Trigger warning. If you don’t like complaining this isn’t going to be a safe space for you 
… but if you have a moment and are willing to hear me out, please pull up a chair!
So, is it just me or has anyone else felt like the wargaming hobby content on YouTube has been steadily marching downhill? There are a few exceptions to this, but only a few. By and large I have been growing increasingly disinterested in a lot of my old favourite channels in the last 1-2 years - due to what I can only describe as low-quality effort across the board and deteriorating quality of content.
I get how the YouTube grind works, with folks feeling like they constantly have to appease the machine overlords by creating content on a regular schedule… plus factoring in the time for making something new, recording the video, doing editing, etc. It’s a time-consuming process, but if videos are weeks apart and I’m not seeing something that looks like it’s more than a day’s effort it’s a bit disappointing and I find I just totally disengage. I’m not going to name any channels here, as I’d like to see them bounce back and I don’t want to get bogged down in zeroing-in on one single channel or a particular video. I also know that a number of YouTubers I’m subscribed to view CDO periodically… ‘Hi’ 
I’m complaining, but still like you … but perhaps some examples of what I’m referring to may help:
I know it’s hard to come up with good ideas when you’re in the grind, but good lord the copy/paste in the wargaming community is shameful. A great example that comes to mind - For those of you who regularly watch YouTube videos when the slapchop method was taking off, Christ it was unbearable as a viewer. Everyone needed to have their own take on it and they all seemed like they couldn’t let themselves be the one person who didn’t make one of those videos. It doesn’t help that I hate the name for the technique as well, which wasn’t new. It’s a kindergarten-level name for the respectable Grisaille technique that’s hundreds of years old… but let’s pretend that some enlightened wargamer came up with it as a revolutionary new way to paint tabletop quality fast and they just so happened to give it an edgy name that conveys it as a slick and quick way to paint for modern people who don’t have time. Ugh, spare me.
In the past 6 months or more I’ve watched a half dozen+ of my favourite creators churn out some pretty disappointingly small projects. Some of them shamefully small for their one video that week - and it’d be the kind of thing you’d make in an afternoon. In a few of these videos I’m subjected to them telling me, the viewer, how their life is so busy and they just don’t have time for a larger project. Ugh, dudes, some of you have been very up-front that your ONLY job is making weekly videos. If you don’t have time to put in your best effort why am I wasting 10+ minutes watch you? Just some insight into my own personal perspective when hearing these things and watching these videos: my wife is a physician and it’s nothing for her to work 21 days straight with no day off, have a weekend off, and then work another 14+ days straight. My own job takes ~60h per week on a slow week and one or two weeks each year I top-out at 120h/wk (yes, that means eating every meal at work, sleeping for ~4h/night, and no day off). I don’t complain during those times that I’m too busy to do my best work… so I also don’t feel sympathetic to anyone else’s excuses unless it’s family or health related. Everyone can come up with an excuse for not doing their best. Most people mature out of it in their 20s some time. Similarly, there are instances of slightly larger YT projects in some videos that would take several days to create (terrain or buildings, etc), where the build seems to be going well, only to have the creator lament near the end that they just ran out of time and wish they could have done a better job…or they just end it and lament that it’ll just have to be left undone and finished some other time off screen… that’s super-unsatisfying to watch. Unless you’ve given me a heads-up that the video is a longer-term project that’s on-going and won’t be finished this installment it’s a big downer. As a viewer I’d prefer they take the extra day and present their best effort when it’s actually done, don’t give me the sob story about your life. This is oh-so reminiscent of listening to university student excuses for not finishing things or not doing their best work. Very immature. Just own it if you’re OK with doing shit work, but save your excuses. If you know it’s shitty work, and you’re telling me about why it’s shitty, that is just way worse and it’s so over-played. Move along.
Up there with the admissions of ‘oh sorry I didn’t have time to finish this properly so I just rushed it’ is the growing number of abysmal product reviews. Case in point - I’m not sure what’s happened with the new Necromunda Hive Secundus sets that were sent out. Was GW intentionally trying to NOT send it to premiere channels and instead sent them out to low-effort channels? I’ve tried to watch several videos now and very few of them even assembled models. I’ve seen one video that assembled a couple and then pointed out how much work it will be to finish the rest. Seriously?? Most of the review videos are just showing sprues and barely do more than flip through a few pages in the books and look at box art. No page close-ups, no details of how game play might be different. A few reviews I saw had more screen time showing the person’s head talking about the product than screen time showing product! I scrubbed through two videos tonight and didn’t watch more than a minute of either because it was a talking head interspersed with a few seconds of showing a picture taken from GWs advertising, even though they showed that they got sent an early copy. The videos that really get me are the ones that just admit in a very blasé way that they don’t know the proper names for things, aren’t too sure about the setting because they haven’t read the backstory, or just wing it in front of their camera and tell the viewer they’re not sure if they got the names or things right or if they’re remembering details of the setting correctly. Maybe they remember some details correctly, but then still admit that they’re not sure, letting the viewer know they didn’t give enough of a shit to do their homework. Like, holy shit, we’re all on the Internet. There’s absolutely no excuse for not knowing something in this day and age unless you’re doing it live. If I could spend the 2-minutes reading a warhammer.com community post about a new product and know more details than the person showing off the box that’s in front of them they should be ashamed of themselves. Particularly if they’re releasing a video that’s intended to be informative and showcasing a product. Holy crap, painful. Oh, and flipping through glossy pages that have reflections and are unviewable or there’s camera issues elsewhere, but the person has the attitude of “F*** it, just roll on and don’t re-shoot or even acknowledge there’s problems, just upload it and call it done.” If they don’t care, then I sure as shit don’t care and won’t be back to watch more of your videos.
Overall I’m finding myself leaving part way through the majority of videos these days, or I’ll get to the 75% mark and then get subjected to the “I wish I could have had more time” or “I’d have done this better but…” and at that point I just close the browser and I usually don’t watch those channels again for a while. What gets me is that these are channels run by people who are essentially running their own business, but they’re acting like minimum wage employees who just need to phone it in when the boss isn’t looking and would clearly rather be somewhere else.
Unrelated to all of these lamentations of poor quality and slipping standards is my growing distain for the ‘new merch in the merch store’, ‘check out my affiliate links’, ‘like and subscribe’, ‘click the bell icon for notifications’, ‘join my patreon’, etc. etc. I get how the system works, but I loathe and despise all of that kind of stuff. I cannot express how great it feels to watch someone’s video and NOT have them say any of those things for the entire time.
So, that’s my rant. I’m desperately hoping for some great content to come along from my old favourites or a new up-and-comer, but there’s just such an over-abundance of apathy and low-effort/low-quality content that it’s getting depressing to continue watching.
~N
