to leech off them. Second Wave even has a very similar name as Screen Wave what a coinkeedink.
PS: I'm not sure if a quarter a mill is far less or far more than we should expect out of ZP. Regardless, he really only needs to hire one guy to put together his animations and run his patreon and media campaigns. No need for an entire likely poorly paid team.
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- Joined
- Sep 29, 2022
Besides the fact that "get reviewed on Zero Punctuation" is a shockingly poor "prize" and indicating that you've run out of things to talk about when he was still early in his career (in retrospect) is not a good sign of longevity, he gave basically five sentences about it at the end of one of his other reviews shoved in at the credits, and if it was for "exposure" he didn't even say the name of who actually made it. I mean, it wasn't until sometime until around after 2015 when he started to review the bullshit indie games that get sucked off by the "gaming press" but no one else does.
I mean, not really. AVGN feels like different shows depending on the era it was, either just screaming obscenities at some crappy licensed NES game, or a 20-minute retrospective examining the look of early games in some franchise, and everything in between, meanwhile, ZP is more or less the same show, just with gradually worse writing and worse takes.
As for everything else, Croshaw comes off as a douche IRL while Rolfe is one of the few e-celebs who really does "play a character" (very obvious when you've been doing the same shtick for 15 years), but from what I've seen he seems generally well-put together but clearly on the spectrum (he was a sped student for years). A lot of Croshaw's industry history videos at least appear that he did read some sort of article to prepare for it, whereas a lot of Rolfe's stuff looks like he didn't consult any research material. (Point Yahtzee). The politics stuff really depends on where you watch ZP, a lot of the early stuff dealt with foreign politics (UK or some other crown colony) and until he moved to San Francisco in the late 2010s or early 2010s he had the same sort of takes liberals did in 2004, not now, and almost came across as a left-leaning moderate.
don't not shoot the Press
kiwifarms.net
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- Mar 12, 2023
Nick wouldn't be fired if he did that. He was losing the escapist money because he kept around a bunch of unprofitable people. Escapist wanted to cut it down to two
Yahtzee & frost and because of that Nick burned down the entire company.
And currently only has 5000 views, not the most successful crowdfunding campaign.
wtfNeedSignUp
kiwifarms.net
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- Dec 17, 2019
The fun thing is that it will happen anyways once the ship sinks. It's just the type of people who will unashamedly be dead weight for their co-workers.
Out of all the Old Internet club Yahtzee comes really badly due to never experimenting. Say what you want about Nostalgia Critic or AVGN, at least they attempted to improve and do other things, and they still do a lot of community stuff. Yahtzee just sits in his corner doing 3 minute videos for 10+ years.
He isn't the worse of course, but mainly because he isn't a cuck/tranny (maybe).
- Joined
- Sep 29, 2022
I wouldn't say that's a bad thing. Yahtzee attempted to do stuff with other projects like books and video games, and while the format was stable, that was the appeal, especially as he didn't try to change things, get pissed when he got poor feedback, and fuck off for months at a time.
AVGN and NC especially have all the fake ends where they wanted to stop but couldn't and in the end became caricatures of what they used to be, churning out content. I have to assume Yahtzee is different in that respect, because he had an opportunity to do something entirely different with the Escapist fallout, only to make a bootleg version with all the same issues of late-era ZP but more e-begging.
I think he probably is a cuck as the timeline suggests that there's no way he could have children of his own, and usually relationships like that aren't faithful. Trooning out? I don't see it.
wtfNeedSignUp
kiwifarms.net
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- Dec 17, 2019
Books and games are very much staying at a comfort zone. You can't keep forever doing sub 5 minute minimal edit videos when today the average youtube gaming video is at least 20 minute, if not over an hour, and has massive amount of editing required. So he'll keep on being on sinking ships until he just gives up making videos altogether.
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- Jan 2, 2020
Even then, he's been loosing drawing power. The hype of leaving The Escapist and doing his own thing went over like a wet fart, and now he just bitches for the sake of bitching. It's "old man yells at clouds" with some of it being unhinged left political takes everyone is sick and tired of hearing.
Its really no surprise why they are not growing and dwindling down. All they did was give ZP a new coat of paint without even fixing the underlying issues that were plaguing ZP in the first place.
Gravityqueen4life
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- May 29, 2019
It would be funny if they became the very thing they hated and tried to separate from. How ionic it would be.