- Joined
- Apr 22, 2015
I'm just amazed he's still doing review videos after over a decade.
"Zero Punctuation" and "Dev Diary" by Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw - The only thing worth watching on The Escapist
- Thread starter Wendy Carter
- Start date
- Joined
- Dec 12, 2018
When they're bad and unfunny throwaway lines, yeah.
- Joined
- Jan 16, 2019
Well, again what else can he do? Every other pie the dude tried to dip his fingers into has tanked and tanked hard. So, really reviews is the only thing he has left.
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2019
He could always dip into Let's Playing. Sure he has shit on Let's Playing but so have most other people who have gone on to do just that.
Or, you know, get a job.
- Joined
- Jan 16, 2019
Why do I imagine if he ever gets kicked off Escapist, he'll probably follow Jimbos idea an jump on Patreon. Why not, when he wanted to go to a con, he did have a donation drive and fo like 100$ hed review a game of the donatord choice.
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2019
You imagine that because it's a likely outcome. So long as he keeps up with his schtick at a reasonable pace he's going to keep getting support.
- Joined
- Sep 25, 2019
In the scheme of things, this is actually quite an achievement. Think about all the shit we've watched happen on this site. Some fat idiot with a terrible review show is $100k in debt, the whole internet watched as a Let's Player who made dumb reaction videos committed suicide, people slowly eating themselves to death, the cocaine-fueled death spiral of an internet debate show that once raked in thousands, some chain smoking Irishman having a panic attack and moving his whole show over to a new site with an even worse upload schedule, the list goes on and on.
Yahtzee has moved countries, survived the equivalent of a website apocalypse, did a Let's Play series with a dude who was literally a random schlubby security guard and he's still going and managing to keep the gravy train up. His upload schedule is still consistent. Even though his content is up and down and I rarely tune in anymore and believe his style has long since been eclipsed by more polished stuff like Ross's Game Dungeon and Civvie 11, and he has had the occasional dumb drunken outburst on his on LP show he did with Gabe, this man has completely avoided becoming a lolcow or suffering any huge failures. Most of his viewers are still watching, his career is still viable, and he's changing things up not out of desperation but I legit think he wants to try new things while keeping up with the old.
He's arguably one of the internet's big success stories up there with people like AVGN or RLM. Its proof that if you just have one good idea and the right opportunity comes along and you don't act like a spastic, you too can carve out your own little empire.
Last edited:
- Joined
- Jan 16, 2019
So, looking at his review on the Escapist, he 1st did Pheonix Point and the last part of him going "You're not one of those people who shuns Epic store exclusives. Because you picked that as your arbitrary bridge too far, for the industry that's been mired for years in anti-consumer practice." and the odd part is him having steam as part of his "anti-consumer" claims.
- Joined
- Sep 26, 2019
That's classic whataboutism, but I really don't get what he meant on that. Steam's been pretty pro-consumer as far as I've seen. They had to be to get as big as they did, considering how they're competing with piracy, a venue where all games are just free.
Hell, a lot of the standards Steam put in place are things that are just taken for granted today. When iTunes was new and you couldn't just listen to whatever you wanted instantly on YouTube or Spotify, your pay-to-download songs weren't just saved in your account. I think you were permitted one re-download after the first one, but if your iPod broke or you deleted that file, you'd actually have to pay to redownload it again. There were plenty of other games out there with dodgy policies on installs, like where you could only activate your CD key a few times, and if you ran out of permitted installs, tough shit, you lost your game.
Not to mention the entire world of mobile gaming. Freemium skinner boxes as far as the eye can see, and how every normal game where you pay upfront could just become unplayable in the future because of newer versions of iOS. At least Android's generally open enough to where fan patches are possible, but iOS is so locked down that you just have to accept that any game you buy on that platform might not work the next time you get an OS update pushed onto you. This has happened plenty of times - Bioshock and Shadowrun Returns are long gone, and The World Ends With You was unplayable for like a year because iOS changed a directory structure and whomever programmed TWEWY didn't think to use relative directories. Fuck, man, between Yahtzee and Jim Sterling, who claim to care about ethical digital storefronts, they sure turn a blind eye to Apple.
- Joined
- Aug 21, 2018
He’s clever, in a fedora-lord way but he’s not dumb. The Escapist are his literal pay pig, nowhere else will pay him a fixed salary for this shtick.
He obviously has aspirations outside reviews (authoring, game development and even investing in gaming spaces) and he’s lucky that his “9-5” is making a 5 min video where he gets to give his take on a new video game that is almost always bought for by the publisher or the escapist.
he has enough freedom to publish books, video games and goto events.
I am genuinely enjoying his current dev diary’s and seems he’s happy. Don’t know how happy he would be if he relied solely on YouTube ad revenue however.
- Joined
- Sep 26, 2019
I wrote up a couple of posts on my niggles about Dev Diary, but both kind of just ended up being long-winded farts, so I axed them.
Basically, I wish he'd go into more detail about how he does what he does. Dev Diary's an interesting idea, but fuck me running does he need to flesh it out more. I'd totally go for a Dev Diary podcast, where he'd at least point us in the right direction. I got a Gamemaker Studio key from a Humble Bundle a long time ago, I'd just like to know in detail what I can actually do with it to pop out something palatable. Yahtzee seems to have a decent grip on what he does, he just needs to extrapolate his shit into something substantial I can chew on for a few months.
Or at least point us in the right direction. Dev Diary as it stands is much more entertainment than educational.
Basically, I wish he'd go into more detail about how he does what he does. Dev Diary's an interesting idea, but fuck me running does he need to flesh it out more. I'd totally go for a Dev Diary podcast, where he'd at least point us in the right direction. I got a Gamemaker Studio key from a Humble Bundle a long time ago, I'd just like to know in detail what I can actually do with it to pop out something palatable. Yahtzee seems to have a decent grip on what he does, he just needs to extrapolate his shit into something substantial I can chew on for a few months.
Or at least point us in the right direction. Dev Diary as it stands is much more entertainment than educational.
- Joined
- Jun 29, 2019
He did do like a lets play with I think one of his Australian mates Gabe before he left to go to the states.
- Joined
- Jan 16, 2019
I dont think they were really LPs, just them talking about stuff/answering questions while Yahtzee played the games.
- Joined
- Apr 16, 2019
I remember in one of the early episodes he says Hotline Miami was made with game maker, and I was legitimately shocked.
- Joined
- Aug 17, 2018
Lots of indie games are. Hyper Light Drifter, Undertale, and Risk of Rain were made with GameMaker too.
- Joined
- Apr 16, 2019
Whenever I want to feel old, I just go to the App Store, look at past purchases, then scroll all the way down and look at how much shit is incompatible. The original crush the castle is still playable though. They didn’t even make it free with microtransactions. It’s fucking crazy.
- Joined
- Aug 21, 2018
The dev diary’s are kinda high level, I don’t think Ben has it in him to explain stuff in layman’s terms. He would probably think it’s only for the “plebeians” if he gave more howto details.
Personally that’s why I like it but to each there own.
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2019
Can't say that's a shock to hear. May have to look at it at some point I'm curious what he's like when he isn't heavily edited.
- Joined
- Dec 8, 2019
He and Gabe are actually quite entertaining in their Let's Drown Out series. Yahtzee barely expresses any louder than a slightly drunken slur, but he makes a good straight man to Gabe's troll tendencies and colorful past. It also lets Yahtzee's own personal weirdness come through more easily, such as how he modded all of XCOM: Enemy Unknown's mission titles so they are replaced with silly ad-libs.
Last edited:
- Joined
- Aug 29, 2018
I think the same could said for ZP.
Yeah, I would call more conceptual in nature, going over what he wants the player to do and rather than the nuts and bolts of actual coding or art, which he covers only briefly. Also, it feel like they have gotten less detailed as time has gone by. Honestly, I feel like the Escapist pushed this onto Yahtzee, to get more out of their only real asset while management tries to right the ship.