Always struck me as hypocritical that watching movies was always put on a pedestal as if sitting around for 2 hours mindlessly consuming the latest Tom Cruise flick is any more productive than playing a video game. At least there is brain activity involved with gaming.
watching movies was always put on a pedestal
TIL
At least in my experience, parents seem to criticise their children playing video games, whilst watching TV themselves. In fact I’d rather my children play video games than binge Netflix or mindlessly scroll TikTok or watch YT etc.
Yeah I never heard a parent put movies “on a pedestal” and in fact watching TV/movies was only slightly less criticized in my house growing up
There’s brain activity involved in watching movies too*. Just because you’re not changing it doesn’t mean that you’re not emotionally and intellectually engaged.
You’re right that gaming as an art form and pastime doesn’t get the respect that it’s due compared to the ones that were already popular when boomers were kids, though…
*even if it’s one that stars Kevin James, Rob Schneider or Adam Sandler in his signature role “Angry Dumb Guy”
As a kid I’d use that against my parents when I had to get off my SNES. They’d be all like, “quit playing games, you’ll rot your brain”, and if be like, “How is this any different than watching TV?”. It never worked but today I feel a little vindicated.
Sort of ironically, my first real world full time job, when I got hired, the owner had asked if I played video games, and he was then later telling a bunch of people that he thought I’d be smart and good with computers, drawing a correlation to gaming. Idk if his thought process was correct, but I am decently bright and I am pretty good with computers, so that’s something.
drawing a correlation to gaming
A lot of PC gaming at the time required a level of computer literacy that generations on either side would associate with compsci students, or at least dedicated hobbyists. If you didn’t specify a console, that may’ve been his assumption.
I don’t mind playing but watching sports is boring AF.
I agree that just watching a random sport or 2 random teams can be boring. It becomes interesting when you feel a connection to the team or athlete. If you go and watch live, it also becomes a community thing.
Personally, I used to train football (soccer) in my local team in a small town and everyone basically knew all the players.
Football becomes more interesting when you throw a beer can at a player, who also works at a pizzeria, and he takes a sip and throws it back.
I’m the opposite. All the focus on the people and the random facts of their lives and trying to constantly manufacture some sort of sob underdog story around various players is boring.
I can appreciate a good game, one that’s close and exciting and played with skill, but the whole sports culture and focus often feels like celebrity gossip, but for men.
Which is also why esports are boring to me too, despite my love of video games (and even watching people play video games, like let’s plays). Esports just brings that whole sports culture and it’s a huge turn off for me.
I’m not a sports guy but I can agree with this. I’m active (rock climbing and part time work on a ranch) but I don’t personally enjoy doing or watching sports. No hate, it’s just not for me.
That being said, I’m totally with you on the community aspect. I will go watch pretty much any sports live and I get way into it. It’s less about the game and more about the people around you. I like going and watching both the Astros and the Texans play occasionally and I know nothing about the players or the standings of either.
I’m really sad we don’t have a hockey team. I don’t care about hockey but my intensity in the stands works really well with hockey.
Same here. I never got the appeal either.
Of course it’s been a major popular interest during a lot of human civilisation (chariot races in the roman world werea huge thing), so we’re visibly not in the majority.
Yea but most of human civilization didn’t have easy access to futa porn, so it’s not like they had anything better to do with their time.
I’m not into sports or futa porn. What can I do with my time? :(
Stare at the wall like usual, I guess
You could participate in the other beloved human pastimes:
- Dig hole
- Pile stones
Let other people enjoy things.
Yes your 5 year old nephew is very insightful
“That’s not the same!”
It really isn’t. If you want to play sports, you need people to be at the same location and you need to have a field/court/whatever and your health. So you can see why people watch sports to vicariously enjoy themselves. How is going from watching someone play games on your computer to playing games on your computer the same?
Well, you need to buy the game, you need the hardware to be able to run the game especially if on PC and it’s a demanding game, some games are online only so if they’re a console player instead of PC then they need the annual membership also, also if it’s an online game then you might be able to do fine with random players but you may also need a serious group if you plan on ranking up in level. Watching gameplay at Grand Champion vs playing at Gold isn’t the same thing, and is usually less frustrating. Not to mention that highly ranked players can teach you how to improve and adapt in your own gameplay.
When it comes to single player games, like speed running, I’d rather watch a clip of the one time a speed runner was able to pull off all sorts of tricks with near flawless execution and get the random chances of various things occurring required for a good time than play the same game for 20 hours a day for 3 years straight to maybe accomplish the same thing.
Also, some people are just entertaining whether they’re playing a game or just waiting for a game to load. I may not agree with what others find entertaining, but it’s subjective so whatever. Others may have injuries maybe in their hands or nervous system preventing them from being able to play well, though it’s highly commendable for those that have found workarounds to be able to play (like rigged up controllers for their mouths or to workaround physical deformities preventing them from using a regular controller).
I get why people play and why people watch for both videogames and sports.
Watching is also free
My 5yo loves video game videos on YouTube.
Particularly Mario Odyssey hacks. But also getting into the real difficult Mario Maker courses
Kid has completely destroyed up my YouTube algorithm. It’s part of the reason I signed up for nebula.
He loves playing games too, though.
Still I wish I could get him off YouTube. There’s so much crap on there and he doesn’t know what’s what. He knows now he’s not allowed to watch YouTube without an adult in the room, but even when I’m in there, I don’t know what the hell is going to be in the video that he clicks. There’s no TV-Y7 or TV-G ratings on YouTube. And there’s so many lies and fake stuff. Kid was heartbroken when he found out that a Mario Movie 2 trailer was a hoax.
Youtube is crack for children. My nephew loves watching Minecraft videos. He doesn’t know what Minecraft is. He mainly watches some animal shows. Every now and then when i check what he’s watching, he watches some content farm shit. One time he watched this video where they just filmed a small child in a mall and made stupid sound effects and fart sounds. The video had millions of views and it was just absolute brain rot garbage.
It goes so far that he doesn’t even want to watch a movie when he comes over. Watching a great animated movie in a home theater? Uhm, can i watch some youtube instead. It’s a bit freaky. And it’s not like he’s allowed to even watch a lot. He gets maybe 15 to 30 minutes if he behaves
I’m glad my kid hasn’t stumbled into that side of YouTube. It’s part of the reason I don’t want to install YouTube kids. I know the same content is on the main app, but it’s just there on YTKids
I personally love YouTube and I’d sympathize with your nephew, except I binge on 15-minute-explainers. That shits my lifeblood.
At least the channels he watches are usually well narrated.
Kid has completely destroyed up my YouTube algorithm.
I ended up having to give my kid my Steam account and I created another one. So my kid’s steam account is almost as old as he is.
I don’t watch or play sports.
This clearly means I win in some manner or other.
It’s a sport now, so watching to learn how to improve your skills makes sense. I must admit, I have recently begun to enjoy watching videos of people playing Rust, but I have only played it a couple times and did horribly. Until I get the time to commit to playing for hours on end to sharpen my skills to achieve the results they do, I am just enjoying watching the journeys. I must note, growing up when my brother and I would rent video games from BlockBuster, he would always choose 1 player games like Metal Gear Solid, so I became accustomed to spectating.
You don’t have to coordinate with 21 other people, and train for fitness all the time to play video games. You don’t even need to leave the couch.
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That is an easy answer tho. You watch football at the highest level of competition to see the best of the best. It’s not like you go out and watch other dads playing football in the park… Do you? 🤔
Like I get watching esports or speedrunners; I do not understand watching people who are the same as you do something you can do yourself easily.
Anyway, I can’t wait for July 13th when the Grumps start playing Dangoronpa 3.
Sometimes, those people just make the content entertaining. Maybe the content itself is not that entertaining to play it yourself.
Abso-fucking-lutely. I could watch Tom Walker play the most shitty games that I don’t even know exists all because he makes the absurd hilarious.
Have you ever watched Mystery Science Theatre 3000? It’s a movie series where you watch people watch movies.
There’s also a British TV show that’s even more meta: Gogglebox.
It’s basically several households watching and discussing TV on TV.
Like a cross between a reality show and a very specialized YouTube reaction channel that makes up for its lack of content being reacted to with an abundance of people reacting 😄
it’s interesting and entertaining to see how others approach or react to the same problems.
You’re totally missing the mark: many of these guys are very, very good at creating entertaining content. They pull more views than NFL matches on the daily, so if anything, I’d say they’re beating top athletes.
The game they happen to be playing doesn’t even matter all that much, because it isn’t about the game being fun. It’s about that specific guy being fun to watch.
That’s an untrue statement….
Highest ever twitch stream viewers 3.5 million
https://twitchtracker.com/channels/peak-viewers
Least viewed nfl game in 2023, 8 million (also only happened to be available via stream thanks to Amazon)
Was talking mostly about YouTube videos, think PewDiePie minecraft series, with millions of views.
Fun stat: Bitch Lasagna counted 8 million views in 2023 alone, despite being released in 2018.
Comedy exists.
Even more exciting than watching a pro soccer team beat whoever they’re playing is watching my kid beat whoever they’re playing.
Even more exciting than watching pro hockey is watching my college team beat whoever they’re at laying, despite never having a personal connection.
And yes, the medias attempts to highlight specific athletes around Olympic times and make us feel a personal connection used to work, until they overdid it. Now it’s just ads
“because I’m not good enough to play football. You’re good enough to play the game”
there’s a difference between a sport and a media designed to be consumed by the masses, but I give the 5 yr old credit, that’s a good question on the surface.
Honestly though, more and more games really are probably being designed to elicit streaming engagement because that makes them money so who knows maybe games aren’t designed to be played anymore
That’s a bullshit reason. He’s not saying you should play football on a professional level, just as he most likely won’t play the game on a competitive level. Actually playing something yourself is always better than only watching other people do it.
How? Lol
Why so aggressive?
Videogames are a media designed to be played as their method of consumption. It’s a media product. A sport, as a media, is a professional sport. Playing a sport and playing a video game isn’t comparable because they are fundamentally different.
The fuck are you talking about? Playing games is a way of spending your time. Football is a game. Video games are games. Tabletop games are games. There are tons of different games. And with all of them it is an undeniable fact that it is always better to actually play them yourself instead of only (!) watching other people do it.
Bro why are you so angry.
Media that gets consumed can be games, but sports are not media that’s what I’m trying to say.
That is such an odd point to make. If I film some random people playing football it’s suddenly media? Settlers of Catan becomes something else entirely when I play it on a screen instead of on a table? You’re just not making any sense.
We are talking about the difference between a sport and art. Something developed by an artist for a player to experience as the player vs people engaging with a framework of rules for competition
Both are part of the larger group of pastimes. Both have, by necessity, rules. You are constructing artificial rules that make no sense.
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There’s a difference between watching a sport and watching someone play a videogame that you can play yourself on a PC in your room alone. It’s fundamentally different to watch a person play a videogame on twitch than watching professional sports on tv even if it’s physically possible to play the sport
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The fundamental difference is That you don’t have to field a team, practice, meet up, etc. to play baulders gate. it was built from the ground up to be experienced by a person the same way you might read a book.
Watching someone else play it isn’t the same as that same person watching football because a writer, or game developer doesnt write a sport. You aren’t defeating the purpose of a sport when you watch someone else play it, you’re just watching people participate in a framework of rules, not experience a narrative. You are defeating the point of the media when you watch someone else play it through YouTube or twitch. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, like for instance if you can’t afford a game or maybe don’t like playing souls likes but like the story, but it’s not the same thing.
The comparison should be “you like movies why don’t you watch movies?” But of course, the dad probably does watch movies.
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The fundamental difference is That you don’t have to field a team, practice, meet up, etc. to play baulders gate.
You definitely do that for competitive/ranked gaming or esports.
Yeah duh that’s why it’s called eSPORTS I’m not really talking about 1 genre of videogames I’m talking the medium in general so we should limit this to concepts that can be applied universally here.
it was built from the ground up to be experienced by a person the same way you might read a book.
Conveniently, you chose a genre that is literally based off of books. Regardless, games like that aren’t even played like “reading a book”, they go completely differently every playthrough. I don’t see the point you’re trying to make here.
Okay halo 1, the last of us, God of war. Happy now? Not based on a book.
Watching someone else play it isn’t the same as that same person watching football because a writer, or game developer doesnt write a sport. You aren’t defeating the purpose of a sport when you watch someone else play it, you’re just watching people participate in a framework of rules, not experience a narrative.
You aren’t defeating the purpose of a game when you play it.
What?
.Unless it’s a visual novel or something, it’s not like you’re reading a book. Not only are you pretending that all games are primarily narratives with a path that it’s predetermined you’ll take within a short number of playthroughs, but the narratives you are talking about still don’t fit your description.
What do you mean? Yes they do. It was an experience that was built by a developer for a player. Experiencing it second hand is a diminished way to experience it. Just because it can be played more than once doesn’t make my point invalid.
People aren’t all the same and they play games completely differently, unless you have thousands of hours to put into literally every game you’re not gonna experience every unique experience from a game like Baldur’s Gate man.
It was just 1 example. Holy shit.
You are defeating the point of the media when you watch someone else play it through YouTube or twitch.
Not at all. You’re not going through a predetermined experience when you play Rainbow Six Siege (ew) or Baldur’s Gate 3 any more than when you play soccer or golf. Chess is technically “predetermined” in a sense that it has a finite number of moves you can take and a finite number of possible outcomes, you can technically “solve” chess, but we’re not gonna pretend like that means watching it defeats the purpose of playing chess.
Watching 2 people engage with a framework of rules isn’t the same thing as experiencing an artist’s art, be it chess or football.
Watching other people use the tools the game gives them along with their own creativity is what makes both sports and games fun.
Correct. However if someone is watching someone else play a game on twitch that’s a second hand experience. It isn’t how the game is designed to be interfaced with, at least it hasn’t been. That was kind of my last musing in my first post is that that may be changing.
I’m not going to think of everything the same as someone else; and I certainly don’t want to play a few million matches of soccer until I experience every new soccer experience, so why should I be expected to do that with games?
Why are you insisting that experiencing a narrative must consist of exploring every branching path of the flow chart of possibility for the game? That’s never what I said.
Watching someone use some advanced technique to improve their play shouldn’t defeat the purpose of basketball for me, I just try to incorporate that into my play or think “oh that’s neat” or something and continue playing. Watching someone do something creative or something I didn’t know about in a game just improves the experience while also being entertaining.
Okay. That’s to be expected lol
That being said, I don’t play games much nor watch games anymore, so maybe the gaming YouTubers have compromised by enjoyment of gaming. But I also don’t watch or play sports anymore so it’s probably just the neccessity to have a job keeping me from using my free time on entertainment…
The comparison should be “you like movies why don’t you watch movies?” But of course, the dad probably does watch movies.
Not sure what you’re getting at here.
Clearly.
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Where can you go to play organized football besides school?
Literally like everywhere. If you were American you could replace that with baseball or American football or basketball, or from somewhere else it could be cricket or rugby or something. Regardless of where you are in the world, it’d be harder to not stumble into something sports related than to avoid them. You could go to wartorn Haiti 0.0001 seconds after a hurricane and an earthquake and there’d be groups of people playing soccer on the rubble.
Yeah, I said organized lol
Organized? How exactly? “Organized” varies by regional law or context. If it’s sponsored by a local sport union and the play is based around a set of rules, that would be organized enough for you, no? That’s the assumption I operated off of.
Why does being “organized” matter in the first place? Something doesn’t need to be professional league whatever for you to view it anyways. Neither sports nor video games.
Because the dudes playing Football are the peak of talent and skill for it, and I don’t like getting concussions. The ones playing Minecraft et. al. are largely random dipshits who are good at being entertaining, not skillful at the game itself. Also I don’t get concussions from playing Fortnite, just brainrot.
random dipshits who are good at being entertaining
Hmm, I wonder why someone would ever watch something entertaining… 🤦😂
Being skillful at some random computer game doesn’t fill anyone’s pockets.
Being entertaining, however, brings in ridiculous amounts of cash, if you’re “the peak of talent and skill for it”.
I assume you derived these conclusions from yourself and applied them to the entire playerbases of Minecraft and Fortnite.
Good thing I didn’t say the entire playerbase (more particularly, the subset who streams) when I wrote my comment then huh?
Who hurt you? Did someone made fun of your Minecraft sandstone castle?
That makes more sense. You are correct about a lot of those streamers, not necessarily all of them but a majority.
I so agree. I mean I don’t watch streamers period because I don’t have patience for the ads, but my teen gets so excited every time he beats a streamer at any video game (or he beats a “college” team), I’m not going to piss on his campfire
