Game Grumps

Game Grumps is a Let's Play webseries starring animator Arin Hanson and musician Leigh Daniel Avidan, also known as "Danny Sexbang," from the musical comedy duo Ninja Sex Party. The show was created on July 10, 2012 by Hanson and comedic video game critic Jon "JonTron" Jafari. Jafari left the show in June 2013 to focus on his primary YouTube channel JonTron, and was subsequently replaced by Avidan. The channel also expanded to include new hosts in spin-offs: animator Ross O'Donovan, series editor Barry Kramer, and Suzy "Mortemer" Berhow, the group's manager and Hanson's wife. Additionally appearing in some, but few, episodes is the new primary editor of the show, Kevin Abernathy, as well as their newest member Brian "Ninja Brian" Wecht, the other half of Ninja Sex Party. Game Grumps was a part of Polaris, a network owned by Maker Studios, a subsidiary of Disney Consumer Products and Interactive Media division of The Walt Disney Company. They left the network in January of 2016.^[1]

Premise

Each episode consists of the show's respective players playing through a chosen video game. Many times they will not finish a game to completion; this could be due to scheduling constraints or eventual lack of interest in the game as a whole. Many games, especially during Jafari's tenure, were only played for one episode (dubbed "One-Offs"), while Avidan's tenure moved away from One-Offs and focused more on completing games. Unlike many Let's Play channels, where the player/host is almost expected to complete any game at one hundred percent completion, Game Grumps focuses more on just completing the game with no care given to its completion rate.

The content of each episode, regardless of show, is basically the same. While the players play through whatever video game is featured, they will commentate over the game play, resulting in an almost stream-of-consciousnesses style discussion; sometimes the commentary relates vaguely to the game's objective, other times (especially during their playthrough of Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) and Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric) they criticize the game's design and laugh at various humorous glitches and poor design/lack of Quality Control, other times they will talk about events happening to themselves or tell stories about things that happened to them. Most of the conversations (especially those on the actual "Game Grumps" show) are very explicit—with profanity and adult subject matter like drug use and sexual situations generously thrown into the mix.

Content

Each day, the group puts out one video that consist of usually two, but sometimes up to four, hosts playing a video game are uploaded to the channel, featuring their own experiences with the chosen game (from their own choosing or from a fan). Longer video games will oftentimes form series of ongoing gameplay and commentary by the two until completion. Occasionally, the hosts will participate in two-player games against each other, as part of their Game Grumps Vs. series. Before Jafari's departure to work on his own JonTron series, the two appeared in a promotional video for the Warner Bros. movie Pacific Rim produced by Polaris. The video also featured other internet personalities Jesse Cox, Dodger, Mike Lamond and John Bain.^[2] In the video they played new recruits under training by "The Lieutenant Commander" played by Robert Kazinsky.

With Jafari's departure on June 19, 2013 due to unspecified reasons and conflicts with his own show, Ninja Sex Party vocalist Danny "Sexbang" Avidan came on to replace him as co-host. Danny would also join Ross "RubberNinja" O'Donovan as co-hosts of the spin-off Steam Train, where both play PC games (the title references the retailer Steam). This expanded the channel's output to three videos a day: two standard Game Grumps episodes and a single Steam Train episode. Steam Train later expanded to include Arin as a co-host at times (sometimes replacing Danny) as well as featuring the group's previous editor Barry Kramer and the group's manager and Arin's wife Suzy "Mortemer" Berhow (who runs her own affiliate LP channel, "Kitty-Kat Gaming", where she focuses on more cutesy kiddie games and often featuring the other Grumps). The expansion also introduced a new Steam Rolled series where four-player games (not necessarily PC games) are played by the group. In October 2013, the group began a gameplay series featuring Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate on the Polaris YouTube channel titled Game Grumps Present: Hunting Monsters. A second installment, featuring Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate, began in February 2015.

In December 2013, Barry and Suzy began hosting Table Flip, where they dress in Victorian/19th century American period clothing^[3] and play tabletop games, such as card games, board games, and tile-based games with other YouTube personalities. The series is professionally produced by Polaris, with seven cameras and extensive editing in post-production to fit the content to the show's 45 to 60 minute format on Polaris's website rather than the Game Grumps YouTube channel.^[4]

In November 2014, Kevin Abernathy was hired in order to assist Barry Kramer with video editing and production. Although Abernathy took on editing for most of the series, Kramer continues to edit the series Steam Train.

In January 2015, to celebrate reaching 2 million subscribers, they released a new show, "Grumpcade," featuring any combination of co-hosts playing any console games. The show also features guest YouTube personalities, such as game critics ProJared and The Completionist, O'Donovan's wife Commander Holly, and fellow Let's Player Markiplier. Shortly after, in February 2015, GrumpOut, a channel dedicated to recreational and live-action video projects, was created, which has no schedule to follow. In November 2015, Ninja Sex Party's other member "Ninja" Brian Wecht officially joined the team.

The channel also airs special holiday themed episodes where they play holiday themed games; "Jingle Grumps" and "Steam Sleigh" for Christmas, "Ghoul Grumps" and "Scream Train" for Halloween, "Date Grumps" and "Single Train" for Valentine's Day, and "Stout Train" for St. Patricks Day.

Charity

In late 2013, the Game Grumps had put various games, which they'd received multiple copies of, on eBay for auction, with all the proceeds going to the children's charity Child's Play.^[5] After the auctions had ended, the total amount they had raised was over $7,000.^[6]

Between 14 and 19 November 2014, a 5 episode mini series was shot called Guild Grumps. For this, Ross mentored Arin, Danny, Barry and Suzy in a 5-day race to go from level 90 to 100 in World of Warcraft. Each participant had $1000 to donate to a charity if they reached level 100. If they didn't reach 100, their donation would be split between those who did reach the top level. In the end, Ross was the only one who maxed out his character so he donated $5000 to Cancer Research. In the first episode, Ross revealed he spent some of the show's budget (intended for equipment) unlocking an incredibly rare mount for each Grump. When they dismissed the mount as boring and a waste of money, Ross felt bad for his misjudged purchase and added the $700 spent to his own donation. Guild Grumps aired between June 8 and 12 2015.^[7] The Game Grumps have also raised over $70,000 during charity live streams on Twitch during 2015.

Promotions

In 2015, the Game Grumps were featured in the official reveal trailer for the Shovel Knight Amiibo figure.^[8]

Popularity

Due to the popularity of the series, there has been a large amount of content created by fans based on the series. Common fan creations from the show include fan art and animated re-creations of scenes from the show featuring audio from the show, musical remixes of audio from the show,^[9] clip compilations,^[10] and also comic strips.^[11] The show and its hosts have also since been referenced in a number of video games such as DLC Quest^[12] and The Angry Video Game Nerd Adventures.^[13]

A specially modified version of the demo for The Stanley Parable was played on the show which addressed the show's hosts Danny and Ross.^[14] The show's host Danny appeared in the PC game Default Dan as a playable option.^[15] Special versions of Haunt the House: Terrortown, Electronic Super Joy, and Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger, and the Terribly Cursed Emerald were modded for them as well, featuring the hosts themselves. Arin, Danny, and Ross, along with Ross's cat Orph, will be playable characters in the game Hex Heroes for the Wii U. They will also be providing voiceover work.^[16]

Singer Hayley Westenra thanked the show for their version of her song "Prayer." She called it a "very fresh spin," and said that "performing that song will never be the same again."^[17]

Video game designer Markus "Notch" Persson has cited multiple times of being a fan of the series,^[18][19] and voiced himself in the Starbomb song, "Minecraft is for Everyone."

Comedy musician "Weird Al" Yankovic, during a Reddit AMA session, claimed that he enjoys Ninja Sex Party's content, as well as the show, and has expressed interest in joining the show for a possible Guest Grumps episode in the future.^[20]

In November 2015, actor Chris Pratt tweeted out praise for the show, linking the final episode of their Super Mario Galaxy Let's Play, which jokingly discussed how Pratt robbed Bowser of the role of Star-Lord.^[21]

Awards and nominations

References

External links

• Game Grumps at the Internet Movie Database
• Game Grumps's channel on YouTube