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]

Originally Posted by 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...

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

[Kyanbu The Legend]

Originally Posted by 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...

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.