[VHS buzzing]
Hi!
I like doing reviews,
but I don't like making them
because they take too freaking long!
So, I'm going to not try anymore,
except I'm going to keep on doing these
for ten years, apparently,
because this is the LGR tenth anniversary!
[intro music]
Greetings and welcome to an LGR anniversary thing,
and [chuckles] man, it feels
weird to say that, not just because
it's been ten years, and a decade is
way too long to do anything,
but also because I'm saying it
to this particular camera here.
This is my original JVC VHS-C camcorder that I
used way back in the day to record LGR videos.
And yeah, what even is this?
It's a GR-AXM225, it doesn't really matter.
It's just something I picked up at Goodwill
because it was cheap, and my other camera had died.
In fact, I had a slightly better camera than this.
I think some of my earliest YouTube videos,
I've been on YouTube since 2006, actually, and
yeah, some of my very earliest videos
were shot on that other camera.
It was a Canon, I think?
Mini DV camera with FireWire,
shot on these little digital tapes.
It was actually pretty good.
But it died after taking to a beach or something,
and yeah, so I had to get a camera,
and I needed it cheap, and this is what I got.
And, you know what?
It's-- [laughs] It just has been
a ride, ever since, of different types of technology
that I've used to make this show,
and then just figuring it out as I go along.
Man, that's all this has been, but,
yeah, it all kind of started with this camera,
at least in terms of LGR stuff.
Yeah, I mean, I had the little
composite video out right there
that you could hook it up to--
I think I had an EZ CAP USB capture device and
Ulead Video Studio to edit videos.
It was also just cool because I had the
flip-out screen on the side, and
a little light on the front that I never used.
And I had a built-in mic that didn't sound
absolutely terrible.
[sound quality shifts] Although, here is what
the mic sounds like. Eh, yeah.
And it's also just even worse now
because this sound in the background.
Hear this? [popping] Hmm.
Yeah, something's not quite right anymore, but-- [laughs]
Anyway, [sound quality shifts] back to the normal mic.
I'm using a Zoom mic now, but
it's a thing I just really liked
playing around with and just
trying to figure out what looked the best on
this crappy camera.
And in a way, nothing looked good,
and everything looked good.
There was something about it's particular style
of creating imagery, man.
And it just fascinating to look at.
And this is probably coming across
even better quality than it was back then
because now I have some
slightly better way to capture video
off of this thing, but, you know what?
It's still using even the same tape
that I had back then.
I put it in there really quick
just to see what was still on the tape, and yeah.
It was the one LGR VHS-C tape that I used.
And it's still got some footage from
the 100th Video Special, which was a Q&A,
and then I think the very last thing I filmed on here was
the Fire & Ice Christmas video.
Yeah, it's one of those things, man.
I used what I had, and there wasn't much--
There was no budget. [laughs]
And I just-- I recorded stuff that I had in my room.
You know, whether it was computers, or games,
or consoles, or just whatever.
LGR, it was just 'Lazy Game Reviews'
it's what it was. It was mostly game reviews
...done pretty lazily@
That's the whole idea. And it really was just a
personal challenge to myself.
When I started in 2009, it was
a personal challenge-type thing
to see if I could do a video
or just some sort of creative something every week.
Because at the time it felt like nothing else
was going right. [laughs]
I was 22 years old when I started LGR. [sighs]
Never start a YouTube channel when you're 22.
It's just a bad idea.
I don't even how these kids do it nowadays, man.
They're little 14, 15 years old
with their YouTubes and Instagrams and--
[grumbles playfully] Get off my lawn.
I would've totally started a channel that young
if I had the technology and opportunity that
kids have now. But anyway, tangent.
Yeah, starting in 2009, it was a personal challenge,
and doing one video a week sounded interesting.
Because, school-- I'd just dropped out of college,
relationship had ended, the job I had was crappy,
and it was getting crappier all the time, and, like--
Nothing felt right. My car was broken.
Everything seemed stupid, and I'm like, "You know what?
I just want to make videos again.
Videos are just fun."
So that's what I did. I got this cheap camera,
at a Goodwill [laughs], and just started making stuff.
And that was all. There was no other planning. [laughs]
I just wanted to make something
and I had a few inspirations, of course, especially
AVGN early on.
In fact, that was the whole reason that I kind of
got started doing videos again,
was after seeing his videos,
and specifically after doing some of my own,
there was the SEGA CD video.
And the review of that went up
sometime in 2008, and then months passed
and then when the AVGN episode of SEGA CD
went up on YouTube,
which was, I think, November 18, 2008,
it was a recommended thing.
My video was recommended.
It wasn't even LGR back then, it was just, like,
YouTube doing it's thing, and the algorithm worked.
It was the first time I'd saw the algorithm
do a thing, and but, "Whoa!"
I think I got 1,400 views in a day,
which was huge back then. Absolutely huge.
I mean, I was in the single digits,
and this was months afterward and then
all of a sudden got a bunch of views,
and it was weird, and it was super encouraging.
Because I'm like, "Wow! You know, maybe I can actually
do something along the lines of what
James Rolfe is doing, or Classic Game Room, or
any number of the channels that were
around back then that I watched."
A lot of them don't exist anymore.
In fact, one of the bigger inspirations--
I don't even remember what the channel was, but
it was like a guy who was German or something
and he just covered Atari 2600 games
and other random things in a compilation form.
He had, like, a hundred games he would cover
in five seconds each, and just
cram them in there.
And that was sort of the inspiration
for the first LGR video,
the Atari 2600 Animal Games,
where I covered several of those just in one video,
and sort of made a sketch in the end about it.
And it was fun, man. That first year and a half,
the first 100 videos that I shot on this camera,
were the most exhilarating, creatively freeing,
awesome times.
I don't know, I miss that in a way because
there was no plan.
There was no money.
There were no sponsors, there was no anything.
I didn't even have that many people watching. [laughs]
So it was actually really--
In fact, here, to give you an idea, this was the
analytics for the very first LGR video.
And it got like 20-something views.
In the first day. Wow!
And then, like, 30-something on the next day,
because I think I uploaded the evening
the previous day. But yeah, like, you know,
50-ish views in, pretty much, 24 hours was
genuinely amazing. I mean, it really was amazing.
The fact that I was getting any views at all was crazy.
Yeah, there was some people that I knew
that made videos back then.
No, they didn't get anything but one or two views
a month. [laughs]
The fact that I could get, you know,
dozens in a day was just nuts.
And again, there was no money involved.
Like, if there was a partnership program
back then, I don't know.
Like, I didn't even become aware that people could
make money making videos on YouTube
or any other streaming service site until much later on.
So that wasn't even a consideration
when I started making videos because it wasn't an option.
You know, I wasn't doing it for money,
I had a day job, so whatever.
I was just doing it for fun.
So it was just cool to see views, right?
Like, it was just neat to have stuff that
could be watched, that was so niche, really.
It was making videos about consoles and computers
and games and stuff. Old software. Things that,
you know, I knew some people cared about,
because I visited a lot of forums and things like that,
but it wasn't quite like it is now
where I can just post a video about an IBM
and it gets a million views.
Like, what is that even?
That still blows my frigging mind.
So thank you very much for watching
over these past ten years, because
it's turned into a legit career, you know?
Like, at this point I've got this camera
over here that is a LUMIX GH5S
that I use to film things, and, well, look at it, it's all--
I'm like, in crispy 4K weirdness.
Like, what is all this about?
This kind of tech blows my mind.
And, like, the fact that, you know,
I can just film things on phones now.
There's a lot of episodes I filmed on this.
It just-- it's evolved to such a degree,
YouTube has changed so much, and just my own
work flow and process has changed so much.
And that really is thanks to you watching,
and to those of you on Patreon
who started supporting.
I think I've been doing that since 2014,
so that's five years.
That's half a decade of that, even.
That first five years, though, of doing this,
was just-- [laughs]
There were so many unknowns.
For one thing, you couldn't even get
a partnership by the time I
figured out that that existed.
I'm like, "Oh, I should try and apply for that."
Well, turns out that pretty much no one that did
game reviews or anything along the lines of what I was doing
could get a partnership back then on YouTube
without joining a-- [stutters] MCNs weren't even--
So, okay. Let's go to the very beginning.
At first, I was not even posting on YouTube,
it was just some other random websites.
There was Google Video, there was--
Oh, man, that one was, like, Shout-something.
I think even ScrewAttack, I know I had
a few videos on there. GameTrailers--
well, maybe it was GameTrailers on--
Screwattack on Game-- Oh, it's been a long time.
GameTrailers, yeah.
But anyway, there were a bunch of
random other sites. YouTube was just one of them.
But the YouTube thing was interesting because
there was a growing-- like, it was growing faster
than anywhere else, so I just wanted to be where
the people were that were going to watch.
So that was cool. The fact that you could
search and see the related videos.
The related videos really got me going.
The SEGA CD one being the first really big one to explode,
and then the Sims 3, actually, early June 2009,
before I started LGR.
Originally it was just, like,
"Top Five Reasons Why The Sims 3 is Neat"
or something like that.
And that got 10,000 views in a month or something.
And that, again, "Whoa!"
You know, it was insane. And yeah, like,
discovered there was a community of Simmers out there,
and nobody was making Sims videos that I knew of.
So I was like, "Yeah, I'll make Sims 3 videos,"
and it was just a crazy time of exploration
and trying all these services and eventually
I tried out Blip.
Blip eventually-- or, very quickly, really--
was happy to start paying people for it.
I think I made, like $10 the first month on Blip, and
over the first year I was making, like $100 a month.
It was crazy, and that was 2011 or something.
2012. So yeah, that was nuts back then.
But then, of course, Blip-- [grumbles]
No longer exists, and YouTube eventaully started
letting people in the partner program, but,
yeah, at first, you would get emails like this.
From YouTube, saying that,
"Do you want to monetize this video?
It's doing well!
Add revenue to it. Revenue sharing!"
So I'm like, "Yeah, sure."
And you apply and put in all these things,
and say that, "Yeah, it's all my content,
I made this video."
And then, like, in my case, anyway,
they would inevitably reply back and say,
"No, you don't have a sufficient amount of
original content in here," or something. [laughs]
Just, you know.
I mean, point being,
I was not able to actually make
any money from LGR videos for years.
It wasn't until late 2012, beginning of 2013
that I actually got some revenue.
And that was only by joining an MCN,
a multi-channel network, and that was the only way
that you could get monetized gaming videos
as far as I knew. So yeah, that worked for a bit.
And it was cool, you know.
Eventually, the end of December 2012,
the moment I made a dollar more
than what I was making at my day job,
I quit the day job and just, you know.
I didn't even do it, I didn't even do it properly.
I just called and be like, "You know what?
I'm never coming back. Bye." And-- [laughs]
That job sucked. Everything sucked about it.
So it was just a thing where I jumped in both feet first
as soon as I started making a little bit of cash.
And then Patreon, now that picked up in 2014, so
thank you very much to everyone who stuck around
on there, as well. Just, it all blows my mind.
Seriously, still to this day,
I don't understand how this works. [laughs]
And, I mean, I have a lot of understanding,
obviously, ten years of experience.
But I don't get it. I don't understand...
the core of how it all works as well as it does, really.
And has for so long.
If you'd have told me ten years ago
I'd still be doing this, "No way I would still--"
You know, I just thought I wouldn't.
In fact, when I started this,
I remember telling myself in that first year,
I think I'd been doing this constantly for a month,
so making one video a week, every week, for a month.
And I remember telling myself,
"If I'm still doing this in ten years,
I'm just going to quit." [laughs]
Because that's more than enough time
to have a run of any kind media.
You know, TV show, or comics, or anything. Like,
having a ten year run is amazing.
So I'm just going to quit while I'm ahead
if I'm still doing it by then. So yeah.
In that being the case, I have an announcement to make.
LGR...
after ten years,
is going to continue for another ten years!
Yay! [laughs]
Or something, I don't know long this is going to go.
But I'm not going to quit now.
That'd be stupid. I'm having more fun than ever,
It's exciting to cover so many weird things,
and have people watch and it's just amazing.
And I have, you know, stuff to film with.
I've got cool cameras like this thing over here.
This piece of technological magic.
And microphones, and, like, lights and stuff.
Where are my lights?
I've got weird little lights now.
Oh, I don't even know, man.
No way was this even on my radar.
Again, I didn't know that this kind of thing
could happen, so-- [laughs]
I'm just super grateful. That's all it is.
And ten years is one of those weird moments of--
Like, it's an arbitrary number,
but there's something about a decade
that just makes it kind of special, and
that's why I wanted to do something here.
You know, I don't really have anything too crazy
to reveal or talk about or do anything.
It was just, yeah, I got an old VHS camera out,
and recording with that.
And I just want to say thank you for watching.
And how awesome it is that YouTube exists,
you know, and video, content creation of any kind.
I've never been sold on this platform, really.
It just happens to be the best option,
and so I'll stick with it as long as it makes sense.
That's why I've left all the other ones
that I used to be on by the wayside, you know.
It's just continually evolving, and YouTube,
as a platform, has evolved.
And I've seen so many things come and go.
Like, there was a point when started,
game reviews were the big hitters, and
then it was let's plays, and then it was--
I don't even know what. Pranks and stuff, or-- [laughs]
Reaction videos, or something.
I don't know. There's been a lot of phases
that we've all been going through, and now it seems...
Honestly, it seems to be a bit more experimental again.
It's getting there, it's getting there.
There's definitely much--
It's experimental with production value.
Or, you know, at least good equipment.
That seems to be where we're at now, and it's interesting.
It feels like we've come full circle, and
at least among a lot of my friends,
and a lot of the people I watch,
it feels like Old YouTube in a way because
we're all just sort of tired of
doing the same thing for a decade now.
And I've talked to several other YouTubers
who've done this for a decade, and we're all
kind of like in a weird headspace because of it.
It's just, like, where did all the time go?
My 20s are gone. [Laughs]
All this is still going on.
I'm still making these kind of videos.
Have I evolved enough?
Have I evolved too much?
Have I remained true to what I, you know,
this and that, and is it okay to take these
sponsorships and do all these brand de--
Like, there's so many things that go into it,
and you start rethinking your entire existence.
And, man, I've gone through some
existential crises, that's for sure.
It feels like a--
It's just like a big hurdle
that just-- [sputtering]
And, you know, hitting a million subs,
that was one of those hurdles
where I'm just like, "Oh, man. What the crap?"
And you don't know what to think about yourself.
You start self-doubting and
getting into all these weird headspaces, and then
a decade passes-- [laughs]
And, you know, I haven't even been
doing this full-time for a decade.
It was a hobby for years, but--
You know, I've been doing it full-time
for about seven years, right?
Six and a half?
I don't know, a long time. SO-- [sighs]
It just makes you think. It does me, anyway.
And it makes me really excited
for whatever's coming next.
And I don't even know what's coming next.
I'd love to hear what you'd love to see more of.
I obviously want to continue what I'm doing,
and evolving it, and adding to it,
and doing more of what I'm known for, I guess, but,
I want to experiment again.
I want to give back to this kind of thing, you know?
Just, like, point a camera at stuff, talking,
showing cool things, being like, "Look at this computer."
And I don't know, man. Like, it feels like
it's okay to do that in a way. [Laughs]
Yeah, going to E3 was really enlightening.
You know, having somebody there with me.
My brother filming. You know, having just
two cameras running it all the time, and
covering twice the amount of ground.
Like, that's really cool.
Do I want to hire somebody, maybe?
Like, you know, I was--
He's only here for that one week.
Like, he doesn't even live around me, so
I can't hire him, but maybe someone for something.
If it's not cameras, then maybe some of the editing load
or some of the other thi--
I don't even know what. I don't know.
It'd be kind of cool to have somebody else
onboard at some point, or, like,
I've still really wanted to build my own studio,
like a proper one.
This is just an office that I'm in here,
and I have the other place that I film,
but that's not, like, a studio-studio.
It's just a rental facility.
So I would like to have that.
Or, maybe, just set up a--
Like, if I get another house, a little larger
than 800 square feet that I have now,
maybe have a dedicated area
that's like a studio there,
that's not like a little tiny 10 by 10 office. I don't know.
I've got a lot of ideas, a lot of things I would
love to try, and, you know, video ideas, too.
Different formats, different types of topics,
different ways of covering things,
both that I've covered before, you know,
that I want to redo.
A lot of old LGR video topics that I should
really jump on and cover again.
But just fresh stuff. I don't know.
Every single video, that's another thing, too,
that I wanted to do this back in the day.
And when I started LGR, I'm like,
"I want to do one video a week,
and I want to improve one thing
about the video every week."
And as long as I can do that,
maybe eventually I'll be go at it. [laughs]
I hope I'm good at it now.
Except for videos like this, obviously,
where I'm just rambling and talking about
who knows what and having a slight bit
of inner turmoil, being like,
"Wow, I'm going to die."
But it's all cool. I just like making stuff.
That's it.
As long as I can continue making stuff, I don't care, man.
Like, you know, all the other things...
the hype and, you know, the equipment
and all the YouTube shenanigans and sponsorships
and that could've just go-- It could go away.
I would still make stuff.
That's just what I like to do.
And...
I'm happy and humbled and grateful as balls
that I can do it and get paid for it right now,
so I'm going to keep it going for as long as I can.
And yeah, let me know your thoughts on
the past of LGR, the future of LGR,
maybe your favorites, or your least favorites.
I got a lot of those.
Don't go too far back into the timeline of [laughs]
LGR playlists, because
there's a lot of crappy videos in there.
But, you know, whatever. You can explore what you want.
I'm not going to delete anything. Yeah.
Well, I have gotten rid of some things because
they just don't apply to anything anymore.
But, yeah, for the most part, it's all still there,
ready for your perusal, so whatever.
I'm mostly looking towards the future,
which is interesting as a retro channel,
but I love looking forward.
I can't wait to see what's next,
whether it's ten years or another year or who knows what.
Anything in-between, it's exciting times.
Thank you so much for watching.
Thank you for watching there on the Lumix camera.
Actually, I don't know why I'm doing that.
And yeah, let's keep this going,
and make more LGR things,
and just have fun with it.
I'm excited for the future.
I don't know about you, so yeah.
That's it. Thank you very much for watching.
I'm going to turn off both my cameras now.
See, I've got this one, okay.
And I got this one right here. [laughs]
See you all later.
[outro music]
Hi.
I like doing reviews,
hut I don't like making them,
because they take too freaking long!
So,
I'm going to not try anymore.
[outro music]