Video Blogging: The Death of the Hobby

Very few people have the charisma and character to appear on screen and not bore me to tears. I like print much, much better.

The problem with video is the problem I have with live music shows too. There are too many external factors involved. A show can be negatively effected by some jack ass standing too close to me talking, people filming shit, audience noises, how the band looks, how the audience looks... when it's me and an album... there is a zero to one relationship with the audience. That's how I like it. I especially hate when the band plays their album exactly as is but with some mistakes. If I'm going to see you live... play differently.

With games I want the rule book. I don't like the video's at all because if a person is distracting me or pissing me off in some way that ends up effecting my opinion of the game, unintentionally I'm sure, but it's still there. Maybe it's a beautiful woman, maybe it's an irritating hipster or some anti-social nerd with no charisma. Everything you see and hear will effect you in some way, whether you like it or not, and that in turn effects how you see the game. That's how stimuli works. With print there is far less to be effected by and with a boring old rule book.. even less than in traditional print... unless we're talking Vlaada rule books where he does put a ton of personality in that I suppose could piss people off or distract them.

It's not just things that piss me off either, positive visuals are distracting as well.

I think... and hope, that there are enough people like me out there that I will continue to enjoy the hobby the way I am used to and won't need to change too much.

I watch almost none of the Dice Tower videos either. Why does anyone even care how he makes his living? Much less hold him up as an example of how the sky is falling in on a niche hobby.

What constitutes being "in the hobby"? Because I'm pretty sure I played a boardgame when I was eight, which puts me at forty years, younglings.

Is Tom Vasel reviewing games full time? That sounds like a great way to ruin a great hobby--doing it for money. I used to send little links about various musicians to a friend of mine who plays saxophone for one of the military bands. He finally exploded, telling me that music has become for him like painting houses, and the last thing he wants to do is read about paint when he gets home. We don't talk much anymore.

So far as I'm aware, TDT is Tom's full time business, yes. Whether that makes the "hobby" suck for him is his problem, or not given the enthusiasm he seems to still have for games. Really, who here is the gatekeeper that gets to decide who can or can't make a video or 100?

This whole topic feels like it needs a vaguely racially insensitive "HATERS GONNA HATE" jpeg in it.

My article wasn't really meant to be a diatribe against video stuff, though I've written those in the past. It was more meant as a lament that the written piece, which used to be the main deal in talking about board games, is much more niche. Such a transition is definitely in line with everything else in popular culture. The difference is that while the tradition of written criticism is strong enough in, say, film that it allows at least some kind of written work to survive, board game writing had very little heritage to begin with. That doesn't mean there wasn't quality, but there's nothing really keeping it there.

I got a lot of comments on that article saying, "I prefer written pieces." That's great to hear, but it must be said that F:AT's focus on written articles is incredibly anachronistic now. There's definitely a sampling bias at work there.

Also, if the question is one of finances, then from all I can tell video reviews are a lot better for the companies. It gives people a better idea of how a game looks and what people can expect, without a really strong opinion that might lose a sale. I'm not sure this is very ambiguous at all.

With games I want the rule book. I don't like the video's at all because if a person is distracting me or pissing me off in some way that ends up effecting my opinion of the game, unintentionally I'm sure, but it's still there. Maybe it's a beautiful woman, maybe it's an irritating hipster or some anti-social nerd with no charisma. Everything you see and hear will effect you in some way, whether you like it or not, and that in turn effects how you see the game. That's how stimuli works. With print there is far less to be effected by and with a boring old rule book..

Thanks, you said that better than me. That is one of the points I was trying to make.

This whole topic feels like it needs a vaguely racially insensitive "HATERS GONNA HATE" jpeg in it.

I don't hate anyone based on their race. Where you got that out of video blogging I have no idea.

Is Tom Vasel reviewing games full time? That sounds like a great way to ruin a great hobby--doing it for money.

Great point! I totally agree.

I don't see the problem with people turning their hobby into a job. It's a nice way to make a living. Okay, some days it might feel like work, but it beats serving fries at the burger joint 364 days out of 365.

I don't see a problem either with blogging. It's all vanity. If you don't want to be read, you buy a paper diary. So putting it out for the world to see means you like people to read it. How you measure the attention may differ. You can look at the hit counter and ignore the spam hits, or you can treasure the comments and ignore the "me too"s.

I also don't see the problem with video. There's loads of crappy text blogs and they are as tedious to plough through as video. It used to be harder to do video but technology is no longer a barrier. So much the better. Unboxing = unboxing and tl;dr = tl;dw

We are all here because a few guys are able to say what we all feel much better than we could say it ourselves (and because Uba made it work). Some of them could probably do that on video as well as in text, but that was not the most likely option at the time F:AT appeared. We've had F:AT casts, and if somebody would know how to do a video well enough, then we'd be watching that.

The Lone Voice wrote:

This whole topic feels like it needs a vaguely racially insensitive "HATERS GONNA HATE" jpeg in it.

I don't hate anyone based on their race. Where you got that out of video blogging I have no idea.

In internet culture, it's popular for people to post images of people of colour* in distinctive garb, with the words "HATERS GONNA HATE" on them, essentially to express the opinion that the OP or other correspondents are perhaps too focused on making negative comments about what other people are (successfully) doing. It would be the image itself that would be vaguely racially insensitive, not a comment on your original post.

*often replaced with domestic pets in ugly sweaters, or llamas with pink sunglasses on, etc.