Guys, we shouldn't be posting on this thread. Don't you know that we're running out of internet? We've gotta conserve it, people.
Extra Credits discussion thread
- Thread starter Imaynotbehere4long
- Start date
I used to like them, but they got a stick up their asses the more the show went on. So I had stop watching around 2012. It didn't help they were either trying to do some agenda or they fucking failed in their research. Extra Credit's latest statement with lootboxes, and the piss poor damage control they tried; made me lose even more respect. Especially when Jim "Fucking" Sterling shot down all of their arguments and revealed how bought out and full of shit EC had become. They were about how publishers and developers shouldn't screw over their own customers, and how games should be art. Now EC contradicts themselves on everything they said losing more credibility they barely earned. It's like with Movie Bob and most of the staff from Channel Awesome.
Never really liked em to be honest. I mean, they did put a bit more thought into subjects than the standard internet troll, but the heavy handed way they present everything like it's some revelation nobody else could have thought of was just dripping with arrogance.
Plus there's the whole 'why they left the Escapist' thing as well...
Plus there's the whole 'why they left the Escapist' thing as well...
They were okay while they were here although the fanbase could be really obnoxious (Gamification is a topic that comes to mind on something that the fanbase was all too willing to take them as Word of God on.). After they left, I think I watched a video or two but I haven't really kept up.
As such, I haven't seen the video on lootboxes/raising prices on video games. Given the lack of realistic thought on this site involving economics (not just games but anything with economics), I can't say whether I'd agree or not but I can't be arsed to watch.
As such, I haven't seen the video on lootboxes/raising prices on video games. Given the lack of realistic thought on this site involving economics (not just games but anything with economics), I can't say whether I'd agree or not but I can't be arsed to watch.
That's something they said, right? I vaguely remember one of their videos talking about something like that back when they were here.CM156 said:
Something to that effect. It's routinely mocked on /v/ and other imageboards as being an example of poor research.Drathnoxis said:
I generally like their stuff, especially the history and sci-fi series, but the Lootbox episodes were painful to watch. It's particularly obnoxious when huge corporations which make boatloads of profit every year try to plead poverty because "Video games are too expensive to make, thus we NEED lootboxes to survive". The EC video completely ignores this and it feels dishonest.
when they described all the money they needed to make a game, all I could think was - how about don't spend that money. Find a way to become more efficient. Don't make us, the consumers, pay for your ineffectiveness.Dalisclock said:
I understand when they side with dev studios, but their recent stand on lootboxes was firmly on the publisher's side. And that's where I draw the line and firmly label Extra Credits anti-consumer. When its consumer vs publisher we now know where they stand. So, I don't watch EC anymore. Which is a shame. In this and last year on content I've lost. Feed Dump, Cracked.com, Extra Credits... It seems like I barely watch youtube anymore.
There was something else the EC video glossed over. It talked about thing such as Office Space, Computers, Furniture, break facilities, janitorial services, etc.trunkage said:
Sure, all well and good, but a lot of those are start up costs with some maintenance and upkeep. Once you have the offices and such, sure, you're paying rent, but you not having to buy a bunch of new office furniture and computers with each game(At least I hope you're not). Especially if you're EA or UBISOFT, companies that have been killing it for decades.
It's wierd. The EC video seems to miss the point by positing a brand new company having to buy all this stuff to get going, except that the start up companies aren't the ones people are complaining about here. It's the behemoths that aren't satisfied with just making a profit(they need all the profit) that's sparking outrage here.
Oh, EC know this. They're believing their own lies, or sucking up that much to publishers that use the worse practices.Dalisclock said:
Also mewonders if they happened to gloss over the overseas tax havens the usual suspects are keeping their profits accumulating in too. You would've thought with so little tax to pay, they wouldn't be in such dire straits.Dalisclock said:
Is essentially the reason I didn't follow them after the exodus here. I find Jim Sterling more analytical and less dependent on clean graphics. Sure, his positions can be disagreeable but I think his basic tendency to play consumer's advocate outweighs this. That and he's funnier.Canadamus Prime said:
I used to think that EC were consumer advocates as well since they went off on EA for their despicable marketing and did several videos ranting about the whole "whales" thing. Apparently though they've bought into the Publisher's excuses of "games are so expensive to make" even if many of the expenses are bloated and superfluous.Redlin5 said:Is essentially the reason I didn't follow them after the exodus here. I find Jim Sterling more analytical and less dependent on clean graphics. Sure, his positions can be disagreeable but I think his basic tendency to play consumer's advocate outweighs this. That and he's funnier.Canadamus Prime said:
Yeah I don't always like Jim Sterling's approach, but he's always been a consumer advocate and I very much appreciate that.
Yeah, they come of as pseudo-intellectuals when discussing business practices of established companies. They view all game development from the perspective of a brand new startup. That said, their audience is supposed to be new game developers and their message is towards those parties. But of course they missed the forest for the trees and made sweeping statements about monitization without clarifying the company organization.Dalisclock said:
AAA companies suffer from internal departmental politics - as most massive companies do. The marketing staff will say that the company needs to invest more in marketing, and the figures prove it! We did our marketing research that proves that marketing departments need more marketing funding which directly results in better revenue! They do not consider the impact of other aspects of the company like, you know, word of mouth or the genuine quality of the game. Nope, money into marketing = better sales, the marketing analysts prove it.
Then the teams in charge of data security state DRM is needed otherwise piracy will run rampant, and they've done their research! It's all really about those departments getting bigger salaries but the shareholders do not understand the industry and just believe whatever the incredibly profitable company is telling them because they must know what they're doing because they're profitable.
I have seen a live-video from a convention some years ago, where they (or more that guy with longer hair) were pretentious little fucks which destroyed any enjoyment I could get out of them. Some videos also were more on the 'feels-side' rather than on profounded objectivity. Maybe I got the wrong impression back then like with Jim Sterling but boy oh boy did I feel disgusted back then.
I liked Extra Credits when they were here on the site, enough to keep following them after they left. The whole debacle when they left the site was a bit sour though, that was a shame. I do like their gaming videos in general still; I think the fact that they're all in the industry gives them an interesting and unique viewpoint on a lot of issues but as the recent-ish videos where they defended microtransactions showed, when push comes to shove they toe the company line and go for financial and pro-publisher reasoning over artistic or pro-consumer decisions.
Never watched their history or non-gaming videos though, never been interested enough to view them.
Never watched their history or non-gaming videos though, never been interested enough to view them.
Yeah James always came off as pretty pretentious. I liked Extra Credits more when it was just Dan.Naldan said:
[hr]
OT: Didn't they used to make mistakes in their videos or leave things out and then claim that they did it intentionally so that people would have to look into it themselves or something? Also I remember that one video where they were slagging off the intro to Skyrim and comparing it to the opening of Call of Duty 4, a game James personally worked on, but they never disclosed that fact in the video. That didn't score them any points in my book.
Maybe the reason why I've liked them so long is that I never saw them as consumer advocates.They gave insight into how companies work, not how to make them better from a consumer viewpoint. I seemed to remember them giving free passes to certain industry practices before, but probably not so many in quick succession.
Well, I certainly learned quite a bit from this thread (Drathnoxis's first post alone would've made this worth it). It helped me understand EC's detractors a bit better and inspired me to try to find rebuttals for their videos. Anyway, while I was looking to see if there were any parodies of the show, and I came across this video from 2012:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEvZmG24NTM
Despite being labeled as a parody, it seems less like the guy is making fun of them and more like he's just using their format to talk about a subject he's interested in (he brings up some good points about children's movies). There's also this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUuJMTFH7wI
This one leans more on the "making fun of them" side of parodies. It made me chuckle a few times, but it's rather awkward since it uses audio clips from the show, just cut up and rearranged to say different things (so if you don't like how the voice sounds normally, this is probably worse).
By the way, I noticed a few of you mentioned Jim Sterling and his response to Extra Credits' lootbox videos. I had seen those already, but in my search, I also found appabend; admittedly, his channel might need its own thread, but he did a pretty good deconstruction on EC's video comparing Yakuza 0 with Persona 5 (which I found interesting because it wasn't about the lootbox videos, and because I haven't played Persona 5 myself):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIBRYUQ2kUQ
Any thoughts on these videos? Any other responses to Extra Credits that are worth checking out? Maybe this could spark a bit more EC discussion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEvZmG24NTM
Despite being labeled as a parody, it seems less like the guy is making fun of them and more like he's just using their format to talk about a subject he's interested in (he brings up some good points about children's movies). There's also this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUuJMTFH7wI
This one leans more on the "making fun of them" side of parodies. It made me chuckle a few times, but it's rather awkward since it uses audio clips from the show, just cut up and rearranged to say different things (so if you don't like how the voice sounds normally, this is probably worse).
By the way, I noticed a few of you mentioned Jim Sterling and his response to Extra Credits' lootbox videos. I had seen those already, but in my search, I also found appabend; admittedly, his channel might need its own thread, but he did a pretty good deconstruction on EC's video comparing Yakuza 0 with Persona 5 (which I found interesting because it wasn't about the lootbox videos, and because I haven't played Persona 5 myself):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIBRYUQ2kUQ
Any thoughts on these videos? Any other responses to Extra Credits that are worth checking out? Maybe this could spark a bit more EC discussion.