The Errant Signal Thread

[tuluse]

 

[felipepepe]

I liked it, he does have a point that saying "X is not a game" is just people trying to make games be only what they like/want... that's why fair codexia calling them "banal shit boring popamole GAMES" is way more honest.

I got a question: What if you like Walking Dead/Dreamfall but consider them horrible games? (inb4 then u a faggot haha)

I can't provide some descriptive argument that destroys Errant Signal's, but the gist is; I play Walking Dead and Dreamfall with five or six guys and gals from my circle of friends, and we have a hoot. We all agree that, as a game, they are pretty shitty, though. That is, we enjoy the stories, we enjoy "watching" them and having limited input with them because that's perfect when you have that setup, but "playing" them is pretty bland.

How do you propose to settle this view with Campster's arguments in this video?

It's an honest question, I don't have the answer.

I completly agree with you, but I don't see the problem. I hate PS:T gameplay, but love the story. My brother never played a single PS1 Resident Evil game, he hated the controls, but he loved to sit and watch me play it. Isn't that kind of the same thing? Besides, you and your bros hated the gameplay, but you know that there are people out there, no matter how casual or nintendo-moms, that probably find it great... same way you'll find "story-Let's Play" of Baldur's Gate, because the ME audience loves BioWare stories, but can't manage AD&D...

 

[Infinitron]

MASSIVE HIPSTER BUTTHURT

Blip.tv culls the weak, Campster is betrayed by his idols: http://www.errantsignal.com/blog/?p=467

IN WHICH I MIGHT GET BROKEN UP WITH BY A COMPANY

I’ve been complaining publicly on Twitter about the recent announcement by Blip.tv, and I figured instead of spewing out 140 characters worth of snark every few hours it might be more productive to post a response to what’s been going on. And hey, if you ever wanted to know why I do video instead of text you can read this wandering, verbose, begging-for-an-editor piece and realize how bad of a writer I really am.

What The Haps Be:

For those not in the know: Blip.tv has announced two things.

1. They are now a walled garden, requiring prior approval of Blip.tv staff to become a channel.
2. They will be “whittling down” (a lovely little euphemism) their current list of “tens of thousands” of shows to – according to the article – around 4,000 in total.

The first point is already active. You can no longer simply go and grab a Blip.tv account like you could before; you need to fill out this application form, complete with a request for your marketing plan and a finished episode. The second point – the point that has a lot of produces of Blip.tv content up in arms and deeply concerned because their shows may be “whittled down” – has not yet been enacted.

YouTube vs. Blip

Before we get too far into it, I’ve gotten a lot of inquiries from people who’ve never run shows about why anyone uses Blip.tv to begin with, or why after the policy shift they couldn’t just flee to YouTube. And there are a lot of reasons, but first it helps to understand just how different the two platforms really are in their aims. (If you’re familiar with the differences between Blip and YouTube, feel free to skip down to the meat of why the decision annoys me below.)

YouTube is a video sharing site in the most generic sense of the word. On YouTube you can upload a 16 second video of your cat freaking out. Or you can run long-form Let’s Plays and serialized shows. You can make a Hypertext interactive adventure game, and you can rent Hollywood movies. As a platform YouTube needs to handle the interests of all of these parties – from people wanting to share their children’s first steps with their extended families through to Miramax wanting to use the platform as another place to distribute and monetize its content. Its wide-sweeping nature is both a strength and a weakness – it can support a surprisingly complex ecosystem of videos and content creators of all sorts and sizes, but it also means it’s pretty indifferent to individual shows’ needs and has to take extra measures to protect itself when it comes to piracy and IP violations.

Blip.tv is more focused. Way, way more focused. They want to handle exactly one sort of content – upscale, professional looking serialized internet shows. They can be fictional stories like The Guild, they can be educational news snippets like Dan Rather Reports, or they can be entertaining cultural essays like Nostalgia Chick, but the unifying idea is that these shows have a fairly fixed format, a fairly fixed audience, and are serialized like a television show. And because of that focus on serialized webshows the Blip.tv platform is tailor-made to support that format. This results in some definite benefits for folks looking to produce shows like Errant Signal:

• Guaranteed monetization:This is a big one. YouTube forces you to apply for monetization and is quick to cut you off if you have black marks against your account or if they deem the content of your video inappropriate. The exact logistics (like most functions of and decisions by YouTube) are opaque and shrouded in a lack of meaningful documentation or clearly defined rules – you just apply for monetization and hope for the best. Generally speaking you can’t monetize video game footage unless you’re signed with a network like TGS or Machinima, and it’s incredibly difficult to monetize videos that include music, movies, and television shows.
• In contrast, Blip.tv grants all of your videos monetization out the gate. They actually have really strong incentive to want you to monetize your videos. Blip.tv isn’t a general hosting service like YouTube. It wants money from all of its content, and putting ads on your videos is how they get money. Plus serialized shows tend to be long and high quality. Broadcasting 15-30 minutes of HD content is not cheap, and so they really want that ad revenue to cover the cost of broadcasting your show to the world. Regardless, the benefits to a content creator over YouTube are apparent – I get to make money without dealing with the complex, mysterious closed door decision making of a monolithic conglomerate like Google.

• Comparatively lax copyright enforcement: YouTube is a nightmare world of pain and death for anyone looking to do criticisms, reviews, or anything else that uses copyrighted footage in ways that would usually be considered fair use in a court of law. YouTube has robots that trawl videos automatically looking for infringing content. You cannot reason fair use with them, you cannot bargain for parody/criticism protections with them, and they will not stop until your channel is dead. And if the robots don’t get you the actual content owners will – on YouTube DMCA takedowns are not what result in videos being taken offline. In order to insulate itself from litigation, YouTube has made deals with most major content makers (movie studios, game studios, record studios, etc) where they need but ask that a video be taken offline (without any evidence as to infringement) and poof! Your video’s gone. There’s a convoluted, badly documented process for contesting these takedown requests, but it should be noted that until recently at no point was the content holder ever required to file an honest-to-god DMCA takedown notice to keep your video offline.
• Now, Blip.tv is not a free-for-all copyright infringement extravaganza; if they see infringing content they’re pretty quick about shutting down the channel. But they also don’t have robots or dealings that give media conglomerates veto power on your videos. This is due to a lot of factors – some of their bread-and-butter shows like Nostalgia Critic rely heavily on copyrighted material, they have far fewer uploads than YouTube and can manually cull the biggest offenders more easily, and they’re already legally insulated via the DMCA as it stands (as long as they follow the takedown notices as soon as they get them). The result is that Blip.tv is one of the last bastions of fair use in the world of digital video distribution.

• A general air of professionalism: This is sort of a wishy-washy argument and it really depends on who you ask, but generally I find that linking people to a Blip.tv page or a blog filled with Blip.tv content tends to be taken more seriously than linking them to a YouTube user page. If you’re a producer looking to show off content you don’t really want to be pushing your Srs Bizness internet show on the same platform people watch 10 second memes on. Blip.tv is an established content hub that has a known focus on premium content (or at least legitimate web shows and not cat videos).

Why This Decision Sort of Sucks

First, let me be perfectly clear on this: Blip.tv have unequivocally treated their content producers in a terribly unprofessional manner during this transition. I found out about the entire affair through Kyle Kallgren’s tweets of the link from the beginning of this post. I didn’t receive (and still haven’t received) an e-mail from Blip letting me know that the future of my channel (and thousands of others!) is potentially in jeopardy. And there’s been no official communication through the site itself or any other channel I’ve seen. As far as I’m aware – and I’d love to be wrong about this – all anyone outside of Blip.tv knows right now is contained in those PR-filtered blurbs on Tube Filter. No one’s been informed about the exact criteria for making the cut – indeed, choosing whose shows to cut and keep was morbidly referred to as an “art” in the Tube Filter piece. And no one has any information about timelines, either – this could be happening as soon as tomorrow or as late as “later this year.” And no one knows what happens to the channels that get culled – are they going to be left up in an archived format, or taken offline? If they’re going to be taken offline, will it impact all videos immediately or is there a grace period for grabbing backups? No one knows the answers to any of this because Blip.tv is not talking to producers.

Worse, the framing of this has been incredibly crass and has all but ignored creators. The Tube Filter article couches these decisions as “building Blip as a consumer brand” and “helping audiences discover new and worthwhile content” and other shallow investor-friendly phrases that might as well be responded to with an eyeroll and an exaggerated jerkoff motion. The reasons for this are pretty clear – Blip.tv is interested in shoring up its profit margins and maybe seeing the black for once. Which is fair! They’re a company, they owe it to their investors to turn a profit, whatever. But let your content creators who rely on you know the score. Be upfront and as honest as you can, answering questions and working with people as you force them off your service. Releasing a big, investor-friendly PR piece through an unofficial channel that casually informs your producers that tens of thousands of their shows are no longer going to have a distribution home and then going mum about the plans for that is incredibly disrespectful, especially to people who stand to lose their shows.

And shows are going to get lost because of this. Sure, comedy sketch shows and original content will do just fine. But like I mentioned above, criticism and review shows really suffer due to YouTube’s disbelief in fair use. Take SF Debris, who discusses Star Trek and other scifi television episodes and films. YouTube’s robots kicked him off and forced him to scamper to Blip. If he doesn’t survive The Great Purge, where can his show go? Could Todd in the Shadows have launched a music criticism show on YouTube in 2013 instead of four or five years ago? I’m lucky – I do video games, which are much harder to take down with robots – and even I’m horrified that if I use a clip with the wrong licensed song or try to compare a game to a film like I did in Max Payne 3 I’ll get a strike against my account.

And really, that’s what we’re losing with Blip purging the undesirables and setting itself up as a walled garden. One of the last places where fair use was a legal defense instead of a long-dead idea sold out to the interests of media firms is now a gated community you can only get into by knowing someone who knows someone. I get that they have financial reasons for doing so, but that doesn’t make the loss any less painful. As shitty as it is that Blip.tv can’t clearly communicate to their producers what’s up, it’s far shittier that people who want to talk about and dissect films, music, games, and more no longer have a safe space to do so.

The Part Where I Burn Bridges I Shouldn’t

I really didn’t want to write this part, but I think a full discussion on this matter wouldn’t be complete without it. There are a number of people who are comparatively safe from The Great Purge that seem to be treating the impacts of this somewhat flippantly. Foldable Human’s Dan Olson posted this article. And really, it doesn’t read too dissimilarly from this one. But the tone is one that sort of shrugs its shoulders towards content creators. It’s really easy to say “Improve your craft!” It’s another thing to realize that doing so usually involves hundreds if not thousands of dollars of equipment and it’s not something everyone can easily do. It’s really easy to say “Fight the robots!” and another thing to get invalid takedown notices or have videos get sound stripped without recourse while you’re out at your day job and fans are screaming that your video is broken. The whole thing reads a bit like an Aaron Sorkin speech where a white guy delivers hard-fought Deep Truths to a naive audience, and it left a really bad taste in my mouth.
But because my response to that was pretty much entirely tone argument bullshit I almost didn’t write this part. But then this exchange happened:

​

​

And I just… maybe it’s the fact that they’re arguing with 14 year old TGWTG fans that are making ridiculous arguments, but it sort of feels like a tone deaf dismissal of potentially legitimate criticisms and discussions about Blip’s decision.

And let me be clear: I mean no offense by singling them out. I’ve repeatedly cited Lindsay Ellis as one my primary influences, and Dan Olson’s stuff can be really really engaging (plus he uses big words in his videos like I do, and that always makes me happy). But I can’t escape a pseudo-Onion style headline running through my mind every time I see tweets like this: “Content Creators Unlikely to Be Affected By Upcoming Purge of Shows Pretty Comfortable With Upcoming Purge of Shows.” No one knows who’s in or who’s out yet, obviously – again, Blip.tv has failed utterly at informing people – but Lindsay Ellis has tight connections to Blip and Olson has connections to Ellis. Both are on fairly popular web portals that aggregate views, and both exclusively post content to Blip.tv which concentrates their views in one place (I cross-post between YouTube and Blip, and YouTube outpaces Blip viewership by more than an order of magnitude). On the gradient that runs from “going to be cut” to “safe” they’re far closer to the latter than the former.

So making light of the whole situation with a shrug and “Whelp, companies be companies, I guess! Sucks to be anyone who loses out!” is a little disheartening. Like I said, shows will be lost. Discourse will be more limited after the purge. With YouTube being the only place up-starts and newbies can post stuff who knows how many talented voices will stop making video content because fighting the goddamn robots should be John Connor’s job instead of theirs? Corporate reasons for the purge notwithstanding, I mourn the loss of an exchange of ideas and the raising of barriers to entry. So forgive me if I don’t crack wise at people’s contributions being silenced – or worse, thoughtlessly compare their efforts to 3 AM nachos. When the standards for criticism are raised such that only upper-middle class people with the disposable income and disposable time to make professional quality videos get a voice protected by fair use we’ve not won at Capitalism; we’ve lost voices who need exposure.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

I have no idea what any of those symbols on my screen mean because as soon as I started trying to read them my eyes glazed over.

As far as I was able to decipher I guess someone is rounding up Youtube video people and putting them in concentration camps? That sounds alright.

 

[felipepepe]

TL;DR: Blip.tv will purge shitty videos and accounts and only host online shows that they consider professional and profitable. And they are doing that in a very douchey way.

 

[AngryEddy]

Maybe Campster should understand that they are probably hurting financially, and they can't just give him free money, despite how much he wants it. Again, typical entitled, liberal, douche who wants his free handout, even if it means that the person giving him the money goes out of business.


I also like his little class warfare sign off at the end

When the standards for criticism are raised such that only upper-middle class people with the disposable income and disposable time to make professional quality videos

What a lying, piece of shit, scumbag. I want to squeeze his skull until it collapses because of this part. I know personally a few Youtube people [Not like I know them, but I know of their rags to riches story] who went from nothing to something, for the sole reason that Youtube is accessible to everyone. Is everything a melodramatic battle that him and all of his faggot fans have to fight? Since when is downsizing some sort of noble struggle to fight against? Like I said in that Bunny Show thread, these Youtube "Game theory" people can basically be boiled down in to hipster, liberal, airheads, who have no clue of what they're talking about, ever, be it games, finances, etc.

 

[Weierstraß]

Free money? What?

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.errantsignal.com/blog/?p=491

 

[Metro]

Jesus I fucking hate this era of internet D-list celebrities and their drive for fame and money. Also looks like he had no problem getting monetized. Not really interested in watching his videos anymore, though.

 

[Jick Magger]

Free money? What?

You get a whopping 0.05 USD for every view your video gets in Blip.

 

[Metro]

If you manage to get 100k viewers a month you're pulling in $60k a year (pre taxes) for doing basically nothing but rambling in a video.

 

[Infinitron]

If you manage to get 100k viewers a month

I wonder how many viewers the Codex front page gets per month.

 

[Metro]

I'm telling you, we should start a video magazine. We'd all make money for just bitching into a camera.

 

[evdk]

I'm telling you, we should start a video magazine. We'd all make money for just bitching into a camera.

We would need some shtick to stand out among the droves of wannabes.

...

Let Prosper do it.

 

[Metro]

Stand out? PFfft. We'd just need Fargo and MCA to retweet our stuff. You don't have to be good, you just have to be talked about.

 

[evdk]

So, we would monetize BN. Good tactic.

 

[Grunker]

If you manage to get 100k viewers a month you're pulling in $60k a year (pre taxes) for doing basically nothing but rambling in a video.

You earn money by getting viewers in a business-model based on commercials? Quick, somebody tell television, they should get on this shit!

 

[Metro]

Not sure I follow the quip -- at least television shows (even shitty reality ones) put some effort into production. We're talking about people yapping into a camera about the most inane of topics and getting paid pretty good annual earnings ... not a bad RoI for three or four hours a week. The last half dozen or so years of the internet, social media, youtube, whatever, have spawned a whole cottage industry of people who do nothing for a living. Excuse me: 'New Media Critics.'

 

[Jack]

We're talking about people yapping into a camera about the most inane of topics and getting paid pretty good annual earnings

Sounds like television to me.

 

[Metro]

Touche. Although at least most of those people have to look good~

 

[evdk]

Not sure I follow the quip -- at least television shows (even shitty reality ones) put some effort into production. We're talking about people yapping into a camera about the most inane of topics and getting paid pretty good annual earnings ... not a bad RoI for three or four hours a week.

Sounds like FoxNews, dohoho.

EDIT: Goddammit.

 

[Metro]

See above.

 

[evdk]

I'm no fan of camwhores

 

[Metro]

 

[DeepOcean]

http://www.errantsignal.com/blog/?p=491

I agree with his critique of the QTEs, the platforming and the easy combat but he lost me with his incessant rambling about deep meaning and emotional engaging story of Lara Croft, that part of killing endangered species and Lara using her fortune for her selfsh reasons instead of helping arqueology is facepalm worth and worst of all: "Don't play like a game from 1996 or 2002" Fuck you Campster. This trend of all games should have deep meaninful stories is retarded (that is made worse by the fact that most video game writers are talentless hacks), next time we are going to see Nintendo making a game about Mario middle life crisis, because he is too old to act on the porn industry.