Hello and welcome to some YouTube channels
I found over the past three ish years and have been enjoying.
This is part two, and is all about channels that deal primarily with media,
specifically games, movies and musicals,
although they do also branch out sometimes, for example to books, or music or online media,
and some also things that aren't media at all.
"This game isn't about tight controls. It doesn't have them."
"It's not about intricate, nuanced gameplay. It doesn't have that either."
"It's about flying a million miles an hour down the highway"
"while having a swordfight on the back of a motorcycle"
"against opponents with swords the size of a city block"
"that combine to make a god damn jet"
"because  why. not."
"And that encouraged wanderlust is easily the game's strongest point."
"Even in an eara with plenty of massive RPGs to chose from"
"It's been a long time since I've been so content to sit back,"
"essentially side quest for an hour"
"and just... chill."
"Exception looks slick as hell and makes you feel like a damn boss"
"as you sprint through each of its 30ish second levels"
"but it has a more generous margin of error "
"and has a few quality of life tricks, like being able to just hit a button to automatically wall jump back and forth."
"So you don't have to sit there punishing yourself for an hour to beat  one level."
First Five
is primarily a video game review channel,
with a focus on how much you get out of a game if you can only play it for five hours.
Basically made for anyone with a busy schedule.
Because a lot of the games reviewed are short games to begin with
there’s a lot of indie games in there, which I quite like.
They’re also just solid reviews from what I can tell, even if you don’t care about game length.
There’s also a couple video essays on the channel with more to come.
Also quite nice, given the point of the channel reviews are usually around the 7 minute mark,
and the longest video I could find on the channel is an essay of just over 20 minutes.
So definitely for those of us with not much spare time.
"In this video I'm gonna be looking at two wilderness games."
"Firewatch, which constructs its wilderness through narrative."
"And The Long Dark, which constructs its wilderness through mechanics, and through the systems."
"Firewatch ignores quite a bit of what open world adventure fantasies"
" have adopted as more or less standard features."
"Collectibles, side quests, crafting, monsters."
"That's because Firewatch is not about a fantasy landscape."
"Even one based on a real one, like Fallout."
"Firewatch is about Wyoming."
"Just Wyoming."
"Just the mountains and woods and trails and isolation of... Wyoming."
"Only games allow a player to explore this space at their own pace."
"Following their own curiosities and surveying their own vistas."
"Firewatch does not have a list of features to keep the player entertained"
"They are depending entirely on character and environment to compell the player."
"It is a piece of traditional media, using the tactile, interactive forms of new media."
"There's one more way to explore the maps of the old isometric Fallouts"
"besides replaying the games or spending years creating custom textures."
"You can travel the real world byways and backroads that the maps of the gameworld are built from."
"There's a grain of truth behind almost all the townships and empires"
"of the original games and Fallout New Vegas"
"And there's more than enough road out there to thread them all together."
"I agree generally that if we're gonna start somewhere"
"we should start in the vault, before we get to the rat cave."
"This is the Titan Two Missile Museum in Sahuarita, Arizona."
"The Titan program was the United States largest and most powerful nuclear weapons program"
"lasting from 1963 until the final transition to the Minuteman program in 1987."
"It was designed to survive a nearby atomic blast"
"by placing all of its structures inside larger canister structures."
"These canisters would absorb the bulk of the impact"
"and the interior structures, the real buildings, would bounce on coil springs inside them."
"Further hydraulic features were built into many of the hallways, doorways and beams."
"For something deep underground, it's not the fire or the primary burst of radiation"
"that's the problem in surviving an atomic detonation,"
"it's the rippling of the earth caused by a blast that powerful."
Noah Caldwell-Gervais
hooo boy, this channel, I just love it.
Noah makes mostly long form video game analysis.
And by long form, I mean very long form.
These videos are very in depth, often analysing a whole game series as it progressed through time,
with a lot of background information, and very thoughtful ideas.
I also just love his presentation style, he’s got an amazing reading voice
and doesn’t edit out every little hickup which makes it a lot more easy to listen to, in a way?
Also the writing is amazing and witty, and, again, I just love it.
He also has quite a few road trip videos,
and in those maybe even more so than in the video game reviews all his talents shine.
The way he recounts his adventures really makes them come to live,
even just with static slide show pictures,
and he adds so much information on the history and everything of the place he’s visited,
it’s truly amazing.
Seriously, one of my favourite channels, full stop.
"As Knox and Pain note, the aesthetic of the modern landmark, a Guggenheim for example,"
"isn't just a cool building."
"It's an indication to the rest of the world"
"that the lardmarked city is worthy of an elevated status with the global economy."
"And when it's the same handfull of people designing these buildings"
"instructed to keep the same style as they used for their other landmark projects"
"things start to get a little... same-y."
"But Modern Warfare seems to think by sidelining real life government and administrations and events "
"in favour of individuals, it's able to dodge politics."
"This isn't a story about Congress, or Parliament."
"It's a story about people simply responding to situations they're put in."
"In their mind, the personal cannot be political."
"Modern Warfare uses real guns, real quotes and one half real countries."
"But"
"Is this game political?"
"No."
"Is freedom good? Is war bad?"
"This game has no idea!"
"Come and play the game series named after the phrase we say when we're honouring soldiers,"
"a series completely neutral on the ideas of war."
Jacob Geller also talks mostly about video games,
but also architecture, and art in general, and how they relate to each other and the world?
I don’t know how to describe this channel, maybe, thoughtful interesting video essays?
I don’t think that does it justice, but unfortunately I’m not as good at words as Jacob Geller is.
So, please give him a watch and see yourself?
"Last year, the Lady I Live With, also known as my wife"
"asked if she could try out one of the games I've been playing."
"And after scrolling through my entire library I realised she was talking about Hollow Knight."
"I knew with fair confidence that her playing Hollow Knight would go terribbly."
"So, obviously I booted it up and set her into the world."
"Watching her work through this early section and seeing the different ways that she viewed the game"
"got me thinking a lot about the language of video games."
"With each game I noticed there were a vast amount of seemingly basic functions and mechanics"
"that she either didn't fully grasp or know existed."
"This first came up with Mario 1-1."
"She figured out the jump easily enough, but never realised she had the ability to dash."
"Making her time with the level painfully hard to watch."
"There are no in-game instructions on how to dash or do anything else really."
"So players will only learn about it if they read the instruction manual,"
"figure it out through experimentation, or have another person tell them how it works."
"As she didn't even know it was something she could do, she never figured it out."
"For me it has become second nature to try to sprint in games."
"Whether or not I know it's an option."
"I just assume it will be and guess the command will  probably be the B button or it's equivalent."
"But I only make that assumption because of years of  being conditioned to make it."
Razbuten.
So of this channel I’ve only watched a few videos, namely the series “Gaming for a Non-Gamer”
in which “the Lady who lives with me” plays video games,
without having previously had any experience with them,
and then describing her experience.
This is particularly interesting to me, cause, while I didn’t grow up completely without video games,
I certainly have had to, and still have a lot of catching up to do when it comes to game literacy.
So it’s really cool to see someone else’s similar albeit more extreme experience of this.
There’s also a bunch of other videos on the channel,
also on the subject of video games mostly, and also movies from what I can see,
which also all sound interesting, I just haven’t gotten around to watching any of them, cause time.
"A simple cone would allow characters to stay unseen even if they were right next to the enemy."
"So more complex shapes are often used."
"In Splinter Cell: Blacklist there's a basic vision cone for the guard's primary sighline"
"but a second, much wider box to simulate peripheral vision."
"And even a small area behind the guard,"
"to mimic that sixth sense of knowing when someone's just over your shoulder."
"In nearly all games with a hider and a seeker players swap between roles."
"And that's because your perspective and experience from one half of the game"
"can actuall make your play in the other half better and more meaningful."
"By letting you engage with that conflict within a single gameplay  space, like in Batman,
"truely great stealth games create the feeling of a dynamic, evolving conflict,"
"that lets you feel the highs of huntil down an enemy,"
"as well as the brilliant tension of trying not to be found yourself."
Game Maker’s Toolkit & Adam Millard - The Architect of Games
I’m gonna do a bad again and lump two channels together.
GMTK and Architect of Games are both channels about game design.
The latter is very open about being heavily influenced by the former,
so they are quite similar, but obviously not the same.
Each episode discusses some aspect of games or game design,
such as stealth mechanics, level design, and evoking emotions.
GMTK specifically also as a couple of dedicated series like “Designing for Disability”
where he highlights what’s important when making games accessible for people with different disabilities,
or “Design Icons” where he talks about several classic games.
I’m obviously no game designer nor do I intend to be one,
but I do find them very interesting and well explained.
"No no no, we don't have to kill anyone. We just have to distract them."
"And then maybe they'll get bored and leave on their own."
"What about their behaviour would make you think that?"
"They been staying in your inn for weeks, you should know how much trouble they are more than anyone."
"They had nothing to do last night, and now town plaza has been turned to town crater."
"First they got drunk. And then they fought each other."
"And then they replaced the faces of every statue in town with their own."
"We're running out of ways to keep them distracted."
"Last time you faked a blight on my farm they burned down every crop to keep it from spreading."
"Potatoes... they never saw it coming."
Doormonster
used to mainly make sketches,
some based off of games, some just original.
They’re very funny and just… pretty cool?
They recently pivoted to more D’n’D content which to be honest I haven’t watched much yet.
But I’m gonna guess those will be just as entertaining,
so if you’re into D’n’D check them out,
and even if not, there’s still some non-D’n’D content.
"But in general the nazi aesthetic, from the uniform tailoring, to the colour schemes to the headgear"
"seems pretty obvious as a source of inspiration."
"It's even there in the way the actors playing the Empire characaters approached their roles."
"The iconography that we associate with nazis isn't from historical documents"
"or from, you know, non-nazi historians."
"It's from nazi propaganda."
"Specifically THIS nazi propaganda."
"And that is Leni Riefenstahl's legacy."
"So when we see the aesthetics of the Empire and the First Order"
"they aren't inspired by the third reich, but by nazi propaganda ABOUT the third reich."
Lindsay Ellis
Now we’re getting away from video games and to movies, mostly.
Lindsay Ellis makes video essays mostly about movies,
but there’s also quite a few about books as well as general media-related issues.
Now it’s no secret that I don’t really watch a lot of movies or TV in general,
so I can confirm that her videos are interesting and enjoyable to watch,
even if you have no clue about the source material. Yay.
"Parasocial relationships have been researched so extensively"
"that studying them and condensing information about them down is daunting."
"But they seem unheard of in a wider context."
"The YouTube Creator Academy - free courses available online, behind the scenes to YouTube content creators -"
"give recommendations for techniques that deliberately foster parasocial relationships with audience members."
"Using terms like 'be authentic' and 'make your community feel loved'."
"In the same courses as phrases like 'long term channel growth' and 'how can you capitalise on this?'."
"Even encouraging YouTubers to develop and play up catch phrases and give special names to fans."
"The World's End was anything but a disappointment."
"I think it's my favourite in the Cornetto trilogy now."
"Even though Hot Fuzz has a more dense script with more expertly woven illusions"
"The World's End brings weightier emotional themes."
"Addiction. Self loathing. Abuse. And self harm."
"And incorporates them into an excellent sci-fi action comedy film about lost youth and nostalgia."
"And drinking. This is a movie about drinking."
StrucciMovies
As the name suggests, StrucciMovies also makes videos about movies,
specifically a lot of horror movies, but certainly also other genres.
And also non-movie videos, for example about comics, music, board games or twitter art.
A lot of it somewhat obscure maybe
so if you’re looking for weird recommendations this is definitely the place for you.
The way I found her channel and what I’d definitely recommend everybody to watch
is her Fake Friends series.
There are currently 3 video essays, two main ones and a spinoff,
that delve into parasocial relationships, both online as well as before the age of the internet.
They are super interesting videos,
I haven’t seen anyone else do much on this topic, unfortunately,
but these videos do a great job.
"Sofie's creepily enthusiastic porusal of her mom's sex life is accompanied by the song Honey Honey."
"What does this have to do with the story?"
"Nothing, really."
"And that brings us to sin number one, the shoehorned in songs."
"This is a problem a lot of jukebox musicals have and the main reason why I have trouble getting into them."
"The songs are often at best an awkward fit for the dramatic situation at hand."
"It forces the audience to see themselves reflected in the world of 1930ies Germany"
"- indeed, the set design for the original production featured a large mirror angled towards the house -"
"and confronts them with the knowlegde that the seeds for fascism and systematic oppression"
"are much nearer than they'd like to think."
"But we still like to comfort ourselves by believing we'd be one of the good ones."
"The ones who realised when things had gone too far and hid Jewish refugees in our attics and such."
"Cabaret firmly disabuses the viewer of that notion"
"by demonstrating how easy it is to be seduced into a fascist way of thinking."
Musical Hell
Another channel that gives away its content by the title: Musical reviews.
Specifically bad musical reviews.
As in, reviews of bad musicals, the reviews themselves are good.
However there’s also a lot more positive videos on the channel,
like the “Know the Score” series that talks about, well, good musicals,
or “At the Source” which discuss the background of some famous musicals.
To be honest, I haven’t watched a whole lot of these videos
for the sake of avoiding spoilers for musicals I might want to watch some day
But it’s still a great channel, so do check it out if you’re into musicals.
