Sunday, May 13, 2012

Watching gaming but not gaming

I've always been a competitive person, right from my early days at school. I've always been pretty smart, in the D&D "Intelligence" sense if not the "Wisdom" sense.

So that early competitiveness got directed at getting the absolute highest marks in class. And for the Northern Ireland school, I was right up there. The only real competition I had was a girl called Barbara, which was my equal in brains and ahead in everything else. And because the Northern Ireland schools were ahead of the English schools academically, that gave me a head start when we moved back over here.

I was only ever able to apply that competitiveness to sport when I discovered cricket, although I was also really good at badminton. (Badminton being what killed my shoulder.) While cricket's a team game, it's focused very tightly on individual battles where that competitiveness can really bite.

But over all that time, there's been the gaming. I'd always want to do the game better. Get a bigger high score. Complete it quicker. Be the highest dps person in WoW. Get all the achievements. And all that stuff, mostly competing against myself. Thing is though - I'm not actually gaming that much lately. When I get back in from work, my brain isn't wanting to go into that higher gear the game demands. I've been watching gaming a lot lately instead.

It started with a youtuber called Totalbiscuit, who is a Very dangerous man if you're interested in games.

TB does a little of everything. There's a regular mailbox, plus he gives tasters of games through his "WTF is ..." series. Those are incredibly useful for giving an impression of whether a game is worth getting. I've bought a few due to WTF is and abandoned thoughts of getting many more. He does a Starcraft 2 series as well, which almost got me buying that game and is another ex WoW player.

The next is Jesse Cox of the OMFGCata channel. He's nuts.

He's more a "Let's Play" person, where he's got a few games on the go at once presenting bites of up to an hour at a time. It's the commentary that make these. They're hilarious, especially when things don't go to plan. The TB + JC Terraria series are amazing and are why I own Terraria. His Skyrim series is why I bought that game and he enjoyed Deus Ex HR as much as I did.

I've also been watching Yogscast and Yogscast2. I have mixed feelings here, their coverage is dominated by Minecraft which I absolutely refuse to watch. They're very silly boys and play to the nerdy, geeky boy gamer stereotype (except for Hannah, who is Gamer Chick). However ... they feel every moment of their gaming and when a spider creeps up on Simon, it's hilarious.

But the highlight found so far is Dodger of two channels :

PressHeartToContinue (aka P<32c) - is a gaming blog where she'll talk through gaming news and views.
Dexterity Bonus - COFFEH Time ! which is a video blog.

If I did this blog via video, it would be a lot like Coffeh time. Except we'd have the sound of cracking monitor screens. Dodger is way more photogenic and comes over as so relaxed on screen. I'm hooked.

They all share a few things in common :
Love of gaming,
Lots of opinion - The Game Station podcast featuring TB, JesseCox and P<32c holds the interest even through 3 hours.
Rare intelligence
Getting as much fun as possible out of their gaming.

It's a credit to all of them that I'm more interested in watching their shows than in gaming myself. They're highly amusing to watch. They enjoy their gaming and include you the viewer in that.

I'll keep watching all 5 of these channels and non gamers would be most interested in Coffeh Time. Thinking of that one with my "Time's valuable" post, she's donating so much of her own time to produce that show to make things a bit brighter for us the viewers.

It's a privilege to watch - and I may well be doing so quite soon if I can pry myself away from Moo2 ...

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