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YouTube “Let's Play”s are preserving video game history

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Re: YouTube “Let's Play”s are preserving video game history

#71
post #12

Call me old-fashioned, but I often prefer screenshot-based LPs. LParchive is a great resource for those. I did enjoy Void Burger's video LP of Silent Hill but I liked that she used subtitles for commentary instead of her voice (I think the only time she spoke was to grumble after a particularly frustrating game over).

This makes me think, YouTube could really use multiple audio tracks that can be selected by the end user for commentary in general, not just LPs.

Re: YouTube “Let's Play”s are preserving video game history

#72

Non-techies that are my age don't get the value of let's plays. When I was a kid, it was NES and then Sega. You'd go over to your friend's house and would take turns playing Mario, Ninja Gaiden, Contra, etc. When you weren't playing, you were watching your friend play. Sure, some games were multi-player, but not all of them. Let's plays capture that same feeling of watching your friend play the game.

Should I point out the obvious that you aren't friends with the youtuber doing the Let's Play? You can't form a real two-way bond with one another, and that is the foundation of friendship. Real friendship could bloom in many other ways and you guys could go get a pizza, go climb Everest, help them work on their car, etc. In a nutshell, that describes my fears and reservations about the way the current age is going.…

There's a concept called Parasocial interaction that describes the relationship between an audience and a media personality (originally observed for tv personalities, but more recently YouTube and internet ones apply too).

"Viewers or listeners come to feel and consider media personalities almost as friends."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_interaction

Re: YouTube “Let's Play”s are preserving video game history

#73

Non-techies that are my age don't get the value of let's plays. When I was a kid, it was NES and then Sega. You'd go over to your friend's house and would take turns playing Mario, Ninja Gaiden, Contra, etc. When you weren't playing, you were watching your friend play. Sure, some games were multi-player, but not all of them. Let's plays capture that same feeling of watching your friend play the game.

Yeah this is a great point. I spent hours watching my buddies play and vice versa. My dad asked me this weekend , as i half jokingly put on the Overwatch tournament on tv, how can you watch someone play video games it's boring. I said well dad how can you watch golf on TV it's boring. We both agree, yes we watch it but really we want to play. but sometimes you cant play.

The lets plays are fun for me , same with twitch. Sometimes i cant fully get into a game so i hop onto twitch, or i'll start up a lets play series. Watch 30 minutes everyday on lunch break and after a few weeks/months you are done.

I mainly do lets play to relive my first experience in dark souls & bloodborne haha.

Re: YouTube “Let's Play”s are preserving video game history

#74
post #71
post #12

Call me old-fashioned, but I often prefer screenshot-based LPs. LParchive is a great resource for those. I did enjoy Void Burger's video LP of Silent Hill but I liked that she used subtitles for commentary instead of her voice (I think the only time she spoke was to grumble after a particularly frustrating game over).

This makes me think, YouTube could really use multiple audio tracks that can be selected by the end user for commentary in general, not just LPs.

This is something I've always wished for. That way, I could turn off the annoying background music that makes it hard to hear what's being said, or if there's a copyright strike against some music, only the music track gets deleted.

Re: YouTube “Let's Play”s are preserving video game history

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this true of any entity? Even a Museum will eventually have to pay bills and have to decide to downsize or make changes. Even government funded preservation can have voters decide it isn't worth the costs and preservation can be dropped. I do think private companies will be the ones most fastest to drop preservation and the ones least likely to look for external entity to swap preservation with, thus making You…

Nothing lasts forever, but I still keep my milk in a refrigerator that might stop working rather than leaving it on the counter.

If you make it condensed milk you can store it on the counter for longer than it would've otherwise lasted in a fridge. Is maximizing longevity the only metric we can to optimize upon?

Re: YouTube “Let's Play”s are preserving video game history

#76
post #34

I don't know if they are. Emulating games is not really preserving them in a sense, because it can't reproduce the hardware or experience as it actually was very well. Like you can play Ridge Racer type 4 in emulation, but part of that game's history was the special controller it was bundled with, which let you twist the middle of it to enable analog steering wheel control. Like you can't emulate Boktai without the s…

I have a feeling only a relative handful of games would suffer from emulation the way you describe. Mainly those that came bundled with some kind of proprietary peripheral. The vast majority of games work just fine through emulation.

Re: YouTube “Let's Play”s are preserving video game history

#77

Non-techies that are my age don't get the value of let's plays. When I was a kid, it was NES and then Sega. You'd go over to your friend's house and would take turns playing Mario, Ninja Gaiden, Contra, etc. When you weren't playing, you were watching your friend play. Sure, some games were multi-player, but not all of them. Let's plays capture that same feeling of watching your friend play the game.

If your statement was accurate there would be no thriving game streaming services like Twitch, UStream, etc.

Watching people play is like watching sports: it's enjoyable the better the player is; it's boring if they're just fooling around with the controls. Also, like sports, the enjoyment improves the more you know about the game being played.

Re: YouTube “Let's Play”s are preserving video game history

#78

Non-techies that are my age don't get the value of let's plays. When I was a kid, it was NES and then Sega. You'd go over to your friend's house and would take turns playing Mario, Ninja Gaiden, Contra, etc. When you weren't playing, you were watching your friend play. Sure, some games were multi-player, but not all of them. Let's plays capture that same feeling of watching your friend play the game.

Should I point out the obvious that you aren't friends with the youtuber doing the Let's Play? You can't form a real two-way bond with one another, and that is the foundation of friendship. Real friendship could bloom in many other ways and you guys could go get a pizza, go climb Everest, help them work on their car, etc. In a nutshell, that describes my fears and reservations about the way the current age is going.…

One way to look at these communities is that in many ways they are similar to IRC, except the interactions take place in twitch chat and discord. For example, the one game streamer I follow I certainly wouldn't consider a friend, but I do have some friends I have found through the community (in the same loose internet friend sense as some of the people i met through IRC and still talk to). Just like IRC channels were formed around a common theme/topic, these communities are formed around a 'personality' and shared videos.

For a technical equivalent to this, look at the EEVBlog forums. It's arguably the premiere forum online for hobby electronics discussion, but a lot of it also revolves around the EEVBlog YouTube videos. There are some people who don't watch, but they are in the minority.

Re: YouTube “Let's Play”s are preserving video game history

#79

Until something happens to Google, and youtube.com goes down (^_^;). Can we consider any website to be permanent?

You don't even need to go that far. They can just decide to remove the video for any reason, or block it in some parts of the world. This happens all the time.

Re: YouTube “Let's Play”s are preserving video game history

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there are people who are constantly downloading the let's plays of those youtubers, so there will nearly alway be a copy of a video if it isn't on youtube and it might end up on archive.org later on

Are there really? I do watch a lot of let's plays and sometimes download them in bulk, but I don't keep them around for long. 1080p60 takes a lot of space and recently a lot are even in 4k.

You just need to visit r/datahoarders to verify this claim. No, I don't understand it either, but it is definitely something people do.
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