"Quantification Grumps"
There's no need for vagaries when attempting to describe the Game Grumps Youtube channel's popularity to someone; its "About" page helpfully counts their current subscriber base at 1,120,175, with an accompanying page view total of 269,759,146. All this just 16 months after the channel first began uploading its "Let's Play" videos, that stalwart online genre dedicated to the fastidious chronicling of video game play-throughs for instructional and entertainment purposes.
With Game Grumps, the entertainment derives from the repartee of its hosts: founding members Arin "Egoraptor" Hanson and Jon "Jontron" Jafari, the latter stepping down after the first year to be replaced / supplemented by Danny Avidan and Ross O'Donovan. With the help of their video editor Barry Kramer, the Grumps leverage their "Let's Plays" as a platform for highly improvisational and frequently crass comedic riffs and discussions.
With Game Grumps, the entertainment derives from the repartee of its hosts: founding members Arin "Egoraptor" Hanson and Jon "Jontron" Jafari, the latter stepping down after the first year to be replaced / supplemented by Danny Avidan and Ross O'Donovan. With the help of their video editor Barry Kramer, the Grumps leverage their "Let's Plays" as a platform for highly improvisational and frequently crass comedic riffs and discussions.
Not to discount the show's inherent quality, but the sheer volume of Game Grumps' updates likely plays a large part in the channel's continued success. Since the addition of the spin-off series Steam Train, the Game Grumps channel maintains a regular schedule of three episodes a day, a pace aided greatly by the format's relatively low barrier of production. A single day's worth of game play, not including speedups and cuts for pacing / framing purposes, can supply the necessary material for a whole week's worth of episodes. There's also the straightforward presentation of said material (again, not to sell short the efforts of Barry, an immensely talented editor whose contributions to the show have made him a virtual co-star) and the streamlined nature of the digital production to consider. The Game Grumps production model is constructed to amass and maintain a large and frequent viewership.
With all this content, one ultimately runs into the issue of how to sift through it.. The Game Grumps enterprise is comprised primarily within the bounds of its Youtube channel, and is thus subject to the various limitations that web site imposes. This is most notable regarding the organization of all the various Game Grumps videos. When you click on the "Videos" tab of their channel, the resulting display is the totality of every Game Grump video to date, laid out on a single screen in reverse chronology. New viewers looking to experience the back catalog's highlights have the option of sorting these videos by popularity (i.e., total page views), but ultimately it is an inelegant display of what Janet Murray characterizes as the digital medium's "encyclopedic affordance" (66). The only practical work-around the Game Grumps channel affords is the organization of videos by series, and even then we are denied any convenient, intuitive means of "segmentation" (Murray, 69) by which to parse out the videos' contents.
The relatively cluttered nature of the Game Grumps oeuvre is endemic of its fan-culture as well. While Youtube provides subscribers with means of commenting on videos, the more popular method for fans to make themselves heard is through the Game Grumps Subreddit. This message board-style sub-domain allows users the means of aggregating all pertinent subjects (updates, discussions, tangential news and media) into a single database. It's still not an ideal solution to the Game Grumps infrastructure: the popularity-based and chronological sorting of topics eschews centralized organization, a la Murray's concept of intellectual access (69-70).
While distinct moments can be difficult to parse out by means of the Game Grumps channel's encyclopedic structure, they are instead readily and frequently held aloft by the fan-base via a memetic feedback loop. Though thee playlist style organization of the Game Grumps channel makes it difficult for select moments to stand out, the capability of Youtube users to form their own customized playlists ensures that there is never a shortage of "The Best of Game Grumps." Some fans go even further, editing out the precise moments in question into home-brewed highlight reels.
With all this content, one ultimately runs into the issue of how to sift through it.. The Game Grumps enterprise is comprised primarily within the bounds of its Youtube channel, and is thus subject to the various limitations that web site imposes. This is most notable regarding the organization of all the various Game Grumps videos. When you click on the "Videos" tab of their channel, the resulting display is the totality of every Game Grump video to date, laid out on a single screen in reverse chronology. New viewers looking to experience the back catalog's highlights have the option of sorting these videos by popularity (i.e., total page views), but ultimately it is an inelegant display of what Janet Murray characterizes as the digital medium's "encyclopedic affordance" (66). The only practical work-around the Game Grumps channel affords is the organization of videos by series, and even then we are denied any convenient, intuitive means of "segmentation" (Murray, 69) by which to parse out the videos' contents.
The relatively cluttered nature of the Game Grumps oeuvre is endemic of its fan-culture as well. While Youtube provides subscribers with means of commenting on videos, the more popular method for fans to make themselves heard is through the Game Grumps Subreddit. This message board-style sub-domain allows users the means of aggregating all pertinent subjects (updates, discussions, tangential news and media) into a single database. It's still not an ideal solution to the Game Grumps infrastructure: the popularity-based and chronological sorting of topics eschews centralized organization, a la Murray's concept of intellectual access (69-70).
While distinct moments can be difficult to parse out by means of the Game Grumps channel's encyclopedic structure, they are instead readily and frequently held aloft by the fan-base via a memetic feedback loop. Though thee playlist style organization of the Game Grumps channel makes it difficult for select moments to stand out, the capability of Youtube users to form their own customized playlists ensures that there is never a shortage of "The Best of Game Grumps." Some fans go even further, editing out the precise moments in question into home-brewed highlight reels.
All this fan-based tabulation and quantification of the Game Grumps catalog plays into another of Murray's four affordances, that of the participatory aspect. The entire Game Grump endeavor is indicative of Murray's observation of "the exponential explosion of user-generated and self-published content, often indexed by other participants. (58)" Game Grumps participation is also inherently ingrained in what another author, Lev Manovich, characterized as the principles of modularity and variability. The capability of users to manipulate the digitally modular nature of Game Grumps videos results in a widening variety of potential viewer experiences (Manovich, 30), ranging from those aforementioned playlists and highlight reels to even more ambitious endeavors.
Two of the most prolific offshoots of the Game Grumps fan-culture are that of the remix and the animation. Utilizing commercial software like Flash and various music synthesizing programs, fans can reassemble all their favorite Game Grumps moments into cartoons and songs; and whereas Murray's affordances bring with them the potential to impede narrative, the utilization of Manovich's principles here see the exact opposite occur. Through short fan-made animations, the anecdotal nature of the Game Grumps format is supplied with a new narrative context. Elsewhere, one can find instances like the second Triforce collaboration, a musical project by three popular remix artists that serves as a retrospective tribute both to their own songs and to the Jon Jafari-era of Game Grumps' run.
Game Grumps' variability, its adaptability to however one wishes to view it, has seen it embraced by millions online. As impressive as those numbers I listed at the very beginning may seem, they almost certainly fail to capture the true reach and influence of the Game Grumps subculture. Unlike the stricter definition of variability put forth by Manovich, which posits any potential changes made by the viewer as stemming from the conscious allowance of the creator (44), with Game Grumps we see the viewership taking control into its own hands, in effect equating themselves with the likes of Hanson and Co. who are further co-opting and recontextualizing the games they play on their show.
Two of the most prolific offshoots of the Game Grumps fan-culture are that of the remix and the animation. Utilizing commercial software like Flash and various music synthesizing programs, fans can reassemble all their favorite Game Grumps moments into cartoons and songs; and whereas Murray's affordances bring with them the potential to impede narrative, the utilization of Manovich's principles here see the exact opposite occur. Through short fan-made animations, the anecdotal nature of the Game Grumps format is supplied with a new narrative context. Elsewhere, one can find instances like the second Triforce collaboration, a musical project by three popular remix artists that serves as a retrospective tribute both to their own songs and to the Jon Jafari-era of Game Grumps' run.
Game Grumps' variability, its adaptability to however one wishes to view it, has seen it embraced by millions online. As impressive as those numbers I listed at the very beginning may seem, they almost certainly fail to capture the true reach and influence of the Game Grumps subculture. Unlike the stricter definition of variability put forth by Manovich, which posits any potential changes made by the viewer as stemming from the conscious allowance of the creator (44), with Game Grumps we see the viewership taking control into its own hands, in effect equating themselves with the likes of Hanson and Co. who are further co-opting and recontextualizing the games they play on their show.