Gaming videos are often short, unprofessional segments of PC or console gamers’ experiences. Usually the videos will have heavy metal, rap, or some random song to accompany the action, as the player will often PWNS. or dominate your opponents. This is mostly seen in PvP (Player versus Player) games when people show off their talents to the masses on the big screen. So what makes watching someone else play Halo, World of Warcraft, or the countless other video games out there fun and addictive? The same reason people watch Flava Flav, I Love New York, Rock of Love, A shot at love with Telia Tequila, Real World, etc.; the realism. These videos are raw, mostly uncensored, limited edition, and something we can all relate to as people and as fellow video gamers. We may not know what it feels like to get hit with seven headshots in a row and a tea bag to go around, but we can understand how awesome it must be right now.
Segments like the popular movie King of Kong on G4TV showcased the true rivalry of Billy Mitchell and Steve Wiebe as they battled it out trying to beat each other’s scores on the classic arcade game Donkey Kong. Other videos like Leeroy Jenkins! The video featured a character by the name of Leeroy Jenkins yelling his name before training his entire raid group in World of Warcraft. Many people who play mmo games, mmorpg can identify with someone who botches a raid or can empathize with the situation that made the video an iconic instant classic. Even VOIP hosting situations like Ventrilo or Teamspeak have turned the most ridiculous arguments into YouTube celebrities. Typically, these earphone-to-earphone conversations include enough racial slurs, hate speech, and pornography for even the most hardened criminal to notice. Video games bring out the worst and the best in people; It’s a great TV! The competitive juices begin to flow along with all the pent-up frustration that makes audio/video incredibly painful. A great example is the Onyxia Wipe video where the raid leader is being recorded on Ventrilo without his knowledge. A fellow guild member ends up getting into the puppies and all hell breaks loose; the infamous cry of THAT IS MINUS 50 DKP has brought many people to tears of laughter as they realized just how sick that moment really was. Massive online gaming situations make the situation even more critical as real-life gamers become deeply associated with their virtual characters and cases of pure joy and utter disaster are a thin line apart. It’s walking the proverbial virtual tightrope with thousands of other participants and spectators.
The glory. Nothing says I’m important like beating someone in a video game. People may try to refer to the cliché phrase “It’s just a game,” but in reality the consequences carry more weight than the participants are willing to admit. Grown men and women don’t frantically scream for a well-cooked turkey dinner, or parallel parking, but our animal urges are exposed at their core during virtual combat. Shooting someone in a video game makes you better than the other person, even if you sweep for a living and the other person is a well-paid lawyer. The game puts them both on an equal footing and unleashes competition that rivals any great “real” sport out there. The cool thing is that video games don’t leave you physically hurt like real-life sports, but they still invoke all of the masculine posturing, empty threats, swearing, and racial slurs we’ve all experienced on our headsets, whether on a console or on the go. a PC. The narcissist in all of us wants to be better at something than the other. When you capture that moment on video, you immortalize your superiority in a very real, raw, and growing medium. Amateur gaming videos have been around since the birth of Pong, with a huge explosion in PC-related video game movies thanks to programs like Fraps and other screen recording technologies that let you play PC games with little to no effect. in performance. As it becomes easier to record actions on your TV to play on the console, the barrier to producing your own gaming videos will be null and void. Just as everyone knows they have a webcam to voice their opinion, everyone who plays video games will upload their virtual battles, melds and feats of epic proportions, or just some random bum playing Tetris.
