Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Holiday Delays and Other Creatures

Wow. The holidays really got me caught behind in game playing and recording. I like to record during the day, when the kids are at school. I like to be about two weeks ahead, in case of flu, toothache, or traitorous headset microphones. I was in good shape around the Thanksgiving holiday, but I fell somewhat behind in December. First, I was sick, then one of my kids were home sick. The fight with Dran Draggore in Eye of the Beholder II didn't help either. It took me almost all day to kill that suminumbatch. Anyway, I could record at night when everyone goes to sleep, but I find that I'm not as into the game when I do that. I always have this feeling in the back of my head that someone is listening to me, or someone's going to ask me to get a drink for them while I'm trying to kill some boss character. My Let's Plays seem a bit more bland to me when it's a night recording.


So I'm taking a week off. I hope that it will only be a week, but that should be sufficient. I don't like fly-by-LPs, where I record, edit, and upload all in one day. With the editing and the YouTube viewing afterwards (for glitch spotting and annotating when necessary), I just wasn't getting ahead at all.

Speaking of Eye of the Beholder, I had a great time playing those two games, but I'm also thrilled to be done with them, and get on to Dungeon Master. I won't be playing the third Eye of the Beholder game anytime soon. There isn't a remake of this game, which means no automap. Doing a Let's Play while mapping on graph paper is... ummm, stupid. I've played Dungeon Master before, and I remember most of it. It's a lot easier to lay waste to Lord Chaos than Dran Draggore.  ;)


As a new Let's Player, I'm trying to get a bunch of games under my belt. Adventure games are good for this, since they usually take under 10 hours to finish, even while playing blind. RPGs, however, tend to be a bit longer. Okay, a whole lot longer! If I was to start playing Baldur's Gate I and II now, I wouldn't be done for over a year and a half. Having three RPGs done (and twice that many adventure games)... well, it brings some satisfaction to me. It can also result in more subscribers. The more games you play, the more searches will come to your videos.

That said, to be a Let's Player, you really have to do it for your own reasons, and have fun with it. There's plenty who have done it for some kind of fame or something. Many of them quit doing LPs. As for me, the fringe benefits of comments and subscriptions are really nice, but they're just the icing on the cake. I'm playing games, gabbing while playing games, editing me gabbing while playing games, uploading my edits of me gabbing while playing games... and I'm having a blast. `Nuff said.


2 comments:

  1. You might not finish a game like Baldur's Gate very soon, but I've found that RPGs, especially when being played blind, make for excellent Let's Plays, whereas adventure games...don't.

    Maybe it's just my personal preference, but RPG games are equally enjoyable as a player and a spectator.

    I find Let's Plays of adventure games to be a lot less engaging due to their typically linear plots and very few solutions to any of the puzzles. While watching an adventure playthrough, I never feel like I'm going to be seeing something I hadn't seen before. RPGs, even the simple ones like Wizardry, have far more variance and therefore, in my opinion, far more entertainment value, speaking as a viewer.

    Of course, the bottom line is in doing what you find entertaining.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This is a very interesting comment. Let me start off by saying thanks for that. :)

    RPGs do often make for great blind Let's Plays, particularly when there is some good character interaction going on, and plot twists, etc.

    Now, Adventure Games can also make good Let's Plays, and so far, I've been finding these to be the simplest (and in that way, just plain fun) to play through. Again, good characters, plot elements, and more so in this case: Dialogue. I do think my LPs of Beneath a Steel Sky, Dragonsphere, and the two King's Quest remakes, are examples of my best commentary. I don't know how familiar you are with those games, but Joey (the robot) from Beneath a Steel Sky is a joy to play off of. In King's Quest 2, there are werewolves, vampires, King Neptune, a Cloud Spirit, journeys to the past and future... well, that game is just packed full of content and surprises.

    With Adventure Games, I find myself immersed in the story, and that makes for great commentary. The downside is getting stuck. I will sometimes edit out the "going nowhere" parts, and sometimes I'll leave them in, with a link to skip past them.

    I can just as equally get immersed in an RPG, despite there often being less story, but sometimes there are many repetitive battles, picking up ammunition, etc. Again, though, I can edit these out.

    Now that I think of it, I do have fun with both - just different kinds of fun. Adventure Games are easy entertainment for me while playing (and at least occasionally entertaining for the viewer, based on my responses), and it's a good time. RPGs are harder for me to supply interesting commentary for ("Okay, up ahead are some more spiders. I'll just fire a volley of ranged weapons..."), but I do find it more rewarding once I've finished a game. Not only are they longer LPs than the Adventure Games by far, but they pull in a larger audience. Turning your weak starting characters into powerhouses of destruction doesn't hurt either. ;)

    Keep in mind, I've been playing old-school dungeon crawlers, which have little to no plot elements or characterization. I'm sure a game like Baldur's Gate or Skyrim will be a whole different ballgame.

    I am uploading one Adventure Game vid and one RPG vid per day, to satisfy both audiences, and both varieties of fun for me. Or at least, I will be once I'm back on track again.

    ReplyDelete