I would never call myself a gamer but I enjoy a good video games every now and then. I’ve owned almost every Nintendo product since the Gamecube launched (sorry, Wii U) and I can hold my own in Smash and even kick a majority of ass in Mario Kart. Video games are fun! They make up some of my most treasured hangout session memories from elementary school until now. But is it possible I enjoy watching video games more than I enjoy playing them?
Just turning that question over in my head feels wrong, like I’m riding a bicycle backwards because common sense says that that’s not the way it should be. Games are for playing, now watching! It’s right there in the name: games! Why the hell are you wasting your time watching someone play Mario Kart 8 when you could go grab your own Switch and hop into a lobby in thirty seconds? It’s this cognitive dissonance that gives the words “twitch TV” and “streaming” and “bio breaks” a nasty coating in my mouth, like the world of streaming a Breath of the Wild run is one only for vile gamergaters and people who know what the acronym “OP” means.
But shit, I gotta me be and I l-o-v-e watching people play video games. Specific people, mostly, but I might just like sitting and laughing at the commentary of someone beating a shrine in Zelda more than I like exploring that shrine myself. Heresy, I know.
The sudden streaming rise of a game called Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds is what led me to this fateful realization. In PUBG, or pub-guh if you want to sound like you just ingested too much peanut butter, one hundred online players are dropped onto a large deserted island littered with guns, cars, bikes, grenades and all that shit you’d find in your average first person shooter. Over the course of 30 minutes or so, players pick each other off one by one as the playing area narrows and those unable to reach the new “safe zone” are slowly killed by a narrowing blue wall. The game is incredibly quiet, footsteps can sound like explosions, and this lonesome open world lends itself incredibly well to tense, ugly, terrifying playthroughs. You’ll be looting a house for a new shotgun one moment and then the next there’s the bang-bang-bangof nearby fire and you fucking dive to the ground, heart racing and scared out of your mind. Where is that guy? Is he in the house now? Oh my god, I need to get to the safe zone. And then you take off sprinting like a frightened rabbit.
Watching people play Battlegrounds is akin to a horror movie. You’re putting all your hopes into one player, sometimes a team of four, to survive the entire game sneaking and sprinting and desperately bandaging wounds while 99 other murderous but terrified idiots do the same thing. It’s enthralling. (The“horror game” take has been done before and better than this so go read that if you want to know more.) But the main reason it’s so thrilling is because I know the people going through that gauntlet. I mean I don’t know them know them but I know them in the way you know your favorite accounts on Twitter and type their handles into the Twitter search bar separately from the timeline. I will watch the same handful of people play almost any game imaginable because I just want to hang out with them. They’re so cool!!!!!
The writers and producers and creative people over at gaming news outlet Polygon are my streaming friends. We’re all friends. When they play video games, I’m playing too. Sort of. Not really. But it’s in the same vein as the appeal of so many podcasts and or even Twitter threads: they are so many cool people online that you want to be friends with and know that you would make the best friends with them, 100%, without a doubt, and you just want to hang out with them. I mostly tune in to their streams to hear their jokes, figure out what they’re chatting about this week, hope they bring up the latest Nintendo blunder so we can all laugh together and really just bask in their coolness. Griffin McElroy and Nick Robinson are chief among my video game friend crushes at Polygon and they’ve done everything from farting around in a horse racing-solitaire game for no reason to making high art out of a car physics simulator. (Seriously though, please watch Car Boys.)
The games don’t even matter! A spell-casting typing game? Please! Only the Create-A-Character screen of a video game I’ve never heard of? Somehow, it’s one of the funniest videos I’ve ever seen. Party games that are not even really video games? If any combination of Nick, Griffin, Pat, Simone, Allegra, Russor Justin are involved, SIGN ME UP. It’s all about the people playing the games and what’s on screen can often fade into the background as I go do some work in Excel while someone rants about the inherent unfairness of Blue Shells just before someone inevitably hits them with exactly that, sparking audio gold that you might’ve only found on the radio or, in recent years, in your podcast queue. Video games are now the table to gather round while shooting the shit and telling jokes on-air.
But is it bad that I’d rather look over somebody’s shoulder instead of actually playing the video games? Honestly, it seems like that’s not really a question worth asking here. I mean, I’m still slowly fusing with this leather couch whether the controller’s in my hands or in theirs. Might as well fuse with other people, eh?
Just turning that question over in my head feels wrong, like I’m riding a bicycle backwards because common sense says that that’s not the way it should be. Games are for playing, now watching! It’s right there in the name: games! Why the hell are you wasting your time watching someone play Mario Kart 8 when you could go grab your own Switch and hop into a lobby in thirty seconds? It’s this cognitive dissonance that gives the words “twitch TV” and “streaming” and “bio breaks” a nasty coating in my mouth, like the world of streaming a Breath of the Wild run is one only for vile gamergaters and people who know what the acronym “OP” means.
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| a very good PUBG stream from gaming site Waypoint |
But shit, I gotta me be and I l-o-v-e watching people play video games. Specific people, mostly, but I might just like sitting and laughing at the commentary of someone beating a shrine in Zelda more than I like exploring that shrine myself. Heresy, I know.
The sudden streaming rise of a game called Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds is what led me to this fateful realization. In PUBG, or pub-guh if you want to sound like you just ingested too much peanut butter, one hundred online players are dropped onto a large deserted island littered with guns, cars, bikes, grenades and all that shit you’d find in your average first person shooter. Over the course of 30 minutes or so, players pick each other off one by one as the playing area narrows and those unable to reach the new “safe zone” are slowly killed by a narrowing blue wall. The game is incredibly quiet, footsteps can sound like explosions, and this lonesome open world lends itself incredibly well to tense, ugly, terrifying playthroughs. You’ll be looting a house for a new shotgun one moment and then the next there’s the bang-bang-bangof nearby fire and you fucking dive to the ground, heart racing and scared out of your mind. Where is that guy? Is he in the house now? Oh my god, I need to get to the safe zone. And then you take off sprinting like a frightened rabbit.
Watching people play Battlegrounds is akin to a horror movie. You’re putting all your hopes into one player, sometimes a team of four, to survive the entire game sneaking and sprinting and desperately bandaging wounds while 99 other murderous but terrified idiots do the same thing. It’s enthralling. (The“horror game” take has been done before and better than this so go read that if you want to know more.) But the main reason it’s so thrilling is because I know the people going through that gauntlet. I mean I don’t know them know them but I know them in the way you know your favorite accounts on Twitter and type their handles into the Twitter search bar separately from the timeline. I will watch the same handful of people play almost any game imaginable because I just want to hang out with them. They’re so cool!!!!!
The writers and producers and creative people over at gaming news outlet Polygon are my streaming friends. We’re all friends. When they play video games, I’m playing too. Sort of. Not really. But it’s in the same vein as the appeal of so many podcasts and or even Twitter threads: they are so many cool people online that you want to be friends with and know that you would make the best friends with them, 100%, without a doubt, and you just want to hang out with them. I mostly tune in to their streams to hear their jokes, figure out what they’re chatting about this week, hope they bring up the latest Nintendo blunder so we can all laugh together and really just bask in their coolness. Griffin McElroy and Nick Robinson are chief among my video game friend crushes at Polygon and they’ve done everything from farting around in a horse racing-solitaire game for no reason to making high art out of a car physics simulator. (Seriously though, please watch Car Boys.)
The games don’t even matter! A spell-casting typing game? Please! Only the Create-A-Character screen of a video game I’ve never heard of? Somehow, it’s one of the funniest videos I’ve ever seen. Party games that are not even really video games? If any combination of Nick, Griffin, Pat, Simone, Allegra, Russor Justin are involved, SIGN ME UP. It’s all about the people playing the games and what’s on screen can often fade into the background as I go do some work in Excel while someone rants about the inherent unfairness of Blue Shells just before someone inevitably hits them with exactly that, sparking audio gold that you might’ve only found on the radio or, in recent years, in your podcast queue. Video games are now the table to gather round while shooting the shit and telling jokes on-air.
But is it bad that I’d rather look over somebody’s shoulder instead of actually playing the video games? Honestly, it seems like that’s not really a question worth asking here. I mean, I’m still slowly fusing with this leather couch whether the controller’s in my hands or in theirs. Might as well fuse with other people, eh?
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