Alright, it took a while to really collect my thoughts on this one. It was just a few weeks ago that I was writing a short textwall about his announcement about retiring WTF is _______ content in his usual tone, and this whole thing caught me completely off-guard. So, without further ado… I suppose I should pay my respects, even if only via a simple textwall.
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Ironically, what I remember most about TB was how he introduced me to Spiders RPGs. I’d been offered Bound by Flame a long time before, and while I liked what I saw on the Store page, I had been deterred by the reviews panning the game for its combat and general Spiders jank.
It was when I saw his video on The Technomancer that I actually liked what I saw. I felt like TB was missing something in the video, similar to how AngryJoe has destroyed every Piranha Bytes RPG over his own mistakes rather than actual flaws in their games (which were quite severe ones, by the way). Respectfully disagreeing with TB, I picked it up on an 80% off sale and played an hour. I ended up enjoying it so much that I quit so I could buy and play Mars: War Logs first, then finally bought and played Bound by Flame before finally picking back up with The Technomancer. Despite its jank, I really enjoyed my time with it.
I suppose that really describes my thoughts on TB as a YouTuber. I’ve disagreed with him plenty of times, even criticized him heavily over some things I considered petty or dangerous. At the end of the day, he’s still basically the trailblazer of game reviewers on YouTube and probably one of the main reasons why “critics” on YouTube can be taken seriously instead of being thrown aside for the main outlets. He gave a voice to a completely new platform where someone like TheRussianBadger can basically come out of nowhere and become one of the most relevant YouTubers around, and have a voice almost as loud as all of IGN or Gamespot combined. He’s the reason I can tune into someone like TehSnakerer, kick back, and forget that RPS and Eurogamer ever existed.
That’s not even getting into the fact that he is, after all, the reason why I’m here. He introduced me to Chrono as I was already interested in RedOut. I’m usually very suspicious of online retailers, especially in the wake of G2A and other fraudulent sites, so I would have just been a little suspect and walked away had he not talked about them.
I just find it extremely hard to be mad because of one joke, a few crappy remarks about American politics, or a few insults here and there considering how much good he did across a long period of time. With an audience that large, any slip-up you make will be put on a pedestal, so the fact that his reputation went relatively untarnished speaks for itself. That’s not even getting into the fact that he’s been going through God-knows-what in chemotherapy for a long while, and the fact that he stayed as professional as he did literally until the end is quite an achievement. I may not have always agreed with TB, but I respect him a great deal for all the good he did.
Phew, that was a textwall and a half. Rest in pepperoni, mi paisano.