Tenishan wrote:

I notice a lot of people refer to TotalBiscuit as "TotalBitch", which is a bit funny! BUT I AM A BISCUIT FANBOY, SO SHAME ON YOU!

On a serious note, TotalBiscuit is a very sceptical and negative personality, but all in all I believe PewDiePie will have to thank him for his success, because he kind of (without knowing) helped people find him, by spotlighting the game he was one of the only ones playing at the moment!

Akisha wrote:

Tenishan wrote:

I notice a lot of people refer to TotalBiscuit as "TotalBitch", which is a bit funny! BUT I AM A BISCUIT FANBOY, SO SHAME ON YOU!

On a serious note, TotalBiscuit is a very sceptical and negative personality, but all in all I believe PewDiePie will have to thank him for his success, because he kind of (without knowing) helped people find him, by spotlighting the game he was one of the only ones playing at the moment!

That too, and yes he might be a negative personality but also original and awesome.

Rawr0s wrote:

Noirproxy wrote:

The problem is that the sheer amount of copy cats out there in the world have kind prime examples of what I mean. They record the same games as him and also try and sprout random stuff as if the randomness is the point of the joke when it is not. PewdiePie is good at improvising and thinking off the top of his head, which allowed him to be very popular. People like originality and in his early days he accompolished this very easily. Though it is obvious that this talent is beginning to thin.

This is a problem, though not a problem for Pewdiepie. It's a problem for all the other people who are trying to copy him. I figure this is a clarification that's necessary =P

Either way the answer to "how do people get to the top like Pewdiepie" is simply done through dedication to their passion for gaming and to the quality of their videos. The problem with making it to the top though is that your perspective of why you do it begins to change over time. There is obviously quite a bit of money to be made in the LPing scene. Now I am in no way saying that LPers like Tobuscus or Pewds are sell outs but after watching that video conference of Pewds explaining how he turned LPing into a job I became worried.

Nah. You don't get to the top by hard work. Hard work is necessary in order to get to the top, but it is not what gets you there. Pewdiepie is at the top because he happens to have a particular personality and camera presence that happens to appeal to a huge audience, because he made videos that were easy viral material when he was playing Amnesia, and because he happened to have a blend of intangible qualities in his videos that made everyone like them, like his originality..If you don't have a camera persona that's just right, happen to be making the right videos at the right time to go huge, and happen to have a lot of luck, all the effort trying to be funny and editing your videos and putting out tons of videos won't get you to the top.

I always follow the saying "If you turn the things you love into a job, then it was never the thing you loved in the first place". I have seen way too many LPers worry about the subscriber count of their channel, which in turn is them worrying about cash flow. A prime example being DarksydePhil. The guy doesn't come off as a person who enjoys gaming. Everything he does is just a way to make a quick buck and I generally use him as a prime example of how not to be an LPer.

Nah. I don't mind at all if people on youtube are able to make money doing in, and I don't think that if someone wants to make money on youtube it has to inhibit their ability to create good content. It may be a problem for some people who don't recognize that you can't force popularity and try to hard just to be popular, but I don't hold it against anyone who wants to make youtube a job or a business as long as that means that can make more videos I like.
A few more words about this: I try to not assess someone's motivations or be the judge or whether someone's greedy for money or just loves what they're doing because you can't know. Unless someone is very obnoxiously just trying to exploit their channel and very obviously just trying to make a quick buck, it's a bit of an unfair accusation to make that they just want money, and unless someone doesn't have monetization on at all you can't say they care only about the videos and nothing about money.


Anyway, a few more words about why Pewdie is popular:

+Pewdie is watchable and comfortable on camera.
I think this is the biggest one, and it shows especially in his vlogs. Pewdie is very comfortable and relaxed on camera, and his commentary feels very natural and free-flowing. Many let's players I see who try to copy him tend to have lots of subtle intangible cues that they're very subconsciously aware of being filmed for an audience and that they're putting on a show. While Pewdie is obviously being filmed for youtube, he is so comfortable on film and natural that it feels like he could be a friend of yours playing a game with you, and this makes him easy to watch and enjoy and be entertained by.

+Silly humor.
Silly humor gets views on youtube, and that's just a fact.

+Viral-ready content.
During the time he was making Amnesia videos, there was an somewhat untapped and ripe market for horror game reaction videos. Horror games and things related to them have always had a natural tendency to go viral, and pewdie was making the right videos at the right time.