YouTube “Let's Play”s are preserving video game history • Hacker News Board

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

#151

Post by lathiat » Wed, May 15, 2019, 12:50 PM UTC

pmarreck wrote: post #91

https://archive.org/ is preserving it by letting you play them right in the browser via emulators compiled to Emscripten. For example here is the Macintosh version of Dark Castle, which I spent some number of hours winning at the time (circa 1986, digitized sound was still a brand-new thing) https://archive.org/details/mac_DarkCastle_1_2 If you hit "Options" you'll notice the familiar WASD keyboard control layout. We…

With many modern games (even single player ones) requiring online servers (and in particular closed servers that are not released for download) this probably won’t translate well to current times.

A couple of very different examples are Super Mario Run (which is just stupid) and Fortnite (which at least makes sense because it’s purely multiplayer in battle Royale mode).

This seems driven by a combination of analytics and anti piracy.

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

#152

Post by wingerlang » Wed, May 15, 2019, 1:29 PM UTC

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #143

On this topic: I'm sure there are a few "epic" let's plays that have left a mark in history, for most games. You need to be a gamer to know, though. To the gamers on HN: can you post your favorite "let's play", specify which game and year it is, and maybe why you like it so much?

I'd guess the opposite, that there is not a single video/series that have left any impact. I think they are quite internal to specific communities.

Maaaaaaybe Freemans Mind, but that's more of a comedy "series".

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

#153

Post by nostalgk » Wed, May 15, 2019, 3:28 PM UTC

stordoff wrote: post #124

jon-wood wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The XBox One's emulation is fantastic in the odd occasion I've used it to play a 360 game - other than the shape of the controller you'd be hard pressed to tell that you're not in fact using an XBox 360.

Actually in a lot of cases, the games run better on Xbox One[1], and an increasing number are enhanced for the Xbox One X, which means that by default they run at a 9x higher resolution (so 720p -> 4K; 3x vertical, 3x horizontal). You can see here[2] some comparisons for Forza Horizon and the difference is quite striking. [1] https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2016-vs-xb... [2] https://www.eurogamer.ne…

This is especially striking and a huge step in the right direction, in my opinion. Oftentimes these days I've turned to emulation to older games due to the resolution on, say, PSX games being very low, but often easily scalable through an emulator.

I do hope the industry trends towards this.

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

#154

Post by WorldMaker » Wed, May 15, 2019, 6:40 PM UTC

myself248 wrote: post #146

Kiro wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. Many of the top streamers (Forsen, Sodapoppin etc) are not good gamers. They are fun to watch for other reasons. Some others are decent (Lirik) but far from pro gamers. They are a different category but just as popular as watching the pros.

Sometimes watching a terrible gamer struggle, and listening to their exasperation, is more entertaining than watching some ace just zip through the challenges.

It's a similar community thing to that "watching a friend play at their house". So many of the biggest streamers may or may not be "good" at the games they play, but certainly work their tails off trying to seem the most like "a friend", their channels the most like a friendly community or even "their house". You want to see them succeed because they are a friend, you enjoy watching them suffer sometimes for the same reason. The social nature of Twitch chat shouldn't be easily dismissed. It's easy to laugh at the "rituals" that have developed where almost every streamer is constantly interrupting themselves to "thank" chat users for random things that matter on the platforms but not really outside of that (follows, likes, "sparks", what have you), but those are absolutely social interactions evolved (tough to say designed in some of these cases) to try to make "friends" visit "your house".

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

#155

Post by NikkiA » Wed, May 15, 2019, 10:05 PM UTC

Noos wrote: 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…

The negcon wasn't bundled with RR4 though, at least not always, my copy only came with the RR4 and RR1-60fps remaster.

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

#156

Post by hnick » Thu, May 16, 2019, 12:44 AM UTC

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #143

On this topic: I'm sure there are a few "epic" let's plays that have left a mark in history, for most games. You need to be a gamer to know, though. To the gamers on HN: can you post your favorite "let's play", specify which game and year it is, and maybe why you like it so much?

I watch them mostly for self-indulgent reasons, so I don't think a non-gamer would enjoy many. The main reasons are to preview a new game before buying, to relive a childhood game, see the end of games I remember not completing, or to watch someone go through a game I've finished and see how they react to various situations. Depending on the game and streamer this can be entertaining for different reasons, such as their personality or skill level.

On the last point a recent one I enjoyed was Joseph Anderson's Undertale blind playthrough. The game is notorious for throwing unexpected meta-narrative about games, gamers, and even stream viewers, and seeing a critic encounter that where he didn't expect it was entertaining. It also has a very difficult boss as "punishment" for certain choices you make on a typical third playthrough, and he definitely proved himself as a competent gamer when it only took him a few hours to beat that encounter. I could hear the change in tone as he got quiet and entered the zone and knew it wouldn't be long.

Like all Let's Plays though it is long and probably best viewed while you are doing something else.

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

#157

Post by dpkonofa » Thu, May 16, 2019, 1:41 AM UTC

criley2 wrote: post #149

dpkonofa wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would agree with you if thousands of videos and accounts weren't removed daily due to false "intellectual property" claims and automated reporting. YouTube's system is terrible because they're so large that they've had to try to automate a system that can't really be automated. A decentralized system would require those claims to actually be validated before they're processed because, otherwise, it would be a waste…

After thinking about it, a decentralized system of intellectual property theft would not work the way you think. The owners would stop contacting individual sites for individual confirmation and would send safe harbor / DMCA reports to the host who would nuke the content without spending ten seconds on it to preserve their business. The only sites safe would be those self-hosting, and those wouldn't be able to serve…

Even in that case, you'd have to deal with every hosting provider which, at the very least, would require an actual legal DMCA request rather than an automated one and, since people would be able to self-host, a way to contact their ISP who would have to verify that the claim and request are even valid. With YouTube, the automation is what's killing content creators and the archival value of the platform.

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

#158

Post by dpkonofa » Thu, May 16, 2019, 1:43 AM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #142

dpkonofa wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to say something similar. I actually think YouTube (as a hosting/sharing platform) is a net-negative for the internet because there are already millions of videos that were embedded in pages that are no longer working because YouTube removed them, the account was deleted, or any number of things. If the internet worked the way it was intended, these videos would have been hosted on the site rather than em…

> I actually think YouTube (as a hosting/sharing platform) is a net-negative for the internet because there are already millions of videos that were embedded in pages that are no longer working because YouTube removed them, the account was deleted, or any number of things. If the internet worked the way it was intended, these videos would have been hosted on the site rather than embedded and would be still working. I…

What? That's exactly how the internet worked before YouTube. YouTube became the standard because you could easily upload things for free since the content was no longer the product. YouTube is only free because they can sell the data surrounding the videos to advertisers. Without that, we'd have exactly the situation that I'm describing because that's exactly the situation that we did have before YouTube came around (and that YouTube helped before it became beholden to companies rather than creators).

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

#159

Post by Noumenon72 » Thu, May 16, 2019, 3:07 AM UTC

godelski wrote: post #140

> It’s a long-observed fact that the phenomenon of the YouTube let’s play has benefits beyond just entertaining viewers and gradually introducing teenagers to neo-Nazism via YouTube’s algorithm. This is really poor wording. Maybe s/benefits/affects? Because I don't think anyone (well maybe neo-Nazis) think "introducing teenagers to neo-Nazism via YouTube's algorithm" is a benefit.

That's why it's funny -- because no one would say that seriously, so there's a contrast between the serious tone and the content. Rock Paper Shotgun is a funny site, and manages to gently editorialize like this without seeming strident.

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

#160

Post by philwelch » Thu, May 16, 2019, 3:17 AM UTC

dpkonofa wrote: post #158

philwelch wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I actually think YouTube (as a hosting/sharing platform) is a net-negative for the internet because there are already millions of videos that were embedded in pages that are no longer working because YouTube removed them, the account was deleted, or any number of things. If the internet worked the way it was intended, these videos would have been hosted on the site rather than embedded and would be still working. I…

What? That's exactly how the internet worked before YouTube. YouTube became the standard because you could easily upload things for free since the content was no longer the product. YouTube is only free because they can sell the data surrounding the videos to advertisers. Without that, we'd have exactly the situation that I'm describing because that's exactly the situation that we did have before YouTube came around…

> What? That's exactly how the internet worked before YouTube.

Yeah--there weren't very many videos because most web hosting services didn't let you consume that much hard drive space.