Channel Awesome
The widespread success of geek-related websites has been an increasing phenomenon. Many are familiar with Penny Arcade, a website originally based around a web comic with video game and pop culture subject matter that has now been popular for over ten years. The site is lucrative enough for its creators, Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik, to put on conventions, put out video games, and donate money from their success to worthy causes, like $10,000 to the Entertainment Software Association’s children’s charity in Jack Thompson’s stead.
Online reviews, particularly satiric video reviews, have also grown in recent years, partly due to the success of ThatGuyWithTheGlasses.com and its main headliner, The Nostalgia Critic, Doug Walker. Nearly all of the contributors to the site were popular online video reviewers in their own rights, mostly found on YouTube, who were either already friends or acquaintances of Walker in Chicago, IL, or were asked to join the site to add their creative talents.
Production company, Channel Awesome, which is also the title often used for the entirety of the site and its videos, now hosts reviewers for pop music, video games, comics, movies, and more. Videos range from only a few minutes to a half hour or longer, and can also come in segments of Parts 1, 2, etc., to review lengthier works.
While Walker, born in 1981, and his crew focus much of their nostalgic reviews on what they experienced as children in the 80s and 90s, the age range of their audience extends much further. All of the reviewers have their own personal quirks and characteristics, and several have alternate personalities, adding to the diversity of the cast. Walker is known as The Nostalgia Critic because of his reviews of older films and television shows and his tagline “I remember it so you don’t have to!” He is also known as Chester A. Bum for a segment called Bum Reviews, and may occasionally show up as additional characters in other reviewer’s videos as well, and vice versa.
Virtual Success
The site was launched in April of 2008, but is already making money from ads and other venues at an impressive rate. Part of the site’s initial success stemmed from Doug Walker, his brother Rob Walker, and Brian Heinz, winning the RiffTrax Presents contest with their iRiff of The Lion King. They were awarded $1000 each and given the opportunity to iRiff Batman Forever with input from RiffTrax main Riffers, Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett, known before RiffTrax for their lead roles on Mystery Science Theater 3000. Walker also won Mashable’s 2010 Entrepreneur of the Year Award.
Popularity for That Guy With The Glasses comes during a time of equal success for growing internet series, like The Guild. ThatGuyWithTheGlasses.com has spawned its own brief internet series episodes as anniversary specials for several years, like this year’s Suburban Knights. The plot showcases the reviewers on a Dungeons & Dragons-like quest, dressed as famous characters from geek films and video games, including The Nostalgia Critic as Link from The Legend of Zelda.
Few online reviewers can expect the kind of success Walker has achieved, but the site itself is a novelty that may never wear out, as there will always be new things to review.
The Future?
For a generation looking to find success outside of the tedium of offices and a nine to five existence, are geek websites and an online presence like ThatGuyWithTheGlasses.com the wave of the future? Check out the newest Nostalgia Critic review, Care Bears in Wonderland, or any other videos on the site, to see for yourself.
Amanda Meuwissen - My passion will always lie with fiction but expressing that devotion through non-fiction helps feed the creative beast.
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