SELLOUT!
Warning: This is going to be a post where I talk a LOT of shit. The following should be taken with a LARGE grain of salt.
This may burn some bridges, but whatever.
I’ve been making “content” on-and-off for a few years now, dabbling in different scenes like osu!, Apex and Aimtraining, seeing moderate success in all 3, especially with osu!, where my short time grinding was, in hindsight, highly successful. I’ve had a pretty fun time staying independent, picking up different skills like editing, graphic design, writing scripts, etc. I enjoy the process, even down to the “boring” parts of editing. Having an idea for a video, and turning that vision into reality is a lot of fun, and highly rewarding (Much better than work!).
Along with the streams, I’ve gotten a pretty dedicated “fanbase” that I am very grateful for. If you guys are reading this, thank you. It’s an honor for me to know that all these silly things I do on the internet are appreciated.
With the niceties out of the way, this “industry” fucking sucks, and interacting with it occasionally makes me think that gaming has been completely corporatized, and everyone sold their fucking soul.
First of all, I DESPISE the word “content”, to me, it’s a soulless euphemism that removes whatever personality (If it even existed.), out of what I do. My videos certainly aren’t High Art - My frag videos are essentially a clip dump with a filter, and aimmag isn’t particularly hard to edit for. It still feels awful to regard them as “content”, it’s a term that commodifies, turning a video that you most likely put a part of yourself into, into a “product” that you are to “sell”. You may think that this is a VERY minor complaint, but I do think it’s indicative of bigger issues.
If you take a quick look on twitter, you can see what I mean. 10 different people, all posting the same video. The entire creative process, especially in the mainstream, is completely formulaic, with even the smallest hint of personality removed. Let's go through that process step by step.
Step one: Footage, getting a mediocre win in pubs, and cutting it into a video EXACTLY 10 minutes long with barely any commentary does not actually make for good content. Especially when I can tell matchmaking blessed you into a bot lobby where you can just farm little timmys. Alright, that’s just me hating for no reason, there’s nothing wrong with sharing stuff you think is cool. Either way, it doesn’t even matter how good the footage is, because of:
Step two: Thumbnails. I am so SICK of these dogshit blender thumbnails - Awfully boosted contrast, HUGE text, random pred icon, either a random battle pass skin with increased FOV and motion blur, or in particularly evil cases, a big face of wraith/octane/horizon (Who else could it be?) on the side like I installed that one MrBeast browser add-on. If you do this, I hope you know you are going to hell.
Step three: Title. FUCK YOU if you post another “MOST CRACKED OCTANE MOVEMENT” or “TOP 0.00000001% AIM” or whatever bullshit algorithm-maximizing title and put it on my timeline, especially when its mediocre bullshit like a 130 spray into a PK shot.
Everything is the same, and it sucks.
As much as I would like this to be the case, you can’t blame individual creators for this - they are just trying to make it in a very competitive industry (Especially one VERY low on money post-esports crash), but come on, are you really proud of making such soulless formulaic content? You literally DO NOT stand out in this sea of slop, how can you even make it in the first place? To be fair, this is what the industry demands, as it supports making slop like this with youtube’s algorithm being as bad as it is, and orgs encouraging this type of content, speaking of which:
These orgs fucking suck too.
Big names, small names, all the same. Pick up someone already established, throw an editor and thumbnail artist at them, and boom, another content-slave making the same industry-standard garbage. Sometimes they are mechanically great, but nothing unique is done with their talents, it’s still the same industry-standard video that looks exactly the same as everyone else’s. The only people that would notice said talent would be people who already understand the intricate details in mechanics that most players simply would not see.
Or worse, you choose people purely based on clout. Here’s a fun story: I was promised by [REDACTED] that they would [REDACTED] if I [REDACTED]. That, of course, never happened after I finished my part of the deal, meanwhile they would [REDACTED] to people who quite literally do not play FPS games, all because they have more followers, even if the followers most likely don’t care about such a [REDACTED] at all. I’ve also never once gotten any retweets from them, ranging from [REDACTED] to [REDACTED], which took 2 entire days to make. Meanwhile, they would [REDACTED], because again, they are more popular.
The notion of talent scouting is also far gone, I’ve seen absolutely incredible players (Here’s 3 names that would 100-0 whatever signed “mechanical demon” CCS you can name: Twix, mav, code_snake), posting insane clips on twitter for… 100 likes, sometimes much less. What the fuck do you people even do? How aren’t you guys literally THROWING yourselves at players like these? But no, you have to pick up some “mechanics” demon who sits in Mixtape all day and anti-mirrors every fight with mediocre aim, or a “movement” demon who does the same thing magic or future does, but worse. Would they immediately bring attention to your org? No, but how are you going to genuinely grow your brand if you aren’t investing into talent?
What I’m trying to say here is that: Where’s the passion? If you are trying to foster a community with your org, why is it then there’s not any effort in that? Posting generic content, or worse, interaction farming with your twitter blue (Of course, you pay for twitter), isn’t going to get people invested in the scene. Which is something that most people seem to have forgotten.
The scene matters. It always does, it’s what keeps the game going, it’s what keeps people connected. Playercounts can be at record-high and the scene can still be dead. It’s depressing seeing that orgs and creators alike just don’t care about this side of “content”, and only focus on their own numbers. Especially as of recently, Apex has been on a steep decline, where even making industry-standard slop is hard with the SBMM changes. This should be a time where the scene tries to stick together and help one another, instead of trying to continue their own individual growth.
I was active in another scene prior to Apex, osu!, where that sense of community was strong, high-level players talked to one another, and there were legitimate meta-discussions about the state of the game and the community. While I think even the osu! scene has fallen off slightly, it’s still much healthier than Apex, or Aimtraining.
This is one of the reasons why I started aimmag, and continues to run it even though numbers are low: To me, this is the type of project that could create that sense of community, and allows for a space where people can catch up with the scene, or share their improvement. Have I ever thought, in the middle of editing “next ups”, that these aren't the BEST clips ever? Of course I have, but that doesn’t matter. I was once also mediocre (For reference, check every single one of my clip dumps prior to #22), but I’m still proud of ALL the videos, SEEING my own improvement over the years is a GREAT feeling, and I WANT to do that for other people too.
When all is said and done, I’m just an old (almost 23) man who only has seen mild success with my own “content”, and I’m not going to pretend I’m above numbers and what not - I would LOVE to get more viewers and eyes on what I do, because it would give me more opportunities to make stuff. What I can say though, is that I am proud of what I’ve made, and I know I will keep making more.
Can you say the same?
Written 09.01.2024