Once upon a time I was a young Cranky Old Man, angrily shaking my fist at those kids and their newfangled forms of entertainment like watching live streams of other people playing video games on Twitch.tv. It was a maddeningly absurd idea that made no sense to me. Why would you watch someone play videogames rather than play them yourself?
Well, ladies and gentlemen, I have come here to tell you that I have been educated, and I am better for it.
I love videogames. I have for a very very long time, and can actually trace that love to a specific magical moment in my childhood when a bunch of neighborhood kids decided to valiantly investigate the strange fancy brown house with high fences and a house alarm that, at the specific moment, was blaring loudly for everyone within 3 blocks to hear.
We discovered two things that day. Firstly, the home owner was deeply amused that half the kids in the neighborhood had come to the rescue of his house which had merely been the victim of his own momentary stupidity. And secondly, the homeowner was in the possession of this thing called an “Atari” that could play a game called “Pong” on the largest television any of us had ever seen.
We were invited in as a thank you, and nothing would ever be the same again…
Years passed and life happened, and in 2020 Amily and I found ourselves in a very specific set of circumstances. We did not watch traditional television, preferring only to stream specific content that interested us (resulting in a basically commercial-free life), we were afforded the opportunity to bunker at home 24/7 due to a pandemic, and we were anxiously awaiting the release of the next World of Warcraft expansion at the end of the year.
It started innocently enough. We began looking for games worth playing that were co-op, and so we dove into lengthy video reviews like this one from TheLazyPeon. While it did lead us to buying the game, we also found that the commentary itself was absolutely hilarious. Watching the review was itself immensely entertaining.
So we began to explore more…
Enter Mike “Preach” Lamb. A YouTube content creator for the WoW community turned Twitch streamer. I knew of Preach, but as I did not abide this videogame streaming nonsense I had never watched him. However Amily and I found ourselves with gaps in our dinnertime TV viewing options and Preach had gotten access to the World of Warcraft expansion Alpha and was streaming it. So… What the heck, lets see what the game looks like at this early stage and get a some idea of whether our excitement is at all appropriate.
So we watched, and enjoyed, and quickly out-viewed his immediate content leaving us back at the point of having gaps in our viewing schedule we were looking to fill. So we began to explore the old recordings that he had archived. Drama Time was a fun and hilarious distraction, so we began watching that, but we knew that even with years of content we’d bleed that source dry quickly, so we kept looking around. We began to stumble across game titles we found interesting, that we’d had curiosity about at one point but then forgotten about. So we began to watch those as well.
We also found that in order to avoid burnout, or because of temporary closure of the testing servers, Preach would fill in his own streaming schedule with games he wanted to play. And we would watch that too.
And we both quickly realized that these games were all extremely interesting, often VERY compelling, but that we’d never play them. We’d miss out on all that these games had to offer, and would be left in the dark when it came to the cultural impact these games had, many actually being genre defining games. It was also extremely hard not to find Preach himself to be a hilarious source of entertainment in his own right, and to enjoy the interactions he would have with his regular viewers.
At that point I went from doubter to absolute believer, and Twitch (or at least Preach) became required viewing for whenever possible. Through him we have experienced so many amazing game moments that we would have never had otherwise. We’ve laughed with him, mocked him, yelled at the TV about how thick he was being, and just generally had some of the most amazing gaming sessions we’ve ever had, all through his efforts.
My list of positive take-aways from 2020 is painfully short, however this is one of them, and one that I am deeply grateful to such a shitty year for giving Amily and I. It is a treasure we will keep with us for many many years to come.