I watch too much YouTube. While on the one hand that’s probably why I’m here, on the other it allows me to learn a little about the mindset of people in the gaming video community. I’ve noticed something recently, a trend in how FPS YT communities evolve. I thought I’d share it here with you so that if you decide to create a channel of your own, you’ll have a little more luck picking the right way to go about it.

The first consideration is what game you want to post. For my purposes here, I’m going with the three top YT games: Call of Duty, Battlefield and Team Fortress 2. Coincidentally, that’s also their order of popularity. Not quite as coincidentally, that is the order of innovation you need to put forward to get your foot in the door. It’s interesting that the TF2 community is as old as the CoD one, but there’s much less effort (comparatively) to become a popular TF2 commentator than it is for CoD. No disrespect to our Omniscient Overlord WiNGSPANTT, whose videos always have high production values, but if you want to impress the sixteen year old masses watching CoD, you better really stretch yourself beyond the limits you thought you had.

With all this excitement, money, and public interest pouring in, it seems like society is on the precipice of mainstream acceptance of e-sports as an acceptable voyeuristic past-time, much like regular sports.

But there’s one tiny problem.

What I propose is a monthly or weekly* take on the state of the YouTube community from an outsider’s perspective. I’m not a part of it, else I’d not have time for this or any real writing, but I watch a fair bit of it. If this is something all of you want, I’ll undertake it and cast my net wide, searching for the biggest names I’m not yet aware of, comb them for the overall feelings in the community as I see them, and report them here to you with my commentary on the commentary community (and I’m done with that word now).

Greetings everyone. I bring to you tonight disturbing news. After two many years of educational and comedic service to the greater Team Fortress 2 gaming community, it has come to my attention that I am terrible.

Thanks to Adam B. for submitting this featured video. I don’t know much about Call of Duty, or Halo, or the NFL. It’s my understanding that in all of these games, people get hurt and rowdy macho guys scream a lot. And sure, I know all the rules of football,* and that the Cowboys are [...]

Back in the dark ages before Tactical Tuesdays and Thursdays, I recommended two Starcraft 2 commentary channels I heartily enjoy. These commentators offered humor and insight into the game, serving as a window into laughing through the blunders of pro and noob alike. However, there exists a greater force in the Starcraft 2 commentary circuit. [...]