What's the Point in Blind Let's Plays?

Prime_Hunter_H01

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Dec 20, 2011
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LP's in general, blind LP's included, for me are about the person playing. While I have never followed an LPer from their beginning, usually I learn about someone after they have become prominent, they usually have said they started for fun but since they were informative and/or entertaining enough to gain a fandom they just started doing more and like others have said you watch to see their experience.

To me a gameplay video is rarely about he game unless it has no commentary or purely informative commentary, such as a walk-through or a segment of gameplay. So for many Let's Plays the game is merely a Vehicle for seeing a personality you enjoy, and are able or relate or contrast to yourself based on how they react to the game they are playing.

Also like others have said, it is a preview of a game you might want, OR if you weren't that interested in it before but like the Let's Player and watch it, you may be sold on the game from their series.
 

Mikeybb

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I suppose if you've already played the game and know there are a few surprises coming, watching the reaction on another players face is the appeal.
 

Supdupadog

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Well if you think of that let's player as a friend, like your a fan of his personality or whatever, then it's just kinda fun to hang out in a way with them. Like you just wanna hear them talk.

What separates the good form the bad is when they know to edit out the dumb meandering stuff that will probably happen in a blind playthrough.
 

Jandau

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Dec 19, 2008
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Entertainment value.

It can be fun watching someone flounder through the opening stages of the game with next to no idea what's going on. Considering how much we often know about games by the time we start playing them, that feel of going into the completely unknown is starting to get rare. Combine it with the schadenfreude of seeing someone run face-first into a wall and you got a winner. Of course, it all needs to be done by a person you find enjoyable, but that's a general rule of any such content, not something specific to blind let's plays. For instance, I can't watch anything by Pewdiepie because his screeching makes me bleed from every orifice of my body, but I'll watch Yahtzee or Jim Sterling comment on paint dry and be happy about it.

As for its value as a review or such, that's just silly. That's not the point of Blind Let's Plays. It's like saying Zero Punctuation is useless because it's not objective. Of course it's not, that's the point. I don't watch Jim's Squirty Play to get an objective, unbiased, comprehensive look at a game. I watch it to see Jim do dumb shit and maybe have a bit of a look at a game. If the game looks interesting, I'll then seek out a proper review to get actual information about it.

Learn to differentiate things made to inform and things made to entertain, as well as their combinations. It'll make your stay on the Internet much easier...
 

BathorysGraveland2

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Blind LP's are about the only ones I actually enjoy watching. There's just something interesting and enjoyable about seeing someone's first experience with a game, their reactions to events and situations and how they go about doing things. If they know what they're doing, and what's around the next corner, it loses the fun for me.
 

V da Mighty Taco

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My question is "What's the point in non-blind Let's Plays?"

Now multiplayer games are obviously a different bag of worms. When it comes to singleplayer LP's though, I can't see what would be the point of watching an LP of someone who's already done it before, unless it was an amazing speedrun or something like that. LP's are all about the personality of the player and how they approach / react to everything that happens. When they've already done it all before and know exactly what to do / what's coming, then their reactions become predictable and boring. There's no sense of "Can they do it?" when you already know that they can.

To use the first level of Metal Gear Rising as an example, watching somebody see Raiden pick up a giant mech and throw it in the air for the first time leaves a reaction that can never be duplicated. Somebody who has seen it before, on the other hand, is going to be way less excited about it and thus will make for a much less pleasant viewing.

In other words, I don't watch LP's to see masters at work. I watch them to see somebody I like have a good time, and the game is almost always the funnest on the first time through.
 

Mr_Spanky

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KazuhiraMiller said:
Well, compare DSP to Chip Cheezum and you'll see why blind LP's are retarded.

In a ChipCheezum you'll see Chip and Ironicus absoloutely flip the game inside out, go through all the unlockables, S rank everything in existance and time their jokes accordingly, also Chip puts more effort into it, I heard he replayed the final boss of Revengance 5 times each time was a no damage run, just to get the musical cues he wanted for the final part.

In DSP you'll see some chucklefuck bumble his way blind through a game he knows nothing about, struggle with off the cuff "humor" and generally make a mess of things.

Don't do a blind LP unless you understand game design, do us all a favour.
"Stop liking what I dont like" is all I'm getting here.

I haven't seen either DSP or ChipCheezum but I have found blind LPs that I've enjoyed. As with all let's play series it's all about the personality of the man/woman (On a sidenote does anyone know of any good female LPers? just curious as I dont know any) doing it. Some simply do not have the gaming ability or the improv skills to make it entertaining - but really what is or isn't entertaning is up to the viewer.

The specific appeal of BLPs is due mostly I think to that "first reaction" idea that some here have mentioned. As I said it really depends the personality of the LPer as to whther it becomes anwesome and exciting or just dull.

The point of BLPs has nothing to do with "acing" the levels/areas and finding all collectables etc. It's about providing entertainment.
 

rob_simple

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Aug 8, 2010
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Depends on the game. I was watching Geop's Blind LP of Dark Souls in tandem with my own first playthrough, and it's actually really interesting to see how our approaches differed.

Dark Souls is a pretty weirdly psychological game that trains you early on to expect you're going to be fucked with, so I found it genuinely fascinating to compare my own experiences on a blind run -I deliberately went into the game with as little info as possible-- to someone else.

Even down to stuff like the weapons he chose to use was interesting, because unlike most other games, what weapon you favour will massively impact how you have to play the game.

For the most part though, I have to concede that a lot of blind LP's just seem lazy, but I base that more on the LPer's ignorant refusal to learn what the game is trying to teach them (yeah, I'm talking about DSP.)
 

rob_simple

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V da Mighty Taco said:
My question is "What's the point in non-blind Let's Plays?"

Now multiplayer games are obviously a different bag of worms. When it comes to singleplayer LP's though, I can't see what would be the point of watching an LP of someone who's already done it before, unless it was an amazing speedrun or something like that. LP's are all about the personality of the player and how they approach / react to everything that happens. When they've already done it all before and know exactly what to do / what's coming, then their reactions become predictable and boring. There's no sense of "Can they do it?" when you already know that they can.

To use the first level of Metal Gear Rising as an example, watching somebody see Raiden pick up a giant mech and throw it in the air for the first time leaves a reaction that can never be duplicated. Somebody who has seen it before, on the other hand, is going to be way less excited about it and thus will make for a much less pleasant viewing.

In other words, I don't watch LP's to see masters at work. I watch them to see somebody I like have a good time, and the game is almost always the funnest on the first time through.
I'm going to have to disagree entirely.

If you watch Chip Cheezum's LP of MGR you'll see that personality and information can make a brilliant LP.

I'd already played through all of MGR and really struggled in parts, but Chip's LP goes to insane lengths to show different strategies you can use on every enemy, how to link the weapons into the best combos, the optimum upgrades to by, and even little exploits you can use to get through some of the hairier moments.

The LP also happens to be funny as shit because Chip and Ironicus are really funny guys, but the idea that a LP where the player knows what they are doing being pointless simply isn't true.

Games are a learning experience as well as an entertainment medium and I, personally, take great pleasure in discovering things about a games mechanics or world in general that I never would have known, otherwise.
 

Kingjackl

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They can be good for certain types of games. Blind plays are fun for games that provoke a strong initial reaction, such as horror games or games with shocking plot twists because it lets you re-experience the initial high vicariously through someone else. When I first beat South Park: Stick of Truth for example, I immediately went looking for blind Let's Plays of it because I wanted to see people react to the all the shock moments. Funnily enough, the best one I found was probably PewDiePie; clearly you don't get 4 trillion views without a little bit of showmanship.
 

Flammablezeus

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Seeing people play games when they already know everything about it is boring. What's the point of that unless it's a review, retrospective piece or a walkthrough? Plus, the commentary gets stale if they only talk about the game. Good "Let's Play"ers will talk about a large variety of things.
 

IFS

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While I generally prefer non-blind LPs I will say that watching someone go through a game blind can be entertaining, especially if you know the game. For me at least it gives sort of a sense of getting to relive that first playthrough again via someone else's experience.