About:
#CraigItUp is a term associated with the act of mocking Craig Sullivan (Creative Director of Criterion Games), and/or the way the Need for Speed games developed by Criterion Games are designed. The mocking happens via 420 MLG Game Montages, glitch & bug videos, meme-based images, and general negativity towards the games, with #CraigItUp added in their titles, indicating that they’re part of this act.
The goal of #CraigItUp was to get the attention of the Need for Speed development team, Ghost Games – and achieve something, that was thought to be impossible at first. To get a development team owned by Electronic Arts realize, that their community is not keen on the design changes that recently hit the Need for Speed franchise as a whole, and they have to act, if they do not wish the series to flop eventually.
After one month of the act intensively going on, with YouTubers from all over the Need for Speed YouTube community constantly releasing #CraigItUp videos, and generally mocking Need for Speed Rivals, Craig Sullivan, and the amount of flaws in that game, on 2014. May 6th, – Electronic Arts decided to give Ghost Games an extra year to develop the next installment of the series, skipping one year in their usual release-a-game-every-year-and-farm-a-lot-of-cash schedule. The idea was praised by the community, as they seemingly achieved something that was thought to be impossible.
Origin:
The r00tz of #CraigItUp date back to 2014. March 19th, which is a video posted by Underground3, including Craig Sullivan saying a common catchphrase “drifting at a 150 MpH laughing your ass off” during an interview, when asked where Need for Speed is headed in the future. After that we can see Craig holding a copy of Need for Speed Rivals, and a bottle of Mountain Dew, while the Need for Speed Most Wanted 2012 and Need for Speed Rivals in-game currency, the SpeedPoints are raining, and he can also be seen dancing around with two Speedpoints in his hand. In the last few seconds of the video, #CraigItUp can be seen. The video acquired 1500 views with good feedback by 2014. June 25.
Before this, Underground3 also posted several 420 Game Montages mocking Need for Speed Rivals, but none of them contain the #CraigItUp term.
Spread:
CraigItUp’s popularity grew fast after YouTube user BlackPanthaa decided to launch an act with the name of #CraigItUp, where he encouraged his 7000+ subscribers (at that time), to submit videos mocking Craig Sullivan and Need for Speed Rivals, with #CraigItUp included in their titles. Most videos of the act got added to the CraigList and CraigItUp YouTube Playlists. By 2014. June 25th, his video had 3900 views overall.
The #CraigItUp Playlist featuring most videos submitted by the community can be found here:
The CraigItUp YouTube Playlist.
Not long after BlackPanthaa released his video announcing the act, lots of Need for Speed players all around YouTube started posting their videos of their own. The act was massive enough for Electronic Arts and Ghost Games to take note of the unpleased community and take action. Afterwards, #CraigItUp was considered a major success and a step forward towards a better racing game series.
No Need for Speed game in 2014 – IGN.
Notable Examples:
The considered “prequel” of CraigItUp, followed by actual CraigItUp videos.
Search Interest:
Google Trends did not detect any major activity (that’s why there’s no graph), and the main reason for that, is because it’s mainly a YouTube trend, which means that people interested in #CraigItUp looked the term up on YouTube instead of Google.
It began to grow in popularity after 2014. April 13th, when BlackPanthaa announced the act. Its popularity began to decrease after 2014. May 6th, due to the goal being achieved, however, some people still made CraigItUp videos months after.