I’ve always enjoyed speed runs, going back to the late '90s. Those are a lot of fun.
Back in the day, I used to love watching competitive StarCraft and Counter-Strike, especially with clanmates.
I never got much into personality based LPs. About the closest channel I follow regularly is retsupurae, but that’s a little different. I liked Mangaminx’s old LPs of the Silent Hill games. The Game Grumps run through of Sonic '06 is funny and it helps you see how bad the game is without playing it yourself.
Nowadays, I mostly watch video walkthroughs of games instead of playing them. Saves money and a lot of time, especially when you can fast forward or just skip past repetitive parts. Most LPs with a narrator I find obnoxious or distracting. The stream channels I’ve seen seem utterly boring and a waste of time since it’s not a finished product, but some people use it as a community hub.
Sorry. I was commenting specifically on watching “eSports” without expressly saying so. When I read the OP that’s what I thought s/he was referring to. Let’s Play type stuff, for me at least, is completely different. I’ve watched or listened to Let’s Play/AAR videos for all sorts of stuff. They’re great for instruction, or even as extended game reviews.
As for eSports, I still can’t get behind it being the same as watching actual major league sports. (I went a little off track with my argument before.) It’s not. It doesn’t matter what the prize pool is. Pro-game players are impressive, sure, in a way, but they’re not pro athletes. The top StarCraft player in the world is not the dork equivalent (I say that lovingly) of Serena Williams or Peyton Manning. It’s not even close. I’d compare them to World Series of Poker dude(tte)s.
Meh, the “that’s not a sport/they’re not athletes” debate gets played out too many times in too many variations with no resolution to be of any importance anyway. No, the guy doing unfathomable actions-per-minute numbers in Starcraft isn’t Serena Williams–but neither is Tony Stewart, or the top table tennis or darts players.
I’ve followed a few player vs player videos for skill-based games that I also play myself and have tried to get better at. A couple of these I’ve also watched for the “sports fan” competitive excitement of watching expert players/teams at high-level play. Some examples:
Guild Wars: Guild vs guild, or team vs team matches. Highly dependent on the video editing, takes a good editor to follow the action / players / cameras to make it interesting.
Soul Calibur: I’ve followed several pro players to watch matches and improve my own game for the characters that I play. Pro matches can get very interesting tactics and cat /mouse feint psych-out play.
I’ve played various sorts of video games for more than 30 years now, and I can say that watching video gaming is probably the most fun when it’s in the context of some kind of tournament, OR when the game is something that you already understand/recognize/watch. I mean, I’ve never been a huge WWF/E fan, but back in college, one of the bar-none, most fun evenings I had was when about 8 of us crowded into a dorm room with a case of beer, a Super Nintendo and a 4-controller setup, and a WWF Raw cartridge. Everyone got a little buzzed, and just enjoyed watching the game and the smack-talk between the various players.
I’ve also spent a lot of time tag-teaming various RPGs and similar games with friends and my brother- one person plays, while the other is a second pair of eyes and is a somewhat detached thinker for solving problems. That’s a lot of fun too.
But… I have to admit that I haven’t really got into eSports. I suspect this is because the vast majority of the eSports games are sorts of games I don’t much like- RTS games like Starcraft and/or tower defense games like DOTA or LoL. I’ve even watched a fair amount of LoL when at Pax South with some inveterate LoL playing (and watching) buddies. I suspect it’s a personal prejudice- the particular visual style and artwork of DOTA and LOL just annoys me, and I can’t really get past that.
I do sometimes enjoy walk-throughs of various games when trying to figure out better ways to play; like where sniper hides are and that sort of thing.
"<Person> who does <demanding physical and mental task #1> is not a “Real” <noun> like <Person2> who does <more traditional demanding physical and mental task> " is not an argument. What is the difference?
Most of the DOTA prize money is put in by the participants, though; in effect, like poker players, they are betting against each other for each other’s money.
As to what value this stuff has I guess my problem with it is that in a few years it’ll be a totally different game. It’s unlikely DOTA or StarCraft will be the eSport of choice in ten years.
Completely incorrect. The money is put in by the spectators. The prize pool value is based on spectator purchases, most of which are “The Compendium,” which allows for in-client viewing and gives some cosmetic game perks.
The initial prize pool, before those purchases, is ponied up by Valve. They make it all back and then quite a bit more off of the spectator purchases though.
Well, speaking just for myself, because:
[ol]
[li]I play basketball for excercise, not entertainment.[/li][li]Playing and watching do not provide the same kind of enjoyment, and [/li][li]I’m not trying to exercise at ten o’clock at night. That’s sit down and be entertained time in the Reluctant A. household.[/li][/ol]
Well anyone (born with the right mental traits) can learn to beat others mentally (with lots of hard training and practice). The physical side of things just ain’t like that.
Hi ! LP watcher here. That’s part of it, certainly - between two LPs of the same game, I’d much rather watch one by a guy I know to be good at commentary, or who’s a funny guy, or the guy who knows the game backwards and blindfolded and thus is constantly explaining obscure mechanics or showing deviously hidden/skilful stuff ; but I also watch some to discover games I don’t know (and in many cases never could have known, be it because they’re really obscure or because they’re exclusives to consoles I don’t own nor plan on owning), or games I’d like to like and play myself but don’t enjoy actually playing/suck at (e.g. RTSs). Or just know to know how the story goes.
As well, many LPs on the forum I frequent come with audience participation whenever possible (i.e. votes on where to go next, what tech to research/enemy to go for, how to level up “our” pixelmans etc…) which introduce a degree of in-thread roleplaying and such.
[QUOTE=amanset]
Whatever makes people happy. They aren’t hurting anyone.
[/QUOTE]
Technically, they sort of are. Or rather, they might be. There’s an ongoing debate about LPs in game design circles. Basically, by showing 100% of a game they’re probably breaking copyright ; and one argument is that when everybody can see how shit this or that game really is (some LPs specialize in mockery), or when people stream videogames that only just came out to completion, then that might cost sales.
OTOH, I’ve yet to see a good LP not accrue a number of “hey ! I dug up my disks again” or “bought it to play along !” posts. IMO it probably evens out, but I’m no marketroid.
I could say the same thing about sports. The vast majority of games have no “amazing feats of athleticism” that you’ve not seen many, many times before. Rarely you’ll see something amazing–just like when watching videos games.
Being a good athlete just means being talented and skillful at a particular thing. The same exact thing can happen in video games. You watch someone who is much more talented and skillful than you do things you can’t do.
The main difference I can see between watching sports and watching gaming is that the former is nearly always a competition, while the latter often isn’t. Sure, at some level, you’re always competing with the game, but most games are not actively trying to defeat you. There isn’t anyone rooting for the game to beat the player, but there are people rooting for some of the sports players to lose.
The point of the analogy is not that sports and gaming are the same, just that a commonly leveled criticism would apply exactly the same to sports. You’re still watching someone else play a game without playing it yourself.
Both of those arguments don’t really hold up. The first completely falls flat, because those people could just as easily tell you that the game is bad in a review instead of playing the game. They legally can show clips, so you can see for yourself. At worst, they are neutral. At best, people see some value in even a game that is bad. They only “hurt” games in the same way reviews do–and that’s really the developers hurting themselves by making a bad game.
The second seems to have merit at first glance. Sure, there are gamers who say they play games for the story, so you could expect that some of them would buy the game if they couldn’t watch a Let’s Play. The thing is, I am one of those gamers. And there’s a difference that is missing
You see, even gamers who play for the story actually play for the story. The interactive elements are still a part of the story. There is still something lost in watching the story rather than participating in it.
I can flat out say I have never watched a game for the story that I had any intent on actually playing. There are other platforms for stories, so if I have to pay for it, I’m going to choose them.
The only time you hear people saying that they don’t have to buy the game is if they didn’t like it. But then we’re back to the first argument.
Is it conceivable there are some people like that? Sure. But it doesn’t really seem all that likely. Especially not in numbers that would offset the benefits.
As for copyright–that exists so you can make money off of the content you make (in order to encourage you to make more). The whole point is that you have a choice on whether you let other people use your content, not that other people using your content is inherently wrong or hurtful.
Finally, to make the post I came her to make: watching people play games has been a part of gaming since the beginning. People who got together to play games with their friends didn’t necessarily only play multi-player games that everyone can play. Not understanding LPs means not understanding gaming in general.
I definitely watch in part for the same reasons I would watch my friends play games. I’ve never been a good gamer. For most of my life, I could count the number of games I’d beaten on one hand. (Now it’s two.) Sure, I played a lot of games, but I didn’t beat them–unless I used a Game Genie.
Not only did I want to watch people play games I couldn’t, but I enjoyed being with these people. Hence those whose commentary you like. I enjoyed having friends teach me how to play a game. There have always been people like me in gaming.
There is nothing LPs do that we didn’t already do before Internet video, other than reaching a wider audience. There is just the one thing that LPs so far can’t do–let you jump in and play. But even that is supposed to be coming with PlayStation 4.
Are you seriously saying that everyone is created equally mentally, but not physically? I think that sounds like nonsense.
Also, if you don’t think playing, say, Starcraft is a physical task, I don’t know how much further this discussion can go, since you would, at that point, be asserting something along the lines of “Golf doesn’t require any physical skill”.
Yes and no. A reviewer can’t publish a whole thesis on a given game, and due to time pressure most professional reviewers only play a handful of levels (which the studios know, which is why most games are heavily front-ended wherever possible). By showing me *exactly *what the game looks like, how it’s played and, more to the point, in precisely which ways it sucks from A to Z, then that’s a significant qualitative difference.
The other difference being that game companies can’t buy dishonest “good” LPs of shitty games like they sometimes do, directly or indirectly, with reviews (or, in the case of fan reviews as on Steam or Metacritic, can’t pad their aggregate review scores with shills) ;).
There’s also the simple fact that a reviewer ain’t me. Guy can tell me “this is likable” or “this feature is insanely cool”, but that says less than nothing to me. When I can see it for myself, then and only then can I grok whether I’d like or dislike a game, a voice actor, an animation set, an UI. That’s why developers made demos back in the day. That’s also why marketers have ended the practice, for the most part.
Well, yes. But they still shelled out a lot of money to make and publish and market this bad game. Aren’t they entitled to your buying the bad game ?!
I tend to agree with that - which is why, as I said, most LP threads generally move at least some people to buy the game. But then again, some LPers are thorough, showing the consequences of every possible choice or notable dialogue that happens if you bring this guy instead of that guy, go left first instead of right etc…
Anyway, I’m fairly heavily biased towards the “LPs are fine and a force for good” myself. But the debate does exist, and some dev teams (well, some publishers…) have come out against them, which was all I was saying.
