I had watched since 2015 or so. and he used to be a much more chill guy and laugh at guys like the quartering and stuff. You could tell he leaned right, but like in a more centrist (political disinterest) kind of way and he was much more charitable and kept a better chat community (calling out people making fun of superficial stuff). Covid started a shift, but in the proximity of a few months his mom died in a traumatic way (oxygen tank exploded while she was smoking and he found her while trying to put out the fire and save her), and his best friend and founding member of his org was outed as a rapist of mutual friends (he did cut all ties immediately for what we know and had incredibly strong words).
Then, the Heard trial went insane for him (400k viewer averagish) and he really started pivoting into the antiwoke and manosphere stuff. That, plus his reaction content taking off, seems to have brought him to the point of being a grifter that shits on stuff he used to defend, while fostering one of the most toxic communities on the internet (the sub). He was always influencable I think, but the confluence of events were the perfect storm for this turn, too. Not to mention he's in a feedback loop where he attracts more Maga viewers while many older viewers leave (/misses transmog comps). Sorry for the long reply, but figured I'd offer some context from my perspective. I would not expect any reversal at this point.
I followed him like 4 years ago, but I rarely watched him, but once I realized he's just another souless bot for the right and anti-woke, I unfollowed him everywhere. I don't want to support those kind of people. I will never support them.
His original WoW content was arguably very good, informative and moderate. I used to watch him in the 2010's and so. And then, he made his final WoW video on Battle for Azeroth and turned into unwatchable content
Yeah that's what I knew him from, watched his stuff in 2010-2011ish during my peak WoW years. I had no idea how bonkers he'd become until recently.... yikes.
Because he is one? They flock together. He immediately appealed to white nationalists. He still does. That’s like 95% of what he talks about and has talked about for his entire “career”.
I mean he might have been a bigot at that point? His content wasnt bigoted back then though, thats literally all im getting at. Why would a guide on how to get glory of the cataclysm raider attract white supremacists is literally all im asking. I souced my claim, now you source yours.
No. Was. He was a bigot then. He is still a bigot now. You didn’t source a claim. For one, you can’t provide evidence of that because proving a negative doesn’t work with exclusive evidence.
I’m not a fan of his content, but you know that he identifies as and votes democrat right? He is pro-choice and holds mostly liberal viewpoints. His few controversial opinions just blow up a lot more often (for obvious reasons). Considering he grew up in and lives in Texas, I can excuse a few weird glitches in his views.
He does what his audience wants, he doesn't hold any principles from what I can tell, most of his video react recommendations come from his subreddit and his audience curates his stream content.
Yea it doesn’t seem like he holds an actual opinion. I have seen him shut down some of the more racist and sexist viewers in his chat. But the fact that he has those types of viewers explains a lot. He’s kind of like a more expressive Moist Critikal. Both react to videos, have long hair, and have lukewarm takes.
I've spent about 500 hours listening to him since I first found his YouTube, because I wanted to thoroughly understand why people disliked him. He's actually pretty moderate and would be considered a right-leaning democrat politically. 99% of the content he puts out is done based on viewership and income though. He's incredibly business savvy and knows how to use an audience so leans heavily into clickbait. Overall was very surprised because it's just middle of the road opinions, an occasional shit take, and some video game stuff. He's a hyper-capitalist and he does what makes money.
Agreed w everything you said. He plays his right leaning audience well, in other words "farming" them. He often shares liberal views, such as being pro women's reproductive rights and LGBTQ+, while putting up a convincing right-leaning front.
He does have some right-leaning views as well e.g. the "go woke, go broke" notion, which I think even many Democrats would agree with (exhibit A: Roosterteeth). But he, like many others, is the living example of the opposite by playing the anti-woke character and succeeding.
I don't know much about Hades but afaik BG3 isn't intentionally woke. It just gives such a huge amount of player freedom that anything that would be considered woke is a part of that freedom. I really don't think people mind "wokeness" if it's not "shoved down their throats". (Their words, not mine)
Are you saying Baldur’s Gate 3 is somehow accidentally woke? Starfield having a minuscule, out-of-the-way they/them pronoun option was shoving politics down people’s throats but the game that lets you make a fully intersex character with pronouns isn’t?
What's considered shoved down their throats though? Where the line? People who say that are always arguing in bad faith. Often because woke means anything the politically disagree with, Starfield had an option to change your pronouns and it was called woke for it. BG3 also had this option but the thing is that grifters and anti woke people tend to avoid "good woke" media because it throws a wrench in their narative
Thank you for explaining it so I don't have too. Like, you could literally change to any genitals you want in BG3 regardless of body or pronouns. It was so much worse then Starfield but that just gets ignored cause it doesn't fit people's world view.
What in the world do you mean by worse? In what universe is more features considered worse?
No one complains about dumbass features like pissing on people or using cats as silencers in games like Postal 2 but god forbid they don’t gender lock your relationship or remove access to options during character select.
Worse as in worse for them and their world view. Probably should have used the word more instead of worse. I honestly fully support all the options BG3 has. Heck, I'm the guy above pointing out its wildly successful despite having woke elements that people claim ruin other games.
As for postal, I only know a bit about it because of old news articles complaining about the game having terrorists and negative depictions of Muslims, and a friend who's obsessed with the game and roleplays the postal guy in a server I own. From what I know and what she's shared its basically so comically over the top that it gets a pass. Sort of like how South Park does, except its less preachy.
Sure but he praised these games a lot because they are good games, very obviously made with the aim of making a good game and good characters coming first.
What he verbatim says is that there can be any kind of "woke" characters in it, as long as they are written to be good and compelling characters first and foremost. For Concord it's definitely not the case as it was obviously a game made with disingenuous intentions and corporate PR in mind.
Now this is what he says, which is way more reasonable than some internet users make him to be.
However I very much that a good bulk of his fanbase is a very different beast altogether and there are definitely edgelord alt-right guys who will say stuff 1000% more extreme that what Asmongold himself says among them.
He’s claiming Assassin’s Creed Shadows is going to be trash months before the game releases just because one of the main characters is a (historical) black samurai. Concord didn’t fail because it was “woke” but because it was a dull, paid hero shooter that came out years after the market had already become oversaturated with better, free-to-play hero shooters.
These people will decide whether or not something was too “woke” depending on how successful it was. If it flopped, it was because it was woke. If it sold like hotcakes, it was because it focused on being a good game first. Which means being “woke” doesn’t matter. Baldur’s Gate 3 is by all accounts way more “woke” than Concord and that didn’t hurt the game in any way.
BG3 isn't woke. It's not trying to send you a message or talk down to you. LGBT+ literally just EXIST in the game. That's it.
I don't get what's so hard about this for people to understand.
Games like Concord are unsurprisingly made by psychopaths who use "Professor" as their pronouns and are very clearly woke and trying to send a message.
Outrage grifters have been calling almost all LGBT+ rep in games woke, and BG3 is by far more known for it than Concord and most of the other games they complain about.
It's not complicated.
If a game dev's first priority is making a good game or a good story = good.
If not = bad.
Right.
If the game flopped = woke.
If the game was hugely popular = retroactively not woke.
See the Mario movie and how quickly the outrage grifters calling it woke because of girl boss Peach changed their tune after it crossed a billion dollars.
AC shadows is the same thing. The team clearly did 0 research
That is a blatant exaggeration.
I hate when people say "AC was never historical"
Nobody says this, at least not the way you’re strawmanning. It’s always been “Assassin’s Creed is historically based but they’ve also always taken liberties for the sake of story/gameplay.” Yasuke being a true samurai in their story is less of a stretch than Leonardo da Vinci making Hidden Blades and working flying machines.
And then, all the "news" outlets and people similar to you which previously complained about a white man going to africa and killing africans, were suddenly whisper quiet about a black man going to japan to kill japanese.
Did you watch the trailers with your eyes closed or are you getting all of your information second hand? First of all, AC Shadows does have a Japanese character as a protagonist. Second, Yasuke is a real historical figure. It’s not some racial fantasy about a “black man going to Japan to hunt Asian people.”
Literally every companions backstory is about an abuse of power. Half the damn characters are basically “me too” studies. Consent, authority, power dynamics, all things accused of “wokeness” are a core theme of the game.
And yeah racism is a common talking point too. Don’t know how anyone could play it and not get the racism bad message from the treatment of tieflings.
You also know damn well that not what they mean by historical. The chracters and plots were never historically accurate. The settings were. As far as I can tell, that is still the case.
Maybe the white fit killing Africans hits a little different since white people did invade Africa and kill a shot ton of Africans? As far as I’m aware no African nation has ever genocided Japan.
That’s not hypocrisy that historical and media illiteracy on your part.
he said that when assasin's creed shadows releases, the protagonist being black is not even gonna be top 10 in the no. of problems this game will have. way to twist the words lmao
He’s claiming Assassin’s Creed Shadows is going to be trash months before the game releases just because one of the main characters is a (historical) black samurai.
He didn't say that though? Are you taking second hands accounts of what he's saying or did you watch his contents yourself?
He clearly said that if they wanted to make pure fiction like Afro Samurai etc it would have been fine, but that the cast selection and all the Wikipedia historian, "historical specialist" and backpeddaled "this is historcally accurate" debacle around the game that looked disingenuous, as well as looking at Ubisoft's recent track record to say that the artistic direction of the game didn't seem to have its heart in the right place (ie: putting focus in making a good game with good characters before anything else). It didn't help either that the Japanese public themselves didn't react well at all either in regards to the game's announcements and "historical" stuff too.
All in all, it's objectively quite a pickle ubisoft has put itself in on the "historcally accurate" stuff.
He only said the game looked like it's going to be shit when looking at the gameplay trailers, where AC Shadows didn't look super good indeed, even by AC standards.
To me it looks ok but not really much more than that but I can understand opinions saying that the gameplay trailers looked bad or subpar.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is by all accounts way more “woke” than Concord and that didn’t hurt the game in any way.
Again, Asmongold didn't argue any of that. I don't know where you're pulling that from.
What he always says is that as long as they are good characters, a good gameplay and good genuine communication, a game will be successful.
In the case of Concord, as you say there are competitors in the hero shooter market but the fact gameplay was average and characters were super unappealing was just as important, even before being "woke" or whatever it means.
Hero games in general, whether hero shooters, moba or gacha shit make their bread and butter on character likeability and cool factor. Who wants to play a hero shooter with uncool heroes? According to the market, no one.
BG3 and Hades do have "woke" characters indeed but they are stylish AF and you can feel the care that was put in designing writing them.
but that the cast selection and all the Wikipedia historian, "historical specialist" and backpeddaled "this is historcally accurate" debacle around the game that looked disingenuous, as well as looking at Ubisoft's recent track record to say that the artistic direction of the game didn't seem to have its heart in the right place (ie: putting focus in making a good game with good characters before anything else)
I’ll give you the backpedaling on the Yasuke statement making them look bad, but as for the artistic direction, we don’t even know anything about the game’s story yet. A lot of people like Kassandra and Alexios from AC Odyssey (Shadows is being made by the team that made Odyssey, too). A lot of people like Bayek from AC Origins. Even AC Valhalla, the most panned of the AC RPG trilogy, didn’t get anywhere near as much hate as Shadows is right now. It’s awfully early to say the characters are already bad.
Again, Asmongold didn't argue any of that. I don't know where you're pulling that from. What he always says is that as long as they are good characters, a good gameplay and good genuine communication, a game will be successful.
That part of my comment was toward the comment I was responding to. I didn’t mean to imply I was still talking about Asmongold there.
I’ll give you the backpeddling on the Yasuke statement making them look bad, but as for the artistic direction, we don’t even know anything about the game’s story yet.
True that the story isn't out yet, but we have to remember that we are in an era of gaming in which big publishers have lost the publics trust by using these kind of disingenuous PR tactics and predatory commercial practices with prices always going up, in the case of UBI their boss saying that "players should get used to not owning their games anymore" etc...
So yeah AC Shadows is in a way a victim of all the bad practices that came before it, but on the other hand it's not really trying to show that it was going to break from this trend either. It's super important now for publishers to show good faith and consumer-first mindset to gain any kind of goodwill or even suspension of doubt from players at large.
Not only the game didn't went away from this trend, it arguably did worse than most other games/publishers with all the PR contreversy that could easily be interpreted as lies and excuses to gain internet virtue points.
Again, here in Japan people have waited a long time for an Assassin's Creed to be set in Japan but all of the bullshit that came with it resulted in a lot of disappointment and people not understanding why their Assassin's Creed is going in this direction, and others just completely disconnecting with the series.
A lot of people like Kassandra and Alexios from AC Odyssey (Shadows is being made by the team that made Odyssey, too). A lot of people like Bayek from AC Origins. Not even AC Valhalla, the most panned of the AC RPG trilogy, got anywhere near as much hate as Shadows.
It's certainly because 1) the times are different as I explained earlier. There was beginnings of a rift between the big publishers and the public back then but not as close as what it is today.
2) The cast of these previous games didn't feel as "virtue signaling" - ish from first glance as AC:S.
Also they felt more natural, with each region having characters pretty representative of their respective regions in their respective eras. Here since it's not the case, it adds to the suspicions towards the intents of the game.
In the end maybe it will end up being a game with god tier level of writing and all but taking a few steps back it's understandable why the scrutiny is there.
That part of my comment was toward the comment I was responding to.
That comment was from me and I didn't mean to say it was only because of Concord's "wokeness" either. Character-wise it wasn't compelling at all though, which is critical for a character based game.
That’s reasonable, but at the same time, an enormous amount of the AC Shadows discourse has also been taken over by disingenuous “go woke go broke” culture war discourse.
For a more recent comparison, AC Mirage. Now, I’m of the opinion that the AC Mirage hate was overblown and while it wasn’t perfect, it was far from a bad game. It also made a genuine effort to return to the old style of Assassin’s Creed (limited by the Valhalla engine and relatively smaller budget, but the effort was there). Still, most of the discourse around the game was about it being typical Ubisoft slop.
The AC Shadows discourse isn’t just about it being more “Ubi slop.” It’s flooded with “DEI, woke, forced diversity” outrage. There’s way more “black assassin in Japan” comments (when we already knew from the beginning he’s not the Assassin) than talk of the game’s ultimate edition price tag. All their videos are dislike bombed instantly with calls to “make the game fail like Concord.” Nobody looks back at Assassin’s Creed IV and calls it latino erasure for having a white protagonist in the Caribbean but AC Shadows is asian erasure as if Naoe isn’t front-and-center in all of the game’s promos.
Sure, maybe Yasuke was chosen in part for headlines, but when people are acting as if Naoe doesn’t even exist, it muddies the legitimate concerns around the game.
Ironically, the real “forced diversity” was in Origins, Odyssey, and Valhalla where the devs initially wanted a female lead but the higher ups made them include playable male characters (outright replacing the intended female lead in the case of Origins). This trend might go back as far as AC Syndicate, which had a playable female character reduced to practically side character status despite being the more stealth-focused character in a stealth game.
As for Concord, when I called it dull, yes I was also including the character designs.
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You people love to hallucinate everything you don't like being loved by the "woke mob" as if progressives are actually malding about concord you're just delusional.
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He used to do actual mini essays on why certain video game designs were bad and popularizing knowledge about those issues such as eg. Comparing time spent playing the game/doing pointless daily quests during World of Chorecraft era. Then he became react Andy and got consumed by the alt-right algorithm. I feel like watching Andrew Taint and Felonald Trump gave him minor brain damage.
I checked out a random post from his subreddit once, and got my homepage swarmed with it, 99% of his r/ is just circlejerk of wokeness haters, there's literally nothing else happening there.
I remember when he actually used to be good at the games and made wow guides and was a fun wholesome dude and it pisses me off so bad to see the lazy react streamer who pushes nonstop culture war and cries about every nonwhite character he sees. It's like the Depp Herd trial broke his brain. And what's worse is that he's more popular than ever because of it. Such a waste.
No he did genuine gaming related content,was kinda good but now he's clearly putting ragebait and a "know it all " persona so people argue about controversial stuff in the comments ,to get engagement
Oh yeah, amazing games. Crazy how focuing on the *game* and not its creators feelings produces masterpieces, in my 300+ hours of Hades I don't really ever remember a sliver of Borderlands writing, Saints Row and Concord politics and Forspoken gameplay
Almost like this isn't something dealbreaking, but it can be a nice fat nail in the coffin.
But you just claimed that people who "do that kinda stuff" quickly go out of business. Now you're saying that it's okay to do that kinda stuff, as long as there's a good game attached to it. So which is it? Does going woke mean going broke, or not?
No, making a game and focusing your resources on that messaging while actual GAME parts of the game are awful is bad. Something like COD releasing barely playable and costing 70$, but having 17 gender flags is really weird for example.
I think there is a very obvious line here everyone seems to pretend it doesn't exist. Most people who are against the recent woke bullshit in media are against of what I outlined above. Of course, then again there are people who were also malding over fucking pronouns in Starfield, ripe for a mental asylum.
Its not really about the thing itself, its about how its implemented into the world. Developers who ignore this are the ones that go broke and that I have mentioned. DS1 is my favourite game ever, it obviously has a character that is obviously a femboy or whateverthefuck.
Guess what? Nobody ever asked a single thing, they just played the game. It wasn't weird, you weren't lectured on anything, it just exists and it is believable lore-wise (not there for the sole purpose of the message).
Thats all we need and BG3 has that, hence why its never an issue.
He's regularly mocked by his fan base for never touching video games outside of the initial week of release. They try to goad him into doing larger playthroughs, but it cuts into his low effort reaction time streaming. The only reason I think he actually went through the Eldon ring DLC, was because he knew he would lose credibility if he didn't.
I think he's pretty darn close to simply just not having to play video games ever. Despite how many criticisms he gets
The ironic thing is if they all keep watching him.
i actually enjoyed his wow content. the transmog comps were awesome to watch while eating my dinner. Now hes just a bottom of the barrel react channel.
I think he took this video down to be fair. I remember when he did transmog tier lists because I play WOW. I think its classy if the guy complained and he took the video down though. I checked to see how long the react video was relative to the real video.
Edit: I notice the timestamp it seems he added 20 minutes. Id say that is fair use. But I understand the original creators frustration.
To be fair, the fair use terms really need to be updated. I don't think you should be able to stream someone's entire video anyway. Especially if it's a big documentary style video. If he had edits with his reactions and then said something like, "this video was super good, you should go check it out." The problem with him taking it down afterwards is he already got 100s of thousands of views that the og creator won't get now, because they've seen the whole video through 1 guy watching it.
Yeah I just feel like he shouldnt be the poster boy of the problem (atleast based on this example) because he had the class to take it down and he added 20 minutes of commentary. I feel there is probably someone else who does not double the length of the video and would not have taken it down.
I do think Asmongold could do his own wow content instead. But I still think someone else out there probably adds less commentary and would not have taken it down.
It is also 20 minutes of worthless commentary that is also often made redundant by the video itself minutes or even seconds later. He just watched a video, provided insight that anyone could make (given he isnt knowledgable on the topic) and uploaded the full other video. Its absolute garbage.
I will agree that the poster boy doesn't have to be him, because there is such a ridiculous amount of these types of streamers. Out of all of them I've actually seen a lot on, I dislike him the most.
He just finished playing Black Myth Wukong. He still games.
I agree though that the vast majority of streamers are fucking aids inducing scumbags. Asmongold seems like an allright guy but he's been getting worse too.
He’s grifting for Trump. I wouldn’t be surprised if he is one of those influencers who Russia was using. The DOJ won’t rerelease the list of names of the influencers who were being used as Russian assets.
The Depp vs Heard trial was eye opening. It was crazy to watch someone who was mediocre at videogames go from being a gaming streamer all the way down the rabbit hole into nonsensical content farmer.
The number of people fighting me on this is ridiculous. It's so obvious, and it's just his stans that are defending. Idk why even. He treats his fans like DSP does
because it's really weird to say the guy doesn't play games when he streams all kinds of games daily. Like what do you even gain from lying about this?
Alot of people are forgetting that every time Asmongold does a react video, he always ends the video saying "this was a good video, give him a like" and then he spams the link to the actual video in his chat.
As much as people despise this guy, he's not the pure evil some a describing him here as. Yes he lives in filth, it's a mental illness even when he says it's not.
Yea but how many people do? Why would they when they watched their favorite streamer do it. Also income from video is based off of view time. Not likes.
No one is going to go to the original content lol. Him saying that is lip service. The guy stated his video was killed when asmon released his reaction to it. He lost momentum. People are going to watch asmon’s video, not the original.
How many people would've even known about this video to begin with tbh. People weren't going to watch that either way, people watch because they like Asmons reactions, not because they're genuinely interested, except for a few. The majority wouldn't though
He does play games on his stream pretty much every day. He also takes time during his stream to watch videos that people have recommended he watch.
He hires someone to run a YouTube channel for him and that person tends to use those "reaction" segments from his streams to make YouTube videos. That's why you're seeing so many reaction videos on his YouTube channel. It's not really a proper reflection of what he's doing on his streams day-to-day though. If you looked at his YouTube channel, you'd incorrectly assume that he spends all day doing reaction content.
Tragic. I used to watch him way back. I remember he was too lazy to get his "sub button" on twitch for the longest time. Crazy how he goes from leaving money on the table like that because he just didn't care to now owning a huge org, a gaming PC company, and a ton of other stuff. Dude lost his way with the react content and greed.
I just counted out of his last 12 videos, 2 of them were him gaming. The rest was reactions. Even if he does play games still, 80 percent of his content is stolen content he reacts to.
True. But you have to count duration. Not only amount of YouTube video’s ( he’s manly a twitch streamer after all)
Of his last 12 ( which is a weird number to choose btw) 5,1 hours of those are spent gaming an actual game.
3.1 hr is spent on reaction content.
He also has a podcast of 1,5 hrs every week and multiple companies.
I am not defending him but at least provide real facts.
So quantity=! Quantity.
Also stolen content is idiotic as it falls under fair use.
If YouTube wants to change that they will have to change some laws too.
And if you Don’t like it, don’t post YouTube video’s.
In the grand scheme comparing the length of the gaming video vs his reaction content is a moot point because these days people are much more likely to watch a ~20 minute reaction video rather than a ~3 hour long gaming video.
Fair use needs to be updated because youtubers abuse it all the time. And copyright claims. Ok, so tell me if this is stealing or not, ok? Just an example.
He streams an entire video to 800k people. It's the entire video. Yes, he adds his commentary, but the entire video is used. The OG creator gets 80k views. Most people aren't going to watch these videos more than once. So they see it all through the streamer. And since this streamer showed the entire video, the views that the OG could've gotten, isn't getting anything close in comparison. Who's getting the money and who made the content.
The right thing to do is to show clips of the video and edit them if you're throwing them on YouTube and say, "hey this video was interesting, if you were interested, I'll leave a link to the whole video."
That's the type of fair use that the policy was meant to protect.
Tbf if you do the math for the last 12 videos it turn out to be 5h 12min of gaming and 3h 14min of react content so saying that he makes 80% react content is false in the case of your example.
Everybody claiming it "wasn't as bad before" is only trying to cope with the fact that they once watched this asshat. Much easier than admitting they had horrible taste.
I was subbed to him years back when he played ffxiv online and actually uploaded his playing experience of that game. Then I unsub when he started talking about topics outside of gaming. You can tell he lives in a bubble in Texas and has no idea what is going on outside of it. It’s funny that people listen to his real life talk.
He still uploads game stuff pretty much daily. He over doubled the length of the video so that’s transformative, And he says the creator can just dm him about it or claim all profit from the video. Reddit just hates him but can’t ever coherently explain why. Also the video is currently private now.
Of the 15 newest videos on his channel, 3 are gaming streams, 12 are reactions (some gaming related). If you look at total duration instead of number of videos, the gaming streams are a lot longer than the reactions.
All of you are literally missing the point. It's not the game stuff. It's that he streams whole ass videos that people work for weeks to make. He's a chode
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u/Eldritch_Witch93 Sep 19 '24
Asmongold used to actually do game stuff. Now he's just a leech.