CHENNAI: Creating quite a buzz this week was the YouTube Icon changing to popularize its gaming website, and it got several of us interested in the world of live game streaming and its various allures. The most popular YouTube channel is PewDiePie’s with 43 million subscribers, himself being a gamer. Smosh ranks in the top 5 as well, and Anthony and Ian are very popular for their Honest Game Trailers and walkthroughs. The several sub channels of major YouTubers on Gaming, and the interminable number of views on each are reason enough to declare the domination of videogames over the internet.
“What’s the fun in watching other people play?” you may well ask. It may start as an innocent search for a walkthrough to finish an insurmountable mission in GTA. Before you know it, you are ‘rofling’ over yet another scream reaction for Slenderman (a free horror videogame for PC). Another few hours later, you find the game you were playing, lying forgotten and its window now closed.
Just to make things a little more challenging, you may even be inspired to chance with ‘Pacifist Gaming’. A very beguiling forum, this is – behaving in a videogame as you would in real life. Pacifist gaming is a real option in several games, where it is not necessary to kill or even attack to finish a level. There are several YouTube channels featuring walkthroughs to these games. The easiest way to delve into this creed is through the stealth genre with Dishonored and Hitman – which surprisingly, embolden non-violence. In fact, there’s also a way to play Grand Theft Auto without the theft of autos.
Your next question may be, “But what’s the use of all this Live streaming of games now?”. As Nandita aptly claims “The walkthroughs let you explore facets of the game you wouldn’t realise on your own”. Let’s admit, it’s fun to egg the players to “shoot that dude”, and also the reason for the considerable popularity of multiplayers. YouTube Gaming is clever too - each game has its own page, shows the current live streams of the game, and allows us to upload videos through mobile capture. With the release of the YouTube Gaming mobile app, and a flashy black screen interface, the website aims to garner all the video-videogaming energy to create precisely this - a virtual ‘kamehameha’ of gaming collaboration.
(The writer is an economics graduate who spends her leisure time preparing for the zombie apocalypse)