About

DSPGaming, real name Philip Burnell, is a YouTube video gaming personality that is best known for his live commentary on his video game playthroughs and numerous controversial incidents. Due to constant trolling and negative backlash towards some of his videos, he has been given the nickname "The King of Hate" and has developed a fan following.

Online History

Darksydephil began his YouTube career in 2008 on his original channel, Darksydephil. It is rumored that the first playthrough he did was Fallout 3. He rose to fame with his Heavy Rain playthrough (shown below).

His popularity grew with playthroughs of other games such as Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2, Mass Effect games, Fallout games, and PS Move games with his best friend John Rambo. In the summer of 2010, Burnell lost his normal everyday job and as a result, partnered himself with Machinima in the fall 2010, thus making him a full-time YouTuber.

DSP is also known for other segments such as Friend Request Ridicule (canceled), Ask the King, DSP Tries It (canceled then rebooted), Poorly Cooking with the King (canceled), Week in Preview, Release Day Unboxing, The Hateful Truth (in which he gives his honest review), and Project 7 (canceled, then rebooted, and is now on indefinite hiatus). He also does annual traditions such as an April Fools special, a Mega Man week, a Halloween special, and an end of the year countdown of DSP's funniest moments (funniest racist moments in 2010), worst moments (changed to worst gaming trends in 2011), and the best games of the year.

In January 2013, DSP announced that he was going to make changes to how he would do his playthroughs. The first change is that Burnell would play fewer games every week and upload fewer videos every day so that people can catch up. He also announced his new segment called Retro Replay in which he would replay a previous game from his early days as a YouTube gamer and post it on his main channel. He has also unblocked everyone in the comments section and will now post all fighting game coverage on his main channel. Finally, DSP announced the creation of a new channel called TheKingOfHateVlogs where Burnell's non-gaming vlog-like segments would be shown.

Reputation

Criticisms

People are often critical of how Burnell handles his playthroughs. Many critics have claimed that DSP is unobservant in some situations and often ignorefacts about the gameplay, which is shown in such playthrough such as the HD remake of Metal Gear Solid 2 and Black Mesa. In his Metal Gear Solid 2 playthrough, viewers noted DSP's inability to use the L2 button, which activates health rations in the game, and also Burnell's failure to use stealth techniques. In part 9-11 of his Black Mesa playthrough, DSP struggled with a crouch jump on a certain platform and has accused the failure to do a crouch jump as a game bug. Burnell has been noted for accusing parts of games to be bugged without realizing that the failure to complete a task in the game is actually his fault and not the game's fault. As a result, Burnell's "haters" have uploaded reaction videos of these moments.

In April 2010, DSP began a playthrough of Splinter Cell Conviction with 13 videos. DSP claimed to have received a copyright strike from Ubisoft and had his channel taken down. However, Ubisoft claims that they did not send a copyright strike to DSP and it was later revealed that a troll by the name of Steve Jones sent DSP the fake copyright strike. As a result of the Steve Jones controversy, Darksydephil has been used as an archive channel to this day. Burnell also created a new account called DSPGaming, which is used for his current playthroughs, RedDeadDSP which was only used for his playthroughs of Red Dead Redemption and L.A. Noire due to a previous copyright strike on Burnell by Rockstar Games during his GTA IV Lost and the Damned playthrough, DSPFinalFantasy which was used for a playthrough of Final Fantasy XIII, DSPStreetFighter which was used for any fighting games playthroughs, and The King of Hate HD which was used for non-gaming vlogs.

Other controversies included the end of Burnell's Godfather II playthrough, which was canceled due to a nudity strike, and as a result, Burnell could not upload a playthrough of Dante's Inferno due to the nudity. When nudity was involved in Burnell's playthroughs of God of War II, Red Dead Redemption, and Heavy Rain he used funny images to block out the nudity.

In 2011, DSP showcased his hatred of the mainstream media especially after the bashing of Duke Nukem Forever. In July of 2011, Burnell bashed Playstation Magazine for giving Catherine, F.E.A.R. 3, and Captain America First Soldier the same score of 7/10. He later got into an intense feud on Twitter with freelance game reviewer Mitch Dyer. In October 2012, he defended Resident Evil 6 after critics bashed the game. To show his defiance to the mainstream gaming media, he gave Resident Evil 6 a 9/10 and placed it at #4 on the top 10 games of 2012.

Feuds

In 2012, DSP was involved in numerous feuds with the popular YouTube gaming personality Toby Turner (Tobuscus Games). The rivalry began when Burnell posted a video stating that he was outraged when ads for college football video game NCAA Football 13 which featured Turner appeared on the side of DSP's videos. Throughout 2012, he bashed gamers such as Turner, PewDiePie, and IJustine and called them "phony YouTube gaming personalities." This incident was placed at #2 on DSP's Worst Gaming Trends of 2012. On March 2nd, 2013, DSP came in fourth place for Worst YouTube Video Game Personality in the 2012 Vidya Gaem Awards^[1] and lost to Tobuscus (3rd), IJustine (2nd), and PewDiePie (1st).

On February 15th, 2012, a YouTube user named evilaj2010 uploaded the controversial video known as "This Is How You DON'T Play Metal Gear Solid 2" in which they showcased DSP's failure in the gameplay of Metal Gear Solid 2 and his crude remarks in some of the cutscenes while evilaj2010 posted pictures of comments on parts of the videos. Evilaj2010 would later post "This Is How You DON'T Play Metal Gear Solid 3" a few months later, in which evilaj2010 would highlight Burnell's failures in his Metal Gear Solid 3 playthrough with a three-hour video. Burnell would go on to express his outrage towards evilaj2010's video in some 2013 Ask The King episodes as he stated that evilaj2010 was stealing his videos because he was using them as a hate montage. In July 2013, Burnell completed a Metal Gear Solid 1 playthrough, and as a result, evilaj2010 posted "This Is How You DON'T Play Metal Gear Solid 1."

This Is How You Don't Play X Videos

Ever since the incident between Burnell and AJ, numerous users on YouTube have been inspired by evilaj2010 on attacking DSP's playthroughs. On July 9th, 2013, YouTube user, SebastpolQueen posted a video entitled "This is how you DON'T play Dark Souls" which has gained over 100,000 views. On July 26th, 2013, SebastpolQueen also posted "This is how you DON'T play Witcher 2," which gained almost 20,000 views. Other videos by other users involve Street Fighter IV, Kingdom Hearts, and Motorstorm Apocalypse.

Pre-Stream Masturbation Pose

On May 1st, 2016, when Burnell was preparing for a live stream of a playthrough, viewers saw him masturbate and held his head up high. Soon, photoshop memes were made with his face from that event while the event itself was mentioned by DJ Keemstar on #DramaAlert. Burnell actually reacted positively to the whole ordeal and referenced the meme on his Twitter account.

Down The Rabbit Hole

On June 5th, 2017, YouTuber Fredrik Knudsen published a "Down The Rabbit Hole" video, which chronicled Burnell's career up to that point and the various controversies he'd attracted. The video gained over 5.3 million views (shown below).

Racist Joke Defense

In September of 2019, Burnell attracted controversy after arguing in defense for the right to make racist jokes during streams. During a stream, a viewer asked him why he defended racist jokes but was sensitive to jokes about his medical conditions.^[2] He argued that racist jokes were "generalizations" and not directed at one person. "What I mean by that is, when you make a joke that is a racial generalization, about a race, let’s say something about the Italians, or the Chinese, it’s usually a generalization, you’re not directing that towards one person," he said.

Personal Life

Philip Burnell lives in a condo in Connecticut. In many of his videos, Burnell has often discussed his back problems in which one of his disks is disconnected due to unknown reasons. He states that walking, driving, and doing other normal activities for a long period of time can have a painful impact on his back. DSP states that he would like to move out of Connecticut due to high condo property taxes and would like to afford surgery to fix his back.

Bankruptcy

In January of 2020, Burnell filed for bankruptcy to avoid paying $500,000 of debt, which he rumoredly accrued investing in WWE Champions and failing to pay the mortgage for his Condo.

Search Interest

External References