I know I’ve mentioned a ton of times: while I enjoy playing videos games sometimes, a little, I enjoy watching other people play them more. Even as a little kid. Like an awesome play date would be going over to a friends to watch them play. Perfect world, the friend would only play when I was watching, so I could see everything. Even more perfect, I could sidekick, referencing maps, looking up tips, keeping track of things, etc.
I honestly thought I was just weird for a lot of my life. It was literally an oh cool I’m not weird at all moment when Amazon bought Twitch for $970 million in 2014, a platform for literally watching people play video games. It was like a mini version of learning that being introverted isn’t weird.
For better or worse, I don’t have a lot of space in my life right now now to sit on a couch with friends watching them play video games. Probably better, honestly. I think my freetime is better suited for things that fullfill me in a little deeper way like music stuff and going for a dang hike.
But now’a’days, naturally: YouTube.
I can watch people play videogames on YouTube (I do actually like Twitch too, but only when the “live” aspect is additive, which isn’t usually).
But you know what I don’t do? Hear about some new game that seems cool, and just go right to YouTube to check it out by watching a “playthrough”.
What do I actually do? I buy the game, play it for a while, enjoy it, but ultimately give up, then I go to YouTube. That’s what I mean by the breakaway moment.
This isn’t some moral high-ground where I soapbox about how gaming studios are losing money because people aren’t buying the game they are just watching it “for free” and my buying of the game is my way of feeling good about that. I think that’s an oversimplification and probably not even true. It’s just… that’s how my brain works.
I think I can’t really get into a YouTube playthrough unless my own brain and fingers have played the real game itself and felt it. Then I can engage with the video somehow much quicker and on a deeper level.
I just did this dance with Expedition 33: Clair Obscur. I bought it. Well, I was prepared to anyway, but it was included with my XBOX Game Pass. I played it for — I dunno ~7-8 — hours. But I wasn’t very good at it. Even though it’s turn-based combat, there is lots of timing involved and it’s the kind of thing I grow to resent. Like doing an action and needing to press a button at the exact right moment to enhance it, or an enemy attacking and you needing to dodge or parry at timing that is designed to be tricky. I don’t get as much satisfaction from getting it right as I get annoyed from missing it. Particularly when, as it turns out, perfectly-timed parries are all but required for winning battles and progressing in the game. It’s not that I dislike the mechanics, they just aren’t for me in the sense that most game mechanics aren’t for me. Maybe I’m just at a point in my life where I’m so frustrated by so many things that paying to be artificially frustrated is a no-go.
But: I want to see the mechanics at work, I want to see someone master them, I want to see how the choices and progressions pan out. I really want to see the story unfold. Video game stories can be truly cinematic. So I’ll just experience them how works best for me. And apparently that’s trying the game myself, waiting for the breakaway moment, then off to YouTube it is.