John Wolfe

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John Wolfe (born: October 28, 1988 (1988-10-28) [age 36]),^[1] (formerly HarshlyCritical), is a Texas-based YouTuber who specializes in blind playthroughs of horror games. Unlike most let's players of this genre, John tends to give clear, decently thought-out commentary about the aspects of the game, and is known for his stoic and sarcastic attitude. John's choice of games range from low-budget indie ones to triple-A titles. He used to call his fans "Critical Viewers," but this was phased out along with his old name.

About

Family

John has a wife named Kimmy Mauldin (Twitch screenname "KimmyKims") who he has been together with since May 2012^[2] and married in October 2020. They originally announced their engagement publicly through social media on December 27, 2019.

Pets

John has a small black and white pet dog named Belle.^[3]

Personality

John generally has a friendly and enjoyable personality, but he is also very witty, sarcastic, and calm. He rarely gets scared or even surprised during most horror games, and it can be considered an accomplishment if a jumpscare affects him.

When gaming with other YouTubers he generally spends his time either trying to sabotage his friends, though in his co-op videos, he is more social and carefree than in his main videos.

John does not tolerate trolls or passive-aggressive messages in his Youtube comments or in his Twitch chat. These types of messages result in sarcastic and snarky replies from John before a swift removal/ban.

Channel

John started his YouTube channel on January 3, 2011, where it was originally called "Harshly Critical." It underwent a name change on March 18, 2017 to John Wolfe (his real name), which is what it is currently called.^[4]

On January 11, 2022 he announced the addition of two more secondary channels, called "WolfeWatch" and "Wolfe DBD", in order to branch out and try something new.^[5]

Content

He mainly plays horror games, but there is also a collection of adventure games among his videos. He plays a wide variety of horror games for his videos, which can range from single-developer Indie games (some less than half an hour long) to AAA games for established horror/thriller series. He has expressed that he particularly enjoys point-and-click and home invasion games. When playing smaller-scale horror games, John frequently gives constructive criticism at the end that is meant to help the game and give the developer a direction to improve in. On one of his secondary channels (WolfeWatch) he makes non-gaming content. In his first (and only) video on the channel he reacts to Youtuber house tours, very similar to how he would commonly appraise the decor, structure, and lack of livability in the houses found in the horror games he played. He has also said that his series "Childhood Cringe" in which he reads old horror stories he wrote as a child and makes fun of them, will be coming to WolfeWatch.

Video Formats

Thumbnails

Originally, John's video thumbnails were mainly a high quality scene from the game, potentially displaying a distinctive enemy found in-game. However, as he found that his thumbnail images were being stolen by other channels, he changed how he formatted them at the same time he changed to the channel name "John Wolfe" and began to put his face in the corner as a trademark to better link to his own channel and prevent theft.^[4]

Editing

For the majority of his Youtube career, John edited all of his videos himself. However, in January 2022 he expressed his desire to expand and not only create two new channels but post on his main channel more often. Since this was more than he could take on by himself, he also announced that he was hiring editors full time to edit all his videos.^[5]

His current editor(s) include:

• Max (TheMadMax000)

Outdated Secondary Channels

Channel Icon	Name	Description
	John Twolfe	He has a main secondary channel called John Twolfe, which is mainly devoted to longer recordings such as stream archives, and also contains co-op playthroughs with his wife. He stated in January 2022 that this channel had largely fulfilled its purpose and was only planning on posting one more series to this channel before deciding its fate.[5]
	Dangerous To Go Alone	Dangerous To Go Alone was a co-op channel ran by John and MrKravin where they played co-op games and donated all of their ad revenue to charity, and threw multiple streaming events every year to raise funds for Extra-Life. Notable playthroughs included Resident Evil 5 and RE6, Fear 3, and Dead Space 3. They also had a series called ‘Shit or Treat’, where every October they played, namely, Gmod horror maps. Later, KatFTWynn and KitaNashGaming joined the channel. The channel was discontinued on August 1, 2018 due to a need for the co-hosts to focus on their own channels. The channel was later inexplicably removed from YouTube in January 2021, with neither John nor Kravin having any idea what happened to it.

Video Skits

Around mid-2018, John started putting short satiric skits before his gameplay videos which had a simple overarching 'plot' between the skits. Many of these skits had only John as the actors for each character. Due to the popularity of these skits, John put together his own compilation of them which completed the skits and represented that he was done with them^[6]. After the compilation was put out, the skits were no longer part of the videos he made.

Alter-Egos

• Editing John is the silent, faceless version of John who is responsible for editing videos and writing video descriptions. Fans don't know much about him except for the fact that he is considered a completely separate character from John, as seen in the 3 Random Horror Games (August 3, 2018) video where John is seen comparing hats with Douchebag John, Guys, and Editing John in an American Psycho fashion.
• Douchebag John made his debut in Dabbing Douchebag Scores Big - House Party, where he created a Let's Play in John's stead. He's characterized as being the "resident cool dude," and is frequently portrayed with oversized sunglasses, a baseball cap, and a tanktop. He can sometimes be seen with orange skin and a pint of alcohol.
• NPC John is a mindless program that only appeared in the Bad, Bad Bunny - Indagar Demo video to give John a quest to find and play a new horror game. After finishing the game, John returned to NPC John to complete the quest but was instead tasked with finding a lost dog. John declined the mission and turned to the camera to tell his viewers that he "really hates this new character," leading many fans to believe that NPC John will return in a future episode.
• Only appearing in The Nun - Ending - Granny Ripoff Mobile Horror Game, Mirror John is something of a dark version of John. His cruel sarcasm and deprecating comments embody John's real life fears. Even still, it's implied that John goes to Mirror John to rant, complain, and speak his mind when he feels like no one else will listen. Mirror John encourages John to keep creating videos by mocking him and calling him names.
• Perhaps the most popular of John's alter-egos is Guys, the embodiment of all things annoying and frustrating about his fans. Guys is typically portrayed with closed eyes, big-rimmed glasses, and a button-down shirt. Sometime after John changed his introduction to "Hey guys, it's John," fans started leaving comments en masse that read, "Hey John, it's guys." This is what sparked the initial creation of the character. Guys' catchphrase is, "Are you holding out on us?" which became popular after John uploaded a video regarding the release of a Sally Face part 2 video. It was discovered in The Complete Sage of "Guys" that Guys is not a single character, but rather an entire counsel of like-minded characters by the same name. In the same episode, John is kidnapped by the counsel before swiftly murdering them all, bringing an end to the reign of Guys once and for all.

Series

Trivia

• John used to work as a copywriter before doing YouTube full time.
• John loves the Goosebumps books and wrote his own similar stories as a child, which he reads aloud in his Childhood Cringe series.
• Due to them sponsoring a video (Bendy and the Ink Machine - Reece's Story), John has a Quidd and his username is Johnwolfe.
• John is frequently sponsored by the website Shudder which is an archive of Horror movies.
• John had a cameo in the Five Nights at Freddy's movie on the employee of the month board.^[7]

Favorites

• John likes metal music, with Artificial Construct being his most common outro music.
• John's favorite superhero is Spider-Man.
• John's favorite movie (or one of) is "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind."

References