Dear readers,

This is not a post on SOPA. After seeing this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7xjxYNOj5Q. The way he placed the censorship in the video was great and really got the point across. However this video is both not and is the point.

The video uses the camera restrictions of the Halo world to create a short filmed, required voice acting, editing and a script yet I found it a bit jarring when someone asked him how one gets noticed on YouTube because the person asking the question is "an aspiring YouTube artist."

You may be thinking, "why do you have a problem with this?" Well the reason is simple, what most people see on YouTube as art, I don't see on YouTube as art. While there are some very well made and well executed videos on YouTube what some of these "aspiring YouTube artists" see as art is doing commentary on video games. Am I insulting Lets Players? No, not at all. I find a well done one very entertaining and they can be fun to do but I can not call it an art form.

There is not very much technique involved in doing a good lets play other than being able to be amusing and knowing the game. I simply cannot understand why people who only, exclusively run Lets Plays call themselves artists unless they are doing so to sharpen their skill at improv (often times this is not the case). If anything, while it is fun, it is more reminiscent too a movie commentary that you are interacting with.

Figuring out upload schedules for his lets plays and his other blog,

Mike Hand