watching other people play video games

why do i like doing this?

i should probably be reading or s.thing

i've been watching game center cx translations on youtube lately. funny stuff.

watching people do speed runs of old, hard NES games on youtube is way better than playing them

watching starcraft replays is awesome fuiud

Watching people do let's plays of PC games on Youtube that I'd otherwise have to spend a trillion pounds upgrading my PC to be able to run is way better than playing them.

no but yeah going to an arcade and watching someone else play x-men was a fun pastime

i like watching my bf play zelda while i lazily read stuff for work

this is like a comfort food thing for me. when i'm super hungover i'll sit in the living room watching my bro (we're flatmates) play xbox, reminds me of childhood i guess?

its raining outside fwiw

Also, watching Youtubes of people (seems to often be Australian women for some reason) play fighting games like DMC and Bayonetta on the hardest difficulty setting is better than playing them myself (not least in the time saved).

I used to watch my Dad playing PC games when i was a kid. He was a big Dungeon Master fan

watching starcraft replays is awesome fuiud

― （╯°□°）╯︵ mode squad） (dayo), Sunday, October 2, 2011 3:36 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

i have never played starcraft ever but i have to say that the 2-3 replays (with color commentary!) i watched were strangely compelling.

I think I know more abt games from watching N play them than from playing any myself, ha ha. He also watches loads of speedruns on YT which I never quite got the appeal of, but eh.

Tell you what, Oblivion on a 50inch plasma TV in HD is the absolute bees, it looks soooo nice.

I watched my old pot dealer play Ultima Online for 3 hours once.

hahaha

did you just turn up at his house for a quick sixteenth, but he was like, yeah in a minute man just watch this for a bit....

Speedruns only really make sense if you've played the game in question through to completion yourself, because of all the sequence breaks and tricks. In particular, one of the speedruns for the original Deus Ex is hilarious because of how much it messes with the 'proper' storyline.
http://speeddemosarchive.com/DeusEx.html

a half dozen of us took turns playing Amnesia: The Dark Descent on a computer around a corner while the main room had the screen & sound clo9ned on it. Plus a webcam skyping from the player's face to a laptop. Basically we livestreamed in the same house. and it was so much better than any other horror game experience ever.

I like video games, but sometimes I like the ideas that go into them and the worlds they build better than playing through a game myself. Sometimes I don't want to face the difficulty or the stress. I find myself watching the giant bomb "quick looks" quite often -- half an our + of games I have no intention of buying. I don't necessarily read their reviews, but I like the site's concepts: it's an emulation of having couch slobs sitting next to you playing a game.

Same goes for games I have a nostalgia for - it's often better to find a "let's play" on youtube than trying to get the same enjoyment out of the game again.