Angry Video Game Nerd reflects on UArts closure (2024)

Roughly 20 years ago after graduating from the University of the Arts, Philadelphia native James Rolfe decided to film a review of an old video game. Since then, he’s become the face of a multimedia franchise through his Angry Video Game Nerd series.

“It was a very niche thing, or so I thought, talking about these old video games,” Rolfe said. “I didn’t think anybody else would remember these same games, but I was totally wrong.”

Rolfe’s YouTube channel Cinemassacre has earned more than 3.8 million subscribers and more than 2.2 billion views. While he was making movies before and during his time at UArts, his breakthrough came during a rough point in his life right after earning his degree.

“I wasn’t in the best headspace when I made that second one, the Jekyll episode,” Rolfe said. “So when I was drinking all those Rolling Rocks on camera, that was just real. That was just what I was doing.”

“When you’re in like a low point, that usually is when you create something new and then it’s a new start, a new era,” Rolfe said. “So likewise, a lot of the students right now who have been basically just cast out from the school, now what I hope is that they all find something new and that it’ll be the start of something new.”

Rolfe found out about his alma mater’s abrupt closure when his parents texted him the news. Not long after, some of his old colleagues started hitting him up as well as some students.

“I wasn’t even aware that anybody knew I went to that school,” Rolfe said. “One of them told me that my Youtooz action figure was in the school store. I would’ve loved to have seen a picture of that but, you know, they locked the doors.”

The sudden closure prompted Rolfe to visit his old stomping grounds where he made a video voicing his displeasure regarding the situation.

“For the students, I just want to say this f—ing sucks,” Rolfe said in the video posted on the Cinemassacre X account. “For the city, I just want to say this needs to be investigated thoroughly because what was done to the students here was not right.”

Rolfe said walking around the campus provided him time to reflect on a lot of great memories he had in school, including it being the first place he ever edited a video on proper equipment and being the first place he ever screened anything.

“The experience there was great,” Rolfe said. “It was just awesome being just among people to have good artistic conversations with. Just being in Center City was very stimulating too. There’s never a dull moment… Every little thing just being exposed to is just feeding your creativity. And of course, being like in your 20s, everything is new. Everything is like a new experience.”

But the vibe at his stomping grounds two decades later was a little off.

“It felt like going to a funeral when I went there,” Rolfe said. “It was sort of like this last visit like, ‘Say goodbye to the school now.’”

And with the school’s sudden closure, there’s a slight concern in the back of his head with the other colleges in the area.

“What’s going to happen now? Like are the other art institutes…are any of the others going to go away? I hope not,” Rolfe said. “I just see like a bunch of students now in need of a new place to go and well hopefully, there’s somewhere good to go.”

Cory Sharber is a general assignment reporter at WHYY. Prior to his stint in Philadelphia, he spent four years between WVXU in Cincinnati and WKMS in Murray, Kentucky.He’s picked up accolades at the...More by Cory Sharber