There’s always going to be this time– this moment, where you have to watch The YouTube Video, you know, the one everyone is going to talk about? Maybe your friends just ascended some tower of babel without you and now they only speak in tongues? You don’t want to stay out of the loop right? You can’t even afford to! Well, after spending 4+ hours on The Video, you’re going to have to cleanse your soul as well as your algorithm. This is good, and normal for a healthy social life to be a ‘part of the conversation’, of course Youtube knows that and would LOVE to plunder your watch retention for it. 

So here’s what I did across 2023: since you gotta have safe pockets of YouTube just for you, I curated a list of my favorite videos from this year that will make you vaguely untrackable to YouTube’s suggestions while still letting you keep your dignity and learn some new stuff along the way!

I NEED MY CURRENT ALGORITHM DESTROYED RIGHT NOW AND I DON’T CARE THE PERSONAL COST

Are you absolutely sure? I understand. Very well. This will take 20 minutes in total, and you may find it unpleasant or even grotesque. It may alter reality around you for a short period of time.

You can even Like these videos and it’ll distract your algo for a short time. Between these four videos you can start to have a full palate cleanse as long as you don’t follow them deeper down the rabbit holes they occupy…

Wait, I kinda want to fall down that last video’s hole, that was nice…

So now that YouTube thinks you are some kind of starving Etsy shitposter, you can start molding your new personality for YouTube. Since we are force-choking YouTube’s algo for the time being, the deeper we go down any of our manually chosen holes, the more breathing-room we have when we want to return to idle browsing later. So let’s go down the deepest side of the crafting hole in a way that distracts and excites. I don’t necessarily know why these got big during 2023, but here we are flirting with DIY YouTube and Adam Savage’s side of the algo! Let’s pretend like we are bettering ourselves for a few hours.

The algorithm currently thinks I’m a girl and I need it to think I’m a guy; for reasons.

You want to be careful here because YouTube’s (and any media platform’s) algorithm is deeply engendered along the binary. However, the lack-of-binary can push you into other holes that you may not have intended; which it’s fine if you want to end up on queer, trans, enby or robot YouTube, but there are much more direct ways to flag your YouTube as queer, trans, NB or bot than this – you gotta pretend that YouTube is a cis dude who read Judith Butler and is now kinda being a know-it-all prick about gender essentialism. Here’s some videos that will allow us to take a subtle approach at ‘masculinity’ and go to interesting places while we do.

Your algo will think you are a 40-50yo straight dude and on top of that you’ll have a working historical knowledge of James Earl Jones and the Atlanta Falcons for your next dinner table conversation. You’re welcome.

Please, I beg you, the opposite of that! Make my (YouTube algorithm) ass into a girl!

Okay now YouTube thinks I’m the ultimate supergender of all femme-masc-ness with a penchant for woodworking and I need chaos to wash it all away again!

I don’t have time to WATCH something because I’m at work. What can I play in the background if I just want noise or new music?

So when I’m at work, I need long videos because for some reason YouTube when in the background starts skipping and refreshing 3 seconds into any new video that is loaded, so playlists are right out for me. Here’s some strange funky playlist videos from 2023 that will put you in charge of YouTube.

Note: Watching videos titled in language different from your primary language helps strip certain country identifiers from your algo. Which can be difficult since I can’t just type in “Vietnamese music playlist” in English to get there, but I can use the YT Recs to access those with enough massaging. It’s a delicate dance.

Mood playlists getting popular weirds me out because of how YT tries to use that to track someone’s mood, but we can easily play into that too.

Well that all sure seemed like way too much work for just watching a fun hbomberguy video, but thanks I guess?

Again, if you don’t, you’ll end up with a twee dude’s livestream showing you his cringiest influencer TikToks while selling his cheap print-on-demand shirt brand; the lowest circle, as I recall Dante wrote.

Solon is the ex-video boy of Gamesline, and one half of the Grindr Bois. He’s escaped containment and fled to become a games infomaniac and is now getting a Master’s in Library Science. You can always find him on Twitch at twitch.tv/chorbySP. The Gamesline-to-Postgrad Pipeline Grows.

The post Solon’s Top 30ish Youtube Videos of 2023 For Purging My Algorithm After Accidentally Watching A 4hr Video Essay About Youtube Drama appeared first on Gamesline.

Anthony Fantano, the Internet’s Busiest Music Nerd, has gotten entangled in a court case with Activision over a popular meme audio he created. The audio, in which he shouts that there’s too many slices of pizza, was uploaded to Tik Tok’s audio library and was used by thousands for memes, but Activision used it for an ad promoting the new Crash Bandicoot party game. Fantano threatened legal action, and Activision answered similarly. This raises the question of if Fantano uploading the audio to the audio library meant brands and companies could use it as well without financial compensation.

Yuka Kitamura, composer of FromSoftware titles such as Bloodborne, Sekiro, and Elden Ring, has left the company. She will now be working as a freelance composer.

Labor’s Continued Struggles

Kickstarter has updated their AI use policy. Now, if a “creator” uses AI in their project, they must attribute how they used AI, and that will be listed on the project’s page.

eBay has been charged with refusing to recognize the union TCGPlayer, the card sale website they bought in 2022, voted to form earlier this year.

Last week, Project Moon of Limbus Company fame ended the contract of one of their artists due to threats levied by right wing incels. Now, the CEO of the company, Kim Jihoon, spoke on Twitter, saying that anyone who claims the firing was unjust will be met with potential legal action.

Anita Sarkeesian’s Feminist Frequency project, in which common tropes in media was criticized from a feminist viewpoint, is shutting down after fifteen years. While often surface level and not without faults in its critique, Feminist Frequency’s Tropes vs Women in Games series did usher in a variety of new voices into games criticism, and changed the landscape of video games forever.

More Standard Game Announcements

Treasure’s beloved SHMUP Radiant Silvergun is coming to Steam on August 18th.

Nintendo rumors abound, one big and one small. The small one first, as LEGO is seemingly gearing up to announce some Animal Crossing sets in the near future.

As for the big rumor, the next Nintendo console is supposedly gearing up for announcement. Prominent leakers are saying the new console will be similar to the Switch, with an eight inch LCD screen and 512GB internal memory. Backwards compatibility with the Switch is still up in the air, but said leakers are claiming it will release sometime late in 2024.

And hey, it’s Evo right now, so we’ll tell you more fighting game news next week. The one thing that got in under the door was Under Night In-Birth 2 Sys:Celes, the full sequel to French Bread’s non-Melty Blood hit.

The post The Bulletin: Practice What You Preach appeared first on Gamesline.

It’s time again to sit down and talk about the week in Video Games. This week, John is joined by Maverick to talk about how they’ve both been playing Pizza Tower. John’s also been playing more Sakuna: of Rice and Ruin while Maverick has been digging in to Evil West and Like a Dragon: Ishin. In the news, a game development fund was created to help European game developers and Itch.io has put together a Trans Witches bundle for charity. The Hoyoverse cut ties with voice actor Elliott Gindi after multiple allegations of grooming, while Final Fantasy XIV is being asked to remove one of their cash shop outfits by the Sami people due to it’s cultural significance. We also got a trailer for Tetris and news that Youtube’s CEO is stepping down and if there is an e3 this year, Ubisoft is going to be there.

As always, you can support us on our Patreon, and follow us on Twitter @VGChooChoo,  @john_michonski, and @Mavsplainiamania

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Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real.

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Kritiqal has helped organize the Trans Witches are Witches games bundle on Itch.io, comprising of various magic and/or magically-themed LGBTQ+ games, zines, and music.

Writer Caroline Delbert has been organizing a compilation of all types of games that have magic or magical themes in them.

A group of European games professional have launched the Gamedev Fund, a fund that hopes to support local games makers.

A couple of episodic series are set to be produced based on the Roblox games Creatures of Sonaria and the Twilight Daycare Series. Wind Sun Sky Entertainment is set to create the adaptations with Productivity Media, an entertainment company based in Canada.

Dead Island 2 is apparently real, and is coming out much earlier than anticipated—despite the fact that its release was already delayed several times prior.

Ubisoft claims that they intend on being present at E3 2023. According to CEO Yves Guillemot, the company intends on attending in-person. Guillemot suggests that the company’s recent shakeups were simply the result of the overwhelming amount of projects that were being developed all at once.  Last month, Ubisoft Paris employees were calling for a strike against Guillemot for constantly shifting the blame of the company’s shortcomings.

A new trailer has been released for Apple TV+’s Tetris, a biopic loosely based on the legal battles that surrounded the game of the same name during the Cold War. The film stars Taron Egerton as Henk Rogers, one of the key figures behind securing Tetris’ distribution and licensing. Rogers today manages The Tetris Company.

YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki is stepping down from her position. Neal Mohan, the company’s current Chief Product Officer, will be rising up to take over Wojicicki’s position as the new CEO. Last week, YouTube contractors went on strike in protest against policy mandating that employees must return to the work in-person by the Alphabet company.

The Saami Council, a voluntary NGO made up of several Sámi member organizations representing various countries, is requesting that Square Enix remove a character costume that they allege is inspired by elements of Sámi traditional clothing.

Following allegations of sexual misconduct and predatory behavior, Hoyoverse has cut ties with voice actor Elliot Gindi. Gindi was voicing the character Tighnari in Genshin Impact. Hoyoverse will be reacasting the role due to what they official describe as Gindi’s “breach of conduct”.

Prepping for the game’s physical release, the Japanese edition of Cuphead will feature stunning artwork by Yoshitaka Amano that reinterprets the game’s cast in his signature artstyle for the DLC soundtrack. 

https://twitter.com/StudioMDHR/status/1625918015995879424

The post The Bulletin: Building Blox appeared first on Gamesline.

Here’s the full Direct if you just want to watch!

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom got a new trailer, which showed off more enemies and vehicles, but not much else. It releases May 12th, and will also be the first Nintendo Switch game to…sigh….be $70.

Pikmin 4‘s trailer revealed the new Hocotatians you’ll play as, the new Ice Pikmin, and an adorable dog-like creature that’ll help you on your quest for riches. The title releases July 21st.

Splatoon 3 is getting an expansion pass. The first wave will allow you to return to Inkopolis from the first Splatoon, letting you shop at the old stores as well. Wave two will introduce what seems to be a new story called Side Order.

Game Boy and Game Boy Advance games were added to Switch Online. Original Game Boy and Game Boy Color will be available to all Switch Online subscribers, but Game Boy Advance is only available for Expansion Pass subs. You’ll have to pay extra for Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga.

A remaster of the original Metroid Prime dropped on the eshop right after the Direct. It may say it’s a remaster, but many people are thinking this may be a full remake, with new visuals and engine effects. A physical release is coming February 22nd.

The Xenoblade 3 expansion pass has been fully detailed, with the final new hero, Masha, arriving on February 15th. Later this year, part four will release, which is a new story that stars Shulk, Rex, and other characters from the past games.

Fashion Dreamer is a new fashion design title by the creators of the Style Savvy games. No idea why Nintendo isn’t just publishing this but hey, it’s Style Savvy in all but name.

Ghost Trick is getting a modern port. This will also be available on Sony and Microsoft consoles as well as PC this Summer.

We Love Katamari is getting the Reroll treatment, dropping a remaster of the beloved second game in the series June 2nd. There will also be a new mode called Royal Reverie where you can play as a younger King of All Cosmos. This will also be available on all other consoles.

Level-5 is back from their hiatus, announcing three titles in one Direct! The first was a new IP, DECAPOLICE, in which you solve mysteries and otherwise perform police duties (the fictional good kind, for what it’s worth). They also announced a new Fantasy Life, Fantasy Life i: The Girl who Steals Time. Both of these titles are due this year. Finally, a new Professor Layton game was teased, Professor Layton and the New World of Steam. No release date there, but it’s fantastic to see our favorite top hat gentleman return.

Advance Wars 1+2: ReBoot Camp has a release date of April 21st. Previously delayed due to the Ukraine war, hopefully it releases and there aren’t any other historical events that run into its release. Again.

The first details of the Mario Kart 8 Deluxe DLC’s fourth wave are here, and it will include a Yoshi’s Island course and the addition of Birdo as a playable character. Every time I (John) think of Birdo I just hear the audio clips from Mario Advance. This truly will be as far as I go.

Fire Emblem Engage‘s DLC was also detailed, with new Emblems Soren, Hector, and Camilla released now and Chrom/Robin and Veronica coming in wave three. Wave four will include a new story, “Fell Xenologue”.

Etrian Odyssey‘s first three entries are getting HD remasters, all releasing on June 1st for Switch and Steam. They will be $40 each or $80 for all three, and preordering the games will get you Shin Megami Tensei-related character portraits for each game.

Both Baten Kaitos games, deckbuilding RPGs for GameCube by MonolithSoft, are getting remasters for Switch. These remasters are pretty standard fare, with updated graphics and new battle functions, but not much else. This bundle will release this Summer.

Samba de Amigo is back with Party Central, allowing for the Switch Joycons to be used as maracas for rhythm fun. It’ll be out sometime this Summer.

The newest Mickey Mouse and co. game, Disney Illusion Island, will release July 28th. 

The remaster of Kirby’s Return to Dreamland, the lesser-known Kirby title for the Wii, has a demo available now. There is also a new Magalor focused epilogue and new mini-games. The game launches February 24th.

TRON: Identity, an narrative puzzler set in the TRON universe by Bithell Games, releases in April.

There were more tidbits in the Direct, but for now let’s move on…

In other news…

YouTube contractors in Texas went on strike in protest of a policy requiring a mandatory return and reporting back to in-office work. Workers allege that Alphabet, YouTube’s parent company, have recently tried to reinforce the policy as a union busting tactic.

The Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States (SEC) is fining Activision-Blizzard due to its failing to disclose the issues of workplace sexual harassment to its investors, hopping in on the train of now more than a handful of government agents still taking legal action against the company. The SEC notes that the company failed to properly report and collect information on instances of workplace issues, which is deemed necessary to disclose to certain parties.

In a continuing string of the sunsetting of several games, Knockout City will be shutting down this coming June. However, there are at least intentions of a private-server version of the game to be released some time after.

CrossfireX servers will be shutting down in a much earlier time in mid-May. The Xbox Store has started halting purchases and providing refunds associated with the game.

Turtle Rock Studios has also ended Back 4 Blood’s string of post-launch content hopping on to focus on their next title.

Square Enix is apparently not doing so hot financially, citing their numbers of the previous fiscal year starting in mid-2022. Sales of games failed to reach numbers on part of the year prior, which also overlapped with the recent decline of mobile game use.

Meanwhile, Dwarf Fortress is popping off, and developer Bay 12 Games is celebrating the game’s latest, fantastic earnings report by finally considering the hiring of another person on the team. Bay 12 has been primarily ran by brothers Tarn and Zach Adams for years, powered by the donations of a dedicated playerbase that supported the original game.

Friend of the site Food4Dogs will be starting to take it easy on her video output in order to take care and prioritize her health. We wish her all the best! You can listen to our Starlight Car interview with Food4Dogs here.

The post The Bulletin: The Latest Nintendo Direct and More appeared first on Gamesline.

The big talk of the tabletop roleplaying games scene has potentially put the Dungeons & Dragons brand name in big trouble: A leak of a new draft of the Open Game License (OGL) has received widespread negative response and controversy due to the constraining and potentially damaging impact on tabletop games creators due to its terms and conditions. The OGL is a copyright document by D&D IP holder, Wizards of the Coast, that is referenced by many developers and designers to grant permissions to modify and redistribute content of their IP. The wider legal implications of this OGL draft—and how this can negatively impact third-party developers and even content unrelated to Wizards’ own IP—is better explained by a lawyer Noah Downs in layman’s terms here. An official statement in response to the backlash by DND Beyond Staff has officially been published as of today.

Various publishers and competitors to Wizards’ brand have swiftly responded to the OGL leak with their own intentions of dropping OGL projects and creating new games systems based on less binding and non-restrictive game licenses. Publisher Kobold Press’s website has been crashing due to increased interest after the announcement of a project they are currently calling “Black Flag”. Paizo, known for publishing Pathfinder, a direct competitor that originally spawned from Dungeons and Dragons to begin with, has announced a new, system neutral open gaming license. Many have canceled their subscriptions to the D&D Beyond platform, potentially further delaying and causing Wizards’ representatives to scramble over their next move. Wizards of the Coast has been a subsidiary of Hasbro since 1999.

After wrapping up the previous year and reviewing their financial goals, Ubisoft has decided to cancel three previously unannounced projects and is once again, delaying their pirate game, Skull and Bones. Again. They’re delaying it again for the sixth time.

Studio head of Amazon’s gaming division, John Smedley, is making his exit from the company. His leave is possibly attributed to the studio’s ongoing struggles, such as MMORPG New World’s shaky launch.

The 20th Super MAGFest has wrapped up last weekend, and anyone who attended is urged to fill in the show’s designated self-reporting form if they have found themselves COVID-19 positive. Respondents’ personal information will not be shared, but they may receive follow-up questions to inform the appropriate community members and other attendees. MAGStock, a spin on the festival as an outdoor, camping event, is currently still slated to take place on June 8-11, 2023 in Darlington, Maryland.

Xbox is set to roll out a more “carbon aware” power setting on the next major update of Xbox Series consoles.

A new trailer was released for the Dead Space remake.

Bloober Team assures everyone that their own Silent Hill 2 remake is going to be A-ok! When the initial teaser for the remake in development was first released, many viewers already raised concerns about Bloober’s potential direction with the game.

YouTube’s latest profanity policy seems to have taken a bigger, stricter crackdown on cursing across the board.

As of this week, Steam has broken its own records by hitting 10 million concurrent in-game users that were active at a time.

Physical games sales went well in Japan in 2022, while the opposite is true for Europe, in which sales in both the console and PC markets were down.

On the other hand, Pokémon continues to consistently build its own numbers, and the Official Pokémon YouTube channel is celebrating by releasing a video commemorating the franchise’s official milestone in hitting over one thousand Pokémon! Feel old and overwhelmed all at once:

The post The Bulletin: Rolling a Critical Failure appeared first on Gamesline.

The Starlight Express rolls back into the station after a long ride away. Don’t worry, the Starlight Car is still open and Scott B is still manning the bar. Scott is joined in the parlor by John Michonski to talk to Food4Dogs about getting into Youtube much later than everyone else, embracing imperfection in your own work, and, of course, the Playstation Vita. You can find her channel at youtube.com/smillasmum and on Twitter @Food4Dogs.

The theme for Starlight Car is a “Super Chill Remix” of Aquamarine by Magic Circuit, which is available off their newest self-titled album, Magic Circuit. You can follow them at @magic_circuit on twitter for more details.

You can subscribe to the Starlight Car on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, and Pocket Casts.

The post Starlight Car Episode 5: PS Vita with Food4Dogs appeared first on Gamesline.

Support us on Patreon! Follow us on twitter @VGChooChoo, @john_michonski, @horngal, @YourPalNiall, and @solonface, and don’t forget to rate & review the show on iTunes, as well as tell a friend! You can also send questions, comments, and concerns to podcast@videogamechoochoo.com or find us on Tumblr! You can also join our Discord channel at thegamezone.zone!

Our theme song is “Crush” by Melt Channel, from the album Magic is Real.

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The post VGCC Episode 243: SUPER COCAINE appeared first on Gamesline.

But now, due to Nintendo’s new policy, a major sea-change is approaching that will affect the YouTube gaming spaces in interesting ways. In their blog post titled: “Nintendo Game Content Guidelines for Online Video & Image Sharing Platforms”, Nintendo is dropping their Nintendo “Creators” program in favor of an approach that allows anybody to “monetize your videos and channels using the monetization methods separately specified by Nintendo…. We encourage you to create videos that include your creative input and commentary.” So anybody interested in sharing gameplay of Nintendo games new and old are now free to do so without Nintendo’s lawyers breathing down your neck!

There are, of course, caveats to this that say that they will continue to defend their games from things like people leaking gameplay footage from games before their release date, footage that comes from “pirated” Nintendo games, and among other things this will probably apply to gameplay footage used for the express purpose of uploading the games’ soundtracks. This is especially interesting the week before their biggest release of the year, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Over the last three days, Nintendo has brought the hammer down on many YouTube channels posting the game’s soundtrack through leaked copies of the game, permanently banning them from posting on YouTube’s platform.

I’m really surprised Nintendo made this decision, I never thought I’d see the day you could freely monetize Nintendo let’s plays. I wonder why they made the change?

— Chip Cheezum (@ChipCheezum) November 29, 2018

Previously, Nintendo had a program for content creators that you could apply for if you were above a certain level of popularity, where select people were allowed to monetize clips of their Nintendo gameplay under a similar set of rules, but now they are opening that ability to anybody. This new set of guidelines is out of character for Nintendo, who rarely loosen their ironfisted grip on controlling who gets to make things from Nintendo’s games, but it makes sense due to the Nintendo Switch’s simple video and image sharing capabilities now causing more video footage of their games being made then they are able to control.

What interests me the most is that these changes will undoubtedly cause a large increase of players sharing gameplay from Nintendo games in ways that could sustain them financially, as opposed to only a select few being able to make money while playing Nintendo games. Those few that were in the original creators program, folks like PeanutButterGamer and TheJWittz, may also take a hit from increasing competition over the coming months, so we’ll see how that shakes out. Personally, I’m so excited for this news and have been waiting for them to change their archaic stance on policing games footage for years. I’ve spent hours upon hours of time fighting with YouTube to allow me to monetize my creative work, that this feels like hundreds of pounds has been lifted off my shoulders and the shoulders of so many people who just want to share their favorite games with friends and the public at large.

Anyways, I’m off to go “appeal the rejected copyright disputes of a 50+ part Let’s Play series” as the kids would say these days, so I’ll talk to you later!

The post Nintendo Allows YouTube Monetization On Gameplay Footage appeared first on Gamesline.

The press release details that although some of these influencers did indeed make mention of the sponsorship, it was often placed beneath YouTube’s “Show More” cut, thus hiding it from plain view and eliminating the disclosure completely when the video was reposted on other sites such as Twitter or Facebook. In addition, the deal with Warner Bros. prevented YouTubers from mentioning anything negative about the game such as bugs or glitches, and made all videos subject to marketing pre-approval.

According to a proposed FTC order, companies like Warner Bros. will no longer be able to “[fail] to make such disclosures” in order to prevent the “[misrepresentation] that sponsored content, including gameplay videos, are the objective, independent opinions of video game enthusiasts or influencers.” Jessica Rich, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, stated that “Consumers have the right to know if reviewers are providing their own opinions or paid sales pitches,” which forms the backbone of most of the complaints launched at Warner Bros.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with an Internet personality being paid to advertise a product – after all, where would we be without celebrity endorsement? However, such sponsored advertising should be made more clear, especially when there’s little genuine opinion to be found. Recently we’ve seen a larger FTC crackdown on misleading YouTube promotions, so hopefully such neglectful practices will eventually be phased out.

The post Warner Bros Paid YouTubers For Positive Reviews appeared first on Gamesline.