Example provided.

if all video essays are short then what am I gonna put on in the background while i try to be productive

absurdly long video essays are a vital part of the ecosystem

Playlist them together! I'm just not sure that there's 7 hours of things to say about one game's themes.

then don't watch those ones! they're for people who like them

I don't know. I'm not saying we have to be laconic all the time but I do feel like there is something to be said for conciseness of thought as well. Arrangement is one of the rhetorical canons for a reason.

there's space in the ecosystem for both quick snappy videos and long meandering videos

they serve different purposes

i see this and i think, specifically, of getting over it

where there's a lot to say about it

but the speedrun is... under a minute

Okay but consider the sheer performance art of a series of dozens of Getting Over It video essays where we approach the frustration in the genre on a meta level by cutting the speaker off repeatedly.

surely there's only five minutes of things to say about super mario bros

Are there more than five minutes of observations about the original SMB that haven't already been made?

yes

people are discovering new things about speedrunning tech for smb1 in 2024

I know i'm being aggro but I think this idea is bad both logistically and ideologically

That's not really what a video essay normally covers, is it, though?

I mean I get what you're saying.

Realistically there are a lot of good games that have some very short runs, especially if we bring in glitch% runs where they zip to the end in minutes.

videos about speedrunning are video essays

there are new things to say about old games

longer games are not inherently worthy of more discussion, nor is it bad to talk a lot about something that's, like, 'trivial'

I once watched a video that was over an hour about a 30 second long song. it was fantastic

digging deep into a small thing can be really interesting

I think you need to understand this is more a polemic against the multi hour navel gaze or surface level theme reading than someone tearing down what makes something smaller work better if it's purpose built for it.

Like how a lot of media analysis is just people basically telling you a plot synopsis.

well, I've said my piece

Like I said I don't even entirely disagree with you on this, there's gonna be exceptions to everything, but, cards on the table, I also feel I've now been put in a position where I gotta like double down on a flawed premise.

personally i see no issue with this restriction and am champing at the bit for the upcoming 338 hr dissertation on baten kaitos

Do what that one RPG speedrun marathon did where you open talking about the themes of Baten Kaitos and then when you're like 95% done picture-in-picture it into the corner and talk about other games in the genre for the next two weeks straight, coming back only at the end.