My thoughts on Dropout streaming service
A month ago news about Dropout was shared here which is how I learned of the service. Having subscribed to it due to it, and since I liked it sufficiently in the three day trial, I'd like to share my thoughts on it.
Overall I mostly appreciate the content, especially due to the unique nature of it. The overall amount of diversity of various comedy formats and skill of the cast at improvisation(or at least the appearance of it) is pretty impressive.
Game changer is pretty amazing at how it manages to intelligently change the game presented (and sometimes format) nearly every episode. Play it by ear spinoff features an improvised musical with very good performances that are delight to watch. Dimension 20 is a tabletop gaming session show with good use of props and music and coherent and engaging storylines. These are mostly ones I watched for one but I'm sure I like some of the others it has to offer too.
But there are also some things that I consider at best suboptimal.
While not catastrophic in either intensity or frequency the crude ass/fart jokes are on average present almost every episode and definitely lower the overall quality in my opinion.
So far as I know specific to Dimension 20 is the woefully lacking content and trigger warnings descriptions. The seasons can vary massively in tone and the indication of it is basically zero until you actually watch it for a while. There are trigger warnings under episodes but only them. Using Burrow's end as example it starts as an intensive and dramatic in events but at the same time very cozy in the family interactions story, then devolves right in the next episode into intensely graphic(for the format) gratuitous gore and body horror with no sufficient indications of that in the first two hours plus long episode.
It mostly lacks the anti user features of modern streaming services but it would have been nice if they left them out entirely. Having to go outside of the site to get basic information on the content, bad series organization(overall seasons sometimes being listed in several different series, making the series tab a mess), unchangeable(as far as I know) play next video anti feature, multitude of trackers on site or the traditional inability to buffer too much of the stream in the browser.
Overall I mostly like it, I just wish they'd have made it possible to like it more.
I think that most of what you are saying is valid. With one exception, with Dimension 20 I do feel your expectations might be unrealistic, since you are effectively watching people play DnD campaigns. DnD campaigns are somewhat (in)famous for the sudden plot twist, players trying to do insane stuff and generally derailing things the DM tried to plan for. So it is entirely possible to have these sudden twists from cozy to horror.
Of course, that assumes you are somewhat familiar with DnD or similar games, but overall I don't think it is realistic to expect a synopsis for all plot turns as that would effectively spoil most.
To get back to your other points, navigation on the website and app is very much an annoyance for me as well. Also the fact that the website and app have different structures for the same contents.
Fan wikia(fandom, meh) has a chart of comedy to tragedy and classical to modern fantasy that I would find mostly sufficient. Add major trigger warnings to first episode as season trigger warning and I would be happy.
I very much agree with a lot, though I will say that the crudeness is very much on point, given this the CollegeHumor crowd grown up.
Personally, I think "Make Some Noise" is the best successor to "Whose Line is it Anyway" I've ever seen, and justifies the subscription on that alone.
I notice both Dropout and Nebula struggle with buffering on the videos. I wonder if it's them trying to keep costs lower as independent services.
Fun Fact: Sam Reich is the son of Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor under Clinton, who was replaced shortly after this speech. Thanksgiving dinner must be hilarious.
I don't want to derail the post too much but that was pretty spot on and three decades old, fun. It reminds me of the five plus decades global warming was known and some insufficient efforts are being made today.
iirc wasn't there a photo of Robert Reich completely nude (like full frontal) featured on an episode of Game Changer? It was blurred for the show but afaik not for the contestants.
There was indeed! He was playing a flute and standing in the garden like a cherub.
"How...big's...the HOG!??" - Jacob Wysocki
Playing a flute in the garden.
He also showed up on an episode of Breaking News. And Sam's mom, wife and (alas former) dog have been on game changer
Same entity?
I think at least some of the main pain points are related to building an app on top of Vimeo (some information on that). Having built things on top of Vimeo in the past, I see a lot of the same issues in the dropout app that my team faced using Vimeo. This is obviously only about the technical aspect of things - things like tags, anti-features, trackers, buffering, queuing followup videos, syncing place in video between app and desktop, etc. They're all just kind of... meh... on Vimeo. It's not bad, but they're all what I consider pretty understandable.
I would like to see them fill out the descriptions and content warnings in more detail. I don't really use them myself, but I understand that it's important for some people.
I think if the low brow humour is not hitting for you, there's not much to do about that, other than to avoid those particular comedians. It's Grant, right?
Have you watched Neverwhere? I feel like the Dimension 20 warnings are really in depth actually. They do them for make some noise too. You do have to go check the description explicitly but they were pretty good at warning. But maybe I'm not seeing a greater need that does exist.
I think that when they do the warnings, they do them very well, especially on desktop which is how I tend to watch, or on the Google TV app, which is the other way I tend to watch. I think that there is old content where they didn't really do it, though, and it hasn't been backfilled, which I think is likely what OP is experiencing, though I see that they did explicitly call out Burrow's End, so actually I'm not sure what the expectation is because I thought that was one where it was pretty well done. But I also know that it's not always obvious between the various apps and the desktop where they show up.
I agree it hasn't been backfilled, though I wonder if it's an issue again with the Vimeo platform. (I know the video description is)
I just have felt like in the past two years at least it's been pretty solid. I think I knew Burrows End was inspired by Watership Down though I don't recall why, so I don't think I experienced the same expectation swerve. Mostly was just wondering if I was missing something obvious or if it's just a difference in tolerance
I think the criticism for Burrow's End was largely due to the "twist" reveal of the horror elements.
Episode one seems to be heading in a Farthing Wood / Watership Down style direction, and the more gratuitous horror is revealed in episode 2. I think the shock there is intentional, and even the players seemed to be surprised by it (which makes for a great viewer experience if you're into it).
I can see someone being caught off guard by that. Even if they checked the warnings for that episode, I think the contrast to the first episode means that a tag of "body horror" may not have prepared them for quite how extreme it is.
Notably episode 1 doesn't have any content warnings, so going from cozy and kinda scary to John Carpenter in the space of an episode is a pretty big tone shift.
I had to look up Farthingwood but are you thinking of Redwall or Secrets of NIMH rather than Watership Down? Because the latter is well known for traumatizing children in my experience. It was one of the reasons why I wasn't thrown by episode 2
I think the first episode of Burrow's End is pretty similar to the opening of Watership Down, except the "bad thing" that forces them to leave is happening rather than being foretold.
I suspect the events that occur at the end of the first episode would be pretty traumatising to children if it was animated!
Any "cute talking animals go through a bad time" comparisons work though, I just chose the two I'm most familiar with.
I guess I just meant, that if you assumed it was Watership Down adjacent (which is what I did) wouldn't you also assume the bad shit that's about to happen? Like it's not much of a twist then?
Personally I agree, but I can see why someone who was onboard for a Watership Down type of scary may not have been prepared for a body horror extravaganza.
Which platform do you use Dropout on? Neither of the ones I use (Roku and Xbox) have this. We've actually missed it occasionally when trying to just blast through a season.
If you're watching the most recent videos or a playlist it'll play next on my Roku TV at least, but if you're clicking on an individual video, less often?
They have less control over the platform than they'd like. On the TV app captioning stays on from video to video, on the site volume and captions seem to reset each vid.
Ah gotcha, I've only ever used it on the two platforms I mentioned, so I didn't know there was much of a disparity. Thanks.
I have it on Apple TV but it’s much longer than the typical auto-play like 20 seconds iirc
On the mobile apps, I know that there is a Next Episode toggle that can stop episodes from being played endlessly. You can also turn off the Continue Watching row, which is much appreciated for me.
So fair warning, I'm a huge fan of Dimension 20 and dropout, so I have bias.
I think they must have changed this practice explicitly because of Burrows End. Episode 2 has content warnings in the description, and everything since then has had pretty detailed content warnings in the episode descriptions. Dimension 20 episodes now starts with a little prelude that mentions this.
I think being fully invested in this content sphere kind of helps. I have some complaints with the technology side of the streaming platform, but I don't care because I know it's a very small production when compared to other streaming platforms. Like it's basically 1 dude and a group of friends bought CollegeHumour and turned it into what it is today, and they still don't have outside investors.
The only annoyance I have that I find bothersome is that full screening on my phone doesn't rotate the video like Youtube and pretty much everything else. I have to autorotate my screen, which I normally keep disabled. heh