Let’s plays – fragmented gameplay?

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about the correlation between creating Let’s play videos and the time span in which the particular game is played.

I already presented „Let’s play videos“ (LPs) as a special form of playing and enjoying a computer game[1]. The most interesting aspect lies in the fact that LPs do have two dimensions of enjoying a video game. On the one hand, the player is playing the game as a regular player would do. However, the player also comments on his own actions thus creating an additional story arc. On the other hand, viewers don’t need to play the game themselves: they can follow the gameplay just by watching the LPs. Furthermore, they’re experiencing at the same time the additional story arc created by the player.

The additional content created by the player is the main aspect to differentiate between different LPs about the same video game. Moreover, the player has the option to interact with the viewers by directly addressing to them. However, this is mostly depended on the type of game the player is playing. A computer game with a linear story offers less options to interact with the audience than an open world game in which the player can influence the outcome of the gameplay. The linear gameplay allows the player only to react to the story line whereas an open world game also provides the opportunity to control the action.

Interacting with the audience also requires the player to receive some feedback from the audience before a new LP episode can be created. In this case, the gameplay gets fragmented into small segments which are separated by the release dates of the LP series. Furthermore, a typical length of a LP is mostly between 20 to 30 minutes. Considering this, the length of an episode increases the fragmentation of the gameplay by an additional degree.

As a result of the gameplay fragmentation, the content of a computer game starts to last longer for the player. The gameplay-time needed to finish a certain task in a particular game will remain the same, but the gameplay-time is spread over a longer period of time.
Building a house in Minecraft could require the player to play the game for one hour. However, due to the fragmentation caused by creating LPs the gameplay-time will still remain one hour in total, but the player might be required to spread this gameplay-time over a play-time of three 20 minutes segments which are separated by the release date of the LP. Finally, this would result in a longer time a computer game is played compared to a normal approach of building the house in a single game session.

Naturally, the fragmentation can be also diminished, if the player isn’t aiming for a direct interaction with the audience. In this case, the player could build the Minecraft house in a single game session and just split the resulting footage into different LP episodes.

Furthermore, the fragmentation is also controlled by the gametype. The aforementioned types of linear story and open world games often influence the fragmentation. The play-time of a linear story game is often less likely to be fragmented, because the player mostly reacts to the story given by the game. Moreover, linear story games don’t offer so much room to interact with the audience during the gameplay. In the end, this will result in a non fragmented game session and a long gameplay footage which can be separated into several episodes.

An open world game on the other hand is open to outer influences and has more potential to be used as a basis to interact with the audience. Compared to linear story games, the player is on his own and isn’t required to follow the story arc. This results in enough room to interact with the audience. In this case, the gameplay of an open world game is more likely to be fragmented in order to create a LP.