We are in a full, functional, Thick44tress located in the beautiful Habachi Buffet. We have the best team: Neebs, with his quick mind, the ability to think on the fly. Appsro, skill unmatched. Doraleus, resourceful as hell. And Simon… good to see you.
Neebs Gaming
is a Youtube gaming channel that spun out of Battlefield Friends, started by Hank And Jed to keep engaged with fans while they worked on their animations. It originally consisted primarily of Battlefield clips, but after the collapse of Machinima the gaming channel morphed into their main entertainment vehicle.
Neebs’ main appeal are their very cinematic production values, constant brotherly antagonism, not being very good at the games they play, and them generally approaching things as entertainers first and gamers second. They (except for Simon) are very good at at First-Person Shooters, which they almost never upload. Instead they focus on Survival Sandbox RPGs, which they are inevitably woefully unprepared for - providing plenty of opportunity for disaster and hilarious banter. While the main channel consists almost entirely of this style of content, in 2022 they created a second channel titled Neebs Magic Dumpster where they post (mostly) unedited videos of a wider variety of games.
The main crew consists of:
- Neebs, the channel’s namesake and most recognizable member, with a distinctive Southern accent, love for nature, and profanity-free mouth.
- Doraleous, more or less the Straight Man with a perpetually chill demeanor and love for dad jokes.
- Appsro, the crew's most explosive member, and often the most competent. He also has a number of role-playing series in single-player games, such as Subnautica.
- Thick44, the Wyvern King and the Human Man Warrior himself, is the most fearless member and is always willing to take the most reckless methods to get the job done, often getting him and his comrades killed in the process. He tragically passed away in 2023 after fighting brain cancer.
- Simon, a Big Applesauce carpenter who rarely (if ever) touched a video game before joining Neebs, and as such is inevitably the resident Butt-Monkey.
- AnthonyCSN, editor turned semi-regular player in some series such as Scrap Mechanic and Conan Exiles.
For information specifically about Neebs Gaming's playthough of Subnautica, click here.
This show provides examples of:
- Achievements in Ignorance: One commenter on a Human: Fall Flat video remarked upon how they developed new, but unnecessary, ways of navigating the levels never intended by the developers because they approach problems as entertainers rather than gamers.
- Actually Pretty Funny: In Subnautica: Below Zero, while Appsro is scoping out a location for his base, Neebs jokingly suggests that he build it right next to the base of Marguerit Maida, an extremely antisocial character who would likely not appreciate having a new neighbor. Appsro dismisses the idea at first, then after further consideration he admits that it would be pretty funny.
- Aerith and Bob: Various nonsense stage names and then Simon. You'd be forgiven for assuming Simon is his real name but it's not, it comes from a Castlevania joke in a Battlefield Friends episode.
- Apologetic Attacker: In Seven Days to Die- Get Off My Bridge, Thick gets attacked by a dog:Thick: Sorry about this, pooch!(The dog damages him.)Thick: Not anymore!(Shoots.)
- Ascended Fan: Adahop, a fan who appears in and makes builds for Scrap Mechanic videos.
- The Neebs crew themselves, due to the popularity of their Subnautica series, were invited by Unknown Worlds to voice Alterra's support department for the final release of the game.
- Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Neebs tends to get distracted by climbing ladders during Grand Theft Auto V videos.
- Bait-and-Switch: Their playthrough of The Forest seems to be heading towards the bad ending, with Appsro shooting down a plane to retrieve a child sacrifice and bring Timmy back to life, only for Timmy to start mutating into a monster. But then it cuts back to the moment before Appsro activates the EMP device, and it turns out to have been a hypothetical scenario being described by Simon.
- Bittersweet Ending:
- Their playthrough of The Forest. Timmy is dead, as everyone except Appsro suspected, and at Simon and Thick's insistence that he'll come back wrong like Megan did, Appsro decides not to bring him back to life, shutting down the EMP so no more planes will be shot down. Meanwhile, Neebs, who used a hang glider to get down into the sinkhole to help the others fight some mutants, finds his way back to the surface and regroups with Doraleous, who busied himself by making a small, easily defendable settlement, and all five of them soon group back up together. However, none of this changes the fact that Timmy is still dead, and unless they build a boat or someone comes looking for them, they're stuck on the island with no way home. But whatever happens next, for the moment, the gang has each other. It helps that Appsro gets over it pretty fast after deciding the kid probably wasn’t his anyways.
- In their playthrough of Subnautica: Below Zero, Appsro finally gets Al-An out of his head, but Thick finds out about his unauthorized presence on 4546B and fires Neebs, Doraleous and Simon for aiding him (along with their general incompetence). This prevents Neebs from sending a rescue ship for Appsro, so he is forced to go with Al-An to his homeworld instead.
- Black Comedy Animal Cruelty: Simon has an unfortunate habit of killing his horses, something he has accomplished in both Minecraft and Conan: Exiles.
- Butt-Monkey: Simon, being the one member of the gang who isn't a regular gamer. The role gets shifted to Anthony when he's around.
- Creepy High-Pitched Voice: Simon’s voice for his Battlefield Friends was pitched up a few octaves to try and approximate a teenager. Since the original conceit was that their BFFs characters were playing other games, he stuck with this for a few years.
- Cuteness Proximity: They break into baby-talk, usually "oozha boozha", when dogs are in a game.
- Dead Baby Humor: Their series on The Forest has Appsro searching for his son Timmy, while the others insist Timmy is probably dead.
- Death Flight: This is how Appsro kills Simon in the Fjordur playthrough after he, Neebs and Anthony team kill Doraleous and their wyverns. He uses his Desmodus to grab Simon and drop him from a great height to get past his high level armor. Neebs loots his dead body to get said armor afterwards to add insult to injury.
- Downer Ending: Their Outer Wilds series. Appsro, driven into Death Seeker territory by the "Groundhog Day" Loop, removes the warp core powering the Ash Twin Project. This breaks the loop despite N.E.E.B.S's protests, and their final moments before the sun explodes and they're Killed Off for Real are spent arguing with each other.
- Early-Installment Weirdness:
- The channel was originally entirely focused on the "Battleloggers" series, which was just short unedited clips of them doing silly things in Battlefield 4, interspersed with the monthly Battlefield Top 10 Plays where they would comment on their favorite stupid or awesome clips submitted by viewers. The channel had a framing device in that it took place in the Battlefield Friends universe, with them still playing their characters. It's especially noticeable with Simon, in these early videos he's noticeably in character doing the voice and acting like the BFFs Simon character (who was something like a squeaky preteen mixed with a black-out drunk college guy).
- After the Machinima debacle they dropped Battlefield content completely and became a variety gaming channel revolving mainly around barely-edited footage of whatever games caught their interest (ranging from things like Kitten Cannon to Far Cry 4), but generally without a multiplayer setup; many videos from this time have one of them screwing around in single player while the others sit around and talk to/annoy/laugh at them. Their original Grand Theft Auto V series and many of their one-offs were mostly in this format; eventually, this kind of content was relegated to their weekly Twitch stream (and now Neebs Magic Dumpster, although these tend to be long plays).
- "Neebsylvania" (their original Minecraft series) was also during this time and is the closest to the modern cinematic open-world series formula, but all the footage is from Neeb's perspective and there's still practically no editing. Simon is still doing his BFFs voice for much of it and Thick44 isn't called Thick44 yet (his screen name is “The Schnur”).
- Easy Sex Change: Used in Subnautica: Below Zero to explain why Appsro's player character is now a woman. He claims that he did it to get away from the paparazzi after the events of the first game made him famous. Apparently he was able to get it done at a chemist.
- Forgetful Jones: Simon will frequently forget about various mechanics and things he was just told, leading some to legitimately wonder if he has a short-term memory disorder.
- The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: Inverted in the final episode of ARK: Survival Evolved: Genesis Part II. Rockwell's acid AOE takes out the whole crew, so Anthony, who was there as cameraman, solos the rest of the battle, with the crew watching through his camera feed.
- Gilligan Cut: In part 9 of the Fallout 4 series, Appsro comes up with a plan to avoid a dangerous bridge:"We'll stay on the shore and we'll head that way. Yeah, it's a solid plan.(Smash Cut to Appsro surrounded by mirelurks)"Every plan I have goes fuckin' south!"
- Giver of Lame Names: In Subnautica, Simon and Neebs demand that Appsro name his Seamoth "Dr. Spaghetti". He eventually gives in.
- Go Mad from the Isolation: This is used as the in-universe explanation for glitches while playing Subnautica; any time Appsro sees a fish swimming through air or something similar, some eerie music plays while he cackles wildly.
- Insane Troll Logic: Simon gets flagged by HR in Subnautica for stalking Tina, Neebs' secretary. He doesn't call it stalking. He gets told the definition of stalking - which is unwanted attention - and dismisses it on the grounds that Tina can't not want it if she doesn't know about it.
- Simon probably had a pretty good chance of going out with Tina, as it turns out she really liked it when Doraleous did the same thing as Simon and she was extremely into it, too bad he stopped after the talk with HR.
- Kaizo Trap: Neebs gets to the bottom of 'Balcony Terror' in Happy Wheels, but the ground is so littered with corpses that he can't land and win.Neebs: I should be winning right now!
- Killer Cop: Appsro's Rage Cop series, in which he plays a cop who goes from brutally enforcing the law to just flat-out rampaging across the world.
- Misplaced Wildlife: An extreme version in ARK: Survival Evolved: Genesis Part II with Space Mammoth.SPACE MAMMOTH! There's nothing out of place about a mammoth out in space!
- Missing Steps Plan: Neebs's goal for his channel is written as:1.Create a channel2.Largest Channel in the world3.World Peace
- In the P.T. video, they try to figure out the backstory of the demo. They come up with:
"Phil Collins killed his wife, had a chicken baby... Sussudio". - Mundane Made Awesome: "Godmode Resupply Montage", a video which treats the act of handing out ammo as the most epic thing of all time.
- Mysterious Watcher: Adahop appears in the second Raft series as a shipwreck rescuee, and spends the first several episodes comatose. Her actual role is cameraman, recording footage that isn't from the perspective of any of the main five. Once she does wake up in-story, she does nothing but mutely stalk them around the raft (recording), creeping them out and leading to a few jump scares.
- Open Secret: Youtube comments frequently ask the gang to do face reveals, when there are already numerous videos out there that show their faces. They often mock this by doing fake face reveals which just show their Battlefield Friends characters' faces.
- Then there's this bit in Outlast:
Simon: I was talking to Nate, Neebs! (correcting himself) I was talking to Doraleous!Doraleous: Now people know my real name! - Out-of-Genre Experience: Neebs and Simon turn some segments in 7 Days to Die into a home decorating show, complete with a "SGTV" (Simon and Gardens) network bumper.
- "Are you a man?!"
- Play the Game, Skip the Story: Invoked by the crew, who skip any cutscene that lets them and steadfastly refuse to read any on-screen text. This tends to backfire in any game that both lacks explicit tutorials and isn’t intuitive enough to be figured out through trial and error, leading to lots of bumbling around cluelessly - for instance, their run of Five Nights at Freddy's they had to restart from Night 1 because they'd skipped Phone Guy's instructions and didn't know how to play, then did it again in the sequel.
- Precision F-Strike: Neebs rarely swears. But when it comes to whether they should grind out the much-maligned ARK Genesis 2 legitimately:Neebs: So, do we care that we cheated to do the missions?Appsro: Um, I don’t care, do you?Neebs: …fuck no.”
- Sixth Ranger: Anthony, who runs the Culture Shock Network on Youtube, consults on various videos.
- Strange Minds Think Alike: While playing Until Dawn:
Appsro: Put an icicle in her butt!
Neebs: Does that have a name?
Doraleous: It's called-
Doraleous and Simon: - a "Frosty".
- Sudden Downer Ending: Played for laughs at the end of Grounded. After finally managing to reactivate the shrinking device so they can reverse its effects, they’re blasted with the embiggening rays… and then it cuts to a newspaper reading "Four Charred Bodies Found in Backyard.”
- The Operators Must Be Crazy: The premise of their Subnautica video, in which Appsro plays the survivor and the rest of the crew act as the support hotline.
- To run a list on their craziness:
- Neebs is the mellowed out one, who's genuinely trying to help, but he has to do things by the book because if Appsro gets found by the rescue team and he's happy and wants to stay, then that's on Neebs and it comes out of his paycheck. Neebs is also insistent on having things scanned, even when scanning is hazardous.
- Simon is the one off his meds. He's depressed, lazy, irresponsible, and the least health-cautious of the lot. He takes drugs during work hours and smokes in his office. He constantly tells Appsro that he's going to die and thinks that he's smart when in reality, he's rather dumb and doesn't give as good advice as he thinks he does, having convinced his friend to break up with a girl he'd been dating for two years and planned to propose to.
- Thick isn't as bad as the others, but he's trying to get people to sign up for premium packages as often as possible because Thick gets a bonus every time they do. He does give up on it with Appsro as he comes to terms with the fact that Appsro could very well die and it would be a waste of time.
- Doraleous is a lot more casual with Appsro, being chill but not knowing much about the job. There's a good reason for that: He doesn't actually work there at first. He's a pizza guy who found the workplace empty and decided to make a random call for fun. Appsro likes him the most because he's the most upbeat, trying to see the bright side of everything, and is generally a fun guy. Hilariously, he turns out to be more helpful than the other three in terms of technical information via the database.
- To run a list on their craziness:
- Take That!: In the final episode of the Rage Cop series, the titular character mentions that one of the reasons he became a police officer was because he liked killing minorities.
- Trivially Obvious: One of the lyrics to the song "Battlefield Bill" just talks about how he needs his thighs to ride a motorcycle.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: In the opening of episode 17 of Subnautica, Appsro receives a telepathic message from the Sea Emperor Leviathan. He doesn't bring this up to his operators at any time during the episode; in fact, it takes three more episodes - and a second vision - for him to see fit to mention it. Possibly justified, as they have already discussed the possibility of him going crazy from being stranded, so he probably doesn't want to give them any ammunition.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: They hardly go a video without having some kind of argument.
