Corporation: Hint taken! Hey, YouTube, buddy, please ban those poor idiots. You know, business reasons…
Dropout and Nebula are making some insanely high quality content, and those are just the two obvious examples that came to my mind. Both also exhibit a more progressive business model and are less capitalistic in their thinking.
I’m sure there are plenty of similar examples.
I’m still kind of surprised we haven’t seen a similar model for gamers/streamers yet.
It costs that much because the people creating it fought for it. The youtubers are massively under paid for their work.
You mean the faces and executives are paid; the people doing the actual work often get the shaft.
I always think about this. Like a lot of the engineering youtubers I follow do some pretty dangerous stuff. They take the necessary safety precautions, but I have no idea how insurance can work when you’re flagrantly disobeying OSHA regulations.
As an independent operator, you can abuse yourself in a way that legally nobody else is allowed to.
The amount of indie games in my “best games of the year” list is increasing year by year.
Corpos are skilled at wringing any and all interesting bits out of something and reducing it to harmless, overdone slop that still sells. They don’t take risks because that may make them $5 less. But indies do.
Corpos are skilled at wringing any and all interesting bits out of something and reducing it to harmless, overdone slop that still sells. They don’t take risks because that may make them $5 less. But indies do.
I’m still amazed at how Gearbox managed to royally fuck up Risk of Rain 2. They had a great game with solid foundations handed to them, and they somehow managed to both regress the game logic into being tied to framerate and release a buggy mess of a DLC in one fell swoop.
What’s interesting to me is the lack of crossover between the two. As far as I’m aware, no popular Youtube creator has ever successfully transitioned to doing Hollywood movies or TV shows. Sure there’s been the occasional cameo, short-lived series, or direct to streaming movie, but none of them had any staying power. Why isn’t Hollywood treating youtube as a farm league for new talent and IP that they can snatch up and exploit after the market for it is proven?
To be clear, I’m not saying I want that to happen. The good content creators deserve better as far as I’m concerned. But the opportunity seems so obvious that I’m truly baffled at the apparent lack of interest.
A lot of YouTubers get burnt out and retire. I’m not saying that’s the only or even primary factor but it could be one of them.
It may just be a factor that a lot of YouTubers don’t want to give up creative control. Working with Hollywood ultimately usually means giving up a lot of control on the type and content of your work. They’re paying for the big production budget; they get final say in all creative decisions.
YouTubing is a career type that naturally attracts those that want creative independence. And by the time someone would be of the clout to make a deal with a studio or network, they’re probably already earning enough money to be making a comfortable living from their work. 10,000-follower YouTube channels aren’t getting calls from Discovery, Nickelodian, or Fox News. They’re only going to be recruiting from the top channels. And people at that level are probably already earning a nice full-time living. Channels of that level are often entire miniature production companies. The biggest YouTubers aren’t individuals, but creative teams.
That’s a level of success many people would consider ideal. You get to live comfortably, you get to have a decent amount of social esteem, you get to pursue what projects you want. And you get the personal satisfaction of providing incomes for a whole bunch of your closest colleagues and maybe even closest friends. Many would call that about as perfect a life as there is possible. And you want to maybe give all that up to go work for a cable network?
I suppose for enough money, you could buy people out. But there’s more to life than money after all. If you’re already living quite comfortably, already very financially secure, would you really want to give up what you have - complete creative independence*, just to make a bit more? YouTube’s top ranks are filled with people who left the rat race to get into YouTube. Many simply won’t want to go back into that big corporate world, regardless of how gilded their chains may be.
*Obviously, creative independence is relative. All forms of ad-funded content will have to pander to the whims of advertisers. Even completely audience-funded works are subject to the whims of the audience.
Good creators get paid. Why split the buck with Hollywood rapists I mean producers?
There have been semi-successful Youtube creators who transitioned into the studio system, who mostly never were big on-screen personas but rather worked behind the cameras.
The Corridor Crew has talked about how they always wanted to make it in Hollywood, but when they were finally being offered deals it simply was not financially or creatively wise to give up their business just in order to be part of a system where others are in control.
David F. Sandberg aka “ponysmasher” comes to mind. He started doing largely horror films himself on no/low budgets. One of his own films got opportunity to become a feature film. That then gave him future opportunities, the largest of which was Shazam! (2019).
Additionally when YouTube Premium (YouTube Red at the time) first launched they also launched YouTube Originals. Many of those programs were created by YouTubers.
The “Originals” eventually stopped being made, but it’s not clear if the issue was the content, the service or a bit of both.
Olan Rogers made Final Space and he’s working on Lightspeed right now. It had a pretty successful run and has a loyal fanbase, despite it being cancelled.
But yeah, stories like these are very rare.
Bee and Puppycat to Netflix too.
RIP battle of Axanar and Star Trek continues.
best Star Trek content in a while
why are they sending cease and desist instead of offering to produce their content. are they allergic to money?
It’s not that they’re allergic to money but rather the inflated sense of self-importance and ego. To rightsholders and executives, it’s unthinkable that fans could come up with something better and profitable using the intellectual property that they earned (read: bought) fair and square. And if someone somehow did, it’s a threat to the bottom line, not something to embrace and encourage.
it’s fucked up that the creator cannot make his art, that he created, because it’s own by a company.
Reminds me of an old story about the game director Chris Taylor. He wanted to make a second iteration to bis game “Total Annihilation” since he promised to do so to his fans. However the current rightsholder, Atari, refused to sell the rights to him and instead took it as a business opportunity. They announced they’d do it themselves (without Taylor). The project got immediately canceled after the public reaction exploded in their faces (this was before social media).
Taylor still didn’t get the rights to his creation back and proceeded to do it anyway with a new name, “Supreme Commander” (with great success). Atari only lost both money and public good will. This still worked though since there wasn’t that much of a public mass manipulation machinery. With social media Atari could’ve potentially gotten through with it.
same thing happened to Kerbal Space Program
they want to make a “good” sequel. but corporate says no.
so the creator and some mod makers are making their own knockoff Kitten Space Agency.
But then you love the indie content so much, so the creator gets more money and starts pumping out mediocre content. Circle of Life.
It’s almost as if users prefer authenticity. Who could’ve guessed?
For the Empire by AFK is preeeetty cool.
Their original webseries…serieses?..with actual actors, were crazy good, especially if you account for them coming from a $15,000 kickstarter.
oh I adored the first webseries they made! Hope they will get it again going, but until then For the Empire will have to do :/
Just rewatched it a few hours ago! I can only recommend it, it is my favorite webseries. Still mind blowing how they put out this amazing content for free.
I’ve been loving Helluva Boss recently
Because small creators are basically forced to take chances and be creative to survive with limited budgets while big corpo can take the boring safe bet and the big money attracts people that have a lot of talent for personal marketing and not much else while the number of people involved makes everything a design by committee.
I’ve never seen a YouTuber that actually meets that description though
We could quibble over the definition of “a show” but a good place to start would be:
Big Top Burger
The Gaslight District
MonkeyWrench
Auralnauts’ Larry series
Mummy Joe’s Kid Vampire
Natural Habitat Shorts
Speedoru’s Punch Punch Forever
Space Station Weird by Luke Humphris
Gobelins (entire channel)
DoodletmeGO (ditto)
Bite Shift by Liz & Ivy
Don Hertzfeldt
Lazy Square
Felix Colgrave
Bravest Warriors on Cartoon Hangover
The “5 Second Day” playlist from titmouse studio
Lackadaisy
Otaking (random animations)
Out of Joel Haver’s insane challenge of making 12 feature films in 12 months that nobody watches because they just want the cartoon filter shorts, I loved these two films:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbZDX_J3nOE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RS5dUZ2WNg
I liked 2 others, but these were the strongest of the bunch IMO.
Then you’re wtching the wrong kind of atuff on youtube my dude
I can think of a few off hand but the best to come to mind is the dude who did the Astartes videos.
Big shout to Tablestory
I’ve yet to see a "high quality YouTube Show that’s not just copying stuff that’s been researched by real journalists or documentaries on TV, cobbled together with cheap stock photos and/or Blender Animations
Check out Real Engineering. He does good research and a lot of his own interviews.
Practical Engineering writes hits own material and makes a lot of mini models to demonstrate the effects he is talking about.
Red Letter Media has a ton of movie discussion and analysis.
I think there are plenty of channels that aren’t just using “cheap stock photos and/or blender animations”, and I can list some examples if you’d like. The first criterion is harder, though, because sci-com by its very nature isn’t going to be original research, so channels in this category tend to be more creative or opinion-based (i.e. multi-hour video essays).
That said, if I’m trying to really get at the gist of what you’re saying, I think you’re looking for shows that have a lot of original work and high production value?
Some random examples I can think of (I’m sure there’s plenty more):
- 3 Blue 1 Brown
- Captain Disillusion
- Gamers Nexus (specifically their investigations)
- Smarter Every Day
- Every Frame a Painting (inactive but with a huge catalogue)
- PBS Eons
- Technology Connections
- Montemayor
- Taylor Lorenz
- Climate Town
- Tantacrul
(this is excluding so many great video essayists and artists since the original comment seems not to be referring to those)
My favourite journalism outlet is Jung & naiv. They are German but purely YouTube based and donation funded. They do very long interviews with relevant political figures from the chancellor to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture. Another german creator who made a full blown fiction series with CGI and of a quality that is equal to traditional production companies is Julien Bams ‘Songs aus der Bohne’.
