As many people know by now, John ‘TotalBiscuit’ Bain died a
few days ago from bowel cancer that spread to his liver. I’ve been a fan of his
for a while and wanted to do a tribute to him, so I’ve made this blog post. His
battle with cancer has been well-documented, and he was a very well-known
figure in games media, so rather than it being a biography of his life, which
many will do, I thought I’d give a brief overview of who he was and then talk
about what he meant to me. I’d rather have to do this only once so while I
would normally keep these blogs fairly short, this one will naturally be longer.
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| There are better pictures than this, but this is how I remember TotalBiscuit - sitting in his office doing the podcast. |
The production and access of media has been changing
dramatically for as long as I can remember. Around the middle of the previous
decade, YouTube came in to prominence as a large platform on which you can
upload videos. Once the site started running advertisements on those videos,
and the people who make them – content creators – started to be paid, it became
possible to make a decent living from making videos on YouTube. This came from
advertising revenue initially, and with their fame and exposure, many YouTube
stars made money from sponsorship deals as well.
One such person was TotalBiscuit, a games critic who
championed consumer rights and choice. He tended to focus on PC gaming with a
balanced line-up of reviews of games from major publishers to draw in the
views, and indie (smaller) developers to support the practice of developing
games. His biggest and longest-running series was WTF Is… ?, which gave
TotalBiscuit’s first impressions of a game after playing it for a few to
several hours depending on the game. It combined gameplay footage with
TotalBiscuit’s massive talent for commentary, and he produced hundreds of
videos for the series. He also provided commentary on news and controversies
within the games industry, as well as supporting and commentating on the
competitive gaming movement now known as E-Sports.
I first became aware of TotalBiscuit in late 2012 when he
posted a video of playing the multiplayer mode of XCOM: Enemy Unknown against
Angry Joe; another games critic I’d been following for a while by then. It was
entertaining, but I didn’t know anything about TotalBiscuit at that point so I
took two prominent YouTubers playing the multiplayer mode as a curio to a game
that I’m a big fan of – I’d bought and beaten the game by then, and it remains
one of my favourite games to this very day.
The video that truly engaged me, that made me realise that
TotalBiscuit’s was a voice well worth listening to – and I expect that the same
is the case for many people – was This video is no longer available: The Day
One Garry’s Incident Incident, posted in October 2013. TotalBiscuit displayed
something that became a prominent issue on YouTube over the next few years,
where an angry game developer – in this case Wild Games Studios – abused
YouTube’s copyright strike system to remove his coverage of their appalling
game Day One: Garry’s Incident. TotalBiscuit provided an insightful and useful
overview on exactly how this works, what was done and how behaviour like this
was used as an attack on games critique and what it would mean for the industry
if it were to continue to allow this to happen. Three million people had viewed
that video by the time the topic next came up, and that number has grown
considerably since then. To put that in perspective, a games critic can, at the
top of their expectations, expect roughly a million to a million and a half
people to watch their videos if they are popular enough and if the game is big
enough; usually the so-called Triple-A releases. Most of TotalBiscuit’s videos
were viewed by around half a million people, at the height of his popularity.
No small number of course, but the only time I ever see videos viewed more than
that are the more popular music videos.
I guess what was most appealing about all this to me was the
fact that TotalBiscuit was, or at least appeared to be, talking as himself; a
genuine human being. I’d certainly come across some volatile videos before –
prior to this I watched a lot of Angry Joe, and the Angry Video Game Nerd – but
TotalBiscuit was the first games commentator I’d seen since the days of Bad
Influence in the 90s where the reviewer was talking as himself; not a character
or a persona invented for Youtube. Not that this makes Angry Joe or the Nerd
any less valid in the points they make, you understand, but TotalBiscuit was a
lot more relatable for, of all things, using a normal speaking voice.
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| TB's strong and often caustic opinions made him a controversial figure. Here's some commentary he did on the Gamergate scandal. |
At that point, I became a fan, watching the WFT Is… videos
and the less-regular Content Patch; a series commenting on the news in the
gaming industry. Interestingly, for the longest time, TotalBiscuit’s content
wasn’t relevant to me, as I didn’t own a PC capable of playing the vast
majority of the games he covered. Some had console ports, but with the Xbox 360
coming to the end of its generation by then, and not having enough money to
justify buying what is now the current generation consoles, he didn’t cover
many games I eventually bought. For me it was more about finding out what’s
going on in the world in an industry I’m interested in. So I watched all the
videos, enjoyed the way he presented himself, even adopted some of his
mannerisms (people who know me in person might remember that I often punctuate
the flow of my speech with “yes indeed,” and agree with certain things with
“and rightly so.”) Often I’d fall asleep listening to some of his videos, not
watching them at all, purposefully putting them on any time I wanted a nap! I
feel no shame in admitting this since I know from talking to certain people
that it is far from uncommon. Later, I enjoyed the Co-Optional podcast as well;
I don’t follow Jesse Cox and Dodger but it was always nice to hear some people
sitting around talking about video games, and I’d often have it on while I was
playing, though the three-hour format made it difficult to listen to all the
way through due to time constraints. Of course, when I bought my laptop, which
in 2015 was a pretty powerful machine, I was able to download and play some of
the games he’d been covering; regular readers will recognise those times when I’ve
said my purchases were inspired by TotalBiscuit, and I still have a list of
games he covered that I’d like to buy at some point!
Then in late 2014, TotalBiscuit publicly announced that he
had cancer. I remember thinking at the time that it was a very brave move. For
various reasons, I’ve been a lot more careful what I’ve been saying online than
I was when I was younger, and I’m not sure I’d want something like that to be
common knowledge. But for someone as popular as TotalBiscuit, he’d never have
been able to keep it quiet for long. I thought it was a fantastic act of
strength to admit that he’d had the symptoms of his condition for roughly a
year before going to the doctors about it, and to advise people to get
themselves checked out if they think they have any symptoms to avoid repeating
his mistake. But I wasn’t unduly worried at the time. Nobody had used the word
‘terminal’ at that point, and with advances in technology and treatment, cancer
isn’t always the death sentence it once was. It’s far from fun, but there was
hope.
The cancer went into remission, but later returned, and this
time it was terminal. I can’t remember how I felt about that at the time, but I
was glad that TotalBiscuit kept WTF is… and the podcast going, and the “I Will
Now Talk About…” videos, which had somewhat replaced the content patch, was a
welcome addition to his line-up. He talked about the cancer from time to time
but never for sympathy, and I truly believe it was never his intention to stop
working. He made regular videos for as long as he was able, including one very
open interview about living with Stage 4 cancer. (From what I understand, Stage
4 is the point of no return for cancer.) I was particularly impressed with his
remark that, while the chemo therapy is a massive drain on him, he would accept
the four days every two weeks he had to go through it for the ten reasonably good
days in between.
At this point, I would like to mention his TotalBiscuit’s
wife Genna, who has supported him throughout all of this. This has happened in
many different ways, I’m sure, but the specific example I’m thinking of is with
the food, which TotalBiscuit talked about in the interview. Even in spite of
horribly aggressive conditions like cancer, your body doesn’t want to be ill,
and will try to fight to keep itself healthy – but you have to give it the fuel
in order to do that. Unfortunately, when you’re that ill, preparing food for
yourself is the last thing you feel like doing.[1]
For TotalBiscuit, that fell on Genna. If he was too ill to cook, she would do
it. If he threw up the food she’d made because he was ill, she’d prepare
something else. If that didn’t work either, she’d try another meal, and she’d
keep trying until she found something TotalBiscuit could keep down. He said
that once he’d eaten a meal, the difference it made to his energy levels and
health was huge. He lived far longer than his original prognosis, and I believe
his family were a large part of the reason for that. There’s a lesson in there,
I think. So well done, Genna.
While the Co-Optional Podcast kept going, TotalBiscuit’s
reviews were becoming less frequent, and early this year when he published the
Top 10 Games of 2017 video, I remember thinking he didn’t sound well. And then
right at the end of April, there was a post on Reddit where TotalBiscuit told
his audience that the conventional treatments were no longer effective, and
with few other options, he would be managing his pain as best he could and be
retiring as a games critic. He knew he hadn’t got long left; he refused to be
drawn into exactly how long since he’d already beaten the odds for people with
his condition. It was his intention to keep the podcast and streaming going,
and for Genna to take over the channel once he’d gone. I think that was
probably the most upsetting part of this whole thing. I can’t imagine what it
must have meant for TotalBiscuit that he had to stop doing the job he’d loved
for so long because he was physically unable to do it.
I regularly looked at his Twitter feed after that –
unfortunately the last month has been very busy for me and I haven’t had time
to watch the podcast, and I’ve never seen Twitch (as if I need another video
site taking up what little time I do have!) and he did a really good job of
keeping people informed on how he was doing. And then, on May 24th
2018, the messages started to go up showing that TotalBiscuit had died.
I found it an odd sensation of proportion that I should have
been more upset by the passing of someone on YouTube that I’d never even had
any dialogue with, let alone have occasion to meet, than some people I’ve known
in person who have died over the last five years.[2]
Surely it should be the other way around? But I guess TotalBiscuit was a
regular part of my life for most of the last five years through his videos, and
while there are many YouTubers out there who do their own thing which is just
as good, if not better, things on YouTube, games media, and even the internet,
are never going to be quite the same again. I’m going to miss him, a lot.
Nonetheless I’ll keep my eye on how things develop. I really
hope Genna picks up the channel, and that the Co-Optional podcast keeps going.
I’ll continue to write my blog – not that I in any way would have stopped
because of this, but I would like to think of myself as a voice that’s worth
listening to, even if I rarely talk about current games. I’ve seen enough
coverage on Youtube to know that people generally like to listen to or read
about people talking about video games, and TotalBiscuit was a large part of
creating that culture for me. I’ll keep working, and doing what I can to make a
living – that’s not easy, in this day and age, but despite my eating habits my
body has the capacity to be an active member of society in a way that some
people sadly don’t get the chance to do. And I will – and indeed have – get
myself checked out if it appears an illness is going into the long term. I’ll
continue with my music as long as I am able, in fact last Friday I did a
musical tribute to him by ending a short set at an open mic with a rendition of
The Parting Glass.
As for TotalBiscuit, I hope he’s out of pain now, and I hope
his family know how much he meant to so many people. “Goodnight, and joy be
with you all.”
[1]
Not that I’d know about how chemo therapy makes you feel, but I felt like that
the last time I was very ill with the flu, and from what I understand about
cancer, it is far worse.
[2]
Just to clarify this remark: Most of people I’m referring to were former
colleagues, bandmates, people I’d known through a previous long-distance
relationship and a family member I hadn’t met in over two decades. I hadn’t
seen them for a long time and, while I’ll always remember the time I had with
them fondly, in most cases we were far beyond the point where I had a stake in
their affairs.
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