by Stone Marshall | Jan 24, 2015 | Minecraft News |
When we talk about YouTube stars it’s often the vloggers that get the bulk of the attention, but now it seems Minecraft gamers are finally getting their due. Gaming is one of the fastest growing corners of the YouTube universe and Minecraft is by far its most popular subgenre. A study released by YouTube parent company Google recently found that Minecraft is the second most searched term on the site after music. Minecraft creators are some of YouTube’s most popular and bankable, despite that fact that many of them don’t even show their faces, preferring to let their elaborate in-game builds or superior game play speak for them. Now a new documentary will recognize some of Minecraft YouTube’s reigning superstars.
Minecraft: Into The Nether will feature some of the biggest names in the game. Minecraft YouTubers and Twitch streamers have built massive followings and hugely successful careers creating content in and around the game. The film will follow Alastair “Ali-A” Aiken, Olajida “KSI” Olatunji and Tom “Syndicate” Cassell, and chart the Minecraft phenomenon through their meteoric rise to online fame. It also promises to provide a behind the scenes look at the life of some of YouTube’s biggest creators. If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to be a big-name gamer, this documentary is for you.
You can check out the trailer above. The film itself will be available to rent or buy on iTunes starting January 27th.
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by Stone Marshall | Jan 23, 2015 | Awesome Book News |
Live-streaming service Twitch has pretty much the perfect business model. Twitch provides the tools to let broadcasters stream their gameplay, and streamers provide the content that brings millions of viewers to Twitch. Everybody wins. Well, everybody except music publishers who aren’t happy with their copyrighted music being used by streamers without compensation. While sites like YouTube have more-or-less found a way to make peace with the music industry, Twitch has been having a hard time finding a solution that will keep labels happy without severely curtailing the activity of streamers.
Now Twitch might have found a way to make everyone happy. The platform has introduced the Twitch Music Library, an archive that collects all the tracks that have been approved by the labels for use in live streams and archived videos. Twitch is hoping that it can convince streamers to draw their background music from this growing database of songs rather than playing potentially copyrighted tunes in the background.
Presently the library contains around 500 tracks, mostly from independent music labels whose artists will benefit from the exposure they’ll receive on Twitch’s live streams. Beyond providing creators with a resources for songs that won’t get Twitch sued, the library is also part of Twitch’s gradual expansion into music. The site, which was born as a “life streaming” platform and gradually grew into its role as a gaming juggernaut, would like to expand its territory into the lucrative world of streaming music. The move was foreshadowed last year when Twitch suddenly cracked down on copyrighted music, a move that was interpreted by many as a hint that the company would soon be acquired by YouTube. Ultimately Twitch went to Amazon, but Twitch’s musical ambitions remain in play.
Twitch has already dabbled in live streaming concerts and live performances and has been working to build partnerships with independent artists and record labels. For artists who aren’t in a position to tour, Twitch’s millions-strong streaming audiences could provide an attractive alternative. Still, Twitch’s primary hustle is still gaming, which is why the Music Library is being rolled out first and foremost as a resource for live streamers with its potential as a source of streaming music for audiences in the background.
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by Stone Marshall | Jan 23, 2015 | Minecraft News |
The greatest thing about Minecraft is that it gives players the ability to create almost anything they can imagine. We’re constantly amazed by what the game’s pro-builders can create given unlimited resources and space as well as plenty of free time. We also love seeing some of our favorite characters come to life in Minecraft’s infinite sandbox. There’s nothing quite as satisfying as a Pikachu built to be the size of a Minecraft mountain. Check out this list of our 9 favorite Minecraft cartoon builds:
Bender (Futurama)
Of all the characters on this list I think that the Bender, the foul-tempered robot from Futurama would be the most excited to be immortalized with a sky scraping Minecraft monument. This one comes complete with Bender’s trademark cigar and equally trademark attitude.
Stewie Griffin (Family Guy)
Of course I could be wrong. Stewie Griffin the matricidal baby megalomaniac from Family Guy would probably be pretty excited with this massive pixel-art likeness as well.
Queen Elsa (Frozen)
I purposely didn’t include a ton of pixel-art on this list because I think that generally 3D builds are a little more impressive, but this rendering of Elsa from an obscure movie called Frozen is pretty awesome. The creator obviously worked hard to capture a level of detail that isn’t usually possible with 2-D.
Homer Simpson (The Simpsons)
In the pantheon of influential cartoon characters it’s hard to think of any that are as long-running, influential, or important as Homer Simpson, so I wholeheartedly approve of this massive Minecraft monument to everyone’s favorite dim-wit dad.
Pikachu (Pokemon)
Part of Pikachu’s charm is that he’s a tiny, adorable electric mouse, but this creator obviously decided to render Pikachu just a little tiny bit larger than his actual size. We’ll just chalk it up to his place in the hierarchy of anime characters we love.
Deadpool (Deadpool)
I know I said no more pixel art but I’m a liar and if you don’t know that by now I really can’t help you. Also I couldn’t help myself when it came to this excellent rendering of chibi Deadpool. Someone show this to Ryan Reynolds, we need that Deadpool movie stat!
Mario and Luigi (Super Mario Brothers)
There are few gaming characters more iconic than Pikachu, but if anyone is going to wear the crown then it would have to be the plumber brothers Mario and Luigi, heroes of the Super Mario franchise and all of its many spinoffs, sequels and iterations, including cartoons, live action movies, and more games than we can count. Here they are looming over the Minecraft landscape just like they loom over gaming culture…and our hearts.
Phineas (Phineas and Ferb)
You don’t see too much solo fan art out there for Phineas of Disney’s Phineas and Ferb so naturally we were impressed with this massive Phineas build.
WALL-E (Wall-E)
If there’s one thing that I always want to be prepared for, it’s the inevitable rise of the robot army that will conquer the earth and enslave humanity. Now that YouTube is aiding and abetting the bots it’s only a matter of time and I want to make sure that our eventual robot overlords know that I’ve been on their side all along, so here’s an excellent build of Wall-E to let the robots know I care.
BONUS CONTENT!
Normally I like to stick to the script, I said 9 videos and I meant NINE VIDEOS. However…do you want to see two giant Marios made out of TNT explode? … Do you?
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by Stone Marshall | Jan 22, 2015 | Awesome Book News |
Games, music and children’s channels ruled the roost on YouTube in 2014, with its most popular channel PewDiePie’s videos watched more than 4.1bn times last year.
The UK-based gamer – aka Felix Kjellberg – ended the year with more than 33.5 million people subscribing to his YouTube channel, which focuses on “Let’s Play” footage of him playing games and providing a running commentary.
PewDiePie was YouTube’s biggest star in 2014 according to the Guardian’s analysis of monthly charts published by online video industry site Tubefilter, based on data from video analytics firm OpenSlate.
Kjellberg’s channel had the most views for 2014 overall, but second-placed children’s channel DC Toys Collector was more popular in the last three months of the year, boosting its overall total to 3.3bn views.
Musician Katy Perry had the third most popular YouTube channel in 2014 with nearly 2.4bn views, fuelled by the popularity of the videos for singles including This Is How We Do, Birthday and Dark Horse.
The Guardian’s analysis of the data reinforces the sense of YouTube as a melting pot of old and new media stars.
Shakira (just under 2bn views) and US chat-show host Jimmy Fallon (1.7bn) rub shoulders with Minecraft channels Stampy (2.2bn) and The Diamond Minecart (1.6bn) in the upper reaches of the chart, for example.
Other YouTube kingpins in 2014 included Dutch dance-music channel Spinnin’ Records (2bn); pop-culture focused WatchMojo (1.7bn); musician Enrique Iglesias (1.7bn); wrestling brand WWE (1.6bn); Russian family channel GetMovies (1.7bn); and the channels for record labels in Thailand (GMM Grammy’s 1.6bn views) and India (T-Series’ 1.6bn).
A montage of PewDiePie’s recent videos (language NSFW in places).
The figures are also a reminder that some of the most recognisable “stars” of YouTube aren’t among the biggest channels by views.
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Prominent American YouTubers like Michelle Phan, Grace Helbig, Tyler Oakley, Connor Franta and Bethany Mota rarely appeared in Tubefilter’s monthly charts of the 100 most popular channels, even though they continued to build solid audiences of subscribers.
Meanwhile British vlogger Zoella’s main channel grew steadily throughout 2014 from 10.9m views in January to 22.4m in December, but its 214m views for the year as a whole were less than a tenth of the biggest British star Stampy’s – PewDiePie is Swedish, although he now lives and works in Brighton.
YouTube remains an incubator for new production companies and online media firms, though. Successes in 2014 included BuzzFeed Video (1.3bn views), The Fine Brothers (1.3bn) and Smosh (1.1bn).
Meanwhile, children’s nursery rhymes channel Little Baby Bum notched up more than 869m views in the last four months of the year alone, having not previously appeared in Tubefilter and OpenSlate’s chart.
It was the fourth most popular YouTube channel in December, behind only DC Toys Collector, PewDiePie and Taylor Swift, whose channel totalled 1.4bn views for the year despite a quiet first few months when she was recording her album ‘1989’.
The charts also reveal the wider growth of YouTube – or at least its most successful channels.
Tubefilter and OpenSlate’s rankings for December 2013 revealed more than 6.9bn views that month for the service’s top 100 channels, but by December 2014 that figure had grown 91% to more than 13.2bn.
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by Stone Marshall | Jan 22, 2015 | Minecraft News |
The Guinness Book of World Records for gaming in 2015 has been published, which lets us know how crazy and dedicated some modern players are.
If you’ve ever been addicted to an awesome game and then wondered if you’ve ever broken any world records, we have some new information for you (and no, you probably haven’t). The Guinness World Records 2015 Gamer’s Edition is jam-packed with tons of gaming records that you wouldn’t believe, Polygon reports. One of the most impressive? The longest ever marathon play session of Minecraft which took place in Vienna, Austria and lasted a whopping 24 hours and 10 minutes straight. Martin Fornleitner was the lucky (or unlucky, because really that’s a lot of Minecraft) winner of a place in the newest edition of the world records. However, the numbers don’t stop there, so here are some crazy records based on Minecraft alone:
- Best-selling indie game: The original Minecraft by Mojang
- Largest indie game convention: MineCon 2013, where 7,500 people crowded into the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, FL.
- First country modeled at full scale in a video game: Denmark is the lucky winner having been recreated in April 2014 by the Danish Geodata Agency.
- Largest real-world place created in Minecraft: Surprisingly it’s not Denmark, but instead a map of Britain which the Ordnance Survey created.
- Most concurrent players in one Minecraft world: Yogscast decided to get a little crazy and push Minecraft to its limits when it had 2,622 players online at once on Aug. 1, 2011.
- Most popular game beta: You guessed it, Minecraft, with over 10 million gamers signed up.
- Most Minecraft snow golems built in one minute: We’re not sure where this idea came from, but Brazilian gamer Nachtigall Vaz made it happen with 70.
There are still more awesome Minecraft records that were broken that you can check out by buying The Guinness World Records 2015 Gamer’s Edition for $14.99. If those are the statistics on Minecraft alone, just imagine what other crazy stories about gaming this record book contains.
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There are few gaming characters more iconic than Pikachu, but if anyone is going to wear the crown then it would have to be the plumber brothers Mario and Luigi, heroes of the Super Mario franchise and all of its many spinoffs, sequels and iterations, including cartoons, live action movies, and more games than we can count. Here they are looming over the Minecraft landscape just like they loom over gaming culture…and our hearts.