As YouTube gains in popularity (is it possible for it to be more popular at this point?), its signal-to-noise ratio continues to decrease. For those that flunked ratios in math, this means the amount of junk on YouTube is increasing faster than the amount of watchable stuff. As a sort of fallout to this, we’ve seen several sites crop up since then to take on the user-generated giant. There have been many sites that do the exact same thing as Youtube, allowing anybody to upload anything for any reason. More interestingly, specialty video sites have also been cropping up lately, which focus on one particular genre: comedy. While these sites are too narrow to become a true successor to Youtube’s throne, some of them could become hugely popular in their own right. Perhaps even replacing Youtube as the goto site for comedy videos.

http://www.atomfilms.com/

This site actually predates Youtube, serving up funny films since 1999 (six years before the big ‘YT’). It used to be famous mainly for Star Wars fan videos and flash animations. Lately, in response to Youtube’s dominance, it’s tried to shift the focus more prominently to general humor, though they still host videos of all genres. While Atom Films has some sticking power, I think they hit their peak a few years ago.

Some famous AtomFilm videos:

In “President Bear”, the question is asked: Would the Nation Notice if the President was replaced by a bear? Maybe not, though the first lady might. This is the first in a series of videos about the follies and foibles of President Bear.

The Star Wars Gangsta Rap, came out in 2002 and helped propel Atom Films into prominence. I remember thinking this was the coolest thing since sliced bread when it came out. In hindsight, not so much.

http://www.funnyordie.com/

The first major success following the YouTube revolution, FunnyorDie is interesting in that it mixes both major name players and regular people’s videos and just sort of lets the funniest ones rise to the top. Will Ferrell has been a huge contributor to this site, though other celebrities (like Bill Murray, for instance) have been known to appear. I think it has a fairly good selection of videos, though I am sort of disappointed that the most viewed videos are usually the celebrity-made ones. Some might think that it has peaked with The Landlord video (see below), but I think the site has some serious potential. The next “Evolution of Dance” could be brewing somewhere deep within Funny’s labs; waiting to pounce on an unsuspecting populace.

Some famous Funny or Die videos:

This video launched the site, in fact to most people, this video IS the site. It has been viewed over 55 million times. Consider this: If it were on Youtube, it would the fourth-most viewed video of all-time. Chances are you’ve watched it before. In fact, me posting it here almost seems redundant.

Canadian Jon Lajoie (who has, perhaps, the most Canadian name in history) raps about what it’s like to be an everyday normal guy. Instead of a tricked out SUV, he takes the Bus to work and instead of being a smooth operator, he’s socially awkward. This is one of my personal favorites, perhaps because it rings so true.

http://www.superdeluxe.com/

This is the new kid on the block, the upcoming rising star. In a sort of backlash to the Web 2.0 movement, it’s not user generated like the other sites. Instead Turner Broadcast Systems (who delivers us our Adult Swim) pays professional comedians to generate content for the site. Since it’s owned by the same company that owns Adult Swim, it features a lot of the same type of humor that’s broadcast on Adult Swim. Since people are paid to make the videos, the production quality usually is better than other sites. Though the two most viewed internet videos of all time, “Star Wars Kid” and “Evolution of Dance” weren’t known for their production quality. If you like the surreal humor of “Tim & Eric Awesome Show Great Job!”, you’ll love this site. While I think this site has the ability to be a moderate success, it’s sense of humor is a bit too narrow to be a giant mainstream success.

Some famous Super Deluxe videos:

This one is simply bizarre. Craig Bierko interviews celebrities in the oddest of places: a bathtub. This video features Craig and John “Being John” Malkovich sharing a bathtub. Craig asks some fairly standard questions that John answers, all the while Craig is bathing John. The funny definitely comes from the ability of both performers to completely pretend that this is a normal and routine situation.

DJ Douggpound stars in his first ever “poundcast”, a surreal parody of the T.V. Show “Cheaters”. This is a Tim & Eric video and is full of their oft inexplicable and surreal humor. I think the flava-flav-esque rival rapper is worth the price of admission alone.

http://www.superdeluxe.com/sd/series/positions_of_the_day
I’m not going to embed this video series as it might be considered a bit NSFW. These videos create humorous sexual positions that seem like they would be rejected from the Kama Sutra. They’re done comedically through simple animations, but are quite hilarious.

Each Friday I shine my big, bright spotlight on a game that deserves attention. This week, Avalon Hill’s “Betrayal at House on Hill” gets a warm moment in the sun.

Over the Christmas break, I had a chance to play Betrayal for the first time with a group of recently met friends. The premise of the game is simple, you are part of a group of people who are exploring a haunted house (the House on Hill part of the game), eventually someone in the party goes mad and tries to achieve some sort of diabolical objective which usually involves sacrificing one or more members of your party (hence, the Betrayal part of the game). The game visualizes this very well; instead of using a traditional game board (á la Clue), each room in the house is represented by a tile. Whenever you go into a new room, you lay down a new tile at random. This ensures that the gameplay stays fresh and adds an element of excitement to the process.

A doomed explorer ponders his fate.

The game starts of in this exploratory phase, where everyone more or less works together to explore the house. However, as more and more rooms are explored, more and more supernatural events happened. These happenings are represented in this case by a deck of supernatural events that you draw from as you enter certain rooms. Every-time one of these supernatural events occur you roll the find out if it is time for the betrayal to occur. As the game moves on it gets progressively easier for the betrayal to occur, eventually moving to the point where the Betrayal is forced to occur (otherwise Betrayal at House on Hill would be a bit of a misnomer). Once the Betrayal happens the game becomes really interesting. Using a matrix involving who tripped the betrayal, in what room they tripped it and what event caused the tripping, the betrayer gets an objective in secret (there are over ). While the betrayer studies their new objective, the betrayees find out what they have to do in order to survive. Neither side knows the other’s objectives. The game ends when either side completes their objective.

This was a fun game to play, setup was a breeze and we were all exploring the house in under five minutes. The included characters are colorful and the room tiles were really neat. The betrayal scenario was interesting and fairly balanced so that it wasn’t just one side overwhelming the other and thumbing through the book there seemed to be quite a variety of horror situations. The rules were sometimes unclear, but they released clarifications and errata online that fix most of the problems. Also, they had little punch-out counters for just about anything that could come up in the game. While it was cool that a statue was represented with a statue token, it sucked having to spend four or five minutes digging through the box to find it. Perhaps this would be less of a problem to someone who was more organized.

Overall “Betrayal at House on Hill” was a fun and interesting way to spend 90 minutes with friends; and for $40, it packs an incredible value.

They always say “Write what you know”, right? I know games. Board Games, Card Games, Role-playing Games, Foam Fighting Games, Made-Up Games and Video Games. I play ‘em all. I’ve spent the better part of my life playing Games. It’s something I’m passionate about. However, if there was ever one thing to could unseat that passion, it was computers. Building them, tinkering with them, occasionally breaking (and fixing) them and surfing the web on them. If I wasn’t gaming, I was computing.

So I figured, “What the heck, why not write a blog about my two biggest passions?” Surprisingly, the217 (in their infinite coolness) said “Sure, why not?” So, here we have it. Dice and Mice. Gaming and Computing. It mixes about as well as Water and Oil, but it’s what I know.

A Pile of my Interests