Hi!

I like doing reviews,

but I don't like making them

because they take too freaking long!

So, I'm going to not try anymore,

except I'm going to keep on doing these

for ten years, apparently,

because this is the LGR tenth anniversary!

[intro music]

Greetings and welcome to an LGR anniversary thing,

and [chuckles] man, it feels

weird to say that, not just because

it's been ten years, and a decade is

way too long to do anything,

but also because I'm saying it

to this particular camera here.

This is my original JVC VHS-C camcorder that I

used way back in the day to record LGR videos.

And yeah, what even is this?

It's a GR-AXM225, it doesn't really matter.

It's just something I picked up at Goodwill

because it was cheap, and my other camera had died.

In fact, I had a slightly better camera than this.

I think some of my earliest YouTube videos,

I've been on YouTube since 2006, actually, and

yeah, some of my very earliest videos

were shot on that other camera.

It was a Canon, I think?

Mini DV camera with FireWire,

shot on these little digital tapes.

It was actually pretty good.

But it died after taking to a beach or something,

and yeah, so I had to get a camera,

and I needed it cheap, and this is what I got.

And, you know what?

It's-- [laughs] It just has been

a ride, ever since, of different types of technology

that I've used to make this show,

and then just figuring it out as I go along.

Man, that's all this has been, but,

yeah, it all kind of started with this camera,

at least in terms of LGR stuff.

Yeah, I mean, I had the little

composite video out right there

that you could hook it up to--

I think I had an EZ CAP USB capture device and

Ulead Video Studio to edit videos.

It was also just cool because I had the

flip-out screen on the side, and

a little light on the front that I never used.

And I had a built-in mic that didn't sound

absolutely terrible.

[sound quality shifts] Although, here is what

the mic sounds like. Eh, yeah.

And it's also just even worse now

because this sound in the background.

Hear this? [popping] Hmm.

Yeah, something's not quite right anymore, but-- [laughs]

Anyway, [sound quality shifts] back to the normal mic.

I'm using a Zoom mic now, but

it's a thing I just really liked

playing around with and just

trying to figure out what looked the best on

this crappy camera.

And in a way, nothing looked good,

and everything looked good.

There was something about it's particular style

of creating imagery, man.

And it just fascinating to look at.

And this is probably coming across

even better quality than it was back then

because now I have some

slightly better way to capture video

off of this thing, but, you know what?

It's still using even the same tape

that I had back then.

I put it in there really quick

just to see what was still on the tape, and yeah.

It was the one LGR VHS-C tape that I used.

And it's still got some footage from

the 100th Video Special, which was a Q&A,

and then I think the very last thing I filmed on here was

the Fire & Ice Christmas video.

Yeah, it's one of those things, man.

I used what I had, and there wasn't much--

There was no budget. [laughs]

And I just-- I recorded stuff that I had in my room.

You know, whether it was computers, or games,

or consoles, or just whatever.

LGR, it was just 'Lazy Game Reviews'

it's what it was. It was mostly game reviews

...done pretty lazily@

That's the whole idea. And it really was just a

personal challenge to myself.

When I started in 2009, it was

a personal challenge-type thing

to see if I could do a video

or just some sort of creative something every week.

Because at the time it felt like nothing else

was going right. [laughs]

I was 22 years old when I started LGR. [sighs]

Never start a YouTube channel when you're 22.

It's just a bad idea.

I don't even how these kids do it nowadays, man.

They're little 14, 15 years old

with their YouTubes and Instagrams and--

[grumbles playfully] Get off my lawn.

I would've totally started a channel that young

if I had the technology and opportunity that

kids have now. But anyway, tangent.

Yeah, starting in 2009, it was a personal challenge,

and doing one video a week sounded interesting.

Because, school-- I'd just dropped out of college,

relationship had ended, the job I had was crappy,

and it was getting crappier all the time, and, like--

Nothing felt right. My car was broken.

Everything seemed stupid, and I'm like, "You know what?

I just want to make videos again.

Videos are just fun."

So that's what I did. I got this cheap camera,

at a Goodwill [laughs], and just started making stuff.

And that was all. There was no other planning. [laughs]

I just wanted to make something

and I had a few inspirations, of course, especially

AVGN early on.

In fact, that was the whole reason that I kind of

got started doing videos again,

was after seeing his videos,

and specifically after doing some of my own,

there was the SEGA CD video.

And the review of that went up

sometime in 2008, and then months passed

and then when the AVGN episode of SEGA CD

went up on YouTube,

which was, I think, November 18, 2008,

it was a recommended thing.

My video was recommended.

It wasn't even LGR back then, it was just, like,

YouTube doing it's thing, and the algorithm worked.

It was the first time I'd saw the algorithm

do a thing, and but, "Whoa!"

I think I got 1,400 views in a day,

which was huge back then. Absolutely huge.

I mean, I was in the single digits,

and this was months afterward and then

all of a sudden got a bunch of views,

and it was weird, and it was super encouraging.

Because I'm like, "Wow! You know, maybe I can actually

do something along the lines of what

James Rolfe is doing, or Classic Game Room, or

any number of the channels that were

around back then that I watched."

A lot of them don't exist anymore.

In fact, one of the bigger inspirations--

I don't even remember what the channel was, but

it was like a guy who was German or something

and he just covered Atari 2600 games

and other random things in a compilation form.

He had, like, a hundred games he would cover

in five seconds each, and just

cram them in there.

And that was sort of the inspiration

for the first LGR video,

the Atari 2600 Animal Games,

where I covered several of those just in one video,

and sort of made a sketch in the end about it.

And it was fun, man. That first year and a half,

the first 100 videos that I shot on this camera,

were the most exhilarating, creatively freeing,

awesome times.

I don't know, I miss that in a way because

there was no plan.

There was no money.

There were no sponsors, there was no anything.

I didn't even have that many people watching. [laughs]

So it was actually really--

In fact, here, to give you an idea, this was the

analytics for the very first LGR video.

And it got like 20-something views.

In the first day. Wow!

And then, like, 30-something on the next day,

because I think I uploaded the evening

the previous day. But yeah, like, you know,

50-ish views in, pretty much, 24 hours was

genuinely amazing. I mean, it really was amazing.

The fact that I was getting any views at all was crazy.

Yeah, there was some people that I knew

that made videos back then.

No, they didn't get anything but one or two views

a month. [laughs]

The fact that I could get, you know,

dozens in a day was just nuts.

And again, there was no money involved.

Like, if there was a partnership program

back then, I don't know.

Like, I didn't even become aware that people could

make money making videos on YouTube

or any other streaming service site until much later on.

So that wasn't even a consideration

when I started making videos because it wasn't an option.

You know, I wasn't doing it for money,

I had a day job, so whatever.

I was just doing it for fun.

So it was just cool to see views, right?

Like, it was just neat to have stuff that

could be watched, that was so niche, really.

It was making videos about consoles and computers

and games and stuff. Old software. Things that,

you know, I knew some people cared about,

because I visited a lot of forums and things like that,

but it wasn't quite like it is now

where I can just post a video about an IBM

and it gets a million views.

Like, what is that even?

That still blows my frigging mind.

So thank you very much for watching

over these past ten years, because

it's turned into a legit career, you know?

Like, at this point I've got this camera

over here that is a LUMIX GH5S

that I use to film things, and, well, look at it, it's all--

I'm like, in crispy 4K weirdness.

Like, what is all this about?

This kind of tech blows my mind.

And, like, the fact that, you know,

I can just film things on phones now.

There's a lot of episodes I filmed on this.

It just-- it's evolved to such a degree,

YouTube has changed so much, and just my own

work flow and process has changed so much.

And that really is thanks to you watching,

and to those of you on Patreon

who started supporting.

I think I've been doing that since 2014,

so that's five years.

That's half a decade of that, even.

That first five years, though, of doing this,

was just-- [laughs]

There were so many unknowns.

For one thing, you couldn't even get

a partnership by the time I

figured out that that existed.

I'm like, "Oh, I should try and apply for that."

Well, turns out that pretty much no one that did

game reviews or anything along the lines of what I was doing

could get a partnership back then on YouTube

without joining a-- [stutters] MCNs weren't even--

So, okay. Let's go to the very beginning.

At first, I was not even posting on YouTube,

it was just some other random websites.

There was Google Video, there was--

Oh, man, that one was, like, Shout-something.

I think even ScrewAttack, I know I had

a few videos on there. GameTrailers--

well, maybe it was GameTrailers on--