I decided yesterday, after my 12th straight failure trying to get through Green Hill Zone on Sonic the Hedgehog, that there are games I like to play and games I like to watch being played. Sometimes, there's some overlap there, like how I would watch people play Doom after speedrunning "Knee-Deep in the Dead" (if you can call Doom a game that I liked to play, that is); but for the most part, I have a very clearly defined list of games I like watching longplays of and one that I will never watch longplays of because I'd prefer to play it myself. This is for various reasons, not just "git gud"; either it's on a system I can't or don't want to emulate on my computer (like the PlayStation), it's a game I like the art and concept of but I know that the controls would make me wig out (like Blaster Master), it's a multiplayer game that I can't play because I don't know anyone who wants to play that game (like ToeJam & Earl), or it's a game that I like but I can't play it very well (like Sonic the Hedgehog). On the other side of it, there are quite a few games, like GoldenEye 007, Super Castlevania IV, Blackthorne, and Super Mario Sunshine that I absolutely must play myself and I won't watch longplays of these.
When I was in high school, the very first longplays started getting put onto YouTube and I thought they were a waste of time; like, the video rental shop is right there and you can just get the game from there if you don't want to buy it outright. It wasn't until I got serious about emulation in college that I decided longplays weren't all that bad actually. The best example of this I can think of is in terms of "walkthrough"; it doesn't matter how detailed a text description on GameFAQs got, maybe you couldn't focus long enough to read it. Maybe you can't read English. Maybe the writing style is so bad that you can't understand it even though you can read English. The only option left is watching someone else play the game and you can see where you've gone wrong in the gameplay, itself. Another big thing came up when I was compiling my first list of 15 Essential Games back in 2021; there are just too many games to do A-B testing on. The Nintendo 64 had somewhere like 300 games released for it, the Game Boy had 1500, the Nintendo DS had 3000 (all estimates approximate). Testing every single game one at a time just isn't feasible. If I can scroll through a playlist somewhere, see a game title like Faxanadu, think "oh, that's an interesting title, I wonder what it's like?", click on it, and see that it's 95% currency farming, that's really, really helpful. It's a little imprecise perhaps, but it's more efficient than A-B testing 1386 NES games just to come up with 15 recommendations.
I guess, my only gripe with longplays is that some players treat their videos as more or less of a relaxed speedrun, making it pretty difficult to use their video as a walkthrough, per se. WOL's Skyblazer video, for instance. Tsunao just fuckin flies through that, like "hey, there's The Temple Infernus!" *blink* "Oh, shit, where'd the Temple Infernus go?" It becomes blatantly obvious as you watch the video that the player has gotten so accustomed to playing the game that they take shortcuts they discovered by accident on their first or second run and they end up flying through a game that the developers probably intended you to play over the course of an entire afternoon. And not just Skyblazer is like this: Sonic 3, Super Mario Bros. 2, Super Mario 64, and others on both WOL and LPA. If I wanted to watch a speedrun, I would have searched for that. It's called "longplay" because you're supposed to take a long time.
An aside, back when I was making Doom maps, I would intentionally make them difficult for speedrunners. I knew all the shortcuts and exploits from reading about the engine on DoomWiki, so I always made sure that my maps were as speed-unfriendly as possible because I spent half my life making sure everything looked good. I wasn't about to have people like Zero-Master and KineticBeverage blaze through like a rocket-propelled crayfish, rocketjumping over details I'd spent 5 hours on. You're gonna slow your ass down and you're gonna appreciate this work!
Anyway, back to the point. I no longer believe longplays are a waste of time, and I firmly believe that World of Longplays, Longplay Archive, and NintendoComplete should receive funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Otherwise, how am I supposed to see the bonus levels in Super Monkey Ball or the good ending in Castlevania: Rondo of Blood? I can't have a second childhood where I spend every free moment playing those games, neither am I some kind of gaming wunderkind who can play a game 5 or 6 times and divine how to play it perfectly. I'm just a freelance graphic designer who likes to fall asleep in her studio chair with a longplay going occasionally.
--21 July 2024--