Erick Landon (César Viramontes Hörner) is a Mexican author, Videogame reviewer, and independent artist. He is mostly known for his YouTube channel Erick Landon RPG where he reviews a wide variety of Role-Playing Games.
Landon began self publishing in Guadalajara, Jalisco (Mexico) in 2013, with the release of Preludio al Olvido (Prelude to Oblivion) with a very limited print run. In 2014, he released Terra Gaiden and El Ejército Revenante (The Revenant Army). He also uploaded several slideshows on YouTube, in a video format, of Top 10s covering JRPGs for different consoles. Upon going viral in 2015, Landon continued making content on YouTube. He currently has 100,000+ subscribers and 10 self-published books so far, most available in English and Spanish.
CAREER (As a content creator)
Landon started a YouTube channel on April of 2007 merely to upload demos of his band Lost Android. The songs had no copyright so he removed them in 2008, protected them in copyright and re-uploaded just some of them in 2009. The band's name had been changed to The Vortex Dimension with Landon being the sole member.
On March 2010, he uploaded a Top 50 Best RPG Town Themes, but since back then YouTube didn't allow videos in a long format, he uploaded each song separately. More demos for his band The Vortex Dimension would be released throughout 2010 and 2011.
By July of 2012, Landon gave up his music career and his one-man-band to pursue a film career. He started with the short film El Vals de Samuel (Samuel's Waltz) which he uploaded to several other websites dedicated to short films. On August of the same year, he uploaded the short film to YouTube. Exactly one year later, August of 2013, he released his second short film Corazón de Plástico (Plastic Heart) again in short film websites and YouTube. Both short films explored themes of depression, loneliness, insanity, frustration and despair. They were well received on the other websites but met poor views on YouTube. He then released Los Fantasmas de Dios (The Phantoms of God) on January of 2014, an abstract and silent bizarre short film with horror elements. Once again, the film met positive views and feedback on other websites but not on YouTube. This would be the last short film he would create to focus entirely on his writing and reviewer career. His three short films can still be found and viewed on YouTube.
On June of 2014, Landon created a short series of slide-show videos for YouTube in the form of a Top 10. The videos only had wallpapers and screenshots of the RPGs and about 30 seconds of music from each game. He has repeatedly said in livestreams and interviews that he made these videos simply to share them with friends and with the Internet. He was expecting them to get enough views to see if he could become a content creator and eventually start reviewing JRPGs. Luckily, two of the 5 videos he uploaded went viral by the end of 2014: Top 10 Best PSP RPGs and Top 10 Best Nintendo DS RPGs. However, on March of 2015 he uploaded a sixth top 10 in the same format for Super Nintendo RPGs, but it failed in views and Landon abandoned the idea.
On September of 2015, Landon decided to start reviewing JRPGs on a video format on YouTube. But they were all in Spanish, a decision he would regret later. The video reviews were in low-quality for both video and sound. The channel wasn't monetized yet so he wasn't interested in investing on new recording equipment, but eventually bought a slightly better camera, microphone and videogame capture card to record gameplay. The review series lasted from September of 2015 until March of 2016, uploading 2-3 reviews per week. He reviewed several JRPGs like the Suikoden series, the Valkyrie Profile trilogy, the Blue Dragon trilogy, and others. Surprisingly, only his review of Blue Dragon Awakened Shadow would get a couple thousand views on YouTube, while all the others never made it past between 50 or 500 views. On April of 2015, he gave up once again as a content creator on YouTube and decided to focus solely on his writing career.
On June of 2017, he created a separate channel in Spanish with his friend Oscar, called Discusión Gamer on YouTube. Together they would cover gaming discussions, review games and create Top 10s. Most of these Top 10s would focus on obscure games or "hidden gems". At this point, Landon deleted all of his reviews in Spanish from his own YouTube channel, and eventually would re-upload them on Discusión Gamer. Only the Blue Dragon Awakened Shadow review remained on his original channel because it had over 5 thousand views.
On September of 2017, Landon felt that the Top 10s he was doing on Discusión Gamer, focusing on obscure games, would be a great idea to revive his own YouTube channel. He would do the same type of videos, but focusing on obscure JRPGs from different consoles. His old Top 10s from 2014 had all surpassed the 100k views, with the PSP one leading with over 700k views and the NDS one with over 400k views. Landon applied for monetization on YouTube and started creating Top 10s focusing on obscure JRPGs. The ones about PS1 and PS2 JRPGs quickly gained a lot of views and attention, which earned Landon the monetization, and motivation to continue creating more. Eventually he would branch out to regular JRPG reviews, documentaries, discussions and vlogs. By December of 2018, the channel had gained 10k subscribers.
On January of 2019, Landon started livestreaming on his YouTube channel. His first livestream was a complete playthrough of Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana. He would then livestream demos or the first 2 hours of different JRPGs, occasionally completing some of them live. On May of 2019, he would create a Twitch account to also livestream games. However, on September of 2019 he abandoned the channel due to a severe lack of followers, viewers and support. As a result, he focused 100% on his YouTube channel instead. Landon wouldn't revive this Twitch channel until October of 2023.
On May of 2019, a second YouTube channel was created. Initially, Landon would upload unscripted content with no gameplay, videos in the form of vlogs. This was done only ocassionally since the channel wasn't monetized. It wouldn't get monetization until Landon started uploading regular Top 10 videos of games from different genres, scripted and with gameplay footage, on July of 2021. However, about a year later he would abandon the idea and would start uploading instead pre-streamed livestreams and clips from his Q&A Livestreams, a series of unhinged and unscripted streams he had been doing once in a while since 2019. On September of 2023, he started doing these Q&A livestreams every Sunday.
The YouTube channel would go on to grow exponentially from 2019 to 2024 until YouTube put a shadow-ban on it in April. Within this period, Landon gained attention as a reviewer, and recognition as a pioneer of JRPG channels on YouTube.
WRITING CAREER
Landon has been writing fiction since the age of 15. Most of his stories and novels throughout the years haven't been published. In 2008 he created a roleplaying group online to write stories together with numerous people from across Latin America. These stories would be played out on forums such as Blogger or Microsoft Messenger. Landon has explained this gave him a lot of experience and practice to eventually start self-publishing his own stories. The group was dissolved in 2012. His first book, Preludio al Olvido (Prelude to Oblivion) was written near the end of 2012, and self-published on March of 2013. Only 50 copies were printed and distributed amongst costumers (Landon had a retro store back then) and family members. During this time, Landon wrote two more books, one in English and the other one in Spanish: Terra Gaiden and El Ejército Revenante (The Revenant Army). The latter he himself would translate and release in English on February of 2023. Both books were released on June and July of 2014, respectively. Landon would then start attending Anime and Gaming shows in the area with an artist table to sell the books. Eventually, he would publish several other books but would also stop attending shows in 2019. Several companies started disappearing, more after the COVID-19 Pandemic, and the ones left started charging high prices for an artist table. As a result, Landon decided to focus more on selling his books online, specifically via Amazon, on both a digital and printed format. His last book was The Reaper's Thorn, released on September of 2018. After its release, Landon decided to take a long break from writing, claiming exhaustion (as he had written so many books within just 5 years). Instead of writing new material, Landon started self-translating his own books. Seven Shadows had been translated years before (in 2017) but others were still only in Spanish. To date, only The Revenant Army and Nix Inferno have been translated and released in English since then. Landon has said that his focus on his content creator career has taken a lot of time, but has also complained about the lack of the fans' interest in his books, citing motivation issues to release new stories.
CONTROVERSIES
On May of 2019, the channel was completely demonetized by YouTube for no apparent reason. Landon reached out to Google Support which failed to provide an explanation and a solution. He then created a Twitter account just to reach out to YouTube support there. He did and his case was reviewed. A few days later, the channel regained the monetization but, once again, YouTube did not provide any explanations whatsoever. To date, Landon still suspects that this could be because of his swearing and political incorrectness at the time, often criticizing videogame companies and censorship. Several months before this incident he had released a video precisely about censorship, which YouTube shadow-banned and, as a result, it barely got any views.
On February of 2020, videogame company Atlus, known for the Persona and Shin Megami Tensei series, censored the game Persona 5 Royal. The censorship in question was about a specific scene that Atlus felt would offend modern audiences. Landon criticized this in a video vlog he did. The video surpassed 11k views in just 24 hours but immediately stopped getting views after that.
On February of 2021, Landon launched That JRPG Show; a live podcast in which he would have a guest to discuss their channels and JRPGs in general. The show ran once a month from February until September of 2021. Landon cancelled the show after several episodes because of lack of views and fan interest. But also because he felt some of the guests "weren't being honest with him". He has stated a few times during some of his livestreams that these guests only took advantage of his popularity but never really cared for him.
Between August and October of 2021, Landon reached out to several videogame publishers, such as Atlus West, Koei-Tecmo, Square-Enix, Bandai Namco and NIS America to establish a partnership. This would consist of the PR companies sending him review codes of their games. Other JRPG channels provided Landon with the contact information for Atlus. Landon sent emails to apply for a review code of Shin Megami Tensei V but never heard back. Most of the other channels got a reply and a code, but he didn't. He got a hold of other contact info from both Atlus and Sega of America, but once again he never got a reply. Landon felt the company's PR agent at the time had ignored him on purpose, mainly due to his video from February of 2020 about censorship, and other JRPG channels calling out his political incorrectness. However, on August of 2022, Atlus West reached out to provide him a review code for Soul Hackers 2. Landon questioned the PR agent and addressed the issue from November of 2021, to which the agent claimed ignorance. Landon later found out the previous agent had left the company by the end of 2021. He proceeded to make a rant video to expose the issue, which he uploaded on a secondary YouTube channel. To mock the company, he called it "Atlus Finally Apologized To Me", which in reality was a lie since no apology was ever issued from behalf of the company. Landon revealed that he called the video that way as click-bait to get people to watch it and learn how PR companies treat content creators and discriminate them for their public opinions.
On January of 2023, Landon released a video titled Top 10 Mature-Rated JRPGs, which went viral within its first week. The virality continued until February, reaching 250k views, which was highly unusual for his videos. The same month, YouTube demonetized the video without providing any explanation. Landon reached out to YouTube support and requested a manual review, explaining the video. One day after this, YouTube gave the monetization back to the video but, as always, never explained the reasons for the initial demonetization. However, on October of 2023, Landon released a sequel video titled Top 10 Mature-Rated JRPG Hidden Gems. Within a week, the video reached 45k views and the day after, it was demonetized. Landon reached out again to YouTube but this time, no manual review could be requested and he wasn't allowed to make his case. Instead, YouTube support didn't provide an explanation as to why it had been demonetized, and also told him that the decision was final. Landon then released a rant video on his second YouTube channel to expose the issue but the video this time was unsuccessful in views. Views, revenue and subscription rate decreased on both of his YouTube channels after the incident.
On April of 2024, Landon released a video review of Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, with a review code having been provided by the company 505 Games after the passing of the game's creator Yoshitaka Murayama. A few days after releasing the video, Landon made another video in which he strongly criticized the translation and accused it of being politically biased. Several other content creators had already criticized the translation and continued to do so for weeks. In the video, Landon also called out the 505 Games team who translated the game. The video, called The Eiyuden Chronicle Controversy, got 17k views within 2 days. But on the 3rd day, all views decreased considerably. Right after this, YouTube put a shadow-ban on the channel, highly reducing its views, revenue and subscription rate by (according to Landon's analytics) 50%.
The two PR agents from NIS America that normally sent review codes to Landon, left the company a month before. Soon after, Landon stopped getting review codes and after several emails with no replies, he cut ties with the company. NIS America altered the translation of The Legend of Heroes: Trails Through Daybreak, changing several events and character dialogue for modern political biases. Landon called out the issue to no avail and declared that he would no longer review most modern JRPGs.
Landon reached 100k subscribers on March 8 of 2024, but has continually struggled to get more, standing on only 101k subscribers since then.
POLITICAL VIEWS
Landon has no political views. He has identified himself as "some kind of philosophical anarchist", criticizing the system. His anti-political and anti-system ideas can often be found within his books, his characters and some of the situations they go through. Landon is openly and publicly against modern woke culture, cancel culture and censorship, and has repeatedly and publicly criticized DEI and ESG, claiming forced inclusion and political agendas have ruined not just the videogame industry but the education and overall entertainment industry likewise.
Books:
-Preludio al Olvido -Spanish- (March, 2013)
-Terra Gaiden -English- (June, 2014)
-El Ejército Revenante -Spanish- (July, 2014)
-Los Relatos Miserables -Spanish- (October, 2014)
-Infierno Nix -Spanish- (February, 2015)
-Seven Shadows -Spanish- (July, 2015)
-The Shattered Sky -English- (August, 2015)
-Infierno Nix Vol. 2 -Spanish- (February, 2016)
-Código Morgana -Spanish- (August, 2016)
-Seven Shadows -English- (January, 2017)
-The Reaper's Thorn -English- (September, 2018)
-Nix Inferno Complete Edition -English- (May, 2022)
-The Revenant Army -English- (February, 2023)
Shortfilms:
-El Vals de Samuel (Samuel's Waltz) 2012
-Corazón de Plástico (Plastic Heart) 2013
-Los Fantasmas de Dios (Ghosts of God) 2014
