Comment my Let's Plays! (of Civilizaton IV Warlords) (and Call of Duty)

[ShiverMeSideways]

Hey, guys and gals, I've started doing my first video Let's Play, and, obviously, I'm playing a game of Civ 4 Warlords. I'd really like as much feedback as you're willing to give, both on youtube (through rates) and here (through posts). I'll keep posting here when I've added more videos, and I hope you guys'll ahve the time to watch them.

My youtube channel is right here, click me!

Civilization IV Warlords videos: three eight seventeen thirty-two.

Call of Duty videos: three seven.

Cheers!

[ShiverMeSideways]

Bump 'cos I added nine more videos for a grand total of 17 parts of my LP. If I'm being troublesome, then a mod please let me know!

[bicilotti]

I love useless explanations!

Me too! It was very instructive, I didn't imagine it could be that fun to watch someone else play Civ4.
I learned something and liked the occasional jokes like

I am british! And I'm also bald

eheheh.

Going through them (I'm at the third one now), I hope to add some useful feedback later.

[ShiverMeSideways]

I'm really glad you like them, bicilotti! I'll continue to try and be funny and instructive and I hope to hear from you again, of course

Also, last night I uploaded part 32.

The only problem I have so far is that I'm starting to get a little bored with it now, 'cos of all the re-recordings I needed to do. However, the last session went rather smoothly, and I've decided to keep going with this.

[Haddas]

You're off to a good start. It's informative if a little bit boring in the long run. It's very hard to keep up interest. There are quite a few funny moments and, as always, practice makes perfect.


I'm going to shamelessly copy Proteus from the Let's Play forum on Somethingawful, as I hope there are some helpful tips in there for you. The only thing holding me back from making one is that I want to prepare properly before I start. Mark my words, one day I will do an LP and it will be glorious.

Proteus' tips of shit you shouldn't do:

1) For the love of God, don't talk about other LPs in your LP unless you're deliberately doing some sort of meta-bullshit. And don't do that either. When we made the joke, it wasn't that funny, and when you make the joke, it's even less so. Just don't do this ever. (Appendum: This also applies to if you're doing an LP someone else has already done. It's a good idea to mention why you're redoing it in the OP, but after that, try not to mention that person's LP again, and for God's sake don't steal their jokes because that's just being a fucking hack)

2) If your friend is an unfunny retard, we don't want him in your LP. I don't care how good of friends you are or if he was the one who brought you paper towels when the other kids at school flushed your head down the toilet or whatever. If he sucks, he's gotta go. This shit is serious, dawg.

3) Do not make me download your video. By this I mean I am not going to go to Rapidshare or Filefront and download the AVI just so I can watch your video. You are not that good. If you want to offer that as an option, great. If it's the only way you're offering it, go away.

4) If you're bored playing it, we're going to be bored watching it, so don't leave it in the video. Editing videos isn't difficult. You can do it in Camtasia in all of about five seconds. Chop out you backtracking because you got lost or whatever. You're not robbing us of valuable gameplay, trust me.

5) Don't talk over cutscenes. If you were actually more interesting than the game, you'd have your own radio show somewhere. (Appendum: Also, don't read out text on the screen. If you're already filming the video, it's trivial to take a screenshot of the text and post it in the thread. Nobody wants to sit there and listen to your nasally voice read some text that the rest of us already finished reading a minute ago. Either put it in the thread if it's really long or if you think we won't be able to read it, or shut the fuck up and leave it on the screen long enough for us to read. Both options are fine. Reading the shit out loud isn't.)

6) Do not roleplay the characters. And for God's sake, if you're doing a video LP, DO NOT ROLEPLAY THE FUCKING CHARACTERS

7) Stop thinking you can do that stream of consciousness rambling commentary where you say whatever comes to mind and it ends up coming out really disjointed and it ends up being just whatever random thought comes to your head in a neverending stream of diarrhea spewing out of your mouth and into the microphone and completely overshadowing whatever game you're trying to play when nobody is actually interested in whatever retard Asperger's thought is flying through your head at the moment but you can't stop talking and you feel like you have to fill every single second of the dead air with your droning incessantly obnoxious nasally voice and it just goes on and on until the video ends and you suddenly realize that you've been talking into the microphone for 18 minutes after the video ended and that's when it's time to go see a psychiatrist. So anyway, yeah, don't be that guy.

8) Don't film yourself and put yourself in your LPs (as in, editing videos of yourself into your LP). That's attention whoring of the worst kind, it's rarely ever funny, and it really gives off a sad vibe. This doesn't come up very much but every time I see it I kinda cringe.

8a) I realize I kinda focused on VLPs in this one and missed a bigger, more common issue, and that's writing yourself into SSLPs. Don't. Nobody wants to read fan-fiction about how you became a master Pokemon trainer, or how you stopped Sephiroth at the last second and saved Aeris from dying, or whatever. Even if you think you're disgusing it well, you're not. We can tell. It's fucking awful. Don't. Don't don't don't don't don't. Just don't. I'm not saying don't let your personality shine through in your writing. That's fine. But don't thinly disguise yourself as the main character. There's a reason there's a passionate undying hatred for fan-fiction here.

9) Don't do a virgin runthrough. Now, I realize for most of you that would preclude you from doing any LPs at all, but what I mean is, play through the game at least once, to completion, before trying to LP it. Yes, some people have done blind runs of games (myself included), but I can't think of a single person who has done it and had it not be a piece of shit unless they've had a couple of normal LPs underneath their belt beforehand.

10) Don't exaggerate your emotions. If something is scary, it's not "HOLY SHIT I JUST PEED MY PANTS!" scary. If a game is bad, it's not "OH MY FUCKING GOD THE WORST GAME EVER". If you can't express emotion or opinion without making it ridiculously exaggerated, I dunno, maybe you should work on learning how to act like a normal human being before you tackle this whole LP thing.

11) Don't have more than three people in your LP. It just doesn't work. Three people is about the most people you can reasonably have in your video without running into an unintelligible mess of people talking over each other and about five of these other tips being broken unintentionally. Plus, I'm not entirely sure there's even three entertaining people in this forum total.

12) If you just registered your account, don't post an LP immediately. Unless it's absolutely spectacular, you're going to get endless amounts of shit. I hate to imply that I support reg date elitism, because I don't, but the fact of the matter is that we get a pathetically large number of new posters here who just register an account for Internet FAME AND LP GLORY, and that's not why you should be making an LP. If it is, I don't even know what in the fuck to say to you (actually, if you're reading this, I probably don't have to say anything to you, because the people who do this stupid fucking shit typically don't read the Sandcastle).

12.5) Along the same lines, don't crosspost LPs from other forums. If you want us to check out an LP that you've already done somewhere else, link to it in here (by "in here" I mean this thread). Don't make a thread where you basically just rehash something you've already done. First of all, you're wasting your time, and second of all, this forum tends to be a lot harsher than wherever you posted it originally (I say that with a high degree of certainty no matter what other site you posted your LP on), so just because letsplayforum.com or whatever thought it was good doesn't mean we will. It also doesn't mean we won't, but point is, use the Sandcastle first. By doing this, you'll get constructive criticism on what works and what doesn't. If you just mash the post thread button, all you're going to get is ridicule.

13) Don't do some sort of mega popular hugely successful well-reviewed and well-loved game as your first LP. There's a lot of people who look at the archive and say "Hey, nobody's done Bioshock (or Fallout 3, or insert some other popular game here)? I should do that!!!!!" Hold up there, slick. There's a reason nobody's done it yet. Big-name games require a level of detail, effort, and knowledge that you're probably not going to know if you're willing to put into your LP yet. The reason these games haven't been done is because nobody wants to be the guy to fuck it up. And I don't think you do either. So cut your teeth on something else, and then maybe after you get a couple of these under your belt you'll be the man to tackle Fallout 3 or whatever.

I'm sure I'll think of more later.

And here's another useful post by Syrg.

Know Your Video Hosting

There are a hell of a lot of places to throw up videos for an LP! Here is a handy list, with links, that tells you all you need to know about each. Try and choose two or so in case one site shits out on us down the line so we don't have to scramble and save your shit for future generations, and if you have a suggestion, point it out.

Youtube
Pros: I guess it plays well with cell phones, so if you watch on those, HOT SHIT!
Cons: Seriously. Don't do it.

Dailymotion
Pros: Like a slightly upgraded Youtube. Longer time limit (20 minutes), simple to use, so on.
Cons: Still pretty much the assiest video you'll get which is still "acceptable". Don't stick anything with subtitles or dialogue to read on here, it'll probably get mangled. Can't download the original file.

Viddler
Pros: Has low-level player resizing to fit the dimensions of your video, you can download the original to watch later/in full quality, if you're clever you can use the comments/timing feature as impromptu subtitles (but this takes some effort).
Cons: Tends to fuck up subtitles which are ON the video, is a little too small to use reliably for anything highly detailed/with a lot of text needing to be read. Flash 10, as of this posting, breaks their player.

Veoh
Pros: Seems a little better about playing nice with subtitles than Viddler, otherwise similar as far as I can tell so far, save...
Cons: Sometimes runs a brief ad before the video starts, video isn't downloadable (at least on any I tried: it wanted me to download a Veoh-centric player to watch it in a larger window!), any video over 30 minutes forces you to use said player to view it.

Gamevee
Pros: Best player you'll get for resizing to the video resolution, is great quality overall, pretty speedy, generally everyone's primary choice now, with Viddler as backup.
Cons: Some people have trouble getting it to load. Has a weird player bug where still images make it shit itself, so if you're going to pause on something unchanging for a bit, try and watch it after uploading to make sure it's not tripping whatever the hell causes this.

Bonus Russian Roulette Option: Vimeo
Pros: I love this site. The player scales to the resolution needed, they do HD content, you can download the original if logged into an account there (which is like a ten second process)...
Cons: ...and they claim to fucking hate game videos and said they would nuke any they spotted. This is a gamble to use and not recommended by 99% of people here because they're currently nuking game videos and have said "fuck games". Use at your own risk.

Besides those quote, this thread in general (not just for this particular forum) is a good read for any aspiring LPer.


EXAMPLES OF EXCELLENT LPs:
- James315's Let's Play  Battlefield 1942. One of the best ongoing LPs in a long time. Multiplayer LPs are hard work but this guy knows what he's doing.
- Helloitsdan and Lithuanian Dad's Let's Play Mercenaries 2. It's funny as hell and shows that a weird accent doesn't have to be a negative thing!

[ShiverMeSideways]

Thank you very much, Haddas, for your kind words and the tips. Indeed, I have done a few mistakes that are on the list Also, a Battlefield 1942 LP is one of the greatest LP ideas I've heard so far, so thanks for sharing that as well.

Even as I'm doing this LP, I keep watching other ones to get inspired, or to pick up things that might help me. I kind of feel guilty now for starting with such a big game like Civ 4, especially since it is very long and, as you said, it's hard to keep it interesting. I will try my best to complete it and keep up the standards as high as I can.

Cheers!

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Wow, Proteus is really one of those internazis isn't he?  YOU WILL DO THIS AND THAT OR YOU SUCK...in my opinion...GWAARR!

Just do whatever the hell you want and if people don't like it by and large then look at the feedback and decide if it's worth correcting.

The only thing I'd ask myself if I were doing this is what I want out of it; what the objective is.

[Chicky]

I don't really get it. Lets play, err... watch?

Surely sitting in your living room with a mate and playing a game irl is a lot more satisfying than just simply watching a recording of someone play one for hours?

Seems like you've done a tonne of work though ShiverMeSideways, good job on that!

[Dualnames]

I'd love to roleplay H2G2, kill Internazis!! I think that indeed you should do what proves fun for you!

[ShiverMeSideways]

Wow, Proteus is really one of those internazis isn't he?  YOU WILL DO THIS AND THAT OR YOU SUCK...in my opinion...GWAARR!

Just do whatever the hell you want and if people don't like it by and large then look at the feedback and decide if it's worth correcting.

The only thing I'd ask myself if I were doing this is what I want out of it; what the objective is.

The objective is simply to have a bit of fun, and if someone likes the videos and some people actually find them informative and helpful, all the better! I don't consider myself a god among gamers so much so that I will make these for the explicit purpose to walk people through a game, especially since the game(s) I'm doing have already been LPed.

I don't really get it. Lets play, err... watch?

Surely sitting in your living room with a mate and playing a game irl is a lot more satisfying than just simply watching a recording of someone play one for hours?

Seems like you've done a tonne of work though ShiverMeSideways, good job on that!

Well, thanks, Chicky. I started watching LPs because I wanted to watch something quick in lieu of a movie that would drain me. Personally, I think watching a mate play a game is infinitely more boring, because I'd rather be playing with him the game or drinking or jumping out of a 10-story office block.

I'd love to roleplay H2G2, kill Internazis!! I think that indeed you should do what proves fun for you!

I am indeed, doing that. The second thing.

Although, technically, I am killing nazis in my new VLP I've just started in which I'll be playing Call of Duty! I've got three videos up now, but I'll be adding more today, tomorrow, or whenever I've got the time.

[Chicky]

I don't really get it. Lets play, err... watch?

Surely sitting in your living room with a mate and playing a game irl is a lot more satisfying than just simply watching a recording of someone play one for hours?

Seems like you've done a tonne of work though ShiverMeSideways, good job on that!

Well, thanks, Chicky. I started watching LPs because I wanted to watch something quick in lieu of a movie that would drain me. Personally, I think watching a mate play a game is infinitely more boring, because I'd rather be playing with him the game or drinking or jumping out of a 10-story office block.

If people appreciate it and you enjoy it then it can't be a bad thing! I must admit i find myself watching video's of MW2 matches every once in a while.

[Haddas]

Personally, I watch an LP because it's funny or informative (or both!). Usually it's games I haven't played, but more than often I end up watching LPs of games I have played before. MGS LPs especially. When played by someone who knows a lot about the game it's interesting to watch them point out all the little easter eggs and bugs that you missed when you played it. I've ended up buying a couple of games because of LPs I've watched aswell, such as Banjo & Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts and Mercenaries 2. Made me dig out my old copy of BF1942 too.

Are you making LPs to entertain others or yourself?

Also I like your CoD LP a lot more than the CIV one. I've played cod a lot, yet i've never noticed the automatic reload takes longer than the manual. Learn something new everyday, huh?

[Crimson Wizard]

I watched LP CoD a little bit. Do you make some kind of script before you record? I think at the start you sound too slow. Also, I don't really understand why making all those useless comments during game loading screen . I usually got bored when listening to a guy explaining why he making this or which games he is planning to review in the future, and similar trivia.