There are more YouTube channels than there are stars in space, how the hell can you be expected to dig through all of them and find content that’s great? Let’s make a start here, you won’t find Yogscast or IGN beyond this sentence, they’re easy to find and don’t need any more advertising. So here we go, in no particular order, five YouTube channels that might tickle your fancy.
Miracle of Sound
Poorly produced, cheesy music about games litters YouTube. Search for any game and add ‘fan song’ to the end, be careful though, that’s how Rorschach got started.
Miracle of Sound breaks that mould, then hunts down anyone who could reforge the mould and chops their head off. Once a layer of mould has grown on their head, he breaks that too, then writes, produces and performs a song about it. MoS is the Trent Reznor of video game fan music, ok that’s a little bit off. Trent Reznor is the MoS of industrial music. Ah what the hell, I love them both and you should all buy everything they’ve ever done.
Since getting a spot with The Escapist, Miracle of Sound’s profile has rightfully grown and he recently hit 40,000 subscribers on YouTube. As a thanks to his fans his Borderlands song is available for free on bandcamp. A truly talented musician who handles both his music and gaming with enough care to make the two work together, Miracle of Sound is an artist no gamer should overlook.
Press Heart to Continue
A woman, talking about games, with jump cuts, in her room. Doesn’t that sound interesting? If you said no, then there is hope for you yet. Once again, we have to dig through the shit to find gems (I’ve never shat a gem out.)
Dodger is a youtuber with a caffeine problem. I’m not sure if her videos actually jump-cut or she twitches faster than software can process. On her Gaming Newz show Dodger covers a wide variety of games and provides an excellent to source to keep up to date with the latest games and announcements made.
On occasion a Let’s Play will pop up, usually Sherlock Holmes related. Worth a watch, just for the damn voice acting. She also says “butts” and “dicks” a lot.
dignitasApollo
In competitive gaming, there are few channels ran by professional gamers. Usually the teams these players are contracted to will handle media, creating well packaged videos and streamlining content on behalf of the players. Team Dignitas’ Apollo actually runs his own channel off his own back and does pretty good job of it too.
A former Command and Conquer pro, Apollo turned his hand to Starcraft 2 and got very good at it. Rather than vanish into coaching wilderness or just commentate the odd tournament, Apollo works constantly on producing tutorials for less experienced players. These tutorials aren’t just general “This is how to play Starcraft”, Apollo accepts game replays emailed in to him and reviews them, given tailored advice to the individual. All of this is done free of charge, with Apollo offering one-to-one coaching at a payment level.
He’s also a damn good rapper.
Life’s a Glitch TV
Two canadian guys who do not give a shit, watching really bad Starcraft games and commentating them. What could be better? How about playing a game consisting of bodybuilders in Speedo pants flying through the sky at you? They do all that.
LagTV first got their name out there by producing a channel series called ‘When Cheese Fails’ where cheesy tactics used by Starcraft players would be ridiculed. Players loved it and they grew and grew, these days MaximusBlack plays for Team Quantic and Novawar recently moved into a house with his gal. They’ve done well off YouTube and deserve the lot.
On a professional note, the work that LagTV put into producing their content is huge. They are the casters, editors, mail readers, artists and promoters for everything they do. Two guys, producing high quality content off their own backs. That’s hard work.
CollieUK
This here is a personal choice. Back when I was in university, I was in desperate need for something that would distract me from my work. Browsing over YouTube I came across Collie (Oh matron) and spent half a day watching his videos.
A drunk man from Britain shouting at retro video games he is too inebriated to play. What more is there to say? Collie’s been at this for six years now and has over a thousand subscribers. The man really deserves more, pure entertainment value.
Mark Brassington 