VG Riffers (The Video Game Riffers) is a YouTube community-based showcase of something that's saturating the YouTube community enough as is. We're just finally catching up with the rest of the world...
Actually, we're doing something we've wanted to do for a long time. The internet has showcased such eCelebrities as 'The Angry Video Game Nerd' and the serial 'Awesome Video Games'. YouTube has gone the extra step by turning thousands of savant and talented individuals (read:nerds with too much time on their hands) into vloggers who want the world to watch them play video games. This project will be something like that. However, the focus won't be so much showing how to play through a video game (walkthroughs) or giving an annoying and biased opinion on every game (reviews), but rather, a satirical, cynical... RIFFING version of the games. The clips will most likely resemble the other videos out there--Screengrabbed-video captures of the games with recorded over voice-overs. We're separating our videos in the following ways. We, at present, have two different types of videos to post:
VGR Reviews: 'Wait a minute,' you think to yourself as you read that subheading. 'Didn't you just say you were going to be DIFFERENT? Why, that's nothing new! Why, in my day...(etc.etc.etc.)' Well, what can I say, except... if you could shut your trap (er, your thoughts) for just a minute, I'll explain...
Indeed, they will be reviews. However, they are only called reviews because, honestly, I'm 'reviewing' the game, not to give an opinion on whether or not you should play it yourself. The whole purpose of VG Riffers is to be cynical and satirical. Riffing, for those not familiar with the term, has been adopted as the act of making fun of something, ala Mystery Science Theater 3000. Those familiar enough with the website rifftrax.com will acknowledge that even a really good movie can be hilarious when you poke fun at it. Bascially, these 'reviews' will not focus so much as a comparison of the good and the bad, the true opinions of the gamer, but will be making fun of what's going on, as if the person commenting on the video were also watching exactly what you were watching, as if it were a television program or a movie...
How will the video be put together? For the most part, it will just be various clips throughout the game. If the game were an adventure or RPG, it would no doubt be a taped-together excerpt of the plot-relevant points that the player would encounter. (Anyone who owns the movie Final Fantasy: Advent Children will be familiar with what I'm talking about, as the DVD selection 'Reminiscence of Final Fantasy' will resemble what we're doing). Given the length of the game, the number of clips may vary in number. Though the videos will be kept to a maximum of 10 minutes, some games may have more videos than others. One would assume that the length of, say, any given modern RPG (broadcasting a play time of 80+ hours) would have more video clips than, say, A Boy And His Blob (Ask your parents, kids--or, on second thought, just wiki it.) Obviously, side-scrollers (such as Boy + Blob) and Arcade-style games would be a rarity on this project, as it's hard to find new material with redundant missions and just doing the same ol thing over and over for 3 hours.
VGR Feature: These will be more rare than the Reviews. That's because there will be a lot more involved in putting them together. See, a Feature would resemble more to a movie. In fact, the VGR Features to come will actually be pretty close to a Video Game version of MST3K. The clips will be the same length, but there will be many more than one would expect from a basic review. In addition, the Features will oftentimes have guest riffers, sitting along and poking fun at the games. Since this will be a bit more in-depth over the Reviews, we're still finding out ways and coming up with ideas that would make the Features that much more special. Stay Tuned for updates.
We're expecting to punch out about 3 or 4 reviews in short order, so it will take a little while before we can actually put anything up. In addition, because of a certain hardware situation, the Features cannot be compiled as of yet. We'll be handling reviews until we've taken care of it, but that shouldn't be too much of an issue.
We'll try to update this blog every week or so for the first month until we get a schedule set down and decided what games are coming first. After all, we'll have to basically play through the entire game to capture the video before we can review. We're pretty busy people here just with our everyday lives, so the process may be a little slower in coming than for others. But we're going to do what we can.
Thanks for visiting and please stay tuned and informed as we fire up this project!
