I have been around for a long time. Sometimes, when I talk to Millennials, I feel like Treebeard in the Lord of the Rings. Sometimes a quick glance in the mirror in the morning lets me know that I also look a lot like Treebeard as well. So it is not surprising that I have at least seen or heard of most things. And that includes the various types of video gaming videos. I thought I pretty much knew them all. After all, I have a channel where I generate the freakin’ things.
There are of course, the playthroughs that take a viewer from the start of a given game all the way through to the end… and the player that takes us on this journey may or may not add their commentary all along the way. There are the Let’s Play videos which may or may not follow a game from start to finish, but they usually are presented in a multi-episode format with the creator’s commentary and these are immensely popular.
However, after trying to go with this format for a few months a few years ago… I learned the hard way that this format is much easier said than done… and I eventually abandoned the effort and that channel. You need to be incredibly creative, charismatic, and entertaining to pull that off. I can do all of these things in 5 minute bursts, but then I need to retreat back to my lair and recharge over the course of several hours with junky snacks and watching old episodes of the Big Bang Theory.
But today, I learned that there are longplay videos which are basically individuals just playing a game on camera… and that’s it. There is no commentary. The video may or may not cover the entire gameplay/playthrough. It’s just watching somebody play the game. Period.
Normally, I would think that the whole concept is pretty bonkers, except I can’t tell you how many times I have been at somebody’s house (back when we went to other folks’ houses) and just watched somebody play a video game… for hours… and enjoyed it. So… it turns out that I am not a weirdo after all… or at least I am not alone in my weirdness.
And this touches upon something else… something I have been thinking about for a while. In talking to folks about my videos, some of them have been asking for something more. They were… or are… looking for more step by step videos… and while these longplay videos are not really set up as tutorials, they kind of act like that in that the viewer can see exactly how the sausage is made. It’s like posting a copy of a live stream the day after it was live.
And this has me wondering if there is any value in doing something like this with the Worldbuilder. It would not be much extra work and would probably result in at least one video upload per day. I really don’t know. I mean I REALLY don’t know. I have only begun to wrap my head around this… kind of like when I first learned that Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and honest politicians are all fairy tale characters and that they don’t really exist.
Anyway, I just wanted to share with you that I had my world rocked and I may alter what I do in light of this new information. Just press on with your day. There is nothing else to see here. Move on. Move on.