Game Theory... What Happened To You?

[Music] [Applause] [Music] oh hello internet um welcome to game theory and our 10-year anniversary special where we look behind the scenes at what it takes to make an episode of game theory smell that nothing but a week ahead of nerding out about my favorite games films and food thank you so much now according to most get ready with me videos a typical youtuber morning looks a lot like this birds chirping sun shining in the sky my own personal brand of cold brew waiting for me downstairs all ready to start a week of work that let's be honest isn't really work but then again this is what it takes to make a game theory episode and it don't look anything like this good morning now it's more accurate now it's even more accurate so the last time we did a behind the scenes episode like this on game theory it was 2014 and there was only one channel with three and a half million subscribers so as you can imagine things have changed a lot since then process has gotten a bit more complicated true story we filmed that behind the scenes video on christmas day in what ended up being a 10 hour shoot it was fun it was also one of the most stressful depressing days of my life and i vowed that it would never happen again and so i like to think that across 10 years of doing this that i've been able to achieve balance that i can just sit down on a monday morning open up my computer and say you know what this is going to be a smooth week it's going to be perfectly normal so let's see how today looks shall we and it is indeed a normal week we've got ourselves let's see a collab request uh record pickups for game theory normal stuff meeting requests normal script revisions meeting requests meeting requests corrupted audio god that's an hour of my life that just went down the tube meeting requests meeting requests why are there so many meetings why are there so many meetings oh sophia says hi that's nice too bad there's no time for her meeting requests that reminds me we have a meeting in five minutes see you there this month marks 10 years since i published my first video on the channel back in 2011. since the start of game theory a lot has happened a lot i mean i've moved six times across three different states and not once have i milked it with a house tour so missed opportunity there but in all seriousness i i got married i had a kid i wore uh this same jacket so many times that people don't think that i own other clothes no joke at youtube they're like you wear other things than this red jacket yes yes i do guys i've drank several swimming pools worth of diet coke and i've used the same cutout picture of myself in every episode of the show for a decade hey buddy looking good there holding up with the times probably should change my haircut at some point oh wait i did that a bunch of times too i've gotten to do things i would have never imagined i've raced on ostriches i've flown stunts in planes i have played soccer in cars and i've met with the pope we've also raised five million dollars for charity including setting an all-time record for the single highest donation amount for an online charity event ever i think it's safe to call this one wow million dollars oh yeah and we've also started three more channels which now total 28 million subscribed loyal theorists the world over with five billion views if you know my story you know that this channel started at what was the lowest point in my life a time when no one was willing to take a chance on me no one no one at least but you you all believed in this little ohio nerd with an annoying voice and here we are today i'm getting to the part of the episode where we go through how these things get made but i wanted to start things off here with you because you are the most important part of team theorist by watching each week by subscribing by buying merch by putting up with the brand deals or by playing our args whatever you do you empower us all of us on team theorists that you're gonna meet today you empower us to do what we love you keep this channel alive and kicking on behalf of this entire community of theorists thank you so that's a little bit about me that's where i'm at that's also you where you fit in on this team but there's a group of theorists that often go unnoticed the team who actually helps me make these videos behind the scenes they're the key to making game theory what it is today but maybe i can coax them into the spotlight today now you might remember that i already made a video like this six years ago called game theory explosion can i say exposed like i said youtube has changed a lot in the past 10 years that'll probably get this video throughout youtube unveiled i guess i don't know let's call it game theory out of the closet no that's gonna get us flagged either game theory's dirty little secret nope uh we're gonna get back to that anyway point being since i made that first bts video the team has grown a lot so come join me on a journey to theorist hq and we're here yeah there is no theorist hq it's just my house in true youtuber form i am still making videos in my own basement oh no does that mean i'm part of the problem am i just a cliche now but in all seriousness we did actually get an office for a while but with commutes sucking especially when you're living in la and honestly with so much of our team working internationally at this point it didn't make a whole lot of sense and so at this point we just do a lot remotely now back when we did this first bts video of game theory i was able to break down the process into six easy steps and honestly those six steps are the same but how they look nowadays is vastly different ten years ago i was the only person writing and researching game theory with steph giving me input to make sure that i didn't publish anything inappropriate so an episode about fake boobs and video games yeah this will be fine i mean the internet will know it's a joke they're really good at understanding nuance and this is going to be great but now with so many episodes needing to get done i work alongside a team of researchers each one selected because they're an expert in their own individual fields which in turn helps to make sure that things stay accurate and thorough every week starts with our production meeting where we get together to review the schedule for the upcoming month yeah month of uploads before brainstorming new theory ideas hey guys sorry i'm late uh jason you should have that mario audio in your inbox here in a couple minutes it's uploading now uh so yeah let's get started cool thanks um so let's hop into programming oh my gosh did you guys see anything interesting this weekend anyone play anything fun so i gotta tell you about this thing that ollie did let me just hop in here and save you from all that i'm jason head of production here on theorists which means it's my job to keep everything on track and now he just climbs the body like himself like a big kid can you believe that that just sometimes feels the need to connect with people and so i give him about 10 minutes at the top of every meeting is it productive heck no honestly i don't even think people pay attention but it makes him feel better and so i'll give it to him so we all sing the potty time song and the potty tongue song goes like this it goes all right matt all right okay so let's talk schedule now justin i have you working on the new mario secretly freddy fazbear episode how's that coming along theory scripts can be pretty weird sometimes uh remember that theory about ash's age in the pokemon anime that one definitely deserved to be a two-parter because an absurd amount of time went into looking for the smallest details that might show seasons changing or in any way indicate the passage of time when you're pausing on a scene to examine the ripeness of fruit you know that you have officially gone too far the thing that got me the most was the mario odyssey episode with the moon um and so this is one that i i don't think actually anyone knows about so i'm not even sure if i'm allowed to say this or not i wrote a completely different script for that episode and it will never see the light of day the reason why it bugged me so much is because i spent about two weeks learning particle physics only for no one to know the fruits of my labor at the end of the day like it was just like hey this is a cool script but there's just way too much complicated math for this to be a good episode my favorite episode generally has been the most recent one like i've been doing this internet video bull stuff for a long time and i am just continuously blown away uh you know handing in work and seeing it go off and everyone knows what they're doing like that shouldn't be unusual but trust me in this business it kind of is every single time something goes up it's my new favorite thing that i've worked on it's fantastic i still get asked how we come up with theory ideas my grandma no joke is like after 10 years haven't you run out of things to talk about but here's the thing friends working with a research team allows me to talk about games that i might not be as familiar with or educational topics that i might not be as confident in there's also always new trending games to cover fan requests i'm also really excited to see fans of the show submitting their own theories on the game theorist subreddit it's awesome because that then can serve as a jumping off point in our own research and fun fact i'm also always on that subreddit looking for new potential members to add to the team so if you're interested that might be a good place to start and if everything everything else fails there's always the good old reliable it's that from there we assign it to the writer that fits the ip the best i mean after all we want to make sure that the writer is as passionate and familiar with that franchise as possible all right guys uh who wants to take the next fnaf theory okay fine fine guys i will do it again but seriously at this point it would be nice to have someone actually recognize this franchise so i can have someone to bounce ideas off of them someone needs to validate the amount of inane knowledge that i have in my head about this franchise please honestly i think any of us could probably write fnaf videos but uh we really just don't want to take it away from matt i mean he gets so excited getting into the little lore things the art books it's so cute i wouldn't want to like step on his toes it's just you know he still thinks he's important oh that's so mean i can't even say that whether i'm polishing a draft from a writer or just working on a theory myself one thing will always remain true writing theories is just hard there's a lot of research and hidden lore that fans of the ip will call you out on if you get it wrong which means that the best theories are always coming from a place of love okay okay now hear me out hear me out now what if shadow bonnie is actually dark plier because they're both shadow people from the shadow universe which probably means that yu-gi-oh is involved too which would make it a film theory do you laugh you laugh but it could be it could be a real thing it makes sense it makes so much sense and now that writing's done it's time to record the episode sorry one second yellow whoa hang on now you do not just simply go record huh here we go friends do you even know what your schedule is today yes no you do not because i create your schedule i create a simplified priorities list so that you can get everything done and stay focused nothing slips through the cracks jason is pretty much my boss uh jason you do realize this priority list is 85 items long that is not a priority list that's just a list record 12th episode feed the cats i don't really like him but if you're gonna have a cat jason's priority list tend to be a bit overwhelming but the reality of the matter is he's the head of production and so he holds the fort together but probably better if he describes what he does you have no idea what i do do you uh i most definitely do yes sure look running a channel like game theory takes a lot of organization and a lot of communication i'm constantly scheduling script deliveries audio deliveries live action shoots when edits are due when notes are due on those edits take game theory so game theory has one video a week right but in actuality there's five different episodes being worked on at any given time i'm also responsible for hiring new members when somebody decides to start a new channel what what come on assist staff steph stop launching channels sure just go record also don't tell matt but i assigned him everything three days early you know just in case what jason worst anyway ladies and gentlemen welcome to the most exciting part of the process my recording yes uh i'm no longer trapped in a recording closet guys and it only took me nine years to get this room that is not an exaggeration i have officially been out of the closet for one whole year i love it it sounds great in here i feel great in here but you know what it doesn't always look this nice to be honest it has been a long long year matthew ollie wants you to read him a book matthew wait what is going on here why are all these clothes in here i'm down here a lot and so i just started storing one shirt and then one shirt led to another shirt and they just started to multiply and then there were just a ton of shirts all hanging on racks and suddenly i was in a closet all over again stephanie you never leave the closet stephanie the closet never leaves you in all seriousness recording is a huge part of my life and it follows me wherever i go i bring my recording equipment on vacation visiting family over christmas basically everywhere i go i've had to record something awkwardly in a closet or under a table while draped in any towels and blankets i can find to try and dampen the sound i've recorded on five continents in 26 countries i've also been stopped about 40 times at the airport because tsa thinks that my microphone is a weapon it is not but i can always tell when the security is on their game when they stop me once i finish recording i send the audio off to the editors they slap a few images together and then bam it's off to youtube for uploading oh wait hold on okay hi head editor dan here here we go you may recognize me as the french sponge guy narrator [Music] got eaten by a ball pit or the time that matt did me dirty as researcher number three say hello theorists hello just wondering when we're gonna get paid sorry i can't really hear you when you all talk over each other like that uh you almost done i also have twitch streams at that cyber channel if you can't tell dan is very proud of the work he does he also likes to talk about it of course i'm proud and you were about to skip over the best hardest and most important part of the process uh false the hardest part of the process is reading the comments yeah fair point but he is totally right we gotta talk about the editing first the script goes to our longest running team member at this point a man i both fear and love my audio editor yossi hello yahweh is that you yosi hears everything that goes on in the closet i'm sure he has countless clips saved on backup ready to blackmail me if he ever needs to i am offended by that allegation and i'm filing it right here ah it's a joke but i don't think it's really that much of a joke yossi is responsible for making my audio actually sound like a youtube video you know where no one breathes or pauses ever because then someone might click away to another video yosi is also a musician he composes a lot of the cringy parody songs that we use for the cold open he's here he's there he's everywhere who you gonna call psychic friend fred bear [Music] my pokemon are shiny a red pika and a yellow pile of swine it's divine and last but certainly not least he's also responsible for removing any flubs or the more recent development surprise ollie cameos that happen as i'm recording the vo can you dance dance dance dance dance dance dance dance dance from there the final cut of audio goes to the hardest working editors in the business and that is not an exaggeration i cannot say enough about the work that these guys do because it's not just editing it is editing and it's animation and it's having to be funny and it's having to become a subject matter expert in the exact same topics that i had to research and talk about in each episode so they can clearly communicate those ideas back to you visually hi my name is alyssa and i'm the assistant editor i go through and make sure that all the editors have everything they could possibly need or want in the script i'm the poor soul who goes through and watches an entire video for one sentence one some of my favorite things to make are aged up or aged down pets those uh old pets with the beards and the young pets as a baby those are fun to make [Laughter] remember how i mentioned earlier that we have won five streaming awards well these guys have been nominated for best editing three times and one once and technically probably should have won the other two times too i'm just saying based on the other nominees i think we had a pretty good shot there i was kind of disappointed that's none of my business just saying we have members of this team that are able to do practically anything they're even creating their own 3d renderings of scenes and objects at this point for stuff like the kfc episode or minecraft cold opens they're great and i love them so much thanks matt and the editorial heroism begins with the weekly editor meetings each editor is usually working on multiple episodes at a time and each episode is broken up into two to three parts so every time you watch a game theory you're seeing two or three people's vision of how the episode should be uh it's also worth noting that most of the editors on the team are people that have found us over the years fans of the channel who did their own theory parody videos or made a reddit fan post and i reached out to them and asked them to audition at this point our editing army even trains our friends to join the next generation we're kind of like a cult join us please we need help what i love most though is that they all have their own specific editing styles which means that i can always tell whose section of edits i'm looking at for every given episode our first editor ronnie was iconic for his use of flash animation and cute simple characters sedge who lives in australia and is getting married this year celebration to him uses a lot of self-generated 3d models in his work and he uses the visual style of different time periods to really mix up how it's presented on screen favorite episode probably a split between the food theory and the game theory intro there's actually an easter egg in the food theory intro that no one has found i'll give you a hint it's so a big part of the job are the video calls team theorist is scattered to the wind um we have people working on the team halfway across the globe and one of those people is sedge i've been working with sedge for a couple years now but he never turns his camera on in meetings so i still don't know what he looks like but his voice i'm not gonna say it hits me in a sexual way but cech's accent absolutely takes me to places i've never been my favorite episode i've ever worked on has to be the dr stone i think it was a film theory the intro to that episode i just i got struck with some weird inspiration i think matt in the script had written just do you know a dr stone-ish themed intro title card or something i decided i was going to make an entire anime op i i found a bass track on epidemic sound for like some chords and stuff whipped out my guitar got a little bit of the uh film theory intro in there had a friend of dan's animated or drum matte pat anime so yeah that was that was definitely definitely my favorite episode lee is a champ who just came back to us after a few years of doing his own projects his edits are always super sleek stylish and clean with a great sense of timing and awesome use of sound effects weekly meetings yeah i have been going to the weekly meetings since we started doing them in 2015 2016. i remember back when we used to do the partner calls goomba had just gotten back from a trip to japan with his wife and bless him he was so excited to share his memories of the trip so he asked if he could share a slideshow and of course we were like yeah we'd love to see and he pulled up his pictures and he shared all of them and goomba took a lot of pictures it took about two and a half hours to get through that slideshow and i know we've joked about that quite a bit but honestly i've held on to that because it's such a funny fun memory of the team tyler is an absolute beast this guy's young but he can handle almost anything we throw at him especially these difficult to visualize science topics my favorite note from matt had to do with a fnaf episode where we're talking about fan fiction and so he wanted me to take freddy and chica and make them french kiss i gave them these big realistic human tongues and they slapped them together and they're so happy and lovey and i just thank you so much for that matt i love to just express myself creatively like that this is the only job where that would be a work note make two robots french kiss and then there's pedro josh and cohen they're relative newcomers who are great at keeping things up to date with the hottest memes from 2018 uh admittedly we all could use a bit of refreshing when it comes to meme culture so my typical day involves waking up grabbing a cup of coffee i sit at the computer and get ready to work but before i open premiere and after effects i perform a holy ritual so i make sure that those two apps don't cry there's also bandit who is faster than any other editor ever and whose animation style is just great for comic book episodes we're also convinced he's an ai we've never seen his face on the editor meeting so one would assume and then after all said and done we just clap our hands together and go home just kidding after that dan and i give them notes on the draft of the episode gentle suggestions on ways they can make their point more clearly sometimes matt can leave hundreds of notes per episode so i sit down take a deep breath put as much caffeine into my system as possible and open up framio to see what he left pedro how's your section coming along uh doing good uh my section is coming along uh how many notes are you up to in your section cohen uh like i'm on minute three and i'm at 45. oh man i'm pushing 80 on four minutes hey jason i thought i was done but i just got a note from matt he said he wants pikachu to look like ted danson who's ted danson what well a video is being edited another part of the team is working to make sure that it plays nice with the youtube algorithms and actually shows up in your feed this includes researching which words will work best for video titles as well as making each thumbnail from scratch that's amy our channel manager basically we want to collect and know as much data as possible that way we can study and learn from it so that we know how to package our videos most effectively hey amy by the way what's more searchable staff or dunkin donuts looking that up now and also while you're looking it up do we have any data on whether other youtubers like me sure i'll pull up the spreadsheet we have on it we don't actually have spreadsheets on that kind of thing i just tend to say something to make matt feel better results are positive yes score another one for the batpad thanks amy keep up the good work before even uploading to youtube i've done a bunch of research on seo that means seeing what people are searching for when it comes to a particular ip as well as seeing what other people on youtube are doing in that sphere so what are they titling their videos what tags are they using what hashtags after that i will go in and write up the entire episode metadata that means pretty much any of the out facing text i've had my hands in for better or worse sometimes and once the video is ready for upload i will qc it one final time and then i will fill everything out as it uploads from there i make sure that the video is monetized i make sure that there are no restrictions no flags or anything like that that goes into our video that would suppress it on the youtube algorithm and outside all of that i help oversee making every single one of our thumbnails thumbnails probably the thing that youtubers worry the most about but with good reason because here's the thing no matter how funny your script is or how flashy your editing is if people aren't clicking on the video to watch it all that stuff gets wasted thereby making the thumbnail the single most important image that you make as a part of any video lucky for us we have the talents of dan our graphic designer who doesn't like to plaster his face all over the internet kind of makes him the smartest person who works on this channel to be honest but it also gives us an excuse to make him look like he's in witness protection hi i'm dan i designed the thumbnails for the channels as well as the logos and the channel banners that you see in my time working at game theory i've had to see every version of chica from five nights at freddy's that's out there on the internet every version how can you do those things to a video game chicken we have three meetings every week to go over title and thumbnail three that is how important this stuff is uh dan can you go back to version 38 of the thumbnail uh switch it to 39 and back to 38. you know honestly i'm not loving the way that minecraft steve is holding that wedding cake can we use the wedding cake from version 14 with the color of steve shirt from version eight and let's change the text to dark secret we used that last week you know what just scrap the whole thing we're going back to version one and starting again the worst is when we live at it just for fun okay so dan can you move the the child and the hand uh can we move it two to the right one more one more all right just go back to the original version uh question for everyone what do you think about the kid is he reading corpsy enough for everyone i want to make sure that we have enough brand safe dead child in here well what do you think of the words have we thought about dark secret yes and uh that's it i mean we track the data and analyze it what do you mean that's it that's one video that's not even half of what we do it's true uh this is steph by the way she does everything i do and more scripts thumbnail notes she's the only person who knows fnaflore as well as i do it's only because i can't unsee it on top of that i spend most of my time clearing away the business stuff so that matthew can focus on the videos i make our long-term plans like 10 years ago when i moved us across the country from new york to los angeles and a year ago when i moved us back across the country from los angeles to north carolina what coast are we living on stephanie i make sure people get paid and that they don't submit their invoices in crayon which i have actually received i understand that you're a creative but company policy is that invoices have to include numbers and preferably not be written in crayon this just says boop boop beep i edited and then it has some money symbols on it and says pay me thinks yes and can you please put it on the fridge i review contracts with real lawyers i consult other companies and even sometimes youtube themselves sometimes over the last 10 years people have ignored me either because i'm not the face of the channel or because i'm a girl when that happens i just write emails from matthew's email address yeah if you've got an email from me in the last couple years chances are it's actually from steph and if you think that sounds like a lot it kind of is we both do this for game theory every week and for the other two channels the same process just as rigorous just as many steps for film theory and food theory every week of the year every year for the past decade if we take a vacation we've done it double for every channel ahead of time to make up for all the time that we're taking off we also live stream for five days a week for three years straight and we helped establish a merch company hey that new shirt is available right below this video we help causes that matter to us we do collabs we do taxes we advocate on behalf of creators to youtube we help build tools for smaller creators uh we did a bad job of staying in touch with friends we make sure we take a vacation every once in a while but not without the recording equipment yeah and me yeah nah get out of here austin but whatever it is it's all for you the theorist community which is why to this very day the best part for me is reading your comments how can someone tell that i put on quarantine pounds it's just my voice it's a vo show i use the same static image of me for 10 years deadpods are beautiful mods too but in all seriousness as long as you're watching as as long as you want to nerd out and over analyze everything from mario to minecraft with me we'll be here some of the faces have changed over the years as people have come and gone but that love of creating of making new videos for you has never wavered and that's not a theory so thank you for a life-changing decade thank you for every time that you stop me at a restaurant or at disneyland or at best buy or a surprising amount at home depot yeah shocking number of people stopping us at home just so many all everyone who works there like a game theory meet and greet over there and you know what here's to another decade ahead thanks for watching you

Channel: The Game Theorists

Views: 3,340,550

Keywords: game theory, game theorists, game theory 10th anniversary, game theory remastered, what happened to game theory, behind the scenes, bts, game theory exposed, matpat exposed, game theory behind the scenes, team theorist, matpat, matpat and steph, stephanie game theory, austin game theory, jason game theory, chris game theory, amy game theory, game theory minecraft, game theory fnaf, game theory mario, matpat cancelled, game theory cancelled, that cybert channel

Id: Dn1OBI8v5r4

Length: 30min 37sec (1837 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 24 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Magdaki]

Cool episode. If you ever have a need for an expert in artificial intelligence or machine learning, then I'd be happy to consult with you. I am currently a medical researcher at a top 20 university investigating topics such a computational neuroscience (building models of the brain to identify and diagnosis neurological injury and disease), precision medicine (crafting medicines for patients at a genetic level), and educational technology in medical education (building better doctors through better training). Send me a PM, and I would be happy to send you my CV.

[u/bradicalz23]

Anybody see the random text at the bottom of the list? Is that ARG material?

[u/DiabloGraves]

Amazing! Been wanting to see this for a long time now, and it was everything I wanted and more. Here's to 10 great years, and many more in the future.

[u/aurthurallan]

Is this subreddit used for film theory and food theory suggestions as well as game theory?

[u/DowningJ82]

I enjoyed this video’s premise and behind the scenes feel. One wonders though, how do I audition for voice over work on the show...I would do it for free for sure.

[u/Undertale_Lover123]

YOU FORGOT RYDER!!! (Footofaferret)

[u/SquibboDEV]

This was so good, and poor matpat not having someone to talk fnaf to. I would love to converse the lore. I could ramble on for days

[u/Scottie7372]

Wtf is the easter egg in the food theory intro

[u/ddkeac]

Well, just found this community Will definetely have to add some theories to this subreddit