Timelapsed 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 how Let’s Plays are an interesting way to enjoy a complex game’s gameplay when not enough time is available to play the game oneself.

So far, I mostly looked at Let’s Play videos (LPs) from the point of view of a content creator and viewers who enjoy playing the game themselves. This time, I like to introduce another aspect of watching LPs: the chance of experiencing the game in a way that is not possible for the viewer.

Open world (building) games allow for a very creative gameplay as players can create impressive virtual environments from scratch, such as vivid towns, massive buildings and other complex structures. While the underlying principles are quite simple, completing such an advanced project often requires a huge amount of time. The games require players to gather and refine materials needed for the construction. Depending on the abundance and transmutation costs, this can take many hours of gameplay to store enough resources.

The creative part of constructing the project also requires time. On the one hand, games can challenge a player to add piece by piece to a building which can result in a huge amount of gametime for large projects. On the other hand, open world games avoid restricting the player hence a player has the complete freedom while building. As a result of this, a user might realize that a particular part of a projects needs to be restructured thus requiring additional time to finish a project.

For instance, building a rail system allowing for a quick travel in Minecraft is a simple task. A player merely has to place rails adjacent to each other to connect them and construct a rail line. However, crafting a rail requires a specific amount of wood and iron which needs to be gathered. In addition, the iron needs to be smelted before it can be used. Finally, player can express their creativity by building rail systems of various shapes thus they might be challenged to refine the layout multiple times until they are satisfied.

In sum, achieving something spectacular can require a lot of time and dedication. This time constraint, however, can make it very difficult for players who simply cannot afford putting so much effort into such a project. Thus, it can already be very rewarding and entertaining watching others implement their ideas and following their progress. When creating an LP episode, content creators can edit out the laborious gameplay of gathering resources or assembling structures out of small pieces. Instead, they simply show the progress of their builds over time.

Naturally, this is not the same as playing the game oneself. However, I personally like watching other players‘ ambitious projects becoming reality as it inspires me. Also, due to other tasks, I currently cannot immerse myself that much in a game, but I really like to see what is possible.

In the end, although LPs are not a substitute for the real gameplay, they can still provide viewers with experiences they hardly can make under normal circumstances.