A Paywall Isn’t The Answer, Mark

Entertainment, Gaming, Internet, Thoughts and Rants
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YouTube is absolutely filled with video game reviewers of all types. The only way to be successful is to stand out above the rest, and one particular series, Classic Game Room, has done that successfully for almost a decade now. What started as an internet TV show way back at the turn of the millennium has risen from the dead, so to speak,  and evolved into not just another typical game review show, but a broad venture including comics, comedy skits, opinions, and more.

Now before you start to give me shit for this article, I want to say I absolutely love the content Mark produces – I may not watch it all, but when I do see a review that interests me, I know I’m in for a good time.

The problem here is that YouTube just isn’t the same place it used to be, and to keep profitable, Mark is having to change things around. I’ll elaborate in a future article on what all he has done so far, but suffice to say he has a history of odd project changes that haven’t gone over well with the fan base.

This time around though, Mark has reached a point where advertising revenue has gotten so low that he has begun to put out short, super cut down reviews on YouTube, leaving the full reviews as exclusive to Patreon, and only view-able to those who support Classic Game Room on the platform.

That’s right, they are put behind a pay wall!

Now, before you go and start with the usual arguments against me, let’s get the usual required disclaimer out of the way now: Yes, I want mark to make money off of his videos. Yes, I think people should, if they feel the urge, support him. Yes, I am fine with people making exclusive content for their Patreon supporters, and yes, I think the prices are very fair (what is it, 2 dollars a month for access? That is cheap, sure).

However, this still doesn’t set well with me, or many fans. Let’s look into why.

First things first, I just want to look at exactly why he is doing this; let’s hit up the tweet he shows an issue that went on.

Alright, so… pictures from World War 1 are not advertiser friendly? Damn, that’s stupid! So, these are all you have to show us? Mkay… and these are videos from 2008? Oh, well… do they get many views these days? They look to have 80K views each, give or take, while most of his videos get 5K-10K on average. Alright, that is quite a bit of a hit in the long run, but, well, that’s 80K views over 8 years, compared to 5K views in a week or two. I just don’t think these are as financially hurting you as much as a more recent video getting hit would, which you aren’t showing us. Not that you should have to, but you chose to show these being demonetized, but not anything else. Was anything else actually hit? We don’t know.

Getting to the meat of the matter, though, the main issue I really have with this whole plan, though, is that the new reviews are Patreon exclusive seemingly forever. Most people who create exclusive content eventually release it to the public after some time: Mark doesn’t say he is ever actually going to do this with his current reviews. At that point, why bother putting out anything to the public, save for the reason of drumming up interest in the Patreon account itself? It teases people with content that’s just a slice of what it should be, content that you can’t actually see without paying; that you will never see unless you keep paying, and if you stop paying for it, you won’t be able to continue to view it (unless you save the unlisted YouTube links, that is.)

He really is sealing his content, which has been available to everyone for years upon years, behind a pay wall. If you want it, you better pay directly for it! I mean, I get that advertising revenue is low, but Mark, you have to let those of us who, for whatever reason, don’t want to or can’t donate be able to eventually see the content. Timed exclusivity wins out in the long run – people who want new content now can pay to see it new, and will stick around to keep seeing new content, and those who can’t or won’t donate can catch the videos on YouTube maybe a month later; you will still get advertising revenue over time from those videos (I’m certain monitization is active for nearly every last one of them) and also have the draw for new people to become patrons to get that up to the minute kind of content. Hell, this is a model I’m considering enacting for my own content in the near future!

People are voicing their outrage to this, as well. Oh yes, as in the past with #whodefeatz (seriously, look it up on twitter) fans are telling him they want none of this. His reaction, sadly, is just as it was before: he doesn’t seem to realize (or care about) why his fans are pissed off about this.

 

As you can see, he is throwing out quite a bit of snark – the problem is this doesn’t help you win fans, it just alienates those who care about your work and are feeling targeted for voicing their dissenting opinions.

Sometime soon, hopefully tomorrow, we will take a look at some of the actual criticisms being posted, and people who are defending this action.

 

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