Many A True Nerd - Appreciation Post
I want to shout out a YouTube channel that has become such a fixture in my life that I'd consider the internet a drearier place without it.
Many A True Nerd is one of the simpler channels on YouTube - Jon plays games he finds interesting and those he knows he loves, and does challenge runs of those he knows like the back of his hand. Claire stays mostly off-screen (in the metaphoric sense, neither is ever visible on camera) apart from for live-streams, but as I understand it she shares the editing and marketing load. The truth is I don't know much about the inner workings of the channel, because...
I don't know much about their life, by design.
Something Jon and Claire have been extremely good at is maintaining a professional relationship with their channel. All I know about them is what they've chosen to share.
There was a point several years ago when Jon was experiencing sustained burnout from their (I think?) daily posting schedule, and reduced it to 4 per week. There was no community poll, no umming or ahhing, they simply posted an update and explained the situation. It was entirely without drama, and really refreshing to see.
Jon is kinda cracked at his games
The thing that gave MATN their biggest growth period was the series of Challenge runs they did in Fallout 3 and New Vegas. It's how I found out about them, via an interview in Kotaku about their Fallout 3 Kill Everything series (11 years ago!?) that just stunned me conceptually. This was a sequel to twin Kill Everything/No Kill runs in Fallout New Vegas and proved more complicated to execute due to Bethesda's more restrictive design - those constraints gave Jon more room to get weird with it. I love all of these series, they're perennial sick-day viewing for me.
After this was the beginning of probably the most impressive demonstrations of Jon's approach to games: his New Vegas YOLO run - 1 health-bar, no healing, permadeath. If he hits 0hp, the run ends. It's some of the most intense Let's Play nonsense I've ever watch, and a real showcase for the kind of gamer Jon is. Yeah I used the g-word. He's pure gaming in this series.
He has No Guns runs for Mass Effect 1 and Fallout 4, New Vegas starting at artificially minimum stats, NV:OWB Level 1 Naked Survival, Hitman Blood Money No Kill, and just playing Deadly Premonition normally.
It's not just janky RPGs though, Jon's actual true love is strategy games. He got massively into Stellaris, and after a few iterations with it he designed a maximise-all-the-slider ruleset for his Impossible Run - I love this series deeply. Pure cowardly strategic brilliance, scaffolded with some really intense swings in luck.
He's also done Rome: Total War Mercenaries Only, which is the first mention I've made of Total War but he has SO MANY GOOD TOTAL WAR SERIES. His commenters love to point out his mistakes/inefficiencies like he's a muppet, but honestly watching Jon learn and internalise a strategy game is one of my primary sources of joy on the modern internet.
Growth is not the goal
The thing I particularly respect about MATN is that they have never really chased success - they have what they're good at and they do it well. They typically get 40k views per video, some of their bigger series get 100k or so, but they don't rely on big splashes to make their living. They've had around 500k subscribers for years and that seems to be enough to sustain their lifestyle.
I have immense respect for people who saw their market, found what they enjoy doing, and accepted balance. Occasionally they'll put together a video essay and they often do quite big numbers, but to hear Jon talk about them it's like they're a distraction from the schedule.
MATN is one of the only Patreons I pay and never consider if I'm getting anything from it - and I don't even get anything from it! I just want to do my bit in making sure they keep this going. They're doing "content creation" the way I wish the platforms would incentivise more - sustainable, consistent, and enjoyable.
Go sub!
If any of that appeals, go check out the channel and enjoy the immense backlog!
Oh shit I completely forgot about the 114-part Skyrim Playthrough also check th-