The Official Staff Blog, as run by the Lead Administrator. This blog hopes to cover all the latest news in both the gaming and DS Ultimate world, and also my ramblings about stuff I like somewhat.
Spectator Games vs Entertaining to Play Games; Important Article for LPers!
Posted 30th October 2009 at 09:22 PM by cheat-master30
Recently, when it comes to watching people play video games on Youtube, it seems a lot of people have been failing to understand that what makes an entertaining to watch game is very different to what makes a game often entertaining to actually play and have been taking on games which... to put it bluntly... aren't very fun to watch for the viewers.
In fact, you can make a couple of distinctions about these two types of games that I will now point out, and that people like raocow should really think about before choosing games to make Let's Play videos of. First things first... there are a few kinds of games that just don't work right as videos on Youtube. RPGs, as most Let's Play forums will say are king here, they are incredibly dull to watch in videos, and if my experience in real life is accurate, even worse to try and get an average video gamer interested in playing at random.
Similarly, heavily puzzle based games... aren't particularly fun to watch. I'm sorry, but this is why 98% of Super Mario World Central hacks are awful to view in videos, because they make the person recording spend about 20 minutes running about a level looking for desperately for P switches, springboards and shells, and in all honesty, more people watch the videos for at least a seminal sense of progress. They want to see roughly a level per video, not six videos based around a single, repetitive, incredibly long slog of a level.
Similarly, many of the above play too conservative with level design and gimmicks to really be that interesting to view. Sure, they might have decent level design in some cases, but they don't push the boundaries of design. They're just so generic Mario, that they don't seem very interesting to watch. There's a reason Mario games themselves have a new gimmick every level, and that's because generic 'grassland, cave and ghost house' levels can't really carry a game well for viewing over about 80 levels. Super Mario Omega, no offence is one of these games. I just got bored to sleep by how long it took to get going, and how overly standard the design of the game was.
One level a video.. just not much original.
On the other hand, going too simple... not particularly a good idea either. Simple games are boring to play in many ways, and they're even worse to watch. A single flat path from A to B with limited obstacles is as unfulfilling as watching a fish tank.
This hack is DULL to put it nicely.
Finally, there's the other aspect... difficulty. Now, I'll be honest, games meant for Youtube play should ideally post a decent amount of challenge, since it's pretty much the suffering of the player which causes a lot of people to watch the videos in the first place. It's where ProtonJon and Azura actually got an audience from. But too far, is just boring. Kusottare World? Five hours on a single jump? That's about the point where watching someone fail over and over gets too boring to watch, especially when whole videos show zero progress altogether. People who watch videos do like progress you know.
This game too hard? No kidding...
However, with the negative out of the way, what about the things that make games actually fun to watch? Well for one thing, action based games do pretty well here. Platform, Action Adventure, First Person Shooter and Fighting Games are great fun to watch in videos, and they're also some of the easiest games to get some friend in real life to try out as well. They're pretty much made to capture people's interest.
Secondly, gimmicks are always a good thing here. That's why raocow's VIP series videos are so great to watch, because with all of these different contributors and all these individual themes to levels, each video gives you a different experience. Something new to see. A reason to want to watch each video. I actually subscribe to his videos, because many of the Japanese games in general keep the level design varied, and you can be sure to see an interesting gimmick in the boss battles as well. It just works, one or two levels a video, new tricks in each one, and you have yourself an entertaining video experience.
This is why people liked watching Brutal Mario at first. Or VIP 1-4. Or Kouhai series. Or those random Japanese hacks. Or Super Marisa World. Or maybe an actual released Mario game. Because each level does something different. You get a quick dose of entertainment for a day, and you get to watch a video author deal with something unexpected.
Cannons, Dry Bones pirates, custom boss... This is what good Let's Play videos are made of.
To a great degree, this is also why team/collab games are good to make Let's Play videos of, because they almost always contain multiple gimmicks, and the designer for each level is often completely different.
On another, sometimes contrasting note... simplicity. Believe me, the games people like to watch other's play are the ones with a simpler core concept. That's why every person I've met who wanted to play against me in a video game, or just play a video game in general picked Mario Kart, Super Smash Bros or, if old, Wii Sports. Most people do not appreciate complexity, and when it comes to Youtube, will not thank you for it. That's probably why many play Mario hacks, they're simple, and everyone knows how the game's general mechanics work out.
People also like PROGRESS. As mentioned before, they don't like watching the same thing over and over. Tough luck if you're stuck, maybe pause the video if you can't get past a puzzle in about 4 minutes and return to it when you're beyond that point. Oh, and use save states in a logical way. Logical as in, not going back to them instead of ever taking a hit (seriously, unless it's required for a puzzle, it shows the completely vanity and shallowness of your ego if you can't let Mario mess up at all and spend ten minutes rewinding), and also not avoiding them altogether. I said it before, I won't say it again, but I'll be perfectly honest here. Any game playable with save states, should have the save states used. I don't give a [BEEEP] if some SMW Central dwelling morons seem to think it's against the spirit of the game, nor what some Japanese player does. I especially don't like the whole raocow cult thing on Youtube who go around telling every LPer to stop using save states altogether. Oh, and save when it's practical please. I don't like people spending hours retracing their steps lost or annoyed after making a tiny mistake. It's not good viewing entertainment.
Finally, the last important thing about what makes a good game to watch, and that is probably difficulty. Now, too difficult is as bad as a game being too easy (see Super Kusottare World example above), but let's be honest here, a good deal of the Let's Play community sprang up due to people enjoying the anger and suffering of people playing difficult video games. This is why Kaizo Mario World and I Wanna Be the Guy are just that played on Youtube to the point of overuse. Because admit it, it's fun to watch people go into a mental breakdown after the insane traps and tricks these games are built of. Easy games aren't really as popular due to not cause people to really... suffer.
This resulting anger is also why the Angry Video Game Nerd, Irate Game and Nostalgia Critic are so popular. Not just for video games, but the whole 'guy on internet freaks out due to bad or difficult piece of media' aspect.
Meh, this just an attempt at calling it like it is. People will hate me for writing this, and people in general are often too stubborn to accept mistakes, but I'm getting tired of all the boring, badly chosen and generally repetitive videos created by people ignoring the points said in this article.
In fact, you can make a couple of distinctions about these two types of games that I will now point out, and that people like raocow should really think about before choosing games to make Let's Play videos of. First things first... there are a few kinds of games that just don't work right as videos on Youtube. RPGs, as most Let's Play forums will say are king here, they are incredibly dull to watch in videos, and if my experience in real life is accurate, even worse to try and get an average video gamer interested in playing at random.
Similarly, heavily puzzle based games... aren't particularly fun to watch. I'm sorry, but this is why 98% of Super Mario World Central hacks are awful to view in videos, because they make the person recording spend about 20 minutes running about a level looking for desperately for P switches, springboards and shells, and in all honesty, more people watch the videos for at least a seminal sense of progress. They want to see roughly a level per video, not six videos based around a single, repetitive, incredibly long slog of a level.
Similarly, many of the above play too conservative with level design and gimmicks to really be that interesting to view. Sure, they might have decent level design in some cases, but they don't push the boundaries of design. They're just so generic Mario, that they don't seem very interesting to watch. There's a reason Mario games themselves have a new gimmick every level, and that's because generic 'grassland, cave and ghost house' levels can't really carry a game well for viewing over about 80 levels. Super Mario Omega, no offence is one of these games. I just got bored to sleep by how long it took to get going, and how overly standard the design of the game was.
One level a video.. just not much original.
On the other hand, going too simple... not particularly a good idea either. Simple games are boring to play in many ways, and they're even worse to watch. A single flat path from A to B with limited obstacles is as unfulfilling as watching a fish tank.
This hack is DULL to put it nicely.
Finally, there's the other aspect... difficulty. Now, I'll be honest, games meant for Youtube play should ideally post a decent amount of challenge, since it's pretty much the suffering of the player which causes a lot of people to watch the videos in the first place. It's where ProtonJon and Azura actually got an audience from. But too far, is just boring. Kusottare World? Five hours on a single jump? That's about the point where watching someone fail over and over gets too boring to watch, especially when whole videos show zero progress altogether. People who watch videos do like progress you know.
This game too hard? No kidding...
However, with the negative out of the way, what about the things that make games actually fun to watch? Well for one thing, action based games do pretty well here. Platform, Action Adventure, First Person Shooter and Fighting Games are great fun to watch in videos, and they're also some of the easiest games to get some friend in real life to try out as well. They're pretty much made to capture people's interest.
Secondly, gimmicks are always a good thing here. That's why raocow's VIP series videos are so great to watch, because with all of these different contributors and all these individual themes to levels, each video gives you a different experience. Something new to see. A reason to want to watch each video. I actually subscribe to his videos, because many of the Japanese games in general keep the level design varied, and you can be sure to see an interesting gimmick in the boss battles as well. It just works, one or two levels a video, new tricks in each one, and you have yourself an entertaining video experience.
This is why people liked watching Brutal Mario at first. Or VIP 1-4. Or Kouhai series. Or those random Japanese hacks. Or Super Marisa World. Or maybe an actual released Mario game. Because each level does something different. You get a quick dose of entertainment for a day, and you get to watch a video author deal with something unexpected.
Cannons, Dry Bones pirates, custom boss... This is what good Let's Play videos are made of.
To a great degree, this is also why team/collab games are good to make Let's Play videos of, because they almost always contain multiple gimmicks, and the designer for each level is often completely different.
On another, sometimes contrasting note... simplicity. Believe me, the games people like to watch other's play are the ones with a simpler core concept. That's why every person I've met who wanted to play against me in a video game, or just play a video game in general picked Mario Kart, Super Smash Bros or, if old, Wii Sports. Most people do not appreciate complexity, and when it comes to Youtube, will not thank you for it. That's probably why many play Mario hacks, they're simple, and everyone knows how the game's general mechanics work out.
People also like PROGRESS. As mentioned before, they don't like watching the same thing over and over. Tough luck if you're stuck, maybe pause the video if you can't get past a puzzle in about 4 minutes and return to it when you're beyond that point. Oh, and use save states in a logical way. Logical as in, not going back to them instead of ever taking a hit (seriously, unless it's required for a puzzle, it shows the completely vanity and shallowness of your ego if you can't let Mario mess up at all and spend ten minutes rewinding), and also not avoiding them altogether. I said it before, I won't say it again, but I'll be perfectly honest here. Any game playable with save states, should have the save states used. I don't give a [BEEEP] if some SMW Central dwelling morons seem to think it's against the spirit of the game, nor what some Japanese player does. I especially don't like the whole raocow cult thing on Youtube who go around telling every LPer to stop using save states altogether. Oh, and save when it's practical please. I don't like people spending hours retracing their steps lost or annoyed after making a tiny mistake. It's not good viewing entertainment.
Finally, the last important thing about what makes a good game to watch, and that is probably difficulty. Now, too difficult is as bad as a game being too easy (see Super Kusottare World example above), but let's be honest here, a good deal of the Let's Play community sprang up due to people enjoying the anger and suffering of people playing difficult video games. This is why Kaizo Mario World and I Wanna Be the Guy are just that played on Youtube to the point of overuse. Because admit it, it's fun to watch people go into a mental breakdown after the insane traps and tricks these games are built of. Easy games aren't really as popular due to not cause people to really... suffer.
This resulting anger is also why the Angry Video Game Nerd, Irate Game and Nostalgia Critic are so popular. Not just for video games, but the whole 'guy on internet freaks out due to bad or difficult piece of media' aspect.
Meh, this just an attempt at calling it like it is. People will hate me for writing this, and people in general are often too stubborn to accept mistakes, but I'm getting tired of all the boring, badly chosen and generally repetitive videos created by people ignoring the points said in this article.
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