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By Laela Ezra
Gaming Vicariously: A Look at Let’ s Plays
Do you watch videos on YouTube? Of course you do; it’ s evolved into one of the largest platforms of sharing media on the Internet. Whether it’ s news, music, sports, or that one obscure clip from an Iranian cartoon that somehow became a meme, YouTube has something for everyone. As many of you may have noticed and probably chosen to ignore, the homepage of YouTube has a series of clickable tags. One is titled“ Gaming” and if you click on it, a ton of videos pop up: reviews, parodies, songs, fan animations / comic dubs, streams, etc.
But perhaps the most popular kind of video, and the most unique to YouTube as a platform, are the“ Let’ s Play” videos.“ Let’ s Players,” as the video creators are called, have gained celebrity status. Maybe you can recognize a few of these names: Pewdiepie, Markiplier, Jacksepticeye, Cryaotic, GameGrumps, the list goes on.
What exactly is a“ Let’ s Play” you may ask. Put simply, a Let’ s Play is a playthrough of a video game recorded in textual, visual, and / or video format. Commentary is usually added by the person playing, who’ s often a fan of the game they cover. Supposedly, one of the
biggest draws to the video game medium is that it’ s a wholly interactive experience. You have agency over your character, you can control the interactions that character has with the world, you become central to the narrative that is this game. In a Let’ s Play, you the viewer no longer have that direct agency on the narrative.
So then, why are Let’ s Plays so popular, especially since it seems to go against the exact experience a game is attempting to create?
Jimmy Kimmel also didn’ t seem to understand this, so he interviewed Markiplier and MissesMae last September. After plenty of awkward jokes surrounding threats Kimmel had gotten from( troll) commenters, Mae shared a video of her parents using the Oculus Rift( a virtual reality headset) to“ ride” a roller coaster in Minecraft.
“ I love seeing other people have fun, and I think that’ s what a lot of people get out of these gaming videos,” Markiplier says. Though Kimmel proceeded to disrespect what Let’ s Players do, Markiplier’ s comment resonates with me. Let’ s Play’ s, at their core, are a way of sharing video games to people in another
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