What shocked me more than the games being bad, and the narrative being non existent and no real throughline to the editing, and it got me in the other video, was just how the money spent does not equate to how the show looks.
282
GrinningPariah23 hr ago
+34
When I heard it was *at least* twice as expensive as Survivor, and probably 3-5x, my jaw just dropped.
34
NeoNoireWerewolf15 hr ago
+11
A major reason it cost so much more is that the production was a mess in terms of organization. Shows like Survivor and The Amazing Race are well-oiled machines whose crews have every detail mapped out and perfected. When nobody running the show knows what they’re doing, you’re just burning money as you try to figure it out while filming. It’s horrible production management.
11
eye_can_see_you9 hr ago
+2
They bragged "we have more cameras than the olympics!" and showing off their 10 billion cameras, but no one who knows how to actually shoot a show so every money shot in every game is a blurry zoomed in mess because no good camera was pointed at it
They think that "expensive cameras" mean good cinematography. You can really tell that no one here actually knows what they're doing, it's just Jimmy and his friends running all creative and financial decisions and no one is allowed to question them or take the lead in anything
2
bautin1 day ago
+106
Oh, it's hilarious how these people are talking about "playing with integrity" and "fairness" and whatever melodramatic shit they can spew.
And it's like, it's a zero-sum game. One person wins, the rest go home. You eliminate your competitors or you get eliminated.
And then there were all of the completely random "games" that had absolutely no skill whatsoever. Then all of the bribes that were greater than the EV of the contest at the point.
106
Puzzleheaded_Fix59422 hr ago
+37
I think what makes these rundowns of the show kind of fascinating to watch is just how poorly these games are designed.
I wasn't really all that familiar with Mr. Beasts's content, but after looking through his channel a bit it's pretty clear that him and his crew of "boys" have never really designed a good game. The ones that aren't just random comparison videos are effectively just variations on the battle royale theme (*x* amount of people enter and 1 person wins). It kind of makes sense that this would resonate with his audience of 10 year old boys whose primary form of entertainment is Fortnite, but it makes for terrible television.
I would not consider myself any kind of game designer, but I'm confident that I could design better games. I don't know if they'd be good games, but they'd certainly be better. I feel like anyone that's played boardgames or social deduction games at some point in their lives could do a better job.
37
LADYBIRD_HILL19 hr ago
+21
His whole thing for the last few years is just to do squid game but worse. His version of it is his most viewed video iirc.
21
turiannerevarine13 hr ago
+8
nah fam it is totally distinct from Squid Game. he doesn't kill his contestants. see? completely seperate and no valid comparison can be made whatsoever. trust me fam
8
TF_dia12 hr ago
+5
Killing contestants is not what made the Games dystopian, it is what made them fictional!
5
turiannerevarine11 hr ago
+2
see that right there is another distinction fam. squid games admit they are fictional. the beast games pretend they aren't fiction. totally distinct fam.
2
juanperes9317 hr ago
+5
It's not a surprice when the best games he ever did was when he just copied squid game. everything else has been a poor imitation.
5
RuthlessIndecision15 hr ago
+2
At every stage they should let all the contestants vote to split the pot and end the show $5M / 200 people is $25k each. It'd be a boring game and a short show. Some people would be more desperate than others and make more predictable choices.
2
Katorga821 hr ago
+6
I liked how they made many of the games just a roadbloack for anyone who isnt athletic, a waste of time for the "smart" people unless they were athletes aswell
6
silverfoxxflame10 hr ago
+3
I did not watch beast games just Dan's review of them for the record.
Frankly the bribe episodes were the only ones that seemed kind of interesting. Like at least people were going to lie and manipulate things in ways that could have been interesting. The fact that you then just have nothing but teams and relationships and bad games and boys club vs girls club stuff for the rest of it seemed boring as f***.
3
bautin10 hr ago
+1
I've watched the first series and I'm going to watch the second season eventually. We have a son who wants to watch it with us, so it's on the calendar as it were.
It *is* boring as f***.
In the second episode of the first season, there's a chance for one of four "captains" to take $1 million, a full fifth of the current grand prize, remain in the game and eliminate everyone else on their team. A woman named Twana was selected as a captain.
No one does. Even if you get eliminated in the next round, so what. $1 million.
They later get to a "trolly problem" episode. Where the choices are:
Destroy a Lambo OR Eliminate 3 people and get a Lambo.
Eliminate one person and destroy a Tesla OR Eliminate 3 people and destroy a Tesla.
Eliminate one person OR Eliminate 3 people, one of whom you don't know the identity of. The person choosing which track also chose everyone except the "mystery person".
The final elimination has two people on each track. The chooser picks one person for each track, then the person the track chooses the other person.
It's dumb. In the first two situations, you eliminate three people. Which is what happened.
For the "mystery person" choice, you save that track because the chance you are the mystery person is like 100%. Mr Beast is a dumb person who thinks he's clever. But this is also a show of f****** idiots, so they chose the track with three people and eliminated themselves.
The last one was essentially the chooser putting a person they didn't like on one track and a person they liked on the other.
When they get down to 10 people, they vote on an order and are then given a chance to take a share of $1 million. They just do it stupid. First, take the $1 million. Yes, next time elimination comes down to voting you are out, but you are out with $1 million. Twana is first. She takes a tenth, $100,000. The next guy takes $223,000. Which fucks up the 1/10th split and almost guarantees you to be the a******. But the guy after that takes *most* for the remainder. Not even all.
So twice now, Twana has declined $1 million.
Luckily she's in the final 3. There's been a coin flip and the prize is increased to $10 million. This does nothing to change the Expected Value (EV) for the majority of the bribes. It's almost always better to take the bribe.
Then they bring in the top 50 previously eliminated competitors to vote out one of the remaining three. However, someone can elect to take $1 million to eliminate themselves instead. The guy who flipped the coin chose the bribe and it was revealed that Twana was the one who *would* have been eliminated had no one taken the bribe.
So now it's Twana and the other guy. The game is one contestant puts a check in one of ten briefcases, then the other contestant has to guess which one.
The other guy gets it on the first try. She's given $100,000 as a consolation prize.
After turning down $1 million three different times, she walked away with $190,000.
Which isn't "bad" per se, but you had three opportunities to take $1 million. In comparison someone in:
19th got $1.8 million
3rd got $1 million
7th (tie) got $655,000
55th got $450,000
494th (yes) got $431,000
7th (tie) got $236,878
13th got $200,000
Fourth place got $0.50. Yes, fifty cents.
It's an infuriating series watching complete f****** idiots make bad choices.
There's one game where three people have numbered cards and a path. They hold up a card and that how many spaces they move. If multiple people hold up the same number, neither move. One person just says "I'm going to hold up 3 no matter what" and expects people to just let her win. And they do. Like you could collude with the other person and say, let's both alternate 5 and 3 that way the a****** can't win.
What that game needed was one less board. Or more boards with the rule that the highest number selected doesn't move either. So if an a****** is like "I'm picking the second-highest every time". It's like fine, go for it, we'll pick under and lock you out and still both get to move.
1
SledgexHammer1 day ago
+15
I wonder if its a problem eith the cutting floor. So much of the season focused on the romance between a power couple who met there, then they get knocked out and the finale just falls flat. Maybe they're cutting episodes as they film, so without enough planning their throughline is susceptible to falling apart like it did here.
The games were total BS though, half of them were from the first season and all of them were derivative of other challenges hes filmed. The whole strong vs smart thing was completely unnecessary to mention at all.
15
Deserterdragon14 hr ago
+3
Very hard to craft throughlines and characters when the games are such random chance and the last remaining guys are so boring (and had to do fairly mean stuff to get to the end). By far the best strategy on the show is to just take the cashout money as soon as you can, so aside from literally getting rid of all the smart people though bad game design, all the smart 'strong' players are gonna be long gone too.
3
KnowMatter1 day ago
+224
I've now watched 3 video essays about Beast Games second season in as many days.
224
dexter301 day ago
+126
Same, and I'm assuming like me you haven't watched a single episode of beast games.
I'm watching these breakdowns and it seems like jimmy WANTS to be like a dungeon master or some kind of mastermind of games. But all his motivations and ideas are oriented around wealth and TV based relationships. (who will betray who and for HOW much etc).
But all the most successful reality TV, game shows and the like are based around actual games of either intellect or manipulation. The traitors in the UK is advanced werewolf. Taskmaster are like party games. Survivor are actual physical challenges mixed with party games.
But it seems like all of his end games are just "who can manipulate who with the most amount of money" He doesn't take into account game theory and potential for tipping the scales. He's single handedly made me respect all those scripted reality TV shows that have producers that coach the stars into baiting the most drama because they KNOW what works best for the camera and know to go beyond basic cash.
126
Ver_Void1 day ago
+52
All of the times there was a bribe offered were just so painfully dull, it's not interesting when you offer people well in excess of the value of their place in the contest.
Doubly so when so much of the elimination is luck based, why wouldn't I sell a 3% chance for a few hundred k
52
Comic_Book_Reader1 day ago
+39
[Scott Cramer](https://youtu.be/tBJdizMEwIs?is=NtxTDJqdRcGaWmcP) criticized season 1 for having just an exorbitant amount of bribes to the point that it's not even funny and MrBeast himself left a (pinned) comment stating he was taking it into account and would try to have more skill based games in season 2... which he also failed at based on Dan's scathing critique and how it fundamentally doesn't work because of his ineptitude.
39
XiaoRCT1 day ago
+18
They'll get it right when they eventually realize they need to give these people privacy when they offer them bargains and opportunities for betrayal. The whole ''take the money and screw everyone else thing'' that happened in season 1 only happened because they actually gave the participants privacy to make the decision, and even then they screwed him afterwards by making it clear what he had done. At least he received meaningful money for it.
No one does anything exciting in any of the games because everyone that does is instantly punished by the group afterwards, it was the main issue in season 1 and seems to be the main issue with season 2 as well. It's shocking how many reality shows fall into that trap.
The netflix squid game had the same issue, there is no intrigue or anything like that, people just end up falling into boring alliances and then anyone who steps out of those lines is singled out quickly by the other participants, and everyone is fine with it because they'll likely get some money or a random chance at victory anyway.
18
GlancingArc22 hr ago
+9
I mean, I think you hit the nail with the fact that he doesn't understand game theory. That's really the key point. To design a game, you either need to get lucky with emergent gameplay or you need to specifically test the game to observe the way yourself or other people play it to understand the game theory behind it. It seems like they didn't do that. Like legit just testing mock versions of most of the games with 10 or so people a few times over a few weeks would be better than nothing.
9
ScyllaOfTheDepths17 hr ago
+8
In many of the games, they have to basically force people to screw each other over or the game won't work because the only way that these sociopaths (literally I actually think they don't understand human emotions) can only conceive of financial gain as an action which must result from one person exploiting another. They want a cutthroat competition where everyone is screwing each other over for cash, but then the contestants don't want to do it so there are literally clips of Jimmy ordering them to betray each other like the world's most ineffective despot.
8
MeanMrMustard4814 hr ago
+3
Man, I miss the Mole. That was a fun one
3
ETNevada9 hr ago
+2
His entire motivation going back years is Growth by X.
Every decision he makes is based on that, nothing deeper.
2
Naggins1 day ago
+67
Folding Ideas 1, Big Joel, Folding Ideas 2?
67
Ill-Muscle9451 day ago
+19
That's me
19
chloe-and-timmy1 day ago
+12
I went back and rewatched the original Big Joel video so Ive watched 4, which is so funny. After finishing the two Big Joel videos I felt burnt out on Beast Games and this dropped a second later so of course I had to watch it as well.
12
MysterWrecked1 day ago
+12
This one technically existed already from the moment the main Folding Ideas video dropped, as it was a free watch on Patreon, and unlisted on YouTube for those who did not want to watch it on Patreon.
He just unlisted it/publicly published it, now that the main video and its message had time to breathe and circulate.
12
Llampy1 day ago
+6
I did wonder why his first video was under 2 hours
6
Puzzleheaded_Fix59422 hr ago
+4
I think he was actually waiting for Big Joel to release his video to not cut into his viewer numbers since they're both friends. And, while I like Big Joel, Dan's video is much better.
4
Kotleba21 hr ago
+2
I watched Dan's video first and then Joel's and I gotta agree. I loved Dan deconstructing each game and pointing out what makes them so poorly made, while Joel seemed to be just kinda plowing through it without making much meaningful observations. Which was disappointing, because I also rewatched his video on the first season and felt that one was about on par with Dan's in quality
2
chloe-and-timmy21 hr ago
+4
idk, I think Joel has a pretty good observation that is a bit downplayed in Dan's in that the contestants seem fundamentally against doing things that normally make a game show entertaining, and I really wonder what about Beast Games make the people who play it get furious at you if you do anything but a Kumbaya. I also think hammering home how much the last half ends up just repeating games from the first season was good.
4
Puzzleheaded_Fix59421 hr ago
+2
Dan's just better at critiquing media than Big Joel is. Dan gets in the nitty gritty of video production. He's not just breaking down the games, but breaking down how horribly structured the show is. I'm not really surprised his video is better.
Big Joel's strong suit is political commentary. His Bill Maher and Conservative comedy videos are his stand outs.
Big Joel's media stuff is so-so. His big Disney Channel original movie video is entertaining, but I wouldn't call it good critique nor is it trying to be. It's mostly just amusing that he sat down and watched all of them and a bit of a trip down memory lane for those of us who grew up watching those terrible movies.
2
RedRobin10120 hr ago
+3
It was just disappointing in how softballed it all was, especially regarding Jimmy himself. I get that's part of the bit, but going from Dan's scathing commentary on Mr. Beast as an individual to Joel's "oh hey Jimmy we can still be cool :)" just feels so sour after the lawsuits and blatant kowtowing with the Riyadh ad.
3
Puzzleheaded_Fix59420 hr ago
+3
Yeah, that's a fair critique. I also thought it was pretty softballish. Like, some of the harsher critique of his first video wore off because Mr. Beast messaged him.
Mr. Beat did an interview with Dan on his channel. I wasn't really aware of who Mr. Beat was, but apparently he's a history guy. He had done a collab with Mr. Beast for a video and you can kind of see the same thing happening in his interview with Dan. He clearly thinks Dan is too harsh on Mr. Beast.
There's this kind of aura around Mr. Beast that some creators want a piece of. Dan seems completely uninterested in it. He did his research and I'd argue that part of the point of his original video essay is that it's it's all built on a house of cards. No reason to think Mr. Beast will be relevant in five or ten years since it's likely his company runs out of cash.
3
RedRobin10120 hr ago
+4
I do wonder if Dan is aware of this mystique and it's part of the reason he's going so scorched earth in these videos. He dedicated a big part of his first video to how this imbalance between creators can be both unconsciously and purposefully exploited after all. Heck, we're seeing a mini-version of this play out with Hannah for Season 2--of course she's "cool" with the rest of the Boys systematically targeting her down, because to not be okay with it would run the risk of not only cutting off her only access to people with wealth, but potentially also alienating Jimmy and Beast Media itself because she's "harshing the vibes."
Regardless of his reasons I really do respect Dan for going all in. A lot of creators have handled Mr. Beast with kid gloves; it was refreshing to watch someone describe both the failings of Beast Games as a product and Jimmy as a human being. We as a society give far too much grace to the rich and they deserve none of it.
4
Puzzleheaded_Fix59420 hr ago
+2
I think it's the first time I've seen anyone give a criticism of Mr. Beast that isn't just, "His smile on his thumbnails creep me out" or "His food kind of sucks."
Dan treats this with the same kind of eye as he did with his NFT video. It's something even journalists from respected news outlets like the NYT would miss in their criticism since Mr. Beast couches everything he does in tacky philanthropy and everyone else has just kind of bought into the idea that Mr. Beast is inevitable and won't just evaporate as his audience ages out of his videos due to some sort of brand loyalty.
2
Deserterdragon14 hr ago
+1
I think it's just harder to fully go in on a dude when you know he's probably watching the video and also seems fairly desperate and needy to be liked by the video essayist class.
He's a weird public figure because he's far more of an incompetent hustler with too many resources than he is the systematic evil he seems like at first glance. He's much more tied to old youtube mentality of Channel Awesome and Rooster Teeth and Yogscast than he initially seems.
1
quitewrongly17 hr ago
+1
Well that's the thing, Joel covered most of the major bases the first time around. A lot of what he said was essentially "Yeah, we saw this first season" with occasional "This was earlier this season". If he's done the work before I think he's allowed to spare himself the effort this time through.
1
Sorlex9 hr ago
+1
The end of Big Joei's video was incredibly strange. He was basically begging to be invited to the studio and said he would make a positive video, or at least not as 'bad' as Folding Ideas.
It didn't come off as a joke either. Like you can tell when he is joking, he legit seemed salty.
1
chloe-and-timmy9 hr ago
+1
It came across like a joke to me, but it was still a bit odd because that's the kind of joke you make when there isnt a chance they might actually take you up on the offer thinking that it wasnt a joke.
1
appletinicyclone1 day ago
+2
What was the other essays?
2
Granito_Rey1 day ago
+2
Folding Ideas, I'm guessing Big Joel, and who else?
2
bautin1 day ago
+1
I'm watching the video before the video right now.
1
Coneskater10 hr ago
+1
It annoys me, because before this I had never watched anything to do with Mr. Beast. I know too much about him now.
1
TheTresStateArea1 day ago
+103
I guess I am mostly shocked that each of their games had obvious failure modes that they hit immediately and each time it felt like "we didn't see this coming at all".
103
ehisforadam1 day ago
+63
Not only that, Jimmy got mad at the contestants for not doing what he wanted them to do and he yelled at them for it. It's so broken.
63
WeaponizedKissing1 day ago
+57
I don't mean this to sound as 'old man yells at clouds' as it's going to, and I want to say that there is nothing inherently wrong with intelligent young people developing and working on shows, but...
his whole production team is just a gang of stupid f****** children. Every clip of the show director Tyler just makes me wonder how the f*** is this guy in charge of anything. I know why, it's just Jimmy and his boys, and that phrase basically encompasses everything wrong with everything. The most gormless charisma pit of nothing I have ever seen.
57
Caelinus1 day ago
+33
It is a problem that YouTubers run into when they try to branch out into production. So many of them seem to think that the ability to make successful YouTube videos means they can make game shows/movies/reality TV.
They can't. It is an entirely different skill set with whole over 100 years of development. There are some loose similarities, but it is like thinking that because you can cook you would be an amazing director of R&D at a multinational food company.
33
Puzzleheaded_Fix59421 hr ago
+10
One of the reasons why YouTube and Twitch streamers so rarely break out of their ecosystems is that so few of them are really all that talented.
YouTube is kind of just a numbers game. You can be effectively talentless and become a millionaire making videos of your family doing completely vacuous activities. It's a flash in the pan kind of success where you'll drop out of relevancy the moment the algorithm decides that it's going to stop feeding people your content, but you'll have a brief moment where you're hitting people's front page and can ride that high for a while.
Mr. Beast is just the ultimate example of that. He's a bit more savvy than someone running a prank channel, but it's effectively the same idea. He isn't Bo Burnham taking that early success and immediately pivoting to stand up.
Twitch is worse. There's been so few twitch streamers that have really amounted to anything of value. So many big streamers like Ninja have failed to capitalize on their fame because their ability to play games for 12 hours a day and talk to chat doesn't translate elsewhere. Hell, I'd argue until IShowSpeed showed up recently that most popular twitch streamers aren't even particularly good at streaming and even his success is predicated on these crazy travel videos. What happens when the dude runs out of countries to visit?
10
Thetonn19 hr ago
+6
I think this is going too far the other way. I think a lot of Youtubers and Twitch Streamers are very talented, and often need to have mastery of a number of different disciplines in order to be effective and survive in a highly competitive field.
I think it is more accurate to say that their limitation is that, because they need to do so much stuff in addition to making videos, they do not specialise in one area in a similar manner to how most professionals working in the production side of entertainment do, making it an unfair comparison between the two they are always going to lose.
6
Caelinus11 hr ago
+2
I agree. Not all of them are, but most really successful creators are talented at doing the exact thing they are doing.
I might not find their exact skill set very compelling in a lot of cases, people like Mr. Beast make zero sense to me, but it is still a skill.
My point in my original comment here was that it is an entirely *different* set of skills than what is needed for successful production. YouTube/Twitch is a very induvidualistic and algorithmically driven process that relies on an ability to create an apparently *direct* connection with the audience. Production just has a much larger scope and very different expectations. It is field with a much more developed visual/storytelling language and is not as reliant on a connection to the audience, but rather to the entire team of people working behind the scenes.
It was the reason I used cooking and being a director of a food company division. I actually think both are equally hard to be good at, but you can't translate the skills back and forth.
You can actually see how true that is whenever traditional production people try to break into YouTube. It is just as bad as when YouTubers try to do TV. Neither group really understands the skills of the other particularly well. TV/Movie people often lack the ability to create the personalized faux-authenticity needed for YouTube/Twitch.
It actually makes groups like Dropout, who have a setup that starts to bridge that gap, interesting.
2
Treecreaturefrommars10 hr ago
+1
Most non youtube productions are also a lot longer than most youtubers/streamers are used to. Remember that with a lot of the youtubers who tried breaking into movies in the 2010s, where it became very clear their style was very unsuited for movie length productions.
Those that we see succeed, such as most recently Markiplier, are generally those that have experimented a lot outside of their usual medium before, and have established connections and experience in fields outside of Youtube.
1
qtx12 hr ago
+1
> I think a lot of Youtubers and Twitch Streamers are very talented, and often need to have mastery of a number of different disciplines in order to be effective and survive in a highly competitive field.
Nah, it's first come first serve. The popular streamers are ones that have been around for years. There are no new streamers that are 'up and coming'. It's a dying market.
1
juanperes9317 hr ago
+2
There is a lot of countries and big cities, so he can probably repeat a few.
2
ehisforadam1 day ago
+17
That's not an old man yelling at clouds. It's a totally fair assessment of the whole thing. The entire Beast Enterprises machine is about maximizing YouTube metrics and make world records. These people have zero education and are anti-education. They won the YouTube l****** and are now the dog that caught the car and the driver decided to let you drive in F1.
17
ascagnel____20 hr ago
+3
I think this somewhat extends to all their other ventures as well -- maximizing metrics works on YouTube because there's zero buy-in to watching a video there, but the minute you move outside that context (buying one of their questionable food products or even watching on a paid streaming service), the person on the other end feels burnt if the result is bad.
One of the Folding Ideas videos has a chart of views; I wonder how many of those views are of a complete video, and how it compares to other channels.
3
ConfessingToSins10 hr ago
+2
No, this is basically entirely correct. Jimmy would be a car salesman if he had not hit it on YouTube. The rest of his friends would be unemployed or working retail. Basically, not a single one of them is actually competent enough to work at anything beyond a low level retail position.
2
itirnitii1 day ago
+13
he just does not at all get how game creation works. its kind of sad to see his shit ideas fail so many times in a row producing the most dull results almost every time.
13
Genindraz1 day ago
+13
I get the sense that it has a lot to do with his worldview.
It's like the man has become so convinced that people are just itching for an excuse to stab each other in the back that he can't fathom the idea that there are situations where people might actually choose cooperation when given the chance to betray someone.
Not to rant too much, but human are inherently social and cooperative creatures. It's how we survive on a day to day basis. And sure, given sufficient temptation, a good portion of us would turn on each other.
13
Bluest_waters22 hr ago
+6
People who themselves are not cooperative or very socially charitable, assume everybody else is also not cooperative nor socially charitable. They really believe the whole world is as empty, narcissistic and vicious as they are. And when evidence presents that that's not the case they simply reject it. A certain politician comes to mind...
6
Ver_Void21 hr ago
+3
Also just missing the point of temptation like that in a show. It works when people feel like they've got a chance to take the bonus and still keep going, such as in a game based on skill where the better player risks a handicap or relies on their team needing them
But why would anyone who thinks they're likely to get 5 million risk that for a hundred k? And if you know you can lose because a dice roll then why gamble the money effectively in your hand on very long odds
3
juanperes9317 hr ago
+3
He also seems to have playtested the game with people who designed it and didnt have to acount with things like lossing social capital for betraying the group.
3
SporadicPanic9 hr ago
+1
one lesson is that building games is actually pretty hard. and doubly so if a lot of money is on the line so contestants are incentivized to break it as much as possible.
I love the Korean game shows and Devil's Plan / Genius are the gold standard. But one of the striking things about them is that the games have so many rules and you can see how it's built and how there are a few potential strategies. Even then, some of the games kinda break anyway bc of interpersonal dynamics that were unexpected.
And it seems like the creative crew / Jimmy went with "here's the concept" and when possibly someone mentioned it having issues, retorting with "no. no. it'll be great". I'm projecting bc i've been on projects where (clueless) leadership was exactly like this, giving broad strokes of how things would go and all the technical personnel were giving it the side eye bc potential implementation issues were painfully obvious from the start.
The thing is that the general concept of "physical 100 meets devil's plan" is pretty intriguing. Maybe we'll see a Korean version sometime in the future
1
dewittless1 day ago
+67
I see that, ill content with destroying NFTs, Dan Olsen must now take on Mr Beast to slake his thrist for blood.
67
ehisforadam1 day ago
+39
Hbomberguy, Jenny Nicholson, and Dan must be in a race to see who can destroy the most shitty things.
39
Captain_Shoe19 hr ago
+19
Hbomberguy is well behind in that race right now, what with him not having released any content on YouTube for more than 2 years now
Please come back, hbomberguy! :(
19
97thJackle10 hr ago
+2
He's supposedly working on a video about Adobe, and their desire to ruin any semblance of brand.
I'm of the opinion that he needs to get the damn thing done.
2
Councillor_Troy1 day ago
+65
One thing I found quite striking is that Mr Beast is a *really* bad host. He’s not without charisma or screen presence but it’s shocking how often the broadcasted version allows him to be seen getting visibly flummoxed or frustrated.
The whole point of a presenter is to hold the whole thing together, that they always look like they want to be there and look like this was always the plan, but I guess no one’s going to tell the boss he needs a bit more media training for something that’s supposed to be a bit more professional than “we stranded a hundred blind people at the top of a mountain”.
65
IamEclipse1 day ago
+24
His whole cadence in the intros being exactly the same as how he introduces a YouTube video also isn't doing his hosting any favours. It feels c**** and lifeless, like he's trying to keep you on the hook for the next crazy video, rather than orchestrating a season of reality TV.
Admittedly, I don't watch a lot of reality TV, and outside of the Folding Ideas videos, I haven't seen any of Beast Games because it seems so unappealing, but on a show like *I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!*, if you remove the hosts, it is a net negative. They give each little bit of drama a studio hook and keep the trials interesting above a celebrity getting a million spiders dropped on them or whatever.
24
Lemurmoo21 hr ago
+6
I don't watch this guy, but because he's so big, I expected more than the charisma of a one off side character in Jackass. But he talks like he's 18 yrs old and also a contestant. It's not relatable or engaging. Just comes to show anybody can succeed with enough luck I guess
6
juanperes9317 hr ago
+4
Hr has the money to hire a talented host, it's just ego that keeps him there.
4
eye_can_see_you9 hr ago
+2
Putting him right next to Jeff from Survivor is such night and day difference lmao
2
SporadicPanic9 hr ago
+1
what's this weird smile of his? it's like he just pulls back his top lip to expose his top teeth; it's more of a snarl instead of a smile. really creepy
1
Ver_Void1 day ago
+41
The comparison to Australian kids shows is hilarious because it would be amazing to see a $100 million version of those, there's just so much you could do with that kind of budget.
If they were even halfway good at their jobs they'd have lured in designers from smaller shows with the promise of building whatever they could dream up and then hired the survivor team to do the personal side of it with the contestants.
Instead they stacked blocks and played dodgeball
41
SporadicPanic9 hr ago
+1
stacking blocks could be really cool. Like in Devil's plan, they had this game where they had to assemble puzzle pieces by shape alone (not picture) and it was amazing.
but yeah, just here are the colored blocks and put them in this order is pretty ridiculous.
1
LoveWaffle11 day ago
+27
Something about Jimmy Beast in the Bluff Game yelling at the contestants to start lying to each other while they all do each other a solid and truthfully tell everyone (sans 1 'villain') where to go makes him seem like an absolute sociopath
27
GrinningPariah21 hr ago
+13
It's like he wants to prove that on some level, everyone is as empty and craven as he is, but they aren't. It's just him.
13
Hot-Guard-911920 hr ago
+7
I watched season 1 and there was a moment when two contestants competed for the island. And one contestant said, "this is so messed up and twisted but in a fun sort of way" and Jimmy gives him a bro fist saying finally someone understands me.
I think that's the real Jimmy right there. Dude's a little twisted in the head.
7
TF_dia11 hr ago
+2
Reminds me to when the Joker was frustrated and confused that neither of the ships decided to blow each other up so he had to do it himself.
2
SporadicPanic9 hr ago
+1
it seems weird; it's like they want to be the evil foreigners in Squid Game season 1, where they sit and watch as they seehow much they can get the contestants to debase themselves.
1
Howling_Mad_Man1 day ago
+22
Is this the companion video to the other one? Think I watched that already. Fascinating to learn what this show is and isn't.
22
Comic_Book_Reader1 day ago
+28
It is. It was initially a Patreon supplement with an unlisted YouTube upload as a backup.
28
leothesilent1 day ago
+37
I legit don’t get how the “beast” game designers are this stupid. Stuff like the “smart” games being bad I can explain that they were designed by jock types who weren’t sure what a good “smart” game would be, but the thing about them not realizing people would end up fighting where the 2 obstacle courses joined up is baffling
37
GrinningPariah1 day ago
+31
Excessive overconfidence.
I'm a game dev, and I can promise you that all the game designers you respect most have made some f****** stupid challenges at one time or another. But you never saw or played those challenges, because that stuff gets immediately caught in playtesting, and they either fix it or scrap it.
The failures in these challenges demonstrate to me that either they never tested these games whatsoever, or their testing was so deeply flawed it was as good as not testing at all.
31
BlueberryWasps1 day ago
+19
the funniest part is he has boat-loads of money that he could use to hire the greatest game designers in the world to design the most robust and engaging courses he wants, but instead spends that money buying lambos for his dumbass friends so they can drive into a giant oversized set in unison while one of them hastily jots "what if we made them stack blocks for 12 hours" into the group chat
but what else can you expect when dealing with the arrested brain of a 14 year old boy who thinks money solves everything
19
GrinningPariah1 day ago
+9
It all goes back to that overconfidence. Why hire experts if you think you're great at it? Why reevaluate when you think you're doing great?
9
Ver_Void21 hr ago
+3
And I'd bet no small sum they went from design to full build with pretty minimal testing, all of those ideas could have failed in a c**** warehouse somewhere and been reinvented but instead got built full scale before it occurred they sucked
3
Analogmon21 hr ago
+7
Dan even says the rope climb issues would have been immediately caught if they had even one jacked dude try it and fail miserably.
There's no shot anyone seriously road tested any of these games. They're too obviously flawed.
7
GrinningPariah21 hr ago
+4
Right? The first Strong challenge is such a good example, they just needed to adjust their formula for the weights, it wasn't fundamentally broken. But because they can't effectively evaluate themselves, they learned that lesson too late to fix it.
4
no-name-here19 hr ago
+3
Folding Ideas’ first Mr Beast S2 video covered this - Mr Beast’s team’s talks a lot about learning from what's been done before but seems to believe they can learn it themselves quickly (’from the experts’).
3
GrinningPariah18 hr ago
+2
Yeah, I saw that one as well.
It's kind of a common pattern. People who are experts in one field know what it takes to become an expert, and that lets them respect experts in other fields. They know how little the average person knows about fields they haven't studied.
But someone who isn't really a trained expert in *anything* has a strong tendency to underrate how much effort becoming an expert takes.
And savants are the worst in a way. Mr Beast *is* a savant at gaming YouTube. He had no formal training applicable to that I'm aware of, but he managed to become literally the top creator on the platform. That's no f****** joke. But doing that without any sort of training makes him think he can do *anything* without training.
2
altacan1 day ago
+10
Dan notes they play tested it themselves and this shows why it's such a bad idea for the design team to play test their own stuff.
10
TF_dia11 hr ago
+1
rich guys fooling aroung don't have the same stakes about life-changing money. Who knew?
1
Katorga821 hr ago
+4
Either Dan said it, or a youtube comment, saying the decisons made for this show were made by college dropouts who "think" this is what "smart" games are, like stacking coloured blocks by memorisation.
The village with all the contestants staying in, the jocks get a gym, but the smarts get.....a lab and chemistry sets? What "smart" person is going to be doing any of that on a show to win money?
4
Fluffy_Ambition354613 hr ago
+3
It really does feel like Beast just thought Smart vs strong would be a reason to get people to watch and, conspiracy, Beast being the elimination addict he is was all in on making 50 people easy elimination targets.
I watched two eps and what is not sold well in explanations how, and this is the only word to describe it, horny Mrbeast is for eliminations. Every game is designed around eliminating people, and there is no game were losing it just means your down a point.
A financial humilation f***** is the only explanation for MrBeast.
3
barcode209923 hr ago
+13
I thought it was funny how c*** the block stacking challenges at the beginning were, when the most recent Taskmaster (on Youtube) had an absolute banger for a block stacking game.
13
ascagnel____20 hr ago
+4
There's so many ways you could make a block stacking game interesting (and they did that later in the show), but that first game was just so dumb.
4
z3r0w0rm1 day ago
+18
This is peak. Line Goes Up v2
18
I_Am_Robotic22 hr ago
+7
Mr. Beast exploits the poor and needy. Bottom line. He can dress it up like charity but he’s monetizing people’s suffering and willingness to be filmed losing their dignity for money.
7
ripyourlungsdave22 hr ago
+6
Mr Beast is an actively and intentionally malignant force on modern culture and no one will convince me otherwise.
The dude is a sociopath.
6
TheFalconKid22 hr ago
+2
2.5 videos in one week! Two full size videos and a stream with Mr. Beat!
This is unprecedented levels of Folding Ideas.
2
SardinmGarter14 hr ago
+2
The final game is just a massively inferior version of golden balls. Watching 2 people play out the prisoners dilemma face to face is exactly the feeling Mr beast wants from these games, at what price are you willing to betray someone. But he just turns it into blind luck which is soo boring
2
the-good-son16 hr ago
+1
It's bewildering how with all that money they don't hire game-creators and playtest the games with random people.
1
Applesburg1413 hr ago
+1
It's a vapid, silly show. But I also saw a lot of contestants from other vapid, silly shows.
Mr. Beast is Doug Walker with a budget and a billion views. Nobody to rein him in.
1
97thJackle10 hr ago
+1
I love how this is actually what Mr. Beast "wants". He brought out Dan and 11 other content creators to get a vibe check of the Beast Productions complex, but was so inept at explaining his own thoughts and desires that it came off to the rest of the creators as a weird collab.
But Dan understood that it was a feeble attempt at a professional assessment, a consultation from Beast's peers.
And here it is: your show sucks, here's why, your company sucks, here's why.
And Jimmy is going to ignore every damn thing Dan has given him, because he is such an uneducated moron that he thinks he can power through anything.
LMAO
1
__Hello_my_name_is__1 day ago
-21
While I obviously agree with just about everything said in that video, I also think that, in a sense, the critique is very much missing the point as to why MrBeast is popular.
It's presented as this baffling thing how something this incompetent can be this popular, but I feel like the popularity is in a big part *because* of the incompetence.
The video (and the other one) mentions multiple times about how astounded he was that a lot of the strong criticism he found were from MrBeast backstage videos. As in: MrBeast admitted to all the bad parts himself! He admitted they completely screwed up some game, or they didn't plan ahead at all, or are just winging it completely. What a fool!
But that's exactly what makes him relatable. He's not some big professional media corporation doing a cool thing. He's just some dude with infinity money who gets to do this. And he gets to fail, and he gets to wing it, and he gets to keep doing it.
I'd argue that in the eyes of a lot of 12 year old kids, that makes him awesome and weirdly relatable ("that could be me some day!"), instead of something to mock.
-21
Mopman431 day ago
+24
Though as Dan points out in his other video, his popularity seems to be waning- the views on his newest videos aren’t doing the numbers to match his old ones.
24
__Hello_my_name_is__1 day ago
-1
Yeah, totally. But he's still absurdly popular.
-1
Analogmon21 hr ago
+11
Dan also points out that no, he really isn't. He has no measure of fandom. He gets youtube views but is unable to convert those into real fans that translate into other spaces.
11
Komorebi_LJP14 hr ago
When he shows up in other videos they get a ton more views, so not really
0
__Hello_my_name_is__11 hr ago
No, that's not what he pointed out. He pointed out that he should have more fans given the views he gets. That does *not* mean that he is not popular.
It is utterly absurd to say the guy isn't still extremely popular, just because he's not as popular as some of the most popular people on the planet right now.
0
potent011 day ago
+11
this is so off the mark, I honestly cant believe that anyone would look at beast games and think that they are trying to be relatable.
To back this up, up none of the admissions of mistakes made are in the actual show and many of them are actively covered up (as anyone trying to make a tv show would do). Instead they all came out in different pieces of media surrounding the show. probably because production was such a shit show that its hard not to talk about making the show without discussing it.
11
__Hello_my_name_is__1 day ago
I'm not saying they are *trying* to be relatable. They just happen to be relatable. Which is part of what made them successful in the first place. They're not bumbling incompetent kids (in adult bodies) on purpose. They just happen to be, which makes them relatable to other kids. That's why social media is full of adults acting like kids, and the ones that are genuinely that immature tend to win out over those just pretending to be.
And this is content produced for kids who mainly get their content from social media. Of course they are going to watch the social media videos produced about the show. Which is where all the relatable admissions are made in the first place.
The show isn't the main thing these kids watch. That's a side thing that only exists because Amazon is trying to get a younger demographic. The guy's Youtube videos is what they watch.
0
potent011 day ago
+4
Maybe they are more relatable in their youtube content, but I think their success in the youtube sphere comes from being able to throw a ton of money at something and make a 10 minute video out of the result. And this is not an approach that works nearly as well in the world of TV shows.
4
__Hello_my_name_is__1 day ago
+1
Yeah, I definitely agree. But it's not like they're gonna say no to Amazon giving them tons of money to just screw around.
As I said originally, I agree with everything said in the video. I just don't think the incompetence is standing in the way of a proper explanation as to why these guys are so popular.
118 Comments