Through his channel ›Radically Misinformed‹, James Bentley combines game criticism, cultural analysis, and philosophical reflection in a distinctive video essay format. In conversation with RUDOLF THOMAS INDERST, he discusses the creative freedoms and constraints of YouTube, the evolving landscape of online criticism, and the unique power of video games to foster deeply personal experiences while illuminating broader cultural, political, and social questions.
Rudolf Inderst: First of all, thank you very much for taking the time to participate in this interview for TITEL kulturmagazin. Your work as ›Radically Misinformed‹ combines media criticism, game analysis, and a very distinctive essayistic voice. To begin: how did your journey into video essays start, and what originally drew you toward analyzing games and digital culture in this format?
James Bentley: I think video has a unique ability in not only how it conveys points and bolsters argumentation, but also in how it paints stories, and that’s something I’ve always admired about the medium. I also find people are more willing to engage with long-form work in the video format than they are when it’s written. To go to the extreme, I’d hazard a guess to say a fraction of those watching one to sometimes ten-hour videos would read a script or essay with the same word count. And, as such, that gives me creative freedom to truly throw whatever I want at the viewer.
I’m a writer, as well as a video creator, and I’ve found that traditional writing, especially that for outlets, is more restrained. I’ve certainly written, both digitally and in journals, work I’m proud of, but being able to make videos for me has allowed me to just throw things at the wall.
My journey into video has been going on for over a decade now (mostly as a kid doing Let’s Plays), but I’ve been going as Radically Misinformed for a few years, and it mostly came from a frustration with the constraints of traditional games writing and an inability to shut up. Making videos was marginally less annoying and marginally more productive than saying those same things to friends at house parties/birthdays/stuck in an elevator with me, and the fact that some seem to like it feels like a happy accident at this point.
Your videos often move beyond straightforward critique and instead explore broader cultural, political, or philosophical questions through games. What interests you most about video games as cultural artifacts compared to other media such as film, literature, or television?
I often find that when I describe the premise of a game, I use ›I‹ and ›you‹ . i.e, »this game places you in the shoes of X«, and that to me is arguably the greatest strength of gaming as a medium. When you watch a movie, your interpretation is your own, but ultimately, the movie is the same for every viewer on a textual level. By contrast, practically every game is functionally a little different for the player.
Even movies like Presence or Hardcore Henry, that have a distinct first-person perspective, can never make you their main character. I’ve talked a little about film, books, music, etc., on the channel, and ultimately, I find that each medium offers its own strengths and weaknesses. Yet, I find that games, more than almost any other artistic medium, have a habit of being seen as purely ›entertainment‹ too. Maybe this is to some degree in how they endure in the background, becoming a bit of furniture in your life. If you spend 200 hours watching The Lord of the Rings, you’re likely seen as pretty obsessive. If you spend 200 hours playing Rocket League, you’re probably only ranked Gold.
Still, people just have such distinctive and personal connections to video games, and that has to be at least partially related to their unique perspective. There’s a lot of very emotive language employed in gaming circles that talks of betrayal, selling out, feeling hollow, when it comes to games, and it’s hard not to believe that at least part of this is that, in games, the player is everything. You are literally the centre of the world. A movie exists whether you watch it or not, but if a tree falls in a video game and no one is around to press ‚F‘, it truly doesn’t exist.
The contemporary video essay scene on YouTube has changed significantly over the last decade, both aesthetically and economically. From your perspective, how has the platform influenced the way creators approach criticism, analysis, and audience engagement today?
This is a really tough one. From my perspective, I find most creators to be, in some way, at odds with the platform, but that should be the role of creators. YouTube’s messaging, in its totality, has been inconsistent and sometimes counter intuitive, and yet it’s still arguably one of the biggest platforms for genuine art critique that exists in the world.
YouTube has been caught in its own identity crisis for a long time; one that acknowledges YouTube is inherently personal and largely driven by personality, yet also one that algorithmically stomps creativity with the embrace of generative AI tools, and the rewarding of hate clicks. Hate clicks have moved from hatred at the author, to the author wielding that hatred to shadowbox culture, ideas and metaphor. And that is a game everyone (including myself) has to play in some form, as even acknowledging it is to give credence, and sometimes legitimise them.
But then, there sits a chicken and the egg question with audience engagement. Are people angrily pushing their way into ideological camps because they find community in creators by doing so, or are they looking for that, and creators just happen to be the platform giving their concerns a voice?
None of this is to say that criticism is doomed on the platform, or even getting worse. In fact, one could easily argue that clashing against anger and testing your ideas through this conflict is actually healthy for critique. I certainly don’t like the idea of getting more and more insular with my thoughts, playing to the same crowd without being challenged. Sometimes, good messages come from bad or simply misinformed messengers, and that is part of what has made YouTube so special.
My one true goal with what I do is to try to give a viewer what I feel and what I think. All of the thumbnails are homemade (thank you to my partner, Bee, for doing most of them), and I make all of the music. Despite the critique I may have of the platform, I feel like I’m constantly rewarded for being me on YouTube, and that is emboldening in a wonderful way.
Many of your essays balance accessibility with fairly complex ideas and arguments. How do you approach the writing and research process behind a video? Do you begin with a theoretical question, a personal reaction, or something else entirely?
Creative autonomy and freedom are the single biggest joys of making videos for me, so I try not to adhere to too strong a criteria before I start scripting. Some videos are intended to be reviews (but simply without the review label), some are single questions I kept finding myself asking, others are simply me seeing a consensus form around a work of art and thinking that’s a light injustice. I think I strive most for fairness, and the honesty of my own thoughts, and my process is often based on how I can best achieve that goal.
Ultimately, I try to touch on ideas that interest me, and I find myself scrapping (or shelving) ideas if they don’t flow naturally or if I simply don’t enjoy the research process. I’ve always been the type of person who loves talking to strangers, because I genuinely enjoy it when someone loves, hates, or just plain cares about something I don’t. And I gain a lot in simply asking them ›why?‹ So, in a sense, that’s what a lot of research is to me. Simply asking ›why?‹
I try to jot down ideas when they come to me, but also never force myself to work on something (except for maybe the final steps of making a video). Right now, I have over 200 ideas down in a doc that I might work on, or I might not. This is freeing to me. I like having the knowledge that I can truly just work on something if it feels right.
The research process is probably the toughest part, mostly because I never know when I’m done. And even when videos go out the door, I find myself thinking of extra concepts I can explore, or extra points I’d like to make. But YouTube is such a free-flowing thing that I’ve come to accept that if I want to re-explore it, I can. I don’t know how to balance accessibility with conceptual thought, and I don’t really know if I do it very well, but I try not to dumb down what I say or assume an audience can’t get something.
In fact, I’d love to go more conceptual. I’d love to build into bigger ideas, talk grander about philosophy, sociology, politics, all kinds of art in all kinds of mediums. And as such, some of those 200+ ideas are just things I need time, experience, and much better skills to one day explore.
Finally, looking at current developments in game culture — from algorithmic platform economies to fandom discourse and the increasing professionalization of content creation; what do you currently find most exciting, worrying, or intellectually productive within the broader landscape of games and online media?
Games and game culture are in a very weird place right now. I think fandom discourse as a practice is healthy and good, and will likely result in plenty of great things, but I think creators are often incentivised to keep it in the same spot. They are emboldened to give an audience a feeling (often fear or hatred) and not necessarily an answer or a question, and that feels backwards to me.
Emotions are important, and they drive us to ask questions of ourselves and the world at large, but they are often treated as the end of the line, the final point, when it comes to game analysis. And that seems wrong to me. Most major games now are followed by campaigns to draw red lines between names, philosophies, and ideologies, and it’s hard not to feel like that excuses the many terrible ethical and business decisions made by large corporations right now. I find it hard to think of any other world where companies hiring then laying off thousands of people would be met with cheer, and yet it’s a common tactic within sects of the games industry.
But in a way, that’s both a fear and something I’m pretty hopeful about. As parts of culture get worse, critique is forced to get better, and I’m of the opinion that this ebb and flow can lead to many great outcomes. As things get worse, it’s on us to make them better.
Thank you very much for your time and thoughtful responses.
