pretty good corporate job at the
time [and] my last day at work
I was sick to my stomach! I was
like please, oh my God, this is the
biggest leap of faith that I’ve ever
taken. [But] it paid off!”
With backgrounds in animation
and filmmaking, the jump into a
pure gaming focus seemed odd.
Schnur explains the decision was
relatively simple; boiling down
to risk versus reward. “YouTube
doesn’t reward animation any-
more. Back in the day, you’d make
pretty good money off of anima-
tion on YouTube...Not so much
anymore. The amount of time,
energy, and money, all the stuff
that goes into animation...You’re
putting all this work into it and
you’re getting very little.
“Doraleous and Associates, and
I think Battlefield Friends as well,
was two weeks turnaround time
for everything. That was a big
credit to Brent Triplett (or Neebs)
because he animated most of those.
It’s like 110 hours a week...he was a
nightmare to deal with when he’s
animating! We joke all the time, we
never want him to animate again...I
just want him to be happy.
“Gaming is very much the op-
posite, even though we do put
more work into it than anyone
we’ve seen, as far as gaming
videos. You get a much larger
reward out of it, monetarily, and
you still get to be creative.”
A combination of factors has
allowed them to grow beyond their
animated roots; between being
able to develop more content as
well as being able to craft longer
videos. “With that long-form content we’re able to put
mid-roll ads in there [and] those are going to perform
way better than any five minute animated thing we
do. Even if we brought back our biggest series, Battle-
field Friends...A 20-25 minute ARK video would make
more money at a fraction of the time [to create].”SETTING THEMSELVES APART
Even with Neebs Gaming, the goal was to bring their
same brand of improvisation to audiences. They
wanted to make sure they weren’t like other gaming
channels and leveraged their prior skills to deliver on
cinematic gaming content:NEEBS GAMING
COMEDY, COMMUNITY AND SURVIVAL
If Minecraft doesn’t provide the thrill you’re looking for, titles like 7 Days
to Die offer more structure while still leaving room for improvisation.