A lot of y’all are pretty good at video games. Damn. Furi broke me, I can’t imagine beating it on one sitting.
The very idea of being in a stream makes me want to curl up in a ball, but if I could manage that side of me, I’d want to play something with space for the chat to participate. A strategy game or a builder, or maybe a Zach-like (like Opus Magnum). Messing around in something relatively open ended with audience help/trolling could be a good time.
As other have said, a game that touches on things I know IRL would be good too, so, weirdly, the Long Dark could be a good one since I grew up in northern Canada, or Eliza since I have some background to talk about ethics in computing.
So I do not watch streams nor am I well versed in the medium but I have been very passively curious about how the general conceit of it can be subverted or disrupted. I am thinking sort of the surrealist or anti-comedy of the early aughts; Tim Heidecker doing stand-up as the hacky and bad “Tim Heidecker” who constantly flubs his punchlines, can’t get the tempo right, and generally tells bad jokes and refuses to read the room, Neil Hamburger, the sort of hostile or questioning/challenging the medium that Kate Berlant did in her stand-up sets. I have always had a fantasy to go to a karaoke bar and use my time to sing a song to either do a really bad stand-up set or just kind of talk about whatever is on my mind.
With regards to streaming, I would want to do something similar. I would want to kind of lay bare the performative aspect of it or really highlight how critical it is. I have thought it would be fascinating or funny if someone just streamed their job and provided little to no commentary. A stream of me sitting essentially dead-eyed for 10-12 hours and periodically muttering “you idiot” and it is unclear if I am saying that about myself or my client. If I were to stream something more traditional, I would want to stream myself browsing the eShop, trying to make purchases but failing because I cannot remember my password, and ultimately giving up. Alternatively, I would stream the first hour of a game and then drop it or try and stream something I had put down for a while and try and refamiliarize myself with. What exactly was a I doing in Divinity Original Sin 2 three months ago? Do I remember how the combat works? Do I remember the controls? Will I make any effort to look anything up before stumbling back in? No, no, no, and no.
the dangan ronpa trilogy in silence. fire pro with some pals talking domestic and or international wrestling and if i could ensure a supportive audience maybe control as i switch assist on and off due to my dystonic cerebral palsy
I was actually thinking about this last night as and I’d probably play whatever as an excuse to stream and chat about music I’m really into. Like, I’ll be playing Crusader Kings III, trying to conquer the HRE, but the actual focus of discussion would be Iggy Pop’s Mass Production
Obscure handheld titles, like forgotten licensed games on the Gameboy Color or Game Gear. Basically the stuff I’m playing now, but for an audience, and with a commentary that’s appreciative of what’s there to be discovered.
I have no idea what I’d stream. I watch a bunch of streamers, but most of them are at fairly high skill levels with their favoured genres, or have a “shtick” that they work with. I’m not good enough at any particular genre to carry a “pro” stream on anything, and I don’t think I’d be good at running a “personality led” stream. I guess, like @Hache I would probably make use of the power to expose people to older stuff - maybe an Amiga emulation extravaganza, or something with old obscure IF stuff like Andrew Plotkin’s stuff [but that’s horrible for streams… all text?]
I stream occasionally and I’ve found I like to stream games I’m proficient in and like to watch myself. Monster Hunter World being a real fun one because I find it engaging to watch being played, lots of highs and lows, and one can involve the community by opening it up for online.
A co-op game is also generally a good choice for streaming since you’re able to bounce off each other and get into scrapes together.
Yea I’ve saw this happen a few times in streams and it’s pretty annoying as it’s awkward a lot of the time for hosts to call it out particularly when the host has a small number of viewers and maybe doesn’t want to alienate people. It’s very cathartic when someone does call this sort of behaviour out with Scottish comedian Limmy being very comfortable with shouting at his chat on occasion albeit he’s obviously able to given his big following and offline success. I still have a fond laugh at one of the Chapo FYM people calling out a cheater on his chill morning Geoguesser stream as well.
Lol this has so much potential to it. Even treating the viewers as a boss. “Hey thanks for the 100 bits! (asshole)”
Yeah I’ve got a list of a few things I’d never have heard of thanks to Save Point. I’ve spent today selling my Warzone buddies on Hunt: Showdown. Even if it’s not a game, something like the Umurangi Generation soundtrack which I’d never have come across otherwise has been a great discovery.
I’d either do Shadow the Hedgehog by comittee, choosing the path via the chat, or I’d play some old Bionicle game while explaining as much of the Bionicle timeline as possible before my allocated time ran out.
So, I really, really adore the writings of Umberto Eco. He’s mostly known for his novels (The Name of the Rose, Foucault’s Pendulum, etc.), but what I find really interesting are his short essays. One of my formative reading experiences was devouring his essay collection, How to Travel with a Salmon, a book full of nonsensical glimpses into his mind covering topics like the merit to scalding yourself with a defective pot of hot coffee, the Marxian implications of eating two ice cream cones at one time, and – yes – how to fly home with an entire smoked salmon while on a book tour. These essays are humorous in their own right, but I think the real merit to them is how they recontextualize critical theory and the implementation of semiotics away from dry, academic ruminations, and instead uses these ideas to better examine the mundane or seemingly inconsequential. So, naturally, I’ve always wanted to do a similar thing with video games.
Not, like, “good” video games either. I mean, I could do a playthrough of Kentucky Route Zero as I examine its incorporation of queer theory into its narrative mechanics, sure. But I’ve always wanted to take another aspect of Eco’s worldview into video games: an adoration of pulpy, b-grade fiction. I’ve always felt a stronger attraction toward B-Games or games with grand ideas that utterly fail to deliver on them in some way. Games like the Trails series (and how it views entities like the State), Anthem (with its portrayal of bodies as objects to be enhanced and exploited), Final Fantasy XV (with how it imagines a healthier form of masculinity by way of mechanically integrating companionship and intra-support among its primary cast).
I think there’s a wealth of untapped understanding to be found in games such as these, and I’ve been toying with this concept for a while: be it in the form of streaming, essay writing, or trying to become yet another video essayist on YouTube. If I were to stream, I’d obviously focus heavily on commentary, so I’d first have to get over my crippling anxiety, but I think I’m okay enough (or rather, academia broke my brain enough) to read deep into games through some sort of post-structural lens out loud while doing my best not to die in-game every few minutes. I don’t know; maybe I’ll give it a shot some day.
So what I have come to learn is my cat knows how to purposely screw with me. She has figured out her tail has enough force to press my cherry blue keys. Cherry blues take a decent amount of force to press so I can only assume this is purposeful. She also likes to lay next to my keyboard and every so often stretch and press a bunch of keys on my numpad with either her head or paws. She also likes laying directly across my right hand while I’m using my mouse.
With that I would like to run an XCOM 2 ironman campaign with a cam at desk level so when my cat eventually shows up to screw with me the audience can watch. Maybe put additional keypads out for her to press so she can mess with me even more. So yes the chaos of XCOM plus the chaos of a cat and me trying to control the two chaoses simultaneously.
Also maybe a CTF stream? That might be fun, I’m sure chat would roast me when I forget something basic.
My experience with streaming is just a little bit of dabbling here and there and showing off a game for friends a couple times before. For something like a Save Point, my streaming game of choice would likely be a horror game of some sort. Oftentimes they don’t require much if any any background knowledge to watch and enjoy them making them pretty accessible in that regard. Also they don’t require too much focus allowing me to still interact with the audience, and the audience gets to watch me get scared a whole bunch (which for strange some reason I get a kick out of).
Other than that, I’d love to stream some rhythm games, particularly some DDR or the DJ Hero series. It could function mainly as a nice chill stream where you just listen to an extremely underrated video game soundtrack. But because I also like explaining how stuff works, there’d be a little bit of teaching how to play the game and I’d throw in some useful tips and tricks too.
I’d run a tournament bracket of Half-Life 2 NPCs fighting. 10 antlions vs 10 combine troopers, that sort of thing. Whoever wins the bracket has to fight 10 striders.
I really, really like sharing the things I love with people to the point where I sometimes feel like im being annoying about it. I also love the knowledge that speedrunners drop while just absolutely breaking games so: I would probably run streams of a lot of older games that dont get much play in the discourse but that I’m really into or think are interesting and try and talk about them in as much detail as possible while not going full speedrun mode, trying to give people more of an impression of what the game is actually like to play while getting a little bit of the commentary you get from GDQ.
It would probably be the worst of both worlds for a while but I bet I’d get the hang of it.
Edit: Also driving games. I’d play driving games lol
