you mean the RFP board (and mat?) i heard some sus stuff about that guy but ultimately have two of the collaboration mats bc…its a good mat
@iaman i looked up the current brand partner and i’d do the same if i were novelkeys. i only know of him in passing from my nephews and whether they like him or not, they end up watching his content because of fortnite etc. guess which of us is likely going to hear about these youtuber merch months down the road come back to school/christmas time.
like @Extra_Fox says it’s a shrewd business move. and if NK can ship boards that don’t need extensive tuning to sound great at an affordable price, i wouldn’t be mad as the adult who likely has to buy (and maintain) the thing for the kiddo.
and iirc all the streamer/youtuber keebs have been subpar – i watched a glarses video (mostly satire but also eek) where he did a red and black 60% that was just a rebranded GK61 (it looked like it anyhow) but i can’t remember for the life of me which youtuber’s board it was.
Yeah idk I would personally have a standard of not collaborating with a person who can get this kind of coverage but this ain’t the place/thread to (re-)litigate this.
Just saying NovelKeys probably could/should have been prepared for people to be significantly less than thrilled about the partnership.
If anyone is wondering “why TFUE tho”, I’m pretty sure I know why beyond Mike being a fan.
IIRC TFUE is the reason NK_ sold so many Creams, and why so many younger gamers flooded into the hobby a while back.
The extra-custom Keycult board TaeHa built for him featured Creams, and TFUE showed it off on his own stream while getting super excited about it. Next thing you know Creams are viral. (Not that they’re bad per se - but I think this is also when they earned my personal label of most over-hyped switch ever, with only Aqua Kings giving them a run for their money.)
I’m guessing that NK_ is drawing a pretty short line from TFUE’s yooo check this keeb steam (and TaeHa’s videos about it, and RFP’s video about it, and The Verge’s piece about it) to the big influx of Cream hype & sales; maybe they figure the same folks who got excited about Creams and keebs in general after seeing TFUE’s keeb might also be interested in a TFUE branded keeb.
If pre-built gaming keebs are “POP / ROCK” and custom keebs are “PUNK AF” …
…then maybe NovelKeys is the NoFX of keyboards - comfortably hanging-out in the overlapping space between banal commercialism and passionate craft for its own sake.
You know what. If this (the keyboards) is what people are into, in terms of the tfue board and others, maybe I just shouldn’t return to making keyboard content
I like to think of that sort of thing as wind in the sails of more interesting stuff that might not otherwise get to exist without the adjacent hype.
I might be wrong, but I think a lot of better and/or more creative stuff emerged in the wake of this or that hype-wave. Let 'em buy snot-yellow NK65s and funny-smelling switches til the cows come home, and hey maybe folks like Mike and Wei will keep trying weird stuff like trying to make quiet clickies or cheap keebs that aren’t half bad.
Besides; that’s only one corner of keeb space - albeit a densely populated one.
I’m a big fan of your work and would love to see you making more - but of course only if it’s about stuff that actually interests you.
Personally, I find stuff like the bright booger board kind of amusing in a meta sort of way - even if I also find it aesthetically hideous, contextually banal, and about as attractive as 100 free hours of AOL.
I agree. I think the hobby is getting big enough that there will be even more niches within the hobby and people interested in different things. There is enough out there that hopefully everyone can find something they enjoy.
Then some of those people will find new preferences and move into a different area of the hobby which ensures you have new people coming in and the community growing.
This is not a new product, but I saw the Keyreative blank keyset at a meetup recently and I was surprised by how good they are. The board at the meetup had the black keyset, and the spacing between keycaps, straightness of stems, flatness of larger keys, and sound were all really good.
Not all the colors are in stock, but if anyone is looking for a good blank keyset, at $20 I think you’ll be hard pressed to find a better value. Even if the set I saw/typed-on was anomalously good, the price still makes this a compelling buy just to see for oneself.
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