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. Well, this is the earliest game I'm aware of that used that layout...
And then there is Bolo, the one game I wish there was a modern-day version of that is remotely similar: https://archive.org/details/BoloMacintosh (Wish this was the color version, but anyway... It was a network tank battle game where you could capture points and build autotargeting defense turrets by harvesting trees via sending out your tank pilot (who was then vulnerable and could get killed, the respawn penalty was not trivial as I recall), it was INCREDIBLY fun at the time, literally hours in the computer lab with a group of other nerds)
It's amazing that I can even give other people a hands-on look at this stuff in their own browser. It's too bad that I can't show off the early network-gaming the same way (firing up Bolo or NetTrek in different browsers on the same LAN... It's probably possible to do, right?)
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.
Emulators don't tell the whole story. Sometimes features depend on the physical game, as in the case of mario tennis and the n64 transfer pak https://youtu.be/QbRkBTMRxZQ?t=653
Which is why I am a big fan of Analogue which is doing hardware level and accurate emulation via FPGAs. Hopefully they will be able to get through the PS1/N64/Saturn. After that, things become quite a bit more complicated due to increased complexity.
Also, there are quite a few really good emulators that do handle the vast majority of games and probably could be enhanced to cover the remaining incompatibility. The question is whether there is a enough incentive to do so.
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 solar sensor on it, and also you don't get the sense of how dark the game boy advance's screen is. Or another example is Trace Memory for the Nintendo DS, which made use of the fact that the DS can close like a book (to simulate stamping on an ink pad) or that the screen is reflective when closed at an angle (to cause two screens to reflect into each other to make a single word.)
It works to show a boosted version of the original game, but something like sprite flicker or having to use passwords to continue gets dropped out. Or something like the dreamcast's VMU, which displays info on it as you play or can be used for minigames to boost the character in the main game.
The games kind of get divorced from the hardware and media they were played on, which reduces them some.
As someone who has spent thousands of hours archiving documents related to certain old computers and writing a few emulators, I have to admit your comment is irritating to me.
Of course, emulation is going to lose something compared to the original experience; nobody knows better than the person writing the emulator. But nobody is stepping up to build the exact reproduction that you are holding out for. Even if someone came along and built reproduction controllers and cabinets, would you be willing to spend the money for them?
It is far better to capture the ROMs and 90% of the experience than to let it all slip away because of purity issues.
Besides, part of the TRS-80 experience was unreliable behavior. I'm quite glad that emulators don't attempt to reproduce it.
How about a VR game where you play games on these emulators as if you're using their original consoles with a TV/etc appropriate for the time? Get a game off a virtual game shelf and put it in the NES/Atari/etc, maybe even emulating the cartridge not registering at first. Theoretically you could even emulate things like the crooked cartridge trick in N64 games (if you're unfamiliar: https://glitchcity.info/wiki/Nintendo_64_crooked_cartridge )
This is absolutely true, however, I favor availability over attempting to recreate the experience perfectly. There is, in fact, no perfect way to recreate the experience because everyone’s experience differs. I played 8- and 16- and even 32-bit systems over RF on a 19” Magnavox, recording gameplay to VHS. Others may have gotten Ridge Racer secondhand and never had the custom controller. A CRT was integral to my experience, but is impractical for most people.
I enjoy retro gaming and go through stupid lengths to get classic systems looking good on modern displays. It’s expensive, takes up a ton of space, and requires a depth of knowledge in broadcast standards and signal processing beyond what most are willing to dig into.
When I want to sit down and enjoy a favorite game with my kids, Virtual Console, Classic/Mini systems, or emulators (software or hardware) allow us to focus on having fun together. Cycle accurate reproduction doesn’t come into play.
> 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.
To a lesser extent, the same goes for cinema, but there's no question that we're preserving cinematic history by continuing to make Citizen Kane available.
So you're saying that if I emulate I can not only play these older games, but I also don't have to deal with limiting hardware and annoying gimmicks? Count me in!
I have a feeling only a relative handful of games would suffer from emulation the way you describe. Mainly those that came bundled with some kind of proprietary peripheral. The vast majority of games work just fine through emulation.
The article is about the value of youtube lets play videos as secondary documentation. There is no mention of emulation. Some lets play videos feature emulated games but some others capture from original hardware.
The article also raises a good point (that I think echos your sentiment) about how lets play videos include some amount of the context that the game was played in. Even with the exact artifact, something is lost when it is transplanted to Now.
I've been a gamer for 30 years and I don't remember a single game where the controller or hardware matter so much that a "Let's Play" wouldn't do it justice.
I can think of maybe 2 or 3 games total with a meaningful gimmick that needed specific hardware or control schemes to really "work". Losing it diminishes the game but doesn't completely invalidate it, so it's sad but it's not really the case for the thousands of other games I've played. Better to have the original game archived as an LP, perhaps even an LP that tries to capture the essence of the gimmick for people who can't experience it. I think we're entering a space now where this is a concern for more games though - an LP or emulated gameplay for experimental VR games or games with custom controllers may not live up to the experience at all, which is unfortunate, but not really avoidable.
The most easily understood example is 999, a game for the Nintendo DS that utilized the two-screens quirk of the system for narrative purposes. It was later ported to mobile and those versions had to drop the twist since there was no way to express it on other platforms. (To briefly summarize, the two screens represented separate timelines and the DS's constraint of only allowing touch input on one screen meant that whatever you saw on that screen was the only thing you could actively participate in)
Does YouTube have any incentive to “preserve” anything once it costs them more money than it brings in? If not, maybe it's a little early to say they are actually preserving anything. (The article does kind of acknowledge this.) Maybe its real role is as a link in a chain that leads to /r/datahoarders
Isn't this true of any entity? Even a Museum will eventually have to pay bills and have to decide to downsize or make changes. Even government funded preservation can have voters decide it isn't worth the costs and preservation can be dropped.
I do think private companies will be the ones most fastest to drop preservation and the ones least likely to look for external entity to swap preservation with, thus making YouTube worse than a museum.
I don't think this is a fair comparison as a museum is normally opened with the sole desire of preserving history ( Profit is often desired but not the incentive for opening )
Do you think google bought YouTube originally to preserve history or to create a new line of profit and enhance its brand?
I think you’re looking at it the wrong way. YouTube is not preserving video game history by providing a place to host these videos. Instead, they’re offering an incentive for people to create these videos that are currently hosted on YouTube but will eventually be archived somewhere else.
In other words, YouTube is somewhat responsible for the creation of this new content, but has no expectation or responsibility to maintain its legacy.
And the same thing can be said for any type of videos, not just video games videos. YouTube gave an incentive (not necessarily monetary incentive) to preserve something to those who previously wouldn't if such a service didn't exist.
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 embedded and would be still working. If the video wasn't there anymore, that usually means the content isn't there anymore. It's almost worse than dead hyperlinks because it's almost always supplemental content that references a video that can't be accessed anymore. :(
That being said, it's a net-positive when it comes to content created. The internet wouldn't be as crazy without YouTube, so thanks for that.
In nearly all of those cases, the content was removed because either the uploader wanted it removed, or the owner of the intellectual property in the video wanted it removed.
In both of those cases, I don't see how this is Youtube's fault or decentralized hosting would be better.
In the first case (uploader wants it gone) you have a sticky situation where loosely managed websites refuse (or can't) respond to requests to remove, which can start interfering with various laws in various places.
In the second case, where IP has been violated, those same loosely managed sites run significant legal risk of lawsuit by not responding.
From the perspective of a content owner or video creator, why would you want your work decentrally stored in places that you can't control it?
The other angles here have to do with monetization, too. When you use youtube, you can serve user aware ads and track who is watching your video as it spreads. If it is self-hosted, your content has been stolen and is enriching someone else illegally.
From a creators perspective I can't see how decentrally stored videos would be good.
Perhaps what we need is a Library of Congress type organization to begin a serious long-term archive of significant portions of this type of media.
> 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.
If it wasn't for YouTube, most of those videos never would have been embedded in those pages in the first place. If the situation you describe was in any way feasible, people would have done that in the first place instead of using YouTube. You're asking for an imaginary free lunch type of situation.
Just a few days ago there was a discussion about how Google is now indexing less contented from a years ago[1].
If Google can't keep indexes which are relatively inexpensive why should they keep videos that are more expensive and possibly no one will watch? Especially as the length and number of videos is increasing faster than ever?
I'd like someone to do the math on that 200MiB estimate. YouTube stores every video at multiple resolutions, and has replicas in data centers all around the world.
You are correct about the cost of storage. However that is not the cost of storing these videos. When you set up a server you just buy a hard disk and some other hardware correct. But Youtube also has to buy staff to maintain, update and services and networks, offices for them, legal stuff, free food, insurance, electricity and every other thing a huge business needs of course.
Google after 2007 has been about doing things that make business sense. Just storing these videos is a cost. It's why there's been a glacial pace in new features, APIs and support in youtube for over a decade - it's not a financial priority.
> Does YouTube have any incentive to “preserve” anything once it costs them more money than it brings in?
They clearly have little incentive to do so.
If there was a law that prevented websites from using technical or legal means to stop people scraping user-generated content, then I would agree that YouTube has not such obligation.
But since they make it hard for people to make archives of their content, then I think they do have a moral obligation to keep it up.
That the cost of storage is falling exponentially certainly helps but it isn't necessary if we want to keep the old stuff.
In fact most of the exponential increase in storage space is used to cover the even more exponential increase in video file size.
But there is a limit on how big video can get. Our perception is limited and passed a certain point, we won't notice the improvement. Audio has been "perfect" for quite a while now, and with 4k video, we are getting there too. There is also a limit on the amount of content users can produce before people do nothing but film themselves.
We may find ourselves running out of stuff to store before we need to delete the old stuff.
If your statement was accurate there would be no thriving game streaming services like Twitch, UStream, etc.
Watching people play is like watching sports: it's enjoyable the better the player is; it's boring if they're just fooling around with the controls. Also, like sports, the enjoyment improves the more you know about the game being played.
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.
I second your opinion. Watching my friend play NES was sometimes frustrating because he played so poorly. I wanted to nab the controller and help him so many times.
Twitch wouldn't be fun to watch if everyone sucked. If I am watching someone on twitch who I think is the best at the game, and I found out some other gamer X is better, I will watch that better player if all other factors are equal.
Yeah this is a great point. I spent hours watching my buddies play and vice versa. My dad asked me this weekend , as i half jokingly put on the Overwatch tournament on tv, how can you watch someone play video games it's boring. I said well dad how can you watch golf on TV it's boring. We both agree, yes we watch it but really we want to play. but sometimes you cant play.
The lets plays are fun for me , same with twitch. Sometimes i cant fully get into a game so i hop onto twitch, or i'll start up a lets play series. Watch 30 minutes everyday on lunch break and after a few weeks/months you are done.
I mainly do lets play to relive my first experience in dark souls & bloodborne haha.
Should I point out the obvious that you aren't friends with the youtuber doing the Let's Play? You can't form a real two-way bond with one another, and that is the foundation of friendship. Real friendship could bloom in many other ways and you guys could go get a pizza, go climb Everest, help them work on their car, etc.
In a nutshell, that describes my fears and reservations about the way the current age is going. It's all watching and commenting and not enough back and forth interaction and doing.
There's a concept called Parasocial interaction that describes the relationship between an audience and a media personality (originally observed for tv personalities, but more recently YouTube and internet ones apply too).
"Viewers or listeners come to feel and consider media personalities almost as friends."
You're not friends with the cast of a TV show either. Game streaming can be much more interactive. I follow a player on YouTube who plays XCOM 2. His followers build the characters, write their biographies and so forth. Then the characters appear in the game and their authors contribute diaries about what happens to the characters in-game ... and since XCOM 2 has a "bond" mechanic, and since it takes 100+ hours to play through, and since unlike other games it's very common for characters to get killed in-game, the experiences can be pretty rich. It's just a bunch of self-organized randos on the internet, not friendship or community, but as far as what you can get out of staring at screens it's near the top in terms of interactivity.
It’s different but similar. Streamers usually build a community around their streams, and this is the part that is equivalent to the friendship part in the “physical let’s play”.
One way to look at these communities is that in many ways they are similar to IRC, except the interactions take place in twitch chat and discord. For example, the one game streamer I follow I certainly wouldn't consider a friend, but I do have some friends I have found through the community (in the same loose internet friend sense as some of the people i met through IRC and still talk to). Just like IRC channels were formed around a common theme/topic, these communities are formed around a 'personality' and shared videos.
For a technical equivalent to this, look at the EEVBlog forums. It's arguably the premiere forum online for hobby electronics discussion, but a lot of it also revolves around the EEVBlog YouTube videos. There are some people who don't watch, but they are in the minority.
I wonder if async forum communication / semi-interactive celebrities can adequately replace the 'piece' of human interaction that makes prisoners go insane in solitary confinement. I'm sure we'll find out soon.
Call me old-fashioned, but I often prefer screenshot-based LPs. LParchive is a great resource for those.
I did enjoy Void Burger's video LP of Silent Hill but I liked that she used subtitles for commentary instead of her voice (I think the only time she spoke was to grumble after a particularly frustrating game over).
This is something I've always wished for. That way, I could turn off the annoying background music that makes it hard to hear what's being said, or if there's a copyright strike against some music, only the music track gets deleted.
Unfortunately disk space is still expensive and rather limited, its unfeasible to really preserve YouTube in any meaningful sense. Maybe someday, like Google Video, YouTube videos will disappear forever.
Perhaps we may have a data revolution before the point of having to delete this old content arrives. I remember watching something on the possibility of storing data within DNA ( the long-term storage possibilities looked very promising not that long ago ).
Is there any other exciting tech which may be on the horizon / advancements in this field?
Owing to that I simply no longer have space or money to repair my older consoles, I've often turned to these let's plays to relive some of my favorite video games.
With every new console generation, backwards compatibility is discussed as one of the main points of contention, yet continually it is shelved. Because of this, I am skeptical of the rumors of the supposed universal compatibility that the Playstation 5 may have.
I will note, as someone who hasn't played since the 360, that Xbox appears to be taking steps in the right direction. I hope that continues to put pressure on Sony to allow their own games to be compatible with the new consoles, and maybe Nintendo as well to offer better virtual console offerings (a long shot, I'm sure).
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.
I love Let's Plays, I basically grew up watching them. As a kid a little interested in video games, they gave me a lot of context of how games changed overtime (how the transition to 3D affect Mario, Sonic, and Zelda), which gradually lead me into Computer Science.
I only had a few friends as interested in video games as I was, so it was huge to see these people who knew everything about their favorite games. And most importantly, Let's Plays are really casual, the people who commentate are funny, and it feels like hanging out on someone's couch. I remember when I accompanied my mom to her spin class, I was reminded a lot of Let's Plays - the instructor would give some commentary to a shared enjoyed activity.
Readit News
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. Well, this is the earliest game I'm aware of that used that layout...
Here's The Dungeon Revealed, an early Mac dungeon-crawler I also spent a lot of time in: https://archive.org/details/TheDungeonRevealedMacintosh
Here's Crystal Quest, the first color Mac game (although the emulation is in black&white which was also supported): https://archive.org/details/CrystalQuest_2_2_5M
Here's NetTrek, one of the first LAN multiplayer games I ever played (was fun!): https://archive.org/details/NetTrekTheRealVersionMacintosh
And then there is Bolo, the one game I wish there was a modern-day version of that is remotely similar: https://archive.org/details/BoloMacintosh (Wish this was the color version, but anyway... It was a network tank battle game where you could capture points and build autotargeting defense turrets by harvesting trees via sending out your tank pilot (who was then vulnerable and could get killed, the respawn penalty was not trivial as I recall), it was INCREDIBLY fun at the time, literally hours in the computer lab with a group of other nerds)
It's amazing that I can even give other people a hands-on look at this stuff in their own browser. It's too bad that I can't show off the early network-gaming the same way (firing up Bolo or NetTrek in different browsers on the same LAN... It's probably possible to do, right?)
I've been toying with Libgdx and have been thinking about a multiplayeror enhanced Bolo.
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.
Also, there are quite a few really good emulators that do handle the vast majority of games and probably could be enhanced to cover the remaining incompatibility. The question is whether there is a enough incentive to do so.
Like you can't emulate Boktai without the solar sensor on it, and also you don't get the sense of how dark the game boy advance's screen is. Or another example is Trace Memory for the Nintendo DS, which made use of the fact that the DS can close like a book (to simulate stamping on an ink pad) or that the screen is reflective when closed at an angle (to cause two screens to reflect into each other to make a single word.)
It works to show a boosted version of the original game, but something like sprite flicker or having to use passwords to continue gets dropped out. Or something like the dreamcast's VMU, which displays info on it as you play or can be used for minigames to boost the character in the main game.
The games kind of get divorced from the hardware and media they were played on, which reduces them some.
Of course, emulation is going to lose something compared to the original experience; nobody knows better than the person writing the emulator. But nobody is stepping up to build the exact reproduction that you are holding out for. Even if someone came along and built reproduction controllers and cabinets, would you be willing to spend the money for them?
It is far better to capture the ROMs and 90% of the experience than to let it all slip away because of purity issues.
Besides, part of the TRS-80 experience was unreliable behavior. I'm quite glad that emulators don't attempt to reproduce it.
This is absolutely true, however, I favor availability over attempting to recreate the experience perfectly. There is, in fact, no perfect way to recreate the experience because everyone’s experience differs. I played 8- and 16- and even 32-bit systems over RF on a 19” Magnavox, recording gameplay to VHS. Others may have gotten Ridge Racer secondhand and never had the custom controller. A CRT was integral to my experience, but is impractical for most people.
I enjoy retro gaming and go through stupid lengths to get classic systems looking good on modern displays. It’s expensive, takes up a ton of space, and requires a depth of knowledge in broadcast standards and signal processing beyond what most are willing to dig into.
When I want to sit down and enjoy a favorite game with my kids, Virtual Console, Classic/Mini systems, or emulators (software or hardware) allow us to focus on having fun together. Cycle accurate reproduction doesn’t come into play.
To a lesser extent, the same goes for cinema, but there's no question that we're preserving cinematic history by continuing to make Citizen Kane available.
Nothing like writing down forty Japanese hieroglyphs in ‘Captain Tsubasa.’
I don't have a remote knowledge of Japanese of any of Asian languages.
The article also raises a good point (that I think echos your sentiment) about how lets play videos include some amount of the context that the game was played in. Even with the exact artifact, something is lost when it is transplanted to Now.
The most easily understood example is 999, a game for the Nintendo DS that utilized the two-screens quirk of the system for narrative purposes. It was later ported to mobile and those versions had to drop the twist since there was no way to express it on other platforms. (To briefly summarize, the two screens represented separate timelines and the DS's constraint of only allowing touch input on one screen meant that whatever you saw on that screen was the only thing you could actively participate in)
Deleted Comment
I do think private companies will be the ones most fastest to drop preservation and the ones least likely to look for external entity to swap preservation with, thus making YouTube worse than a museum.
Do you think google bought YouTube originally to preserve history or to create a new line of profit and enhance its brand?
In other words, YouTube is somewhat responsible for the creation of this new content, but has no expectation or responsibility to maintain its legacy.
That being said, it's a net-positive when it comes to content created. The internet wouldn't be as crazy without YouTube, so thanks for that.
In both of those cases, I don't see how this is Youtube's fault or decentralized hosting would be better.
In the first case (uploader wants it gone) you have a sticky situation where loosely managed websites refuse (or can't) respond to requests to remove, which can start interfering with various laws in various places.
In the second case, where IP has been violated, those same loosely managed sites run significant legal risk of lawsuit by not responding.
From the perspective of a content owner or video creator, why would you want your work decentrally stored in places that you can't control it?
The other angles here have to do with monetization, too. When you use youtube, you can serve user aware ads and track who is watching your video as it spreads. If it is self-hosted, your content has been stolen and is enriching someone else illegally.
From a creators perspective I can't see how decentrally stored videos would be good.
Perhaps what we need is a Library of Congress type organization to begin a serious long-term archive of significant portions of this type of media.
If it wasn't for YouTube, most of those videos never would have been embedded in those pages in the first place. If the situation you describe was in any way feasible, people would have done that in the first place instead of using YouTube. You're asking for an imaginary free lunch type of situation.
It's totally worth them storing the data given the marginal cost.
A 10TiB HDD is only 150$ retail. These videos can likely be stored in less than 200MiB on average.
Storage has gotten cheaper YoY
If Google can't keep indexes which are relatively inexpensive why should they keep videos that are more expensive and possibly no one will watch? Especially as the length and number of videos is increasing faster than ever?
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19762907
Google after 2007 has been about doing things that make business sense. Just storing these videos is a cost. It's why there's been a glacial pace in new features, APIs and support in youtube for over a decade - it's not a financial priority.
Where is that? I can't find anything so cheap.
Deleted Comment
They clearly have little incentive to do so.
If there was a law that prevented websites from using technical or legal means to stop people scraping user-generated content, then I would agree that YouTube has not such obligation.
But since they make it hard for people to make archives of their content, then I think they do have a moral obligation to keep it up.
In fact most of the exponential increase in storage space is used to cover the even more exponential increase in video file size.
But there is a limit on how big video can get. Our perception is limited and passed a certain point, we won't notice the improvement. Audio has been "perfect" for quite a while now, and with 4k video, we are getting there too. There is also a limit on the amount of content users can produce before people do nothing but film themselves.
We may find ourselves running out of stuff to store before we need to delete the old stuff.
When I was a kid, it was NES and then Sega. You'd go over to your friend's house and would take turns playing Mario, Ninja Gaiden, Contra, etc.
When you weren't playing, you were watching your friend play. Sure, some games were multi-player, but not all of them.
Let's plays capture that same feeling of watching your friend play the game.
Watching people play is like watching sports: it's enjoyable the better the player is; it's boring if they're just fooling around with the controls. Also, like sports, the enjoyment improves the more you know about the game being played.
Twitch wouldn't be fun to watch if everyone sucked. If I am watching someone on twitch who I think is the best at the game, and I found out some other gamer X is better, I will watch that better player if all other factors are equal.
The lets plays are fun for me , same with twitch. Sometimes i cant fully get into a game so i hop onto twitch, or i'll start up a lets play series. Watch 30 minutes everyday on lunch break and after a few weeks/months you are done.
I mainly do lets play to relive my first experience in dark souls & bloodborne haha.
In a nutshell, that describes my fears and reservations about the way the current age is going. It's all watching and commenting and not enough back and forth interaction and doing.
"Viewers or listeners come to feel and consider media personalities almost as friends."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_interaction
For a technical equivalent to this, look at the EEVBlog forums. It's arguably the premiere forum online for hobby electronics discussion, but a lot of it also revolves around the EEVBlog YouTube videos. There are some people who don't watch, but they are in the minority.
I did enjoy Void Burger's video LP of Silent Hill but I liked that she used subtitles for commentary instead of her voice (I think the only time she spoke was to grumble after a particularly frustrating game over).
Is there any other exciting tech which may be on the horizon / advancements in this field?
Deleted Comment
Deleted Comment
With every new console generation, backwards compatibility is discussed as one of the main points of contention, yet continually it is shelved. Because of this, I am skeptical of the rumors of the supposed universal compatibility that the Playstation 5 may have.
I will note, as someone who hasn't played since the 360, that Xbox appears to be taking steps in the right direction. I hope that continues to put pressure on Sony to allow their own games to be compatible with the new consoles, and maybe Nintendo as well to offer better virtual console offerings (a long shot, I'm sure).
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.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2018-forza...
I only had a few friends as interested in video games as I was, so it was huge to see these people who knew everything about their favorite games. And most importantly, Let's Plays are really casual, the people who commentate are funny, and it feels like hanging out on someone's couch. I remember when I accompanied my mom to her spin class, I was reminded a lot of Let's Plays - the instructor would give some commentary to a shared enjoyed activity.