I think these are good points/clarifications, but it does kind of leave me wondering what sort of gaming-related content you'd be interested in at all.

I 100% understand and empathize with not wanting to watch and follow ragebait and there-to adjacent content, however there may be some risk of otherwise nominal gaming-news coverage coming across in a similar way simply because, as you point out, AAA companies *are* quite bad. Kind of the same thing with real-world news right now, sure it's not impossible to try and focus on the good, but at a certain nebulous point, you start having to really twist a narrative to make the world seem like a chill and happy place. I don't think gaming is anywhere near that bad yet, but I must also confess that I don't really know that many positivity-focused channels.

Another point you brought up previously and here is that complaining without having a firm vision or plan to change things. I understand your frustration at other people just complaining endlessly, seemingly going in circles, and it might just be me personally, but I feel this is an unrealistically high bar to set for people. Setting aside the question of whether it should be done at all for a moment, I want to emphasize that AAA game dev and AAA companies by extension are complicated things. Not only are they tied up in huge amounts of money and cultural significance, they also create and carry a certain degree of inertia, meaning, when they make decisions like if they use a 3rd party game engine, which monetization options to use, how they enforce EULA rules, etc. it sets precedense and can be difficult to change, and these choices impact other AAA companies but also smaller devs.

This means the issues that are systemic in AAA gamedev/companies do not have simple solutions. Unless you have a ton of first-hand experience with the field, and probably some formal education on business/marketing/economics/sociology, or similar, then you're going to be speaking from a position of relative ignorance.

So does that mean that anyone who isn't an expert should just shut the fuck up and deal? I'd say no.
Let me try to bring in an analogy. What else is really complicated that a lot of people complain about for good reason, but with varying degrees of soundness? Capitalism.
So, should you only be allowed to complain about the myriad flaws and issues with capitalism if you can put forth a working alternative/solution and a comprehensive and realistic plan for how to achieve it? No, I believe this would be a horrible plan. Not only would it remove power from those most likely to be negatively affected by the flaws of capitalism, in turn empowering those who benefit from its flaws, but it would also make solving said flaws more difficult in the future since less emphasis on and discussion of the flaws would make them harder to identify and thus harder for those who might actually have the knowledge or be in a position to implement possible solutions, to then act on the complaints.

So sure, same way complaints of rising housing prices and increasing inequality fall on deaf ears in the current government in the US and elsewhere, so does the complaints of various (not too braindead) gamers fall on deaf ears at publishers and AAA companies.
But that doesn't mean those complaints are never heard. Up and coming politicians can utilize those frustrations (for better or for ill) to dislodge the old governments and systems, same way new gaming companies can expand and compete with the old, growing powerful, and influential,l and in turn start changing trends.
It's just that often, neither of these things happen quickly, but over decades. No one news article, plan or good idea is going to flip the script on society or gamedev.

And yes, I know AAA Gamedev =/= capitalism, but I hope you see my point with the analogy: large complicated systems are slow and difficult to change, and to make a reasonable and practical solution you need experience and domain knowledge, but neither of those means complaints are useless as they inform potential decision makers and errode the power and credibility of current flawed systems.

*aaaall* that said, I would suggest checking out the channel People Make Games, if you haven't already. They are the closest you get to investigative journalism within gaming that I'm aware of. They upload once every 3-5 months or so, videos vary in length from 15~ to 75 mins, focus on problems within the gaming industry, often involve what actions are being done to fix the issue they are highlighting, I believe they often wind up involving themselves personally to help in what capacity they can, and often also include how the viewer can help the issue as well. Despite this, I don't personally find them preachy, but I wouldn't consider it easy viewing that paints a pleasant picture of the gaming industry. As an example, they semi-recently made a nearly 1 hour long video about sweatshop, abuse and cult-like conditions at an outsourcing studio in an east asian country. The video includes brief clips of the abuse iirc, as well as interviews with the staff. The video also covers how their initial investigation into the conditions at the studio had caused a stir and set processes both good and bad in motion, and I thiiink they were currently helping some of the fired staff that still wanted to work within the industry find jobs, but it's been ~5 months so my recollection may be flawed.

So, I think that more or less addresses why it's tough to find general gaming news/discussion/journalism. Again, there's probably more out there, but it's admittedly not something I'm hugely interested in myself.

I personally enjoy essays, be they technical analysis of mechanics and systems, or thematic ones covering how game subverts the tropes of it's genre, but yeah, i know there are plenty of bad ones and if you have a high bar for which essays you enjoy or just plain don't enjoy that type of content, that's fine.
I'd still recommend you check out Jacob Geller if you haven't. His essays are high quality, well-researched, and well-written. There are music genres I don't like, but that doesn't mean I can't find the rare song or track in that genre I enjoy. Perhaps Jacob Geller can be the one video essayist you enjoy.

If the kind of content you're looking for is more along the lines of 'new/up-and-coming releases' (specifically within the indie genre) check out Splattercat. I'm personally lukewarm on his style, but I find his taste in games often overlaps with my own, so even if I don't watch his vids it at least lets me keep an ear to what is being made.

If you want challenge run videos, I mostly know of LilAggy doing stupid-hard Souls-like stuff, and Giant Grant Games who does a ton of Starcraft 2 challenge runs. I quite enjoy both, but they're very 'in their own niche'. As an opposite to this, 'NGPlus' makes basic challenge runs for a bunch of mainstream but older games, I don't personally find the style too engaging as it's often more about breaking the game in specific ways than about extreme skill execution, but that's a matter of taste IMO.

I know this doesn't address every point, but this post is too long already and I need lunch. I hope this could give some thought/perspective, but if you (or anyone else) are unconvinced and want to discuss it, please do challenge my points, they are far from ironclad.

Thank you for your response, yes, I do watch Jacob Geller, he's honestly one of the better essayists out there.

I do understand that yes, you can still criticize something on is bad without a plan, but ideally, you should start figuring out how to solve it after someone brings it up, even if it will take a long time, or if the odds seem impossible. I understand, serious change for the better will take a long time, and through small gradual changes.

But my biggest issue is that the people leading the charge on this are morons, reactionaries and manchildren who just want that feeling of finding games fun again to come back, so they yell out into the nothingness, they become the face of the movement and advocate for terrible solutions, or just more yelling, they drag any tiny victory over something slightly bad going for AAA, or, just straight up LIES and say, SEE! SEE! We're winning! in a few more days or weeks or months AAA will finally collapse! It's so over! and they parrot all of this until... nothing. and the cycle repeats.

People have been trying to take down EA for over a decade now, to the point where EA hate barely gets much views these days, then they moved on to Bethesda, then Ubisoft, then whichever company they can wring as much watch time and views out off, and flex their moral superiority over how righteous it is to boycott (even though they've never worked), vote with your wallet nonsense, they get millions of views, nothing gets better, cycle repeats, because this is slacktivism. It's "feel good for not doing anything" mentality that makes people think they are doing something, rather than supporting grifters who farm your frustrations.

who gives a damn... does it even matter at this point? I'm seeing a vicious cycle of stupidity. Which is why I have mostly tuned out, there aren't much reliable reviewers these days, I did use to watch a lot of Zero Punctuation, that's what introduced me to a bunch of cool indie titles like Night in The Woods, which I never would have looked up or heard of, I know that after Yahtzee split from the Escapist he made second wind, but i dunno, his new content doesn't seem to interest me that much. In fact a lot of modern reviewers feel like you're flipping a coin on either, knows what they're talking about, or total idiot, not to mention a lot of modern reviews and essays are just endlessly repeating how much old games are better compared to new ones.

Unironically, the most reliable channels which introduced me to new games are let's players, your Markiplier, Call me Kevin, and RTGame, they have funny commentary and showcase themselves clearly having fun, they feel like some of the last gamers that haven't been touched by the scourge of ragebaiting. I also like Mandalore gaming's channel, he does good and entertaining, if rather standard reviews, but with how crappy some essay channels are these days, I'm cool with this.

Although one of my favorite reviewers? idk if you can call him that is the series "Ross's Game Dungeon", his videos are technically? sorta? kinda like reviews and essays, but they personally feel a lot more like a man talking about his experiences with a bunch of games he used to play, along with some personal thoughts of his, some of the games he's talked about being really obscure and probably stuff you've never heard off, I also enjoy the way he reviews games, and often talks about the little details which he cares a lot about, such as his review of the 2014 racing game "The Crew", most critics have talked about how mediocre of racing game it was, however Ross talks about the incredibly cool concept of being able to drive all across America, and the review is structured like a road trip across the country, as he gives some thoughts and commentary about how each state is portrayed in-game, it's really cool! Especially for someone like me who isn't American. He kinda reminds me of classic AVGN to some degree.

I just wish there was more stuff like that, but like I said, the good ones are hard to find, not to mention Ross's game dungeon is over 10 years old now.

I'm not sure those ragebait channels or even their viewership are really leading the charge. It may be a bias from me not following those channels at all, and only see their subreddits/viewship in passing when other subreddits poke fun at them.

I think big AAA studios and publishers are largely too far removed from their user base to act on any feedback, good or bad, unless they make an explicit effort to listen, and usually, then it's mostly regarding stuff like balance changes and not development-workflow or monetization. Those decisions aren't made by devs, they're made by suits, and suits largely don't play games from what I gather, they're just there because gaming as an industry makes more money than god, and they're living off that fact. I personally don't see that changing unless the gaming industry or society has a catastrophic collapse, or we find a way to change our economic systems to vastly reduce the incentive to speculate and for companies to endlessly grow, and I don't see *that* changing unless we can get everyone to start agreeing on rules like taxation, and given some countries more or less work off being taxhavens, I don't see *that* changing unless there are some major political upheaval in those places, either internally and externally, and such processes are seldom just and careful. I'm not talking about full-on revolution here, just major changes to laws, the kind that make or break industries.

Sure I could go and vote for parties that support efforts to apply that kind of pressure, damn the consequences it might have for the people who are directly and indirectly affected by such changes, but what if none of the parties in my country support the idea? Or if those that do are ineffectual laughing stocks, or the only party/parties that do champion such ideas champion other ones I know are horrible? And this all assumes you care more about videogames and taxation in other countries than whatever major issues might be gripping the country you're in.

Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked again, sorry.

I think gamedevs largely know that these vocal minorities don't represent the broader playerbase, and thus they try to curate the feedback they receive and the communities they participate in. Arrowhead, devs of Helldivers 2, have publicly stated on their discord that they mostly look at r/lowSodiumHellDivers when they want feedback and sentiment without explicitly asking for it, since that skews your data a ton by itself.

As for slacktivism, I mean... I don't think it achieves anything. Why give it the time of day? It lives in it's own little ecosystem, again, the only times I come across it are in passing on reddit when others poke fun at it, or the rare time some really huge thing happens and the goals of common users momentarily align with slacktivists, for an example of this see the Helldivers 2 and sony debacle, where the playerbase had some success in bending the arm of the publisher, though not completely. While it wasn't a 100% clean win, it was a reviewbombing and socialmedia shitstorm that did make sony back off from the idea of mandating linking a PSN account to play Helldivers 2, even on PC. Yes, countries where PSN is banned still can't play Helldivers 2 without a VPN or lying on account creation and thus risking a ban, though I think more recently there has been some shifts in this regard, but not sure if that was just rumors.

As for reviewers and such, I don't really follow that many to be honest, and those I do tend to be fairly specialized (like Iron Pineapple), so I trust their judgement on what they talk about.

As for other gaming content creators, you list some good ones, I personally like RT as well, though I don't watch all his stuff. In a similar-ish vein:
- Ambiguious Amphibian is pretty good.
- Quil18 and PotatoMcWhiskey are also solid, they tend to cover more complex games, sometimes new, sometimes old.
- Wanderbot I don't personally enjoy, though his taste in games overlaps a lot with mine so I follow him for names in video titles lmao
- JesseCox has the 'scary video game squad' series where they play horror games, which is quite fun.
- Martincitopants makes very meme-y silly videos, but I can find them enjoyable.
- Hazzor and Anti-Kleaper I've found more recently, they're a little hit-and-miss imo, but not terrible.
- Olizandri is a fairly small channel that does 100% playthroughs of games, usually entire series, in the past he's focused mostly on various Nintendo titles like Legend of Zelda and Metroid, as well as JRPGs of newer and older make, but has branched out to various other games. He's very chill, unlikely to make you drop out of your chair laughing but if you just wanted to see the full story of a game and it being played competently, he's a great pick.
- SsethTzeentach miiight also interest you, if you haven't already heard of him. He does similar stuff to Mandalore, though also covers newer games, but has a distinct brand of edgy humour. It can be a bit hit or miss at times though.
- DoshDoshington mostly does Factorio mods and challenge runs, but will also do occasional one-off videos talking about a specific game, don't think i'd have heard of Cog Mind otherwise.

Lastly, I would also recommend Tehsnakerer. He does extremely long-form videos that cover games extremely thoroughly, it's both him talking about/reflecting on his experiences with the game, but also him doing some analysis, sometimes giving praise and sometimes giving critique. His writing is also unique in that it's very understated, he regularly does some pretty incredible wordplay and puns that you only realize in the seconds after, and more with amused surprise than a groan.

I hate people that worship games like they're 10/10 and can do no bad. Dark Souls fans are especially notorious for never allowing anyone to criticize their games, despite having (for many years now) one of the worst "multiplayer" systems in video games. Put down your sign, coordinate with your friend where you are and when they can ues THEIR item.

And if it ACTUALLY works, then you get summoned. And then you get invaded by some PVP edgelord using some crazy PVP build. Despite you having a password to you summon and not using an ember, invasions are mandatory. You can only play with your friend AFTER you kill the invader. Killed? Resummon and do it again.

And then they made Nightreign and fucked it all up regardless.

But tell FromSoft to make seamless co-op (like many use the mod to do so), you'll get shunned for criticizing their perfect game. Git gud, all that. And I am the "git gud" type, but I'm no purist. Use wiki and guides and forums if you get stuck.

Gaming is in a shit hole and until there's a crackdown on AI and these big companies, it won't get any better. But that crackdown won't happen if people willingly encourage it with their wallet. I'll enjoy my little indie titles, I guess... No Blizzard, Bethesda, Nintendo, EA, Ubisoft.... and I'm better off for it.

i dont have much to say, your feelings about it are understandable. if anything, i can recommend Noah Caldwell-Gervais on youtube if you like video essays about game design and storytelling in games.

to just add some additional insight into the speedrunning side of things on the developer-side. it is true that a lot of devs are starting to pander towards it. And the main reason for that Is a speedrunning scene... is well, its recurrent play and remaining relevant. Its how numerous games that are designed for a one time experience don't just fade into obscurity immediately. A lot of the games I work on employ the philosophy around unintended progression skips, that pretty much boils down to "Will a normal player not trying to route a speedrun accidently discover this, and potentially have it hinder their experience?" If its something that logically doesn't run a risk of lowering the play experience of someone not trying to do speedrunning, we wont patch a skip.(Sometimes we even make some super... annoying things slightly easier, because nobody likes a trick that you can only get based on rng and half-inputs.) We simply just encourage speed running because it kind of only hurts a game to be antagonistic against it. While i'm not into it myself, its pretty much just like any other special interest from my understanding. I don't think i'd be able to critique people doing it at all when I do special restricted ironman accounts in Old school runescape, and thats what makes me happy (Mostly from the community it makes me apart of.)

In realms of content creators being negative its just what gets views. there's definitely a ton of channels that go against that philosophy though, one channel That i commonly use as resource and show to developer buddies, is that of NitroRad. They are a games retrospective and review person, that's pretty much entirely focused on highlighting the positives of games even if its not that great of the game (They dont obscure the games quality) They just focus on the ideas that work, and the things forgotten to time. They also do a ton of coverage of new indie, especially around 3D platformers. A game I work on has been pretty significantly impacted by what they had to say about movesets in their Demon Turf and Pseudoregalia videos. They aren't the 3 hour deep dive sort however if that's more of what you look for (I like that sort of content as well so i get if that's specifically what your in the realms for.)

I guess to me a lot of this gaming discourse seems alien, but most of my gaming interests of late and of the past decade have largely been simulators and citybuilders.

Honestly it feels good to read opinions of gamers other than myself, reading these journals is a refreshing breath of fresh air!

I usually just watch Let's Plays to determine if I like the game or not. My personal favorite Let's Players are Randomise User, Khaios, Let's Game It Out, Waffletime, and Chippygaming.

The last AAA game I bought was Animal Crossing: New Horizons and I bought it used. Since then, I've bought mostly indie games. That being said, most of my preferred games are factory building games, simulators, and survival sandbox games, which I've almost never seen from AAA studios.