I feel like I'm reasonably good at picking at a game on the gameplay level, as per what works and does not and why and surface videogame essayist stuff like ludonarrative dissonance (or the rare examples of ludonarrative harmony).
I may offer you my finest insight into video games such as "Lara Croft has some sort of father complex going on" and "Shadow of Chernobyl is unintentionally about life in the collapse of the soviet union" which even by my own admission feels shallow and trite. You watch someone like Jacob Geller or Noah Caldwell-Gervais and they have fascinating things to say even on games you wouldn't expect it, like NCG on Quake.
How do I become that knowledgeable? Interesting? Analytical? about video games?
I get it now. They're good, it's a unique look at things but at the same time it's not quite what I'm after because as per grappling with the media as much because it tends to "ignore" most of the games to focus on the unseen.
Sometimes he has quite profound things to say about games from his quite unique perspective as someone who likes to be immersed in the minutiae. But yes, a good chunk of the videos really are as simple as "I thought it would be neat to see if I can make sense of this bit of environment design"
I'd argue that the "unseen" can still tell us a lot about games. Any Austin tends to focus on open-world games, and these rely on simulating a world to an extent that a player is willing to suspend their disbelief. Skyrim needs rivers because the real world has rivers, and while players will expect to see them, they are unlikely to care much about where the water comes from/goes. But a developer needs to put the rivers there, and will have to grapple with these questions to some extent. Even then, the developer does not have to create a full simulation of Skyrim's hydrology, they just need to keep one step ahead of what the player cares about to make the world feel "real" enough. Poking at the boundaries of a game can tell us what players and developers do and do not care about, and I think that ties in to what you're looking for.
Not trying to knock the guy at all, it's just not what I'm after because this kind of thing just happens naturally to me. Fun Fact: The remedy games all tend to have insanely detailed bicycles but everyone rides a fixie.