Since the beginning of the semester, I've been testing the Live Let's Play waters. For those that don't know what a Let's Play is, I'll tell you:
Initially, a Let's Play was an interactive screenshot-based play through of a video game which enabled forum posters the power of suggestion of behavior or movement. However, after a while it's melded into more of an expression of the Let's Player's-- or LPer's-- own experience within a game. Some of them have glitches, others include a degree of original material created for the sake of the narrative they were weaving. A personal favorite which I find myself reading over and over again, The Terrible Secret of Animal Crossing, is a popular one and an excellent example of how Let's Plays can entertain and show how others experience video games.
In recent years, the Let's Play community delved into video commentary, which was for a while considered dodgy in terms of legality. After all, the entire game is shown to all! Surprises and the story are left for all to see-- and without paying a dime! However, because it's all purely shown and not actually played by the viewers themselves, that in and of itself is considered a performance, and a person's performance in a game cannot be owned by those that own the videogame IP. Additionally, many of these Let's Plays are also reviews by nature-- when playing a game, a comment about a buggy physics engine is often expression, for example, and thus it can also legally count as a review. IN this sense, and with these in mind, I knew I could manage to get away with doing livestreams. Hell, Twitch.tv is dedicated to it.
So far, I exclusively livestream games of the Horror genre, for better or worse, Triple A to Indie, Immersive to RPG Maker. I also play these blind because, well, I typically have at least one other person with me. This way, either I or one of the other 'cast members' will be legitimately spooked and bring about entertainment to my viewers that way, or there'll be another person for me to banter with, cracking jokes all the while. I use it a a means to study game design and to showcase the state of horror games as a whole.
We started off with Five Nights At Freddy's. We couldn't make it past the fifth night, which is fine since we weren't supposed to make it past the fourth night anyway. We've covered a multitude of games by the time of writing this bog post, having streamed Five Nights At Freddy's 2 this time last night, closing out this semester and marking the change to another recording location for a time. All in all, I've found it enlightening for a couple reasons. Namely:
1. It's hard to find a good horror game. In fact, a lot of horror games suck.
2. Even a good horror game can have otherwise scare-happy individuals bored.
3. Not all horror games have a win condition.
4. It's easy to find terrible tropes and memes within the horror game community.
I learned a lot more than that, such as how to test audio levels, which softwares to use and how, whether a game will function properly in X settings rather than Y, or if I have to rig up a Z setting somehow, et cetera. the entire thing is a learning process. iI do plan to continue streaming Saturday nights at 8PM like clockwork, however, regardless of my low viewer count. I do it for my own amusement, anyway, so it's not like I have much reason to stop. With that being said, I do take it seriously and any suggestions are much appreciated. IN the coming months I plan on releasing the recorded videos to the world of YouTube-- edited a tad for various reasons-- and the creation of a Facebook page-- possibly a Twitter-- so I can more easily post events and make them known.
With all that said, here's the link to toteslegitstream. Nothing has taught me more that everything is a constant learning process than this personal endeavor, and nothing brings me more joy than to reduce my friends to tears through either fear or laughter.
Tune in at 8PM EST every Saturday for a streamed horror game with commentary.
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