Not So Grump

[Bells]

And in one of those lovely internet debacles, just yesterday Mr JonTron left Game Grumps.

Almost 1 year, over 1 million subscribers. 630 videos, and the dude called quits.

Jon's reasoning is that the show took so much of his time that he could not focus on anything else, nor his own show (which is actually pretty successful for a one man fun-and-games show with sporadic updates) nor any other projects.

I guess when you make a living out of this stuff there is always the fear that you can't survive forever doing just this one thing... a guy in his late 20's playing video games and making jokes for a living gotta have a plan B somewhere...

Weirdly enough, his plan B is just to go back to his original show... which is 1 guy doing comedy about games... so there you go.

That's not the weird part though... the weird part was how it was all handled... it was pretty much out of left field, no warning... no nothing. Just... gone. And not only gone, but immediatly replaced.

Game Grumps goes on with Arin and a new dude i never heard of before... and a in-channel spin off called Steam Train with that one dude and ANOTHER dude i never heard of.

Supposedly this is to allow Arin to have time to create his own content too...

Fanbase, as you would expect from a show on the internet with over 1 million subscribers, is going nuts. and in just 24 hours they lost over 10k subscribers.

This show was born in overdrive. 2 Videos a day everyday? 600 videos just short off a year in? that's NUTS. But they did it... all in all working out of celebrity power from Arin and Jon, an active fanbase that made over 500k videos of songs and animations of the grumps... and charm. BEcause more often than not, you would tune to game grumps because of Arin and Jon, not because of the games they played...

So, this happened... i'm bummed. I understand, but i'm bummed. Cause i really liked their show... the new guys aren't bad... but they are not grumps. Now... it's just another "2 dudes playing games" show, and it lost a lot of its charm with me.

Also, i just have to say that this was handled really poorly... like, really badly. I don't blame their fanbase turning rabid and vicious on them for it... you watch a whole year of a show, and then one day you come to watch a new episode only to found out they changed a main character and created a spin off with 2 characters you never heard of?

No previous warning? No hints? Foreshadowing? Not even rumors? That's rough to take in... specially when you come to like these guys and care for their chemistry on the show.

Nobody would really be cool with that. Not at first at least...

So, that's that then... the intertubes are ablaze and drama is manifest if you want to check it out.

[Locke cole]

At the same time, though, I'd heard a lot in recent weeks about Gane Grumps nosediving in quality. That was most of what I heard, really.

I have little to say on this development, but their fanbase wasn't going to be sugar and rainbows either way

[Bells]

I really didn't see this nosedive people keep talking about... they simply did more ones shots of less known games instead of longer playthroughs of well known ones. That's really the only change in the last few months...

[Bard The 5th LW]

I'll miss Jon and Arin's dynamic, but things got to end sooner or later. They still work together on other stuff and have their own shows so they ain't gone by any stretch.

[Aldurin]

I figured something like this was bound to happen. Game Grumps decided to be the dream team to ride on the same model as the Two Best Friends, which is ok as long as you do it well, and Jon+Arin turned out to be a pair of try-too-hard comedians who can't spew the same quality of entertainment when it's on-the-go instead of carefully written and edited (Yes Jon, keep screaming wiener into the microphone while an underage character is on screen, because that's how comedy works.) It was inevitable that one of them was gonna run out of steam and desire a slower pace again.

In some ways, I think it was for the better, just because the quality just wasn't really there. They both were living the Sequelitis example as the industry-viewed deafblind players that needed a leash and a trail of epilepsy-inducing rainbow cookies in order to progress through the game, and I even think they might have been detrimental to the gaming industry. A lot of their stuff past the beginning stage had them (usually Arin) talking shit about some good games for odd reasons, that really should have been clarified since when you're rocking that many subscribers you hold sway over a few of them (there was also the time when they joking talked shit about Half-Life, but until they clarified that they were joking it sounded just like their actual opinions towards some games).

It was a good try from them, but I guess it just wasn't for them to sustain it.

[Bells]

and shit is hitting the fan eveywhere online... from th most "doih" like 4chan fake conspiracies to report that Jon actually left the show cause he is moving to NY to live with his Girlfriend.

In other aspects of this, a former Jontron contributor has come out on the case explaining that Jon is pretty much a money grubbing jerkass that took advantage of him to get an early start and then left him in the dust. The sad aspect is that this guy is actually legit... it's the "cocaine guy" from the SONIC TEAM videos on early JonTron episodes.

[Bard The 5th LW]

Pffft. Sure, some random dude who was in like 1.5 Jontron episodes has decided to hold back on some juicy Jon Jafari gossip right up until people are in a furor apparently and when Jon is most easily attacked.

[Bells]

According to the dude, he is the one that pushed Jon to make his videos and even got him the recording equipment and games and then Jon just 'cutted him off' and never credited his work or payed him anything for his help. According to him, they are not on speaking terms since 2010.

Gossip and internet babble, sure... bunch of sour grapes everywhere. And we are only getting one side of a bitter story wich is always a red flag anyway...

[Bard The 5th LW]

According to the dude, he is the one that pushed Jon to make his videos and even got him the recording equipment and games and then Jon just 'cutted him off' and never credited his work or payed him anything for his help. According to him, they are not on speaking terms since 2010.

Gossip and internet babble, sure... bunch of sour grapes everywhere. And we are only getting one side of a bitter story wich is always a red flag anyway...

Doubtful since the 'sonic team on cocaine' video was made late 2011.

[Kyanbu The Legend]

I really didn't see this nosedive people keep talking about... they simply did more ones shots of less known games instead of longer playthroughs of well known ones. That's really the only change in the last few months...

The quality of their jokes began to drop into cheap humor territory. They started making mistakes such as failing to understand very basic controls in some of the games they played. And they've even began to contradict their own views on video games.

If you didn't notice all of that then you more then likely still found enjoyment in the show. I gave up on them months ago when this started happening. Game Grumps needed change, regardless of how poorly it was handled. And them working separately will result in their own works improving.


It's also possible that neither of them actually planned to keep doing GG like this. If I remember correctly it was only started to give their fans something to watch till new eps of Jontron and New Animations from Ego were ready. Except as we now know, it back fired and GG ended up hurting their own shows rather then serve as a distraction between eps.

Had GG continued the way it was, they would've just either

A. Closed their own channels
or
B. Closed GG from the stress of not having time to do the other things they wanted to do and the unbelievably terrible fan base they acquired.

[akaSM]

First, I watched the Kirby Superstar videos, and really liked them. Then, the lack of any order in the videos the last time I poked their YT channel drove me away. One of their videos popped in my suggestions, and one from a game I like! (Shatterhand)...but the video was really boring to me, it was one guy playing a game and someone talking about things...things I don't remember even though I watched the video yesterday.

Even though I like watching longplays, let's plays and TAS videos, which are just people playing games in one way or another, their Shatterhand video was...just boring. The talking just made it worse for me :/

I'll just go and watch more (ALL of the) Classic Game Room videos because Mark is awesome.

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

this is good thing. gives ego time to work on his own stuff and Jon to...do whatever the fuck he does. which is being loud for sake of being loud, I guess. 'cause that's his thing apparently. loud = funny....?

[Arcanum]

This show was born in overdrive. 2 Videos a day everyday?

Aren't all their videos like 10 minutes long? That's a 2h20m game session every week to have two videos every day. Even accounting for editing each video, not all that impressive.

[Locke cole]

this is good thing. gives ego time to work on his own stuff and Jon to...do whatever the fuck he does. which is being loud for sake of being loud, I guess. 'cause that's his thing apparently. loud = funny....?

I've seen some (well, okay, most) JonTron videos, and they seem to focus more on absurdity than volume. It does kind work in certain videos.

[Kyanbu The Legend]

Aren't all their videos like 10 minutes long? That's a 2h20m game session every week to have two videos every day. Even accounting for editing each video, not all that impressive.

Estimated, yes that sounds about right. But it might be much more then that. during one of their Link to the Past vids (might have been one of their other vids), Jon mentions that they still have a lot of stuff pre recorded. So their sessions could have been longer then that. In fact technically we'll still hear Jon in future videos because not all of the prerecorded vids have been uploaded yet. Which includes the rest of Sonic 06.

[POS Industries]

this is good thing. gives ego time to work on his own stuff and Jon to...do whatever the fuck he does. which is being loud for sake of being loud, I guess. 'cause that's his thing apparently. loud = funny....?
As far as his role as Not So Grump was concerned, I always felt his contribution to the team was best described as "Budget Nathan Lane."

[Bells]

Being that i'm doing pretty much the same thing with a friend now, i can attest that this is a broad estimate.

What we are doing is recording 2 hours of footage every month and breaking it down to 2 uploads a week, plus any extras. We are not pros of ofcourse... of any sort... so some videos come better than others. Plus there is setup time, breaks, issues with recording... and even spams of time where we are simply not "Into it" enough... It easily takes 6-8 hours to get a half-decent 2 hours when we are in our top game.

Both Arin and Jon have some chops in that department, and that makes stuff a bit easier... but i can totally see how it would be easy to get burned out from it all... they stated the record it once a week, to keep those 2 hours going every week for a full year... yeah, it can be demanding.

Specially since what they did was pretty much all improv, many of the games they knew nothing while playing. And on the last few months it was increasingly clear they weren't paying attention on how to play a game.

I mean, i didn't watch it for the gameplay, i watched for the jokes and interaction... but try to beat a level at least, will ya?

[synkr0nized]

As far as his role as Not So Grump was concerned, I always felt his contribution to the team was best described as "Budget Nathan Lane."

Ah, I am not alone, then.
Also the intro won't be as good. The "Hey I'm Grump!" "I'm not so grump!" was amazing. His laugh is good, too.

[Magus]

I'm a bit confused at how time-consuming it could be seeing as how they tape several hours at once and then from what I tell have several weeks worth of footage since they release it ten minutes a day.

On the other hand, I'm perfectly fine with JonTron focusing on his own show because it is actually downright hilarious (probably due to actually being scripted/dramatic as opposed to the spur-of-the-moment fare of Game Grumps). It's also not JUST being loud. There is also the confused muttering of half-intelligible nonsense and blatant absurdism.

If Egoraptor wants to make more cartoons that would be fun too

[Bells]

There is also the confused muttering of half-intelligible nonsense and blatant absurdism.

Case in point

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