Argie Bee Plays
| Argie Bee Plays | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Let's Play |
| Created by | Darien Brice Dickinson |
| Presented by | Vtuber Flye |
| Voices of | Darien Brice Dickinson |
| Country of origin | Australia |
| Original language | English |
| No. of series | 8 |
| No. of episodes | 1000 (list of episodes) |
| Production | |
| Executive producer | Darien Brice Dickinson |
| Animator | Darien Brice Dickinson |
| Editor | Darien Brice Dickinson |
| Camera setup | Single-camera |
| Running time | Per game length |
| Production company | Studio RGB-Newt / The Fishal Project |
| Budget | $0 AUD |
| Original release | |
| Network | YouTube |
| Release | January 8, 2024 |
Argie Bee Plays is an Australian Let's Play web series hosted by Vtuber Flye (an avatar based on the NeonWabbit character Flye; created and portrayed by Darien Brice Dickinson). After initial attempts at getting a Let's Play series off the ground in 2013, including one which would start with the game OXO (EDSAC, 1952) and work up through the history of gaming[1], Dickinson returned to the idea ten years later, as the technology for streaming and recording gameplay rapidly improved.
The name of the series is derived from combining the abbrievated term for red, green, and blue ("RGB") with bees - two things which have been used in Studio RGB-Newt branding in the past, and likewise, the bee-inspired phrases "Buzz: On" and "Buzz: Off" cap the beginning and end of each video, respectively.
It is also a reference to the Australian and British slang phrase "argie bargie", which means "argument".
Format
Each episode of the series showcases a full game usually being played in its entirety, or at least the main story beats or interesting parts. Episodes are not cut up into parts, so depending on the length of the game, episodes of Argie Bee Plays also vary in length. Instead of a webcam feed of a human player in the corner, a half-body Live2D face-tracked avatar of the host, a hybrid kangaroo-furred dragon character named Vtuber Flye (also known as Flye Gaming) is displayed, as they provide commentary on the events of the games.
In most episodes, Vtuber Flye is usually depicted as a "dumb and deadpan dragon", who is forced against his will to make 1000 episodes of the show by a "higher authority", in order to earn his freedom from being locked up in Castle Argie Bee, but it seems he doesn't even really know how to play games, or acts uninterested or confused about the events of the game, in a humourous or surreal fashion, due to growing up hating them. However, it's also shown that he probably knows more than he's letting on (such as when he actively cheats to skip certain sections, or he forces something to happen in-game that doesn't usually happen), and is most likely just "acting" for the show. Most instances of him cheating or abusing glitches is usually explained away by him using his "magic dragon powers", and can also be implied to be unintentional (as in he, himself, is confused about why things are happening), or interventions by the "bees in the booth" behind the scenes, or the "higher authority" keeping him locked up in Castle Argie Bee.
Even though Vtuber Flye is a character being portrayed through motion capture, and some jokes are scripted in advance, most vocal reactions to unexpected things such as game crashes, jumpscares, and plot twists are genuine. The episodes are also truncated to exclude most of the downtime moments when nothing of interest is happening. Some things that do get cut out are released in a separate videos as "Bee-Roll" (B-Roll) footage. On a similar vein as with this pun, likewise, all episodes open with the text "Buzz: On"; the word "Buzz" being an allusion to the word "Bee" in the title of the show. To bookend this, the videos close with the text "Buzz: Off" (sometimes with the colon symbol omitted to drive this "stinger" home).
History
The show began recording in December 2023, with two pilot episodes in the subseries "Season 1: The Best of the 1980s" uploaded unlisted in early 2024, which then released publicly on June 3, 2024. As of December 2025, it is still only halfway through its initial 36-episode season, due to episodes like "Metal Gear", "Final Fantasy", and "Zelda II: The Adventure of Link" taking too long to record.
Personnel
Host
- Vtuber Flye – rigged in Live2D Cubism, and voiced and puppeteered by Darien Brice Dickinson in real-time using Virtual YouTuber software Vtube Studio, Vtuber Flye is considered a separate character to the Flye character of other NeonWabbit productions, such as Flye 'n' Frie, only sharing their base design (which was created by Hioshiru, and further refined by The-F0X). In stated lore, Vtuber Flye grew up hating games because he was jealous of others who could play them, as his family could never afford them, but for some reason, he also specifically has "magic dragon powers" when it comes to video games, which allows him to explain away any intentional or unintentional manifestation of cheats or glitches in-game.
Episodes
Legacy
Accolades
References
External links
- Argie Bee on YouTube
- NeonWabbit Fans group on Steam, repurposed for Argie Bee's community