Let's Play / Master Classes Archive

Dear Tyrants,

Please make sure you're going to finish your game.

When you start a game, many people get excited! They remember this game, they are fond of this game, they always wanted to see this game played, et cetera.

And then.. then you let us down.

It's fucking irritating.

Spitefully,
nunix

So, inebriated idea here.
It seems like we're all very much into the idea that a Let's Play is essentially guiding the readers through the experience - whether it be the story, the gameplay, hidden secrets in an old classic, etc etc.
But could the opposite not also work? Have someone play through a game that everyone knows except the person doing the LP? Then they could conveniently end each post/episode/installment at not only moments with audience interaction, but also places at which they get stuck. Not to mention you could get secrets/feedback/advice/responses from all our learned TTers instead of just the one who happened to be doing the LP. A kind of collective pool of expertise on the game, handled and interpreted by a complete beginner at it.

I dunno, it made sense at 4 in the morning after the Vengeance trilogy.

Sounds neat but really hard to make work. Besides the obvious casting issues, you'll have the risk the noob recruit just doesn't like the game. That's one merit to all the ones so far - the LPer knows they like the game before they even start.

Though if Nunix is to be believed, it hasn't necessarily helped some to keep on with the LP. Well, I suppose a safe-ish way to do it would be to pick a game/overlooked classic in a genre they already like. Or to have the person possess an iron will of unbreakable determination, I suppose.
The idea's still pretty half-baked, but I dunno. I promised myself I'd put it out there for better or worse regardless.

Believe it or not, I think it's already been accomplished (EDIT: scratch that, it was a replay :/). In any case, it could work well enough - I mean, it's not like it's that different from the original formula, and there's a certain appeal to reading someone work their way through a classic for the first time.

Actually, Something Awful does this too. The concept's called Let's Fail. Here's a good one of some guy's first playthrough of Home Improvement for SNES.

And here's a big archive of Let's Fail videos: http://aphasian.info/letsfail/

Dunno how well it would work in text format, though.

My Tombs and Treasure Lets Play was started based on the fact that I played it for a couple of hours many a year ago, and recalled liking it.

It's similar in concept.

The unprepared play-through idea is intriguing to me. I was tempted, not long ago, to tentatively claim the first Zork. Of course, I have no right to request the game and I've played it only minimally. In fact, I have only about an hours experience with text-adventure games in general.

Just throwing the idea out: If someone did go through with a game they didn't know. I'd require the readers, who have played the game, to provide obtuse hints (possibly in rhyme, or haiku).

I've actually considered volunteering to do an LP of a forum-chosen game I haven't played or don't know very well, but the sheer amount of work involved combined with being about to start a master's degree and the possibility I just wouldn't like the game all convinced me it wasn't a very good idea to actually go through with the idea.

I could still possibly be talked into it though.

I honestly can't imagine putting in the amount of work required for an LP without loving (or at least really, really liking) the game that you're playing.

For reference - the Word document in which I've been composing the notes for my just-finished Dawn of War LP is 68 pages long. I wish I was kidding, but no. 68 pages, and ~24,000 words.

When people say that an LP is a lot of work? Believe them.

But would I have as many notes to write if I didn't know the game well enough to explain anything about it? Since I've started thinking about this again, I'm starting to wonder how much work would be involved if I'm not doing everything the tricky way or explaining all the pros and cons to using different characters or spells or units or whatever and instead am getting these things explained to me (or hinted at) by the forum. Not that I think it'll be easy, but it seems to me it might be a bit easier than what others have been going through.

On this note, I really really want to like Morrowind, but somehow I could just never get over the hump of the first few hours, including everything from building a character to killing anything effectively to being able to find, well, anything in the game. I was already planning to give this game another crack this winter, and now I'm thinking, maybe...

I totally propose to do Plok! for SNES.

Truth. I stopped mine because I was faced with the realization that I was basically writing a novel about a video game. And, sadly, not even a video game that I enjoyed as much as I remembered.

I still want to do another one but I'm not going to talk about it until I'm sure it's going to go somewhere

D:

Yes. Possibly more.

An enormous amount of work. I did in one update of FF1 what a newbie player might have gotten done in three. Learning a game is an enormous amount of work.

It's not a matter of easy/hard. It's a matter of time-consuming.

Then no, you don't want to LP Morrowind. Especially if you could never get into it!

If you have to be talked into it, you don't want to do one.

I don't mean to be a Negative Nancy* here, but we've got too many LPs being abandoned. They are an enormous amount of work, and are a big disappointment when the author just gives up on them. There's also the sentiment that people aren't getting enough feedback for the amount of effort you put in. I believe these two things feed into each other.

If you want to find out whether or not you have it in you to really go the distance, first pick a relatively simple game you know really well, and try that. You'll be surprised at how quickly a "fun, easy project" turns into a full-blown chore. A fun, fulfilling chore, sure, but a chore nonetheless.

*See also: Discouraging Dennis, Grumpy Gus, Sour Sam.

Uh, if everyone is so overwhelmed by threads right now, I don't see why I should add another one to the mix. I don't have school or any other schedule thing that forces me to do it now and as far as I can tell no one is chomping on the bit to read about Mario is Missing.

I want people to actually read it and have things to say which doesn't sound like it's going to happen right now.

Maybe we should start new ones every two weeks instead of every week?

i did a reverse LP of sorts when i played through chrono trigger last fall, having never played it before. everyone else here had, and my thread was basically guided by the rest of the board.

Same here. I was thinking about letting people sign up as "scientists" or "explorers" instead of just reading along, to cultivate a more personal stake in the MOO2 story and get them more involved; but there's enough LPs going on that that doesn't seem very likely to work well.

There's also the detail that I have a job interview for a potentially big promotion coming up next week, so if I don't get it I'd be depressed and sulking for a few weeks anyway, so no hurry. *chuckles*

If you know how to hex edit some of the game's data files, you can rename the leaders after forum posters. e.g.


"Zithuan", the Enforcer: Assassin, Spy Master, Farming Leader, Financial Leader, Labor Leader

Assassin/Farming Leader always struck me as an odd pairing of abilities...

In my mind, easy/hard is functionally equivalent to quickly done/not quickly done; it's just one of my many quirks. Your point is well taken though! Especially as it's sinking in that the time when I said I could do it will be right after I've done roughly 150 pages of research papers, so just maybe I won't feel like trying to write on schedule about a video game right then.

Still, the fact remains that I do want to give Morrowind another shot and I do think that the advice of people who know the game well could get me to actually make it past the first combat and enjoy the game for once. I think that if/when the time comes that I do want to try the game again, I'll just make a (non-LP) thread asking for advice with the beginning game. If it turns out that I end up chronicling my way through the entire game, fair enough. If I eventually take the training wheels off, stop asking for advice, and just play on my own, that could happen too. If it turns out the game's just not for me, well, hopefully at least this way it'll be less painful for everyone when I stop (and I'd explain what happened too, just so everyone knows).

Contrary to what everyone else is saying, people will be reading your thread. As Parish put it in the FAQ:

In any case, feel free to start whenever you feel ready. If you feel that there's too many, then don't be afraid to hold back for a while, but if you want to go ahead with yours and think you can reasonably finish it then post away.

True, but it really seems like people are overwhelmed by these right now and can't pay enough attention to all the threads. I'm not worried that people won't comment, I'm worried that people are going to look at the other games instead of mine because they don't feel like they can read all of them.

Yeah, but there's usually only one or two updates a day from the various threads, so it's not that bad.

It's also a declining problem anyway - the queue is getting smaller every week and there a lot of LPs set to end very soon. It'll solve itself in time, so don't worry about it too much.

Yeah, I'll do Live-A-Live once congestion goes down.

Kishi is going for the grail.

Then I would say you shouldn't do one at all.

EDIT: The thread will be there. If you really don't care about the comments, then just do it whenever and people will read the thread whenever.

I'd like to see someone do a LP of Hydelide. I think it has potential.

I am being utterly serious. I want to see that game get Lets Played.

After intense deliberation, I've decided to do Star Fox as my next Let's Play instead of its 64 counterpart. Though I'd love to see an LP of it in the future - it's a fun game with more than enough stuff to talk about - I'm better equipped to play and have more to talk about its SNES predecessor, and thus would be able to give the game more justice. Still, if anyone's willing to LP Star Fox 64, you've got my blessing.

Also, most LPs aren't that hard to write, guys. Honestly, BL may be taking me 2-3 hours per installment to finish, but that's because it's a freaking SRPG. Speaking from experience, more action-oriented games like Link to the Past or Star Fox write themselves pretty quickly, especially once you take dialogue transcription and the need to trim image numbers out of the picture, and can't be reasonably compared with slower-paced, time-intensive games. There's still a bit of challenge to it, sure, but as long as you take enough screenshots and know what you want to say, they aren't nearly the grueling affairs you guys are making them out to be.

This is my experience - I wasn't sure going in if anyone would care about my DROD LP, and I took the first sign of disinterest as a sign that it wasn't worth doing. (Considering it was probably better as a GameSpite article, this is probably true!) You have to know, going in, that it'll be worth it.