Viva La Dirt League: Gaming Comedy Parodies

Have you ever wondered if NPCs are betting on players each time that they are taking on a major boss fight in the game? I mean, there’s a lot of theoreticals on that considering that AI may well be evolved enough to place wagers as we do in our games – and Viva La Dirt League just gave us a premise that NPC betting should be a real thing.

What is Viva La Dirt League Known For?

You may have watched some various reels or shorts on different social media platforms, and Viva La Dirt League offers various comic sketch videos and even parodies that revolve around the gaming industry. Most of the time, they feature various workarounds and poke fun at the video game mechanics and gaming tropes, which is something that many players and gaming enthusiasts are able to relate easily.

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Based in New Zealand, Viva La Dirt League began streaming in 2011 and has amassed a huge fan following ever since, having tallied an estimated 6.85 million subscribers to go along with 4.4 billion views on their YouTube channel alone. Over the years, the group has produced multiple sketches of various series, which has entertained a lot of viewers all over the world, earning over 100,000 subs in 2017, and then hitting the 1-million mark by 2019.

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PUBG Logic was one of the most popular sketches that the team has been known for. The cast made fun of the game overall, focusing on its bugs, gameplay limitations, and many exploits in the game. PUBG would go on to endorse the series itself, and a supercut of the first season’s shots have amassed over 17 million views.

Then there’s the highly comedic fun in the Epic NPC Man, which spoofs multiple RPG games such as The Elder Scrolls (mostly Skyrim), World of Warcraft, Dark Souls, and even the 2015-hit The Witcher. Other series of VLDL include Baelin’s Route, Bored, and Dev.

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Viva La Dirt League Cast

To begin their founding videos, Rowan Bettjeman, Alan Morrison and Adam King all collaborated to start up the channel. As time went by, however, the productions have gone on to feature other regular cast members, such as Byron Coll, Hamish Parkinson, David Correos, Britt Scott Clark, Ben Van Lier, Ellie Harwood, Phoenix Cross, Rhiannon McCall, Rory Nolan and Robert Hartley.

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Since then, these regular cast members have become recurring characters over various episodes, and it has led to a lot of promising content that many fans have loved over the years, establishing Viva La Dirt League as one of the premier gaming channels.

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NPCs Placing Bets on Players

So let’s get to the subject matter at hand – how did Viva La Dirt League’s two-minute video alone establish NPC betting at a glance? Well, this video has been quite special as it already racked up 499K views in just six days as of the time of writing.

For this video, however, it was the main trio of Bettjeman, Morrison, and King coming up to play the NPCs, while Ben Van Lier played the role of the player character. Bettjeman’s character would go on to trick the player into fighting a boss that he’s very underleveled for, while he and his fellow NPCs place wagers on how long would Van Lier’s character would last in a fight against the boss, named the “Aspect of Baltaroth”.

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As it happens, the player character calls for help on the NPCs and is unable to escape the game arena of the boss fight. He would later die without doing much damage to the boss, and King’s character, on the other hand, wins the said bet.

Three Types of Bettors – Based on Viva La Dirt League’s Video

Now that you’ve watched the video yourself, you may be thinking now “how did that two-minute video even touch betting as a whole?” Well, for starters, this is not the first time that Viva La Dirt League has touched the grounds of betting in games. Here are some of the betting-related videos that they have released so far:

Video Title	Date Released	Total est. Views
NPCs Placing Bets on Players	January 31, 2025	500K
Loot Boxes Are Basically Gambling	January 13, 2025	561K
Gambling in Games…	January 13, 2025	2 million
Winning the Lottery	September 22, 2024	483K

Based on these videos, there have been a total of only four betting-related videos from Viva La Dirt League, with the first one coming out last September 2024. However, it is worth noting that there has been a new trend with the channel releasing three gambling-related videos in just a span of a month, with one of those featuring one of the beauties of Viva La Dirt League, Britt.

So what are the three types of bettors that the latest Viva La Dirt League video has actually put into perspective?

Casual Bettors

Portrayed by Allan Morrison (the one on the right), casual bettors mostly just bet for entertainment or fun – just enjoying the experience and betting on what’s in front of them, which is what Morrison’s character does in the said video. He bets on the player to make it to the second phase of the boss fight – relying on gut feeling and not making an in-depth analysis at all, though he makes it a point that the player character is a level 13 Ranger.

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Professional Bettors

Professional bettors have been looking at the betting scene as a long-term, and serious endeavor. For this video, it is portrayed by Adam King, the one in the middle who also has a spiel by the end of the video. King’s character bets regularly and correctly guesses that the player character doesn’t last more than a minute in the boss fight, thus winning the bet.

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Value Bettors

Value bettors are more focused on coming up with the big markets – in which they identify the odds by assessing the players in a given game. For instance, Bettjeman’s character easily hinted at this type of bettor by actually saying that he’ll bring in a level 20 character next time – which hints that he is identifying a player with a better odds to win in the boss fight so that he can make a better bet also.

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The Future for Viva La Dirt League

Viva La Dirt League’s humor, high-energy performances, and genuine love for gaming have helped them build a loyal fanbase. They are widely appreciated for blending gaming culture with humor, creating content that resonates with both casual and hardcore gamers. As they continue to grow and evolve, their future looks promising, especially with their continued ability to innovate and entertain.

They have already built a strong fan base through their humor-driven content, gaming parodies, and insightful takes on gaming culture, and they’re likely to expand into new avenues that further engage their audience. One major development is their recent push into betting and gambling in relation to video games. While VLDL is known for its comedic approach, their decision to explore betting content could significantly shape their future direction.

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