Angry Video Game Nerd: Complete Retrospective
Prologue
Prologue
Anyone who was in the world of gaming on the internet in the late 2000s/early 2010s is aware of the Angry Video Game Nerd. Independent filmmaker James Rolfe trailblazed both retro gaming and online video content with his foul-mouthed reviews of games from the 80s and 90s. In a brand new space mostly filled with people rambling in front of webcams (or at the zoo) or posting ten-second videos of their cats, Angry Video Game Nerd stood apart as something special - a show with (relatively) high production values, and a unique and entertaining formula that could only be done on the internet.
YouTube was such a new medium at the time that no one really knew what to make of it. Unlike today, no one really intended to be a YouTuber. There was no money to be made, so there was no career to aspire to. Instead, most people saw it as a stepping stone to something bigger; a potential springboard into a career in music, film, or television. While nowadays it is possible to turn YouTube into a career, it remains notoriously difficult to translate YouTube popularity into success in traditional media. While a handful of people did get their foot in the door, the results were very mixed and almost always petered out (with some exceptions, of course). Freddie Wong, co-owner of what was once the 5th most-subscribed YouTube channel of all time, has stated that film executives simply don't care about view counts on social media. If you didn't make anyone any money, and you didn't win anyone any awards, you're just some guy on that website their kid watches. It's a sobering thought if you ever poured your heart and soul into YouTube hoping it would lead to something bigger than... YouTube.
Rolfe has made it very clear that he sees himself as a filmmaker first and foremost, and I think that makes sense. Any gamer could have ranted about the NES on YouTube, but it took someone with training and experience in filmmaking to turn that into the entertainment juggernaut of AVGN.
As an independent filmmaker, Rolfe was very prolific. By his own count, prior to the first AVGN episode, he had created a whopping 113 films. You might be wondering how that's even physically possible, how can you create that much work by your mid-20s? Well, Rolfe's definition of "film" is relatively loose, including everything from heavily produced short films to 60-second goofs. This list would later include every episode of AVGN, movie reviews for Spike TV, and other assorted videos for his YouTube channel. Ironically, Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie, his only (relatively) high-budget, feature-length film, only occupies one spot on the list, taking up no more space than "Lloyd Kaufman interview" and "Top 20 Urkel Moments".
As a tech nerd, I'd be lying if I said I didn't admire Rolfe's dedication to record keeping, but even he acknowledged that at a certain point - especially after becoming a YouTuber - the classification of "film" had become too arbitrary and had lost its meaning. In some ways, this is understandable, but in other ways it's a little sad. It comes across as an acknowledgement that a lot the items on the list probably don't count. Depending on how much you agree with Rolfe's original definition of "film", he's made anywhere from 500+ films to just 1. And considering his decision to stop tracking this list at all, it seems even he's no longer sure how many films he's really made.
So why am I bringing all of this up? Well, most people will acknowledge that AVGN's golden era was some time around 2007-2012. The exact years may shift around depending on the person, but most people agree the series eventually went downhill. During the production of Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie (2012-2014), Rolfe acknowledged that whatever episodes he made in that time would be "shittier" to keep his mind focused on the movie, but looking back those episodes are still quintessentially the Nerd. There was a point long after the film was completed that the series backslid considerably into mediocrity, where it continues to shuffle along to this day. Much like The Simpsons, everyone seems to know it's not what it used to be, yet it manages to maintain just enough viewership to keep the operation sustainable, so it continues on.
Rolfe's relationship with the series appears to be a tricky one. He knows the series is popular, and therefore continues to make it, but if you listen to him talk about it, there are suggestions that not only is it something he's not particularly passionate about, he may have never really cared for it to begin with.
In Cinemassacre 200, a career retrospective released in 2008, Rolfe only devotes about 30 seconds to mentioning the Angry Video Game Nerd. At the time, this seemed fair enough; AVGN was only a few years old, he was introducing us to a lot of his life's work most of us had never seen, and the sky was the limit as far as the future of his career. However, nearly 15 years later in his autobiography, A Movie Making Nerd, he still devotes only a handful of pages to what the majority of his audience know him best for.
Probably the most damning evidence is an early production vlog for the movie from 2011. At a certain point he starts talking about how surprised he is that AVGN has lasted as long as it has, saying the series was supposed to only be a trilogy, but that he was "talked into" a fourth episode. Since they remained popular, "[he] was like, okay fine" and made a fifth episode (the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles episode) which blew up, and then the next thing he knew, he'd made over 100 episodes. This portrays him as a kind of reluctant hero, that he himself had no desire to continue AVGN, instead only doing it because it happened to be so popular. Additionally, he says after doing 100 episodes, it's become "harder and harder to keep them fresh", and that he was "pretty much happy to stop there". This video is over 10 years old and AVGN is still running.
There's a persistent rumor that Rolfe had hoped to springboard out of AVGN with the release of the movie, but that his plan was denied due to its generally lukewarm reception, and that upon realizing he was back where he started, destined to make AVGN for the rest of his life, he checked out and hired a team (specifically Screenwave Media) to make the episodes for him, for which he's now just a glorified actor/presenter for. Given the context, it's not a story that's hard to believe, and could explain the drop in quality a few years after the movie (Rolfe has denied this rumor for the record).
I want to make it clear that there's nothing wrong with being burned out, or growing tired of something, or of hiring on help, or of your true passions not being your day job. However, there is something fascinating about such a groundbreaking and influential series being made by someone who may have been looking for a way out the entire time. It's ironic that someone who seems to have had his sights set much higher ended up inspiring a whole generation of people to do exactly what he was doing. This retrospective intends to explore that juxtaposition, as well examining when the cracks may have started to appear, and when (if ever) you can start to feel someone else's hands on the wheel. Of course, we'll likely never know for sure the answers to any of those (much of it is subjective after all), but by diving deep into the show and its surrounding media, we may be able to get a pretty good idea.
Season 1 (2006) Retrospective coming soon...
Goin' Flipmode!