It’s a thought that makes me feel about 400 years old – when I was a teenager it would take several minutes to load a single screenshot on a website via a stuttering dial-up modem. I was in my early 20s during the whole YouTube and Twitch phenomenon, and I was working for IGN, the biggest games website at the time. I was one of the presenters of its first-ever livestream, a 24-hour Dark Souls marathon that started with me flying to San Francisco to take up residence in the studio and ended with me almost missing my flight back because I had fallen asleep in the middle of the day in an airport hotel.
This was around the time that Twitch became a thing and a few years into the Minecraft-driven YouTube boom in gaming videos, which I reported on with curiosity. Who are these young dudes playing Minecraft for armies of tween fans? Why are so many kids watching people scream into their mics in front of Five Nights at Freddy’s?
It was a new way of engaging with games, one that removed a lot of barriers to access; an 11-year-old might not be able to afford a console and all the games she wants, but she can watch as many YouTube videos or Twitch streams as she likes. I’ve now met teenagers who have developed a passion for games primarily through second-hand experience, only going on to actually play more games when they get a little older and have more money and self-determination.
Livestreaming is now, of course, a deeply embedded part of gaming culture for pretty much everyone under 25 and plenty of older people besides. I don’t mind admitting that I still don’t really get Twitch; I barely have time to play any games, let alone watch someone else play them. But watching people play games has been a significant part of my life. My brother and I would pad-pass our way through most of the classic games of the Nintendo 64 generation, maximising our gaming time by sharing the experiences. I know plenty of people in their 30s who got their start by watching a friend or a family member play Tomb Raider or The Sims, or Doom. Despite stereotypes, gaming is rarely a thing that we do entirely alone. Games are experiences we share with each other, whether as co-op partners, competitors or spectators.
I asked readers a wee while back about the games they like to watch, rather than play. The responses reminded me that watching other people play games has been part of gaming culture since the arcades. Here are a few of them:
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“I enjoy watching any of the Monster Hunter series when I am part of a group of skilled hunters. For my own part, I am so old and slow all I can ever use as a weapon is a Hammer (basically, hit it on the head until it is dead). The other players use a whole variety of sophisticated weapons and complex techniques that I just sit back and watch in awe.” Iain Noble
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