For those of you unaware, Youtube is a weird and drama filled place. Being a site that pays people based on views, and with drama effectively generating free views after a certain point this is kind of to be expected. But it's been getting oddly racist especially in the gaming parts, and long story short Youtube has lost its collective mind. With all of that being said, I think its important to acknowledge a channel that avoids the craziness of the gaming community, ManyATrueNerd (MATN). MATN, is run by Jon, a British guy, with very scarce appearances from his girlfriend Claire. Jon specializes in story based games and strategy games, which is why his channel is so good. On the topic of story games, the best examples are his signature series of Fallout playthroughs. Each individual run of Fallout, carries it's own challenge, for instance he's not allowed to use guns, not allowed to heal and must finish the entire game on one life, or not allowed to kill anyone during the game at all. Jon is really good at bringing these characters to life based on the self imposed challenge of that run. If episodes don't have a running theme to them, then they basically devolve to Jon bumbling around and fanboying out about the game, which is just as good, because his fits of giggling alternating with insightful lucid commentary make for good videos. And Jon's great commentary skills translate over to strategy games as well. Strategy games are pretty difficult to make interesting for viewers. Most of the fun comes from thinking and plotting, rather than what the game presents to you. Watching 20 minutes of base management is not exactly engaging content for most people. For making strategy interesting, look no further than Jon's playthrough of Total War: Rome. Jon makes no effort to hide the fact that Total War: Rome is one of his favorite games, and the let's play quickly turns into equal parts putting the game over, putting characters in the game over, and lessons on the Roman culture, such as cicero meaning chick pea in Latin. If you are like me, and spend enough time on Youtube to where it basically replaces television for you as the main source of entertainment and/or background noise, and most of your Youtube tastes come back to video games, then ManyATrueNerd is worth checking out.
