Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Video streaming sites actually ruining the Reviewaverse? (AKA my written plea to Blip and YouTube)

No storyline today, I'm here to do something a bit more serious.

Adapting for survival is the key to a good business, But with YouTube (in some recent cases Blip) It's all worth it to shoot themselves in the foot, and the only way their going to learn is the Hard way. This is going to be shorter than usual, so bear with me.


So I started Blogging in November of 2011, Oh what humble beginnings they were, I started text reviewing in February 2012. I never really started a review show, but I do treat my blogs as such. If I were to start now, I'd be late to the bandwagon. Come to think of it, I'm late to the reviewing bandwagon as well. That brings me up to the subject, Are sites like YouTube, Blip, Vimeo, and even SpringBoard to blame for the Impending Reviewaverse Apocalypse? Let me put it this way, Irate Gamer was one of the first reviewers of his kind to make money off his videos, and as much as I can criticize Bores for various things, I'll give him this, He did deserve his top spot on YouTube, He put some effort into his videos, the first thing that he did that was against the YouTube guidelines was flagging videos that criticized him that didn't have ANY of his material or fell into fair use, and that was in 2008, when the AVGN VS IG wars was still relevant. But that brings me to the broken flagging system.


We lost pretty well known channels from this system, Granted some of them did it more than once and or revived, but some of these channels include (but not limited to) JamesNintendoNerd (Angry Video Game Nerd), Armake21, PlayItBogart, Nostalgia Critic, NintendoCaprisun, Shofu, LittleKurioh (Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged), TeamFourStar (DBZ Abridged, etc. Several of these set up their own websites (more on that later), but why is YouTube's Flagging system so broken that a even a Video of you talking on camera can get flagged for Copyright. Why can't YouTube Just suspend guys like Ray William Johnson (for stealing other People's content), Shane Dawson (for Changing Titles and Thumbnails on his own videos to make quick buck), or Phillip DeFranco (for Using fake thumbnails)? They can't suspend those accounts but they can suspend guys like James Rolfe or Doug Walker for no reason? Several of these banned reviewers moved to Revver for their videos getting flagged.


Yeah Revver Screwed them over so they moved to Blip, which was good for them for a while, but as of 2013, blip wrote this on their terms of service.


"Videos that are not part of a high quality, original episodic web series can be removed at Blip’s sole discretion. Examples of content considered inconsistent with Blip’s definition of high quality, original episodic web series can include but are not limited to sermons, speeches, slide shows, webinars, screencasts, gameplay footage, tutorials, walkthroughs, meetings (corporate, community or government), personal (home movies, weddings, parties, vacations, etc.), music videos and content produced for other mediums (television, film, radio). Each episode must consist of original content created by the account holder."


TL;DR: If you post any video that's not 100% original and like a regular TV show, You're d-e-a-d-m-e-a-t, Unless you can make at least 4 figures a MONTH!!!! So yeah, reviewers like Doug Walker, Chez Apocalypse, and possibly Linkara, will get a pass since they're pretty big, But relatively small guys like JewWario, JesuOtaku, and MarzGurl (who I'm most worried about), Those guys are probably out of luck. :( So Blip's becoming YouTube as far as censorship levels (just look at The Hardcore Kid, he got two strikes on his show for getting False Flagged), but we can only pray that these policies aren't as enforced as we expect them to.


So there's two more options, 1) Vimeo (if you're willing to make less money than Blip) or 2) Springboard (which not only do you have to apply for, but takes forever to upload. Not to mention that the TGWTG site is so OVERDUE for a redesign that it's no even funny). So if the  Reviewaverse wants to live, it's going to have to adapt somehow. I pray that no one buys Blip and screws it over even more.


Well that was random, Next time, Back to the Storyline.

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