In late August there was a video posted by Billy Hudson of The Game Chasers from the emergency room. This and a subsequent video indicated he was seriously ill with a brain tumour but he was upbeat and confident to the point that I thought he would recover. I offered up prayers at the time and kept him in my thoughts but learned yesterday that he died on the 18th of September.
I did not know Billy personally but I did enjoy his YouTube Channel which he began in 2011 with his friend and co-host Jay Hatfield. From all appearances, he was an amiable and fun guy to be around. I will continue to pray for the repose of his soul but I wanted to offer a little tribute to what he created below.
YouTube has now been active for over twenty years; so long that you can actually see how much many long-time creators have aged by scrolling through thumbnails of their videos. A good example to check for yourself is a YouTuber known as TheArchfiend who began his channel in 2007 and has more or less retained the same format to this day. You can see him go from a young adult to a balding, greying dad just by looking through his videos from oldest to newest. He is also a good example of what YouTube was like in the early years which was more a platform for ‘Vlogging’ than anything else. YouTube has also been around long enough for a number of creators to have died and that sadly now includes the relatively young, Billy Hudson.
Billy began the The Game Chasers six years after YouTube was founded at a time when many channels were rapidly improving in quality. That is, they were going from videos recorded in bedrooms on webcams to much more professionally produced, scripted and edited videos complete with lighting, soundproofing and proper broadcast equipment. What distinguished The Game Chasers immediately was just how professional it was from the very first episode. Many older YouTube videos are hard to watch today as they are recorded in what is now a very low resolution of 240p that looks blurry and pixelated on modern displays. Episode 1 of The Game Chasers by contrast was 72op and is still very watchable all these years later. It is no hyperbole to say that it was just like a professionally produced television show and the quality of the show’s presentation remained consistent even as other channels caught up. Normally when you discover a channel and watch their old content, you’ll find yourself cringing when exploring earlier videos but this is not so for The Game Chasers. Although I was watching many related channels around the time, I didn’t really get into The Game Chasers until some years later and so did go back and watch their older content.
Unfortunately, considering all this was that they weren’t all that successful by YouTube standards as they are today. As of writing, the channel is still has under 200K subscribers and not one of their videos has broke half a million views. Many similar channels that began around the same time or after have dwarfed them in popularity including a number of channels and personalities they helped promote early on. This is especially sad given how many low effort ‘react’ or ‘rant’ channels have done much better. The channel was successful in the ways that matter though. Their fanbase was extremely engaged and loyal and I’ve even seen a few comments under their videos wondering aloud why the channel they loved, wasn’t more popular. They were also clearly well-liked, respected and enjoyed by many fellow creators too.
I remember them mentioning something about speaking with television producers about creating a broadcast version of the show which they turned down because it would involve planting games to be “discovered” to make the episodes more interesting. If true, that they rejected this speaks to their integrity and makes every episode they did more authentic. What may be the final episode (assuming there was nothing filmed prior to his death), has them striking out completely but it was still an entertaining ride.
Perhaps another reason that they weren’t more popular was that game collecting is a niche within a niche. Video games make up much of the popular content on both YouTube and other streaming channels but game collecting is increasingly difficult to be a part of due to expense and other factors that I have discussed before. The show then was more aimed at people like me who did or had spent time game hunting and could relate to their successes and failures. Finding genuine rarities at bargain prices became more and more difficult over the last fifteen years as even people outside of collecting became aware of the potential value certain video games had. That they also branched into ‘Toy Chasing’ some years into the show also demonstrated this. In the last few episodes I remember them being given a few absurd quotes on old video games at flea markets simply because they were old video games.
Nonetheless, even as hunting for bargain video games became more difficult, the show remained entertaining and would have at least made it to one hundred episodes without the sad news of Billy’s death a few days ago. They still had a loyal group that had funded them in other projects including a feature film titled, Adventures in Game Chasing. I confess I didn’t enjoy this film but I was happy to have bought it if only to offer something for all the free entertainment they’d already given me with their main series.
I will continue to pray for the repose of the soul of Billy Hudson and for the family he has left behind. I don’t know how he was with God at the end but I hope and pray he had time to reconcile himself to him and leave this world in a state of grace.