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As many YouTube personalities have come and gone over the years, a handful have seemed to have some lasting staying power. One of those strong personalities has been James Rolfe aka “The Angry Video Game Nerd”. What started as a passion project has blossomed into a YouTube page with 3.2 million subscribers and hundreds of videos to choose from. Indeed his Cinemassacre website has a plethora of information and videos to choose from that should engage most of the gaming community. So what does AVGN have to do with business? Well his look backs at various video game consoles and games over time have spotlighted how much the video game industry has grown.
Starting back in 2006 with his famous review of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” on the Nintendo Entertainment System, AVGN has steadily grown his fan base over time as he has spotlighted a plethora of awful games from various consoles throughout history. His reviews of the Atari Jaguar to the Sega 32X have all shown that video game companies have the capacity to make colossal financial blunders over time that have cost them millions of dollars. With AVGN or “the Nerd” spotlighting these over time, it is really easy to see why these companies lost a lot of money, because these consoles and games were garbage! With millions of followers, the Nerd has stayed true to his base by pumping out content to this day as we are nearly in the era of the next generation of consoles.
What has also made AVGN a solid YouTube business model is his commitment to his brand and craft. He shares a lot of his videos with his friend and business partner Mike Matei and has still prominently featured Kyle Justin as the intro music to his videos for almost 15 years. His original partnership with ScrewAttack.com allowed him to spin off into his own website with Cinemassacre which has even branched off into reviews of horror movies, Godzilla and all kinds of different forms of media. As both a critic and businessman, the Nerd has found a variety of ways to reinvent his niche and making sure he is always serving his fans as they grow older over time, like myself.
In closing, AVGN will always be close to my heart thanks to his staying power and his ability to always make something new. No one on YouTube has done video game history quite as much justice as Rolfe and his Cinemassacre and for that we should all be thankful. That being said, one could even use Rolfe as a standard for harnessing your passion and turning it into a viable business model. Rolfe has found numerous ways over time to dig deep and turn deeper into his content library and make it a successful and strong product for his viewers and for that I salute you Nerd. So go check out one of AVGN’s famous videos and leave a comment with the one you like best.
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