Does Game Choice Matter?

As I mentioned in my post "Old vs. New", recent Let's Plays channels, especially with Pewdipie and Dan & Phil Plays, the show becomes less abut the game and more about the people playing the game. The audience is more thrilled about seeing the person playing the game rather than the game itself. So the question relevance here is, does game choice matter? If the person is popular enough, who cares what they play, right? Well, allow me to answer the question with a question of my own: Say you're a lover of rock music. Would you like to go a Van Halen concert to see them cover Nicki Minaj songs? Same concept applies here.

Of course game choice matters. Despite the games themselves fading into the background in recent years, they are still the core of what makes up Let's Plays. People come to watch their favorite content creators play games, they don't come to watch them view a movie or eat lunch. They still come for the games, but just in a different way. They want to see the person they love beat their favorite game because they want to share that love with them and all of the people watching. It's essentially what Let's Play channels are about.

Secondly, for some people, the type of game being played can affect whether they actually watch the videos or not. I was having a conversation the other day with a friend about Markiplier, and how we love his videos. He mentioned to me how hesitant he was to watch his Let's Plays of Five Night's at Freddy's because he's easily scared by horror games.  This conversation is what essentially inspired me to write this blog entry because I too have let games affect my viewership of some of my favorite Let's Play Channels. I have skipped quite a bit of Game Grumps because I just simply wasnt interested in what they were playing. For instance, I skipped their entire Sims 4 series because I'm just not engaged in what's going on screen. Sims is a game I love playing, not watching and I find it boring to look at. Another angle I can take from this is watching them play a game that doesn't quite fit their comedic strengths. I found one of their recent series, Pac Man, very boring for two reasons. Firstly, Pac Man is a game that just consists of one continuous screen. The layout never changes and there's not much to say other than it's classic, and "darn the Ghost got me again!". This in my opinion. led to a very bland commentary as they didn't really talk about the game but more so about their daily lives. Which, don't get me wrong, is very endearing and interesting but, I enjoy Game Grumps because of its wacky improv based off the games, not a discussion about what they had for lunch the other day. And to reiterate, this is a Let's Play channel about the people playing, not the game being played. If game choice didn't matter, then I wouldn't have turned off the episode.

Lastly, you should never pick a game you're not passionate about or don't enjoy. Randomly picked games can be hit or miss, it really depends on the games content that determines whether or not the episode will be funny so it's quite a risk. I know this fact from experience. On my own project, my friend and I attempted to play Ghostbusters the video game. I never really got far in it so I really didn't know what it had in store. Additionally, my friend has never seen the Ghostbusters movie so he didn't get any of the inside jokes I was laughing at. We were mostly talking about things on screen but nothing was clicking humor. In the end, we decided to stop within the first three levels and just cut the the series altogether. We don't regret it one bit and we both feel it led to some good quality episodes after.

The rule of thumb is, if you''re not invested in what you're playing, the audience won't be either. If you choose to cut a series because it's not turning out as good as you hoped, that's perfectly fine. Artists, musicians and comedians cut their own work all the time because they want to give their audience the very best. If you're starting out, you're allowed to make mistakes because it's necessary to learn from them in order to progress and become better. So when you go to choose your first game, keep all of this in mind  but also don't over think it. Just choose what you love, and quality will follow.