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Once upon a time, gamers looked to traditional print reviews to help them decide whether or not they should buy a game, but in the past decade or so this has changed massively.
Once upon a time, gamers looked to traditional print reviews to help them decide whether or not they should buy a game, but in the past decade or so this has changed massively. These days, one prime source of information about upcoming or just released games are Let’s Play videos, where someone plays the game in question for a throng of avid viewers.
But as well as information, Let’s Plays also offer serious entertainment value as reactions to horror games likeand Five Nights at Freddy’s give viewers something to laugh at. Meanwhile, games likeand Grand Theft Auto 5 give viewers something to talk about, as they discuss their latest builds or the ridiculous antics that they recently got up to in Los Santos.
Swedish YouTuber PewDiePie (real name Felix Kjellberg) is one such person who has built his success on the popularity of Let’s Play videos. In the five years that his channel has been up and running, PewDiePie has played everything from the impossibly difficult app Flappy Bird , EA’s skateboarding sim Skate 3 , and the nightmare-inducing Slenderman: The Video Game . His channel currently has over 39 million subscribers while his Twitter account has over 6 million followers, suggesting that people are interested in the man himself as much as his humorous gaming reactions.
Today we made history! 10 billion views! THIS IS INSANE. Thank you all so much! Kisses pic.twitter.com/L3Td2HMX4N
— Felix Kjellberg (@pewdiepie) September 6, 2015With figures like that, it should come as no surprise to hear that PewDiePie has today made history as the first YouTuber ever to have passed 10 billion video views. Some of the biggest contributors to this figure include “Harlem Shake FAIL” where PewDiePie attempts to take part in the Harlem Shake dance trend, “WORLDS MOST OFFENSIVE GAME?” in which he plays Cards of Humanity , and there are also several Funny Gaming Moments montages in which PewDiePie has just handpicked some of the funniest clips from his videos.
In addition to a legion of fans, PewDiePie has also amassed some serious revenue. In 2014 he made $7.45 million from his videos, with advertisers paying big bucks to get their wares featured on his channel. Additionally, PewDiePie has been called one of the most influential people on the Internet(right up there with President Barack Obama), he has released his own mobile game Legend of Brofist and he’s raised money for charity including a campaign for Charity Water that raised $446,000.
However, although most YouTubers would be reveling in all of this success, PewDiePie’s previous statements suggest that the popularity isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Last year PewDiePie was forced to disable commentson all of his videos due to many comments being spam and self-promotion, and, as he’s so central to YouTube, people ask “why is he so big?” and sometimes he wishes that he just had “something like 5 million subscribers” instead. Nonetheless, he’s unlikely to fade into obscurity any time soon so dealing with the pressures of fame and keeping those 39 million subscribers captivated will pose serious challenges for the YouTuber going forward.
Source: PewDiePie on YouTube