About

Joueur du Grenier, or JDG, is the online alias of french youtuber Frédéric Molas and main character of the eponymous video game show, co-created by Molas and Sébastien Rassiat. The character is known for his angry and humorous reviews of bad video games and old TV series, in a similar way to the Angry Video Game Nerd and the Nostalgia Critic, from which the show is heavily inspired. Since its creation in september 2009, it has become one of the longest running and most popular series on the french-speaking youtube community.

Online History

Molas and Rassiat started the Joueur du Grenier^[1] (literally translating to "the gamer from the attic") show on their Youtube channel on september 30th 2009, with the simultaneous release of the first two episodes, respectively reviewing the video games adaptation of the Tintin in Tibet comic book and the Saint Seiya manga series. Over the past eleven years, both videos reached a total of 11.6 million views. (shown below)

The first episodes, as well as the following ones released in late 2009 and early 2010, settled the basics of the show's format: the character of JDG (played by Molas) always wearing a recognizable yellow shirt, angrily or cynically reviewing the titular game, often interrupted by snarky comments from his co-host Sebastien Rassiat, or, more often as time went on, by scenarized comedy sketches parodying some aspect of the reviewed media. To this day, Molas and Rassiat have over 3.48 million subscriber on their main Joueur du Grenier channel, and 1.69 million on their secondary Bazar du Grenier^[2] channel. The show also has its own TV Tropes page^[3]

Cinemassacre plagiarism accusations

In july 2012, Cinemassacre member Mike Matei published a Facebook post, accusing Molas of ripping off James Rolfe and using the language barrier to get away with it. Molas later replied in a comment on one of his own videos, indicating that he had a friendly discussion with Matei and they both sorted out the issue. The original post by Matei was deleted but the event remained discussed in various french speaking forums.^[4][5][6]

Eventually, on september 28th, 2012, Molas appeared as a cameo on Matei's video reviewing various NES games (shown below).

Papy Grenier

On September 13th, 2012, the channel introduced an alternative video series called Papy Grenier ("Attic Grandpa"), breaking from the usual format of Molas reviewing bad games or shows exclusively.

Papy Grenier consists of Molas portraying the titular character, a cynical old man telling stories of his past to his grandchildren, which actually consist of explanations and anecdotes about famous video game franchises, highlighting the absurduties of video game logic. The storytelling is illustrated with video game footage as well as filmed videos of a younger Papy Grenier (as the game's protagonist) and side characters, usually portrayed by Rassiat. After a first episode in september 2012 presenting the early generations of Pokémon games (shown above), the series gained in popularity with the reviews of more recent popular games, such as Skyrim, Mass Effect, or Grand Theft Auto (shown below)

Narrative Let's Plays

The Narrative Let's Plays refers to a series of episodic shows created for JDG's secondary channel, Bazar du Grenier in 2015. The series typically consist in Let's Play videos with various scenarized characters, usually played by Molas and Rassiat, narrating the game's plot. One of the most famous example being the series dedicated to Civilization V, pastiching the format of the famous french educational show Le Dessous des Cartes ^[7] (shown below, left). Other famous Narrative Let's Plays series include other strategy or management, or role-playing game franchises such as Mount and Blade or Tropico ^[8] (shown below)

Aventures

Aventures (Adventures) is another popular series created in 2015 for the Bazar du Grenier channel. The show consists in Molas, Rassiat, Twitch streamer Krayn^[9] and youtuber Bob Lennon, filmed while having a game of Table-top RPG, and humorously discussing their options with the Dungeon Master, portrayed by youtuber and table-top games enthusiast Mayhar^[10]. The show spawned 4 seasons, as well as 3 spin-off series, Magical Aventures,^[11] set in a Magical girl universe, Starventures,^[12] set in the Star Wars franchise, and finally Les Survivants ("the survivors") set in a modern zombie apocalypse setting.^[13]

Since its creation, the show has gained a notable popularity among the JDG community, most notably for its break from Grenier's usual cynical humor in favor of a purely ficitional, heroic-fantasy setting. It has also got its own TvTropes page^[14], and spawned a wide variety of fanarts online, most notably on art-sharing sites such as DeviantArt. ^[15]

11 years anniversary episode

On june 29, 2019, JDG released its episode dedicated to Heavy Metal themed games. The episode ended with a cliffhanger announcing a special episode commemorating the 10th anniversary of the show, which would be a crossover between all scenarized plotlines of the previous episode. Later this year, on October 5th, JDG released another episode, reviewing Men In Black games, which, again, ended with a cliffhanger confirming the production of the anniversary special.

However, on September 5th, Molas announced in a FAQ video that the Special Episode would be delayed due to production and financial issues for the rest of the year 2019. In may 2020, another FAQ video was released, announcing another delay for the special episode, mostly due to shooting issues caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, and that they expected the video to be ready for the 11th anniversary of the channel.

On october 18th, 2020, Molas posted the trailer for the episode on his twitter account:

pic.twitter.com/adyYCiobtf

— Joueur du Grenier (@Frederic_Molas) October 18, 2020

Finally, on November 7th, 2020, the First part of the two-parter episode, titled "11 years of JDG – Part One" was released on Youtube. It was overwhelmingly well recieved, reaching the 4th place of the french youtube trends and gaining over 1.1 million views and 195k likes in 24 hours. The second part of the episode, consisting in a review of the 2006 Sonic the Hedgehog game, and featuring a cameo of James Rolfe himself, was posted on Youtube on December 20th, reaching the top position of the french Youtube trends and reaching over 1.6 million views and 213k likes in one week.

Related Memes

David Goodenough

David Goodenough is a recurring character in the main Joueur du Grenier show, based on the name of an actual developper of the action game X-Perts on Sega Genesis. Introduced in the show in 2016 and portrayed by Sebastien Rassiat, he is depicted as a lazy man passing everything off as "good enough" with a shrug.

Reaction images

Since its creation, the JDG show became an important source of Reaction images and GIFs that are still widely popular on french social media.

Weight loss jokes / Death conspiracy theories

Between the years 2013 and 2014, Frederic "Fred" Molas experienced a drastic weight loss that many fans found intriguing. During the following years, he became the regular target of various jokes and memes from the JDG fandom, including some ironic conspiracy theories, claiming that the "new" Fred was actually an impostor who kidnapped and murdered the original "fat" Fred.^[16]

Fred reacted very positively to the meme, often poking fun at it in various interviews. On october 18th, 2018, Fred posted the following tweet, officially aknowledging the meme :

N'empêche ma vie est cool depuis j'ai repris le rôle de l'ancien gros jdg #complot pic.twitter.com/fR7u428B3n

— Joueur du Grenier (@Frederic_Molas) October 18, 2018

"Anyway, my life is cool now that i've taken over the role of the former fat JDG #conspiracy"

Finally, on august 29th, 2020, he explained in an interview on youtube channel Ironquest that he willingly went on a severe diet in 2013 due to health reasons after he met his girlfriend.^[17]

"Context?" tweet

On December 6th, 2018, Molas replied to a tweet of youtuber Benjamin "Nota Bene" Brillaud^[18], who posted a video allagedly exposing a case of police brutality against teenagers during a demonstration of the Yellow Vest movement. Molas' tweet^[19] simply saying "Context?" was poorly recieved by his community, since a significant part of it didn't understand such an unexpected and seemingly radical political stance from Molas. The following days, several users started to mock Molas' tweet by posting sreencaps of it juxtaposed with unrelated pictures of various tragic or fictional events.

Additionally, some users started to spam screenshots of the tweet under every subsequent Molas' Twitter post. Finally, on June 8th, 2019, Molas tweeted a picture of himself posing with a man he presented as the original spammer. (shown below, right)

Search Interest

External References