Article contributed by David Allen
Daniel Hardcastle loves video games. The thirty-year old YouTuber has made a career out of playing them in front of his 2.5 million subscribers and he has also turned his experiences playing video games into a book, Fuck Yeah, Video Games, a love letter to the greatest hobby in the world.
“If you fill a room with people and watch a film together, then you’ll learn nothing about those people,” Hardcastle said. “If you fill a room with people and play a video game together, then you’ll see who the bastards are, who the kind people are. You’ll find out who’s sneaky, who’s silly, and who’s stupid. You can’t play a video game without revealing a part of who you are, and that’s a beautiful thing.”
The only thing Hardcastle may love as much as video games is a good laugh.
“I’ve been making the same, silly video about video games for a decade now and, honestly, it’s starting to run its course,” he said when asked about his YouTube channel. “It’s alright though, if nothing ended, then nothing would ever begin, and hey, the descent is always more fun. Just look at a rollercoaster. Or America. Wait, hang on was this a softball question to promote my YouTube channel? OH GOD. Can I answer again? Do we have any time left before the next ques…”
He brings the same wit to his book Fuck Yeah, Video Games, which chronicles Hardcastle’s various encounters with some of the great, and not so great, video games of the past.
He also delves into the history of the consoles behind the games with background research on Sony, Sega, Nintendo, and Atari consoles.
“I find the history of video games fascinating, especially the little bits and pieces that aren’t very well known,” he said. “Little facts like these, especially the mad ones, felt like a really nice breather between all the lengthy stories. And hey, if someone learns something they can win a pub quiz with, then all the better.”
The first game he ever saw was Horace Goes Skiing. Although he was very young at the time, the game left an impression.
“It was one of those games that was bundled with every ZX Spectrum going and holds up about as well as a one-legged table, but it blew my tiny mind,” he said. “However, I never played it for some mysterious reason. Probably it was because I was a baby, and babies tend to be rubbish at video games.”
Once he got older, Hardcastle discovered the Sega Mega Drive, also known as the Genesis in the U.S. One encounter with Sonic the Hedgehog later, and he was hooked for life.
“That was when the love began, with arguably one of the greatest games ever made,” he said. “Actually, good thing it wasn’t Horace I played first; I might have hated it and become something rubbish like an accountant or a pharmacist.”
Since a Sega system inspired his love of gaming, it is not surprising that Hardcastle favoured the system over its Nintendo rival during the fabled “console wars”.
“Nobody wants to be wrong and most households only buy one console,” he said. “Nowadays, I can look back at the SNES and Mega Drive and treat them objectively. The Mega Drive is better. Objectively.”
Although most well-known as a YouTube personality, Nerd3, Hardcastle has a long history as a writer. He has been writing scripts in his spare time for over two decades, and before YouTube, started his online creative career making web-comics based around the game Minecraft.
“I always knew I’d go back to writing at some point,” he said. “YouTube has just been a very long, very fun diversion for a decade or so.”
The title Fuck Yeah, Video Games suits Hardcastle just fine.
“The word ‘fuck’ in the title serves three purposes,” Hardcastle said. “One is that it wards off kids. This really isn’t a book for them, and I didn’t want them reading it. They’ll smudge all the pages. Two, after getting frustrated as so many publishers telling me it didn’t have an audience, the ‘fuck’ just became a faster way to get rejected by the folks who weren’t going to get it. I like to work efficiently, you know? Three, it makes me giggle.”
Despite the evocative nature of the title, his book has encountered few difficulties. Amazon’s autofill won’t suggest the book and a few bookshops lined up for the book tour rejected a visit from Hardcastle.
“Everyone has been way, way more mature than I have,” he said. “Fun fact: its original title was The Joy of Video Games, which is cleaner and much, much worse.”
Despite having millions of subscribers on YouTube, Hardcastle faced a lot of rejection from traditional publishers who felt that his book did not have an audience. After searching for alternatives, he came across Unbound, a crowdfunding publisher. It was a match made in heaven.
“They loved the book, loved the title, and were more than happy to let it be its own thing,” he said. “A few months later we launched FYVG, it became the biggest crowdfunded book in the UK ever, and now it’s a bestseller. 10/10, would work with them again.”
Fuck Yeah, Video Games may be a celebration of Hardcastle’s life in gaming, but it certainly is not a compilation of the greatest games ever made. They are simply a collection of experiences with video games, some good, some bad, like many gamers have accumulated over the years,
“For most of it, it was stories that I wanted to tell,” he said. “Playing The Sims as my Dad, the Sins of a Solar Empire LAN matches, and my childhood searches for the 151st Pokémon. Everyone has gaming stories like that, and they’re wonderful things. Then, during a nightmare, I remembered that Ride to Hell existed and I thought, sure, why not? Let’s celebrate bad games using quite possibly the worst one ever made.”
Hardcastle makes it a point to cite Rockstar’s Bully as the greatest game of all time.
“Bully is a time capsule; it’s like that smell that reminds you of camp, or a song that makes you remember a face you haven’t thought about in years,” he said. “It’s school. The feeling, the people, the naughtiness. Sure, it’s broad and big and bonkers, but it just captured that relatively tiny part of all of our lives so perfectly.”
Fuck Yeah, Video Games is, however, not all sunshine and nostalgia. Hardcastle is more than willing to also critique the hobby he loves so much. He specifically calls out the practices of microtransactions and loot boxes, which he describes as “being electronically mugged”.
“Take-Two Interactive, the company that owns Rockstar and 2K, now makes over half their money from what they call ‘recurrent consumer spending’,” he said. “They’re happy about it, but it has made every single one of their games worse. NBA games have become glorified slot machines, the most recent WWE game had only 35% of its roster unlocked at the start, with the rest locked behind grindy progress or cash payments, and GTA Online is a screaming nightmare.”
The remedy, according to Hardcastle? Independent developers.
“Folks at home with tiny budgets, big ideas and a lot of heart make the best games anyway,” he said. “Sure, in the future the AAA games will be nothing but casinos, but the sort of people who make Factorio will still exist. We’ll be ok.”
Fuck Yeah, Video Games also features the artistic talents of Rebecca Maughan, who provided illustrations throughout the book and also happens to be Hardcastle’s wife.
“Rebecca and I worked together for years, then we got married and cleverly decided that we might as well keep working together,” he said. “Honestly, it’s a delight. Rebecca is so fantastically creative, an incredible artist, and my very best friend. Is there anyone better to work with?”
Hardcastle is already hard at work creating a follow-up to Fuck Yeah, Video Games. His next book, however, will be quite different.
“It’s the great big sci-fi adventure of my dreams, with weird aliens, huge spaceships and proper time travel called The Paradox Paradox,” he said. “It’s funny, dark, and I’m most likely writing it furiously as you read this.”
He also recently starred in a film with frequent collaborator Stuart Ashen.
“Ashens and the Polybius Heist is a full length, proper heist film about tracking down the legendary arcade cabinet, Polybius,” he said. “It’s currently sitting at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, so my acting clearly hasn’t ruined it.”
In the meantime, there’s always still his YouTube channel.
“Yes, the YouTube thing! Do we have enough time for me to answer again…”
