SGDQ 2014 Blog: Day 0 (Travel Day)

Why?  Why not?  I need something to do when I'm not flipping out about how badly I'm going to bomb my run.

I left for Summer Games Done Quick around 10pm last night with another runner from the area.  Good thing he came too, because by the time we were heading through Illinois I was getting really tired.  We would trade off, driving in shifts.  This worked up until we hit Kansas.

Anyone who ever bitched about Ohio being boring to drive through can kiss my ass.  If you ever wanted to know what the "Great American Desert" looked like, try driving through Kansas along I-70.  Not only was there little to speak for outside of endless grassy plains, several signs of civilization were abandoned.  In our case, it was mostly gas stations.  When we needed gas.  Fun times.

I can say this about Denver, though: we never saw it coming.  I kept checking the GPS which said we were 30, then 20, then 10 miles away from the city and I still couldn't see the city skyline on the horizon.  Denver just sort of appeared after we were within about 5 miles of it, way after I got my first in-person glimpse of the Rocky Mountains behind it.

After getting to the hotel I quickly found out that there was a convention going on at the same time SGDQ would be starting: RomCon.  As far as I can tell it's a convention about romance authors, stories or some shit like that.  At one point a group of SGDQ people and RomCon people were in the same elevator.  One of the RomConers had a riding whip and said "The safe word is yellow."  She remarked to the others about how fast the gamers were walking away when the elevator opened, probably not realizing that some of them likely go to anime conventions and have seen as bad or far worse than what she just did.

In the parking lot I was mistaken for Murphagator.  Not sure how the hell that happened.

The convention center attached to the hotel is where SGDQ will get streamed live, and holy shit the space is huge.  It's one massive open area split into a few areas.  The first is the registration and main streaming area where you see everyone speedrun their games.  Next to that is the practice area.  The third space is the food area, the only space where food or drink is allowed.  At the moment all I can say about the entire space is holy shit, it's really cold in there.  Hopefully firing up a couple dozen computers and consoles warms the space up a little.

Also, I met another runner there who happens to be an Ohio State student.  O-H!

By sundown the practice room was in full swing.  A couple dozen TVs were set up with a few more in reserve and everyone was either playing Smsh Bros. Melee, practicing, or streaming their practice.  It's weird to stand at a TV muddling through Ninjabread Man while there are some people who have a game running on a TV, streamed to twitch via a laptop and webcam, with a condenser mic suspended over the set.  It was one of those "Am I really supposed to be here?" kind of moments.

SC On Sony's E3 Experience and Nintendo's Smashfest

The odds of someone like me, from a financial and geographical standpoint, ever getting the chance to go to E3 are slim to none.  Actually, get rid of the "slim" part.  That makes events like these, even though they're such a small sample of what E3 presents, increasingly important for console companies trying to reach as much of their audience as possible, including and especially people who can't be at E3.  Two such events happened recently; Sony's E3 Experience, Nintendo Smash Fest and Microsoft's E3 Hands-On Demo.

Sony's E3 Experience

This event was a special screening of Sony's E3 conference which took place at select movie theaters across the country.  The one I attended was at a local (as in 'I drove half an hour on the freeway to get there.') Regal movie theater.  I printed off a wait list e-mail after registering for the event earlier in the week and got there around 80 minutes before the conference started, finding myself about 12 people deep in a wait list line that was on the other side of the theater.  Only people who got tickets could wait at the check-in area.

We were the "have nots" that evening.

 

So I'd have something to do I brought along my 3DS with Fire Emblem Awakening.  After a while I started to notice something.  Even considering that people might not have them out, there seemed to be a lot more people with a 3DS in attendance than a Vita or a PSP.  I counted four or five people with a Sony handheld versus the 14 or so 3DS users.  I wound up with 18 StreetPass tags before the night was through.

The line for attendees with tickets was steadily growing, stretching back to the theater entrance while I and the other have nots sweated it out.  After a long wait and several slain Risen, the ticket attendees were taken care of and we were moved into the check-in line.

Chuck it out.  You're che-cking-iiiiiin!

 

The guy at the front of the line handing out passes with "VIP" printed on them warned us that there would be limited entry to the event, reminding everyone several times that being on the wait list didn't guarantee us entry.  After getting to the point where I stood eight people from the front of the line, that same guy held up his arm so we could see it, pointing to the four passes left hanging on it, and said "This is all I have left."  Shortly after that an attendee with a ticket who got his pass walked out of the screening room to get some popcorn, but not before turning to the wait list line and saying "They've still got a TON of seats left in there."

That's when the whispers started.  Were we really going to be left out of the event despite the number of open seats?  Hell, were we going to miss the conference entirely?

Then the guy handing out passes got on his phone and gestured to the woman checking off names to look under the desk.  She pulled out a box and dumped out a few bags, each having at least 30 passes in them.

The guy smiled as half the line gave him a stare that said both "Oh thank God" and "You motherfucker."

The audience is now hype.

The screening itself got off to a strange start.  The lights in the theater weren't turned down until a few minutes in, which prompted someone to yell "CLAPPER!" and clap a couple times.  Then at around the 50-minute mark the bottom half of the video started to glitch out.  Ten minutes later the video began flickering and, about a minute later, the video and audio froze before cutting out entirely.  This happened a few times over the course of about fifteen minutes.

Aside from that, there wasn't too much noteworthy.  Someone in the crowd yelled "Last Guardian?!" at the start of a trailer for The Order: 1886 and someone else yelled "Sly Cooper crossover!" when they saw Ratchet & Clank on screen.

 

The best part came after the conference ended (and some interviews by Geoff Keighley after the conference started airing).  Upon leaving the theater the same people handling the line earlier were handing out a poster of some games presented at the conference and reminding people to check their badges when they got home.  Each badge had a web address and a code printed on the back.  Redeeming the code got a person access to the Battlefield: Hardline Beta on June 16th, the Destiny Alpha on June 12th, 30 free days of Music Unlimited and a $5 PSN voucher.  Thanks, Sony!  I can't use half of this, but thanks!

Nintendo Smash Fest

 

Smash Fest is similar to an event Nintendo ran last year.  At Best Buy stores across the nation they took over a demo station and used it to show off a series of upcoming WiiU titles.  This time they did the same thing, but exclusively for the new Smash Bros. game... or so we thought.

 

Best Buy wasn't quite ready for the coming storm.

 

I got to a local Best Buy (fifteen minute drive on the highway) and found myself sitting around 29th in line, getting there an hour and a half before they let people inside.  I don't know if it was just due to the specific people in line, but they seemed way more social than the people at the Sony event did.  Carrying on with random people helped the wait go by much faster.  Well, that and the few dozen StreetPass tags.

Somewhere between that pillar and the highway a half-mile away

is the end of the line.

 

 Then the moment came where they tried letting the whole line into the store at once.  Oh, those poor Best Buy bastards trying to keep the line organized.  It became pretty clear they'd have to improvise a bit when the initial roped off line was completely filled, people were piling up at the appliance section (a little over halfway into the store grounds) and there were still a lot of people in line who hadn't even entered the building yet.

 My name is Smash.  For we are many.

They took chunks of the line and started winding them through the aisles of the appliances section.  My section wound up waiting next to some stoves and coffee makers.  

For we are many!

People were still filing into the building as they took the line and extended it into the home theater section of the store (read: the back wall of the store) as well as the main aisle in front of it.  Finally they got everyone into the building, but not without ensuring no one would be able to shop in about one-sixth of the store.

FOR WE ARE MANY!

 

My wait was not just relatively quick, but also well-positioned.  I wound up at the end of an aisle right before the main line and could see the first couple groups playing.  Everyone in line got to play two four-person, two-minute rounds.  The idea was to have a round where people could adapt to the controls, since they only had pro controllers to play with.

And of course, thanks to D1's commentary during the Smash Bros. Invitational, the first round of the first group of people wound up being Mega Man vs. Mega Man vs. Mega Man vs. Mega Man.  And yes, someone did scream the Mega Man theme when one of them did their final smash.

You can't unhear it.

 

Then the damndest thing happened.  The line was progressing at a good pace and people were having a lot of fun with the Smash demo, but in addition to the WiiU demo there was also a person in line with a 3DS tethered to her belt letting people try out the Smash Run mode in the 3DS version.  It was a fairly quick demo, what with having to keep the line moving and all, but nice nonetheless.  There was another person doing the same thing at a table after people played the WiiU version as well.

 

 I can only imagine how much she got dragged around the line as the event went on.

Then the moment of truth came and I got to test run the WiiU version.  I wound up picking the person I was most interested in testing out, which was Little Mac.  Apparently I wasn't alone, because there were about six other guys in line watching and rooting for him.

 

The round ended with Sudden Death between me and a Donkey Kong player which went on for almost a full minute of us dodging each others' attacks.  I didn't expect to do nearly that well considering I haven't touched any of the Smash games in a long, long time.  By sheer luck I wound up getting the win and eliciting some cheers from the peanut gallery before playing as Samus and getting third in round two.  

 

 According to an anonymous source, the hype is real.

 

Everyone got to take home one thing from a prize table they had set up off to the side.  I wound up grabbing a pack of Mario Party AR cards purely because Toad was on the front and I didn't want a Yoshi's New Island sticker sheet.  The Smash logo button was tempting, though.

Overall, a very fun event to go to.  The demos were fun, it was nice that they had a 3DS demo of sorts, and the people there made the atmosphere a blast to play in.

Oh, and it's happening again this Saturday.  As such, don't try to contact me at all this Saturday.

Toad Awaits.

SC On Kung Fu Rider (PS3)

Ladies and gentlemen, the pride of the Playstation Move.

There is only one place I can possibly start with this game, and that's how I got it in the first place.  I was at an EB Games in Canada with some of the other RiverCityGamers guys when I saw this with a couple price tags slapped over the top of each other.  The most visible tag said $0.49.  Yup, I paid around 50 Canadian cents for this game ($0.46 in USD).  That's not the worst part, though; it was a new copy.

A new copy.  For 50 cents.  Of course, it also requires a Move controller and camera/sensor, which can cost upwards of too damn much.  Thanks to AngelHalo for supplying both for the brief period I/we could tolerate this game.

The idea of the game is that private investigator Toby (the guy on the box art)and his secretary Karin (below) are stuck in Hong Kong, running for their lives from the Triads (for simplification's sake, the Chinese mafia).  The two split up to make a break for their escape vehicle, a.k.a. the "finish line" for every level, by riding through the (all conveniently downhill) streets of Hong Kong on whatever they can find, usually things like desk chairs and wheeled luggage.

"Ma'am!  Wait!  You dropped your dignity!"

 The idea is to get through each stage by riding around or ducking under obstacles, jumping over obstacles, grinding on rails (it looks as dumb as it sounds), and using "kung fu" moves, most of which equate to spastic flailings that sort of end in a kick, to take out various suit-clad Triad clones waiting in the streets.  The enemies are only slightly varied in that some of them run at you and try to punch you, some push obstacles into your way (most of which don't do anything), and some of the less mobile ones have tonfas or bo staffs to swing at you.  It's okay, though.  One kung fu move or even one piece of the environment tapping any part of their body causes them to go into an instant rag doll state.

Strange hit detection makes the flimsy enemies matter very little, though.  Running into an enemy sometimes knocks Toby over and sometimes it doesn't.  Slightly grazing the side of a parked car can send Toby flying, but slamming directly into a wall doesn't.  I've had Toby rag doll and scream bloody murder at hitting his foot on a traffic cone at roughly half speed, but stay on his chair after having a trash can thrown at his head.  There is less consistency in the hit detection than there are exclusive games on the XBox One, and considering you can only take four or five hits before having to start a level over, this becomes tiring very, very quickly.

Office chair racing.  It's a thing which is more entertaining than Kung Fu Rider.

Get used to not just seeing the same three or four enemies over and over, but also the same four or five levels.  While the game has at least 18 stages to it, it doesn't take more than six to realize that the game is reusing levels while making minor changes to enemy and object placements.   As such, you might think that it is pretty simply to navigate through each of these stages, having played all of them several times by the end of the game.

Nope.  After all, I deliberately held off on mentioning the controls to this point.

Above: the amount of space you should have around you when playing this game.

The controls assigned to buttons on the Move controller function well enough.  The problems there have more to do with hit detection and boundaries than anything else, especially when it doesn't register grinds or registers them from several feet away.

Motion controls, however, are an absolute chore to use.  Pushing forward to accelerate and doing a mad dash forward are assigned to similar motions, so there were innumerable times where I'd try to get a little speed and end up charging chair-first into a wall.  Jumping sometimes didn't work at all or registered as a dash.  The worst was having to recalibrate the controller every few levels or so because Toby would get stuck leaning right and going in circles for seemingly no reason.

You know what?  Why even have the chair?  Toby gets off of it to do his dash move, so why not just have the game be Toby running around smacking mobsters with traffic cones?  It- oh, right, that's how the two-player works.

No, Dad!  No!

Two player co-op has one person controlling Toby/Karin and the other person playing as a floating hand that collects money (used for getting other rides of varying stats, few of which matter) and, more importantly, grabs parts of the environment to move aside or hit/throw at people.  AngelHalo took on this role when we finished the game in what felt like a whole night, but turned out to be an hour and a half, if that.  He would grab a traffic cone, cart, or anything else he could find and just hold it up on screen.  Anyone that touched it would go limp.  Most of the time.  Maybe.  Let's say 8 out of 10 times.

There are other (recycled) levels where you can collect medals around the course, but it's hardly worth the effort to play through the game at all.  There's little to no reason this game couldn't be mapped to a PS3 controller and release as a somewhat more playable, but still not worth the effort title.  If I never hear Toby say "I hope Karin will be alright!" in his voice-cracking shriek before every level begins, it will be too soon.

Pandas eat bamboo.  Toby the teddy mistakes it for a Move controller.

Everquest: 15 Year Anniversary Ramblings

Evil boats, shirts, Jackass stunts, weird guild raiding policies, everyone hating my race + class combination and one of the worst things that could happen to someone on a raid.  All that and more as I reflect back on the 15 year anniversary of Everquest, the MMORPG that started it all.

The Best and Worst Thing

For those of you who don't know, I've taken a bit of a liking to speedrunning, or the act of completing a video game as fast as possible.  This started a while ago after seeing one of the Awesome Games Done Quick marathons, hosted by Speed Demos Archive and Speed Runs Live.

 They seem like nice people.

I don't think I'm particularly good at it, but in a "why the hell not?" moment I decided to try submitting a couple games (all but one of which were crap) for Summer Games Done Quick.

Well...

Uh...

How should I say this?...

Guess who's traveling to Denver this summer to play Ninjabread Man for charity?




Countdown Clocks

SC On Backyard Wrestling 2: There Goes the Neighborhood (PS2)

This series was given more than one entry.  Think about that.

Gee, just what I was hoping to get as a gift from one of my convention buddies.  Thanks, Macho Man!

 For those of you who did a double-take at the "2" in the title, yes, this was a thing.  Not only was the first game a thing, it was a thing that sold half a million copies.  This game would sell almost 400,000 units, thus reaffirming my lack of faith in humanity, or at least the average video game consumer.

Casuals.  Fucking casuals everywhere.

 As the cover might suggest, the game does indeed include Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope from the Insane Clown Posse, who also co-founded Juggalo Championship Wrestling (yes, that is also a thing), which is where several in-game wrestlers now or at some point in the past worked.  Also included are people from Combat Zone Wrestling, the stereotypical "hit me with something until I bleed, then hit me again" promotion where the infamous "JEZUS" Botchamania clip comes from.

And thus Maffew would spend the rest of his life avoiding Zandig.

Also on the cover is New Jack, also known as "that guy who technically killed four people."  He and another alum of Extreme Championship Wrestling, The Sandman, are in the game because reasons.  As for the woman in the middle, she's either Tylene Buck, Tera Patrick or Sunrise Adams.  I don't know who specifically she is because they're porn stars and why should I even bother talking about them?

The game boils down to a career mode and exhibition mode.  There is multiplayer but let's face it, the only people who would play this game with you are only doing so ironically or out of pity.  Career mode is where you create a custom wrestler, assign them a move set and go around various "backyard" locations to win titles by completing missions to unlock challenges, namely a tournament to win a title which unlocks more areas to compete in.  The idea is to win all the belts to get to the final section and beat the Insane Clown Posse guys (yes, they're the final boss) to collect a million dollar prize, which is a simple enough setup if not kind of dumb.

Then I tried playing it.

In case you can't tell, I'm the one with hair.

The custom wrestler creation is, in a word, unusual.  I would say lacking, but in truth there is a wide variety of options for the most mundane shit while other aspects are left woefully understocked.  For example, there are 132 tattoos available from the beginning, but only 18 pants options.  A character can have a lot of different skin colors, even allowing for Mr. Game & Watch black, but there are only six faces and seven hair styles to choose from.  Also if you make a female character you only have two body types.  They're called 'Athletic' and 'Muscular' but they actually look like 'Needs a Sandwich' and 'Had a Sandwich.'

There are three different sections (East, West and North) with three separate combat areas in each, then the final area where the ICP hang out.  Each area of each section has five missions and five challenges unlocked after completing the missions.  One area of each section has a title tournament which opens after completing all available missions.  Winning the title opens up a new section and the game moves on.  This essentially makes all challenges but the title tournament a waste of time, unless you really want to earn some extra money to unlock a new hat or some other crap that should have been available from the start.  Besides, more than half the challenges are the same across each area.

There's a problem with these missions, however.  Each area has a set number of generic create-a-wrestler characters that appear in each match.  Even when just doing each mission once I ended up seeing the same half-dozen or so people over and over.  Even worse, there's so little variety to these missions that I quickly realized two-thirds of the mode was "perform X move Y amount of times" or "get your opponent to X Y amount of times."  And if that wasn't bad enough, some missions where you have to do an action four or five times, for example, show you as having cleared the mission by only doing the action once.  Proper programming is for those WWE wussies.

Okay, forget what I just said.

I haven't touched on the actual "wrestling" part of the game yet, though.  Each match consists of two sort-of mobile character models awkwardly jogging around an environment trying to beat each other up.  Each environment has specific environmental hazards and weapons that can be used and, unless there's a mission objective that requires doing something else, each mission can be won by finding a weapon in the area that won't break and doing three-hit combos over and over until the opponent's health runs out.  That's more hardcore and extreme and awesome and real and entertaining than pinfalls or submissions, right?

Sometimes the reach of said weapon only makes things even more ridiculous.  In the pool level there's an indestructible pool skimmer which has about a five-foot reach.  Coupled with how bad the grappling is, why would I do anything but use weapons?

Oh right, I haven't explained that yet.

Grappling in this game has a few key problems with it.  For one, you can only irish whip (read: throw) or drag/lead people while in a front grapple.  There's also a big input problem when trying to pull off "Super Moves" by mashing the two attack buttons at once.  Sometimes it just plain won't register that both buttons are being hit at the same time, which for me meant doing shoulder breakers half the time I tried using it.

The worst part however is how evasion works.  It's possible to mash a couple buttons to do a "grapple escape" when the turbo meter (also used for the supers) is full, but most of the time you'll have to try and counter by hitting either the attack, throw or submission button when the opponent tries to do an attack, throw or submission.  This has to be done before, not during, the move, meaning reversals boil down to a 1-in-3 guessing game for what the opponent will do.

Why am I not surprised that the game with poor wrestling mechanics has several people from promotions that go through thumbtacks, barbed wire and light tubes the way I go through cherry soda?

Scratch that.  Why am I surprised that this happened when I tried playing it?

The styrofoam head avatars seem unfazed by this.

There's yet another reason to just use weapons the entire time: the enemy AI.  It is, in a word, terrible.  The AI constantly tries to get in as close as possible to do grapples while sometimes doing attack combos, however leading them near any elevated surface leads them to climb on top of it and attempt a diving attack, which can be avoided by not standing still and leaves them open to be attacked, pinned or put in a submission hold.

Then there are times where the AI, while trying to find a weapon, runs into environmental hazards and takes damage.  I've won a few matches this way.

Committing suicide in a survival challenge?  That's a paddlin'.

You do eventually fight the actual wrestlers (and porn stars) in the game and have a chance to unlock videos of them for one or two-thousand dollars.  That means doing missions, challenges and general matches over and over to earn enough money to buy the videos, most of which aren't worth the effort. That and the videos for the porn stars are the most expensive despite being less risque than a Dead or Alive volleyball game.

Or you could save some real money and not even bother with the game to begin with.  That is, unless someone gives it to you, like in my case.  When I get the chance, this game's going through my friend's window Paperboy-style.

This gif syncs well with most polka music.

Content ID: Get a Real Job, You Say?

(Note: nonsensical mess of words ahead.)

This will likely be the only thing I say on the subject, seeing as how the YouTube community has already proven to be both way more knowledgeable and not very knowledgeable at all of what exactly is going on.

Before getting into it, here is where I stand.  I am virtually unaffected by this.  I have a job, am working toward a college degree and treat video-making as a hobby.  I have monetized none of my videos and, to date, have copyright claims on about 55 videos, three of which are blocked in Germany.  Ich bitte Sie, Deutschland.  Most of them are dumb bullshit, but among them are also the Guitar Hero III and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 videos (licensed music), the last part of the Shenmue videos (again, music), one part of the Jumping Flash playthrough (yet again, music), the last part of the Resident Evil: Survivor video and the James Bond Jr. video.  If you are seeing ads on these or any other videos, I have two words for you.  Adblock Plus.  If you're on my blip channel, use it there too.  I'm not sure why it even still exists when I went out of my way to make the front page look as ugly as possible.

However, that doesn't mean others aren't affected.  Some people at RiverCityGamers do monetize some of their videos and can be affected by this.  YouTube's "guilty until proven innocent" approach--don't kid yourself on this one.  It's been like that for a while, but only now has it started to affect larger, partnered/network-managed channels--means that monetization of a video might not be possible now or ever.  YouTube moves at a snail's pace on any sort of claims, even slower than they did when I first started getting claims and had to dispute them left and right to keep the videos on the site at all.

That also means this applies to the "big fish" like Angry Joe, Rad Brad, Classic Game Room and a laundry list of others.  In fact, Classic Game Room, who has been with YouTube since the passing of the first ice age, appears to have up and left YouTube in favor of using his own site for his videos.  The new content ID system is the rough equivalent of treating everyone like Milton in the movie Office Space; management 'fixes a glitch' in payroll which stops him from getting a paycheck and not only does no one tell him about it, they avoid the subject when confronted by him as he continues showing up to work.

In theory I should be somewhat glad about this because, if enough people are driven off YouTube, it opens the opportunity for someone else to step in who couldn't because of the gap YouTube's site creates between promoted and non-promoted channels.  That and I've had various disagreements with certain content creators in the past, namely Joe.  Then again, I've only stuck around as long as I have because of the people who look at or are subscribed to my channel.  If there were a solid alternative to YouTube, I would have left years ago.

That would be the case, except that the same rules everyone has struggled with now apply across the board.  A person in the medium of creating gaming videos now has limited options when any video or audio from the source material is a copyright flag waiting to happen, one which several publishers or creators of the sampled content have had to manually whitelist users who were flagged by YouTube's content ID system without their go-ahead.

Some might say to make gaming-related videos without using the game video or audio.  People have done and do this, with a prominent example being Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation, yet another person I don't really like.  Also note that Yahtzee left YouTube and didn't return with ZP until 2011 on The Escapist's channel.  My opinion on "vlog" style reviewing of games is as follows:

I don't trust you.

That's one thing I give people like Angry Joe and which I try to emulate in my videos.  When I talk about something, positive, negative or otherwise, I show it so you'll know I'm not pulling "facts" or opinions out of my ass.  Vlog reviews of video games are the equivalent of writing a research paper without citing any sources.  Yes, I have done the rough equivalent of that before, and no, I don't expect you to believe or agree with what I say in those videos, much less anything I've posted.

Others have tossed around a phrase I'm all too familiar with.  "Get a real job."  This phrase should have died along with the "real jobs" that became obsolete or unnecessary as time and technology have moved on.  As an aspiring musician, you can probably guess how tired I am of hearing this phrase get tossed around in lieu of an intelligent statement, especially when it implies that there is no work involved in anything that is not a job in the most traditional sense.

What defines a real job?  Having set work hours?  Having some signed paperwork on the subject?  Having a set salary and steady paycheck?  Having a boss?  As someone whose father works as a self-employed architect, all but one of the prior conditions does not apply to him.  Try telling him he doesn't have a real job.

In the sense of a "real job" not involving the use of material originally created by other parties or for the purposes of review or parody, I suppose anyone who samples sounds or music like DJs or musicians have real jobs.  But then, would the original content creator, who is also a musician, have a real job?  Let's not go into anything too paradoxical.  As for parody, comedians and entertainers don't have real jobs.  For review, critics of various things such as video games, movies, food, toys, books, cars, computers, and more 'I think you get the point' examples don't have real jobs, even though there are several such people employed in such roles, "real jobs" if you will, by various outlets.

There seems to be a disconnect between the idea of a "job" and doing "work."  Let's ignore the old formula of plopping a camcorder in front of a TV and talking over it in real time for something like I would do.  Game reviewing is not a job of mine.  I try to show what I can from the game so, depending on its length and content, on average I end up recording roughly 10-12 hours of footage for the one game the video focuses on.  Then I go back and review all of the footage, taking another 10-12 hours, making notes about what happens where and which clips illustrate different points.  As this is going on I also have to script out the entire video, hitting all talking points and organizing everything into a pseudo-comprehensive and logical flow while marking sections for narration over game footage, live-action shots or other external clips.  I also do background research on the game, its developers, etc.  Depending on writer's block and information availability, this can take anywhere from three to eight hours.  Then after all that I film any live segments and locate external video clips, which takes maybe an hour if things go well.  Then I finally start editing which, depending on how my editing programs feel that day, usually takes about 9-10 hours.  Then I can finally render the video which, depending on length, might take another 2-3 hours, and assuming the whole video rendered correctly then I can upload it.

If you do the math, that equals anywhere from 35 to 46 hours of work on average.  That's for a relatively short game, too.  Things like Evergrace or Muramasa wound up with closer to 25 hours of recorded footage.

I'm getting sidetracked.

The point is this: don't fall into the trap of thinking that because X is enjoyable, any form of profiting or working through X is automatically not considered a "real job."  Also, stop talking like a crotchety old man.  That's my "job."