Let’s Play! Narrative Discovery vs. Expert Guides

Ryan Tanaka is a resident blogger, visiting us from his home turf at http://ryan-writer.com. The latest musical work that inspired this article can be found here. (Animated music video!)

If you’ve been watching South Park’s recent episodes, you might have noticed YouTube commentator PewDiePie making a few cameos here and there near the top corners of your screen.  South Park is typically known for its brutal treatment of celebrity and public figures, but surprisingly, PewDiePie was portrayed in a very favorable light this time around: as the protagonist that saves Christmas and the future of entertainment as a whole.  (No spoilers here, just watch the episode for yourself.)

For those unfamiliar with PewDiePie’s work, most of his videos consist of “Let’s Play” videos, where he literally sits at his computer in his bedroom, playing video games in real-time as he makes commentary and jokes to go along with it.  Most of the dialogue is unscripted and improvised, with him simply reacting to the things that happen on screen.

Regardless of your opinion of PewDiePie himself, Let’s Play videos are more than just a passing fad: it’s arguably the new paradigm of how game commentary will work from here on out.  It has been wholeheartedly embraced by the indie gaming community and the younger generations of our time, even as critics continue to label the medium as being dumbed down and superfluous.  Commentators may occasionally overreact or throw some acting in there for good measure, but the fact that these videos are filmed in real-time helps to keep the experience of it authentic and genuine — something that tends to be missing in today’s sarcasm and irony-ridden cultural environments.  (Personally I prefer watching Markiplier’s channel, just as a matter of personal taste.)  A good portion of game commentaries are admittedly geared towards juvenile and slapstick humor, but there’s something cathartic and reaffirming about watching these videos as they progress through the game at their own pace.

Let’s Play videos originally started out as “walkthrough” videos that were hosted on YouTube, designed to help gamers through the more difficult, challenging, or confusing parts of various gaming platforms.  These practices, however, eventually evolved into something more: players started to inject their own commentary, reactions, and criticisms to the videos as they played, with their personalities and opinions becoming part of the entertainment itself.  Even videos of underdeveloped and poorly made games could be made entertaining with the right kinds of reactions, right kinds of jokes, right kinds of comments.

Let’s Play commentators will be the first to admit that they’re aren’t the best of gamers out there by any stretch of the imagination.  They’re usually skilled enough to progress through the game at a moderate pace, but they’re certainly not going to be playing in any professional e-sports leagues, earning high scores on leaderboards, or breaking any timed playthrough records any time soon.  Commentators often play games “in the blind”, with no knowledge of the mechanics, narratives, and techniques of the game prior to its play.  They make mistakes, get frustrated, lose their way, get confused, lose their temper, and, most importantly, frequently fail at what they’ve set out to do.  People watch Let’s Play videos because they can identify with the gamers’ struggle to understand what’s going on, connecting with them on a personal and emotional level.

Walkthrough videos are the utilitarian gifts of obsessive gamers who play through each game over and over until they manage to find all of the secrets, power-ups, techniques and paths available.  They know exactly what’s going to happen at every turn, and know exactly how to react and deal with everything the game happens to throw at them.  These videos are the idealized Platonic versions of gameplay, formulated and recorded after hours of practice and perfection, highlighting the most efficient ways possible of beating the game with 100% completion.  Showing people “the way” in such a manner may be considered a form of generosity, perhaps, but is there really any point in striving for this type of efficiency at the expense of narrative development and discovery?

The vast majority of social media platforms of today could probably be categorized as being formally “competitive” by most standards of gaming.  Companies don’t actively seek to pit people against one another, but more often than not their incentive systems are designed to encourage peer-to-peer comparisons as their primary mode of engagement.  The acquisition of signaling mechanisms (points, awards, achievements) as means of proving one’s worth, validated through the statuses of others, relative to one’s self.  Some signals may exist in the real world, others may be inventions of online identity systems, but more often than not users are forced to play an endless game of competitive signaling with everyone they happen to come into contact with.

In gaming, these are issues that the industry faces every day, especially when dealing with multiplayer systems and communities.  Competitive signaling may increase the shelf-life of game titles for a little while, but in it of itself is never really enough to sustain its momentum indefinitely.  The gaming industry’s solution to the problem is relatively simple: add more narrative content as means of extending the player’s sense of wonder and discovery.  (Add-ons, DLCs, mods, alternative playthroughs, etc.)  Coming up with new titles and new content is the only way game companies can hope to survive for the long term, because they can’t really rely on having one platform to sustain themselves indefinitely.

Most social platforms, however, lack the kind of overarching narratives to make these types of extensions possible.  The strategy of adding more features to existing sites tends to fall flat because its developments are mostly detached from coherent narrative designs, rarely amounting to more than the mere sum of its parts.  There are ways, however, of extending the longevity of platform systems by focusing on the lesser known areas of the user’s “journey” into newly built worlds.

The User’s Journey

Gamification expert Yu-kai Chou explains the experience of video game players as a 4 step process — Discovery, Onboarding, Scaffolding, and End-Game.  Broadly speaking:

• Discovery is the marketing and outreach effort that goes into trying to get people to take a chance on your site.

• Onboarding is the process of educating and training the user to use your site more effectively.

• Scaffolding is the phase where the user tries to accomplish as many objectives as possible, earning victories and achievements.

• The End Game is where the user feels as if they’ve accomplished as much as they could within the game system, turning to other means of keeping themselves entertained.

Well-designed game systems manage to integrate an overarching narrative of the product into the user’s experience every step of the way.  When the user first hears about the game, the story has already begun: play the game to save the world, fight for your freedom, explore regions of the universe seldom seen, etc.  The onboarding process is then just a continuation of the story: you learn how to move, shoot, jump, interact and collect things so that you can accomplish what the game has set you up to do.  The scaffolding phase include most of the exhilarating parts of the game where your skills are put to the test: winning, accomplishing your goals, reaching your objectives.  The End Game is the point where narrative development ends, transitioning the player from following a linear path into experiencing the site in a more open-ended way.

All too often, platforms have a tendency to rush through the first few steps, eager to push the user all the way into the End Game as quickly as possible.  The End Game is where most of the content, interactions, and features lie for most social platforms, so companies have a tendency to treat the Discovery and Onboarding stages as mere afterthoughts rather than as a part of their core design process.  Generally speaking, however, most platforms would probably find it beneficial to allocate at least some of their resources to the first few steps, since it serves as a way to build greater immersive momentum and attachment to the platform itself.

The gradual introduction of progress bars and achievements into social systems (e.g. LinkedIn’s profile completion meter, Facebook Likes, Twitter follower counts, etc.) is reflective of social media companies working their way backwards toward the Scaffolding stages, in an attempt to reach out to new users and expand their market presence.  In today’s environment, where anyone and everyone could potentially build an app and start their own company, focusing on the initial modes of interaction is probably a good strategy of maintaining a competitive edge over the others.  The majority of the core users on popular social platforms, however, have been sitting around in the End Game for a while now, feeling quite existential and eager to jump into the next big thing that happens to come along.  They’ve long forgotten the joy and wonder that made joining the site fun to begin with, sticking around only out of a sense of obligation, and in some cases, spite.

Competitive gamification can be appropriate for platforms that are explicitly competitive: in the worlds of competitive gaming, ranking systems are necessary in order for players to be matched with those of comparative skill and dedication.  In cases where there are tangible rewards for unlocking achievements (money, access, prizes), some of these incentives may in fact be meaningful.  But social platforms that pit people against each other for no particular reason is likely to cause more harm than good in the long run, for both the users and the platform as a whole.  In order for the End Game to be seen as more than a point of departure, incentive systems must be managed carefully, and the importance of narrative development must never be lost.  A user that becomes disillusioned is much less likely to return to platforms that made them that way, more so than one that’s completely uninformed.

The Let’s Play phenomenon is a reminder to the world that gaming is supposed to be about the game: the journey and wonderment of actually playing through the game itself.  The good times, the bad times, frustrations and triumphs toward achieving a goal that gamers find meaningful on a personal and emotional level.  It’s not always about winning or comparing yourself to how others are doing, in other words.  The fact that this trend has gained popularity in recent years ought to be cherished, since it’s one of the very few places where technology is seen as a genuine source of joy, rather than as the potential harbinger of a dystopian future.

Bridging the Immersion Gap

Aside from their usual antics, Let’s Play commentators also play an important role in bridging the “immersion gap” that exists between gamers of various backgrounds.  The interactivity and direct control given to gamers is what allows immersion to occur, but this feature can often become a double-edged sword: the particularly of the gamer’s experience, in it of itself, produces feelings of isolation and loneliness because it foregoes the possibility of having a shared experience with another person that’s exactly the same.  Gamers often feel disconnected even from other gamers who play the same game, because the details of the plays-by-plays can’t really be replicated or shared in a meaningful way.

Let’s Play videos provide a cathartic release for gamers who’re looking for that type of shared narrative experience among others within the community.  Playing a game by yourself can be lonely, but experiencing the ups and downs of play-by-play commentary (using the commentator as an emotional vassal) creates an experience that’s both common and universal.  Social platforms currently lack the ability to create shared experiences in this way, leading many to utter the phrase, “the more connected we get, the more disconnected we become”.  The disconnect isn’t a technical disconnect — it’s a narrative one.

The immersion gap is actually a very serious problem because it spills into socio-political issues of real world contexts.  It explains the reason why video games (and tech products in general) still continues to be thought of as an activity for degenerates and anti-socials, despite its increased acceptance and commercial success.  (The Gamergate fiasco didn’t really help to improve the image of gamers, either.)  Being “social” means doing things with other people, but its definition can go one step deeper: it also implies having a common experience with others that’s both identifiable and consistent.

These issues will become particularly urgent when virtual reality systems start to become commonplace in the near future.  The possibilities and opportunities of using VR for greater learning and adaptation are surely great.  But it’s implementation would have to be counteracted by common narrative experiences that allow users to feel connected to the world once again when they get off screen.

If these issues aren’t taken seriously, tech-based narratives will naturally slide into dystopian visions — a cold, isolated world full of danger and uncertainty — regardless of the industry’s economic or political success.  (A common theme found in video game tropes, not surprisingly.)  And that’s, probably, something that nobody wants.

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As always, a few suggestions below to bring some of these ideas down to a practical level:

Let Users Take Their Time

As mentioned above, there’s no particular reason to get users pushed all the way into the End Game if it just means a quicker path to boredom and exit.  Most onboarding procedures for most platforms feels like watching a movie with all of its spoilers given away (“walkthroughs”), with nothing really interesting left to discover once you’re onboarded all the way.

Why not stretch out the onboarding process over the course of several days, weeks, or even months?  A robust system built towards the beginning of the onboarding process can serve as both a tool for recruitment, as well as a way to increase immersion with the system overall.  Having a good product doesn’t mean you have to give it away all at once — let people work for it, let them take their time.  People can be at varying phases and stages of the narrative flow without compromising their engagement with it, so there’s no reason to rush the process faster than what’s absolutely necessary.

Replay Value

Have you ever wished that you could wipe your slate clean and build your identity from scratch?  Video games allow for this possibility, since all you have to do is delete your save files and start the game over from the very beginning.  It gives the player a chance at doing things better or experiencing the game in a different kind of way the second time around.

Giving the user the ability to “replay” their identity-building process can be said to be a crash-only solution for social platforms that have yet to be fully explored.  Most companies tend to be apprehensive about allowing a users to reset their profile, since it would mean losing the active connections accumulated up until that point.  But if users aren’t really putting most of their connections to good use anyway (which is often the case), then the replay function can be a good way to give them a second chance at starting the “game” over from the beginning.

Real-Time Feedback

As an imitation of Let’s Play style video commentary, it may be useful to conduct market research and QA testing in a real-time, recorded format, as opposed to conducting surveys or organized focus groups.  This method is similar to customer development methodologies found in lean startup practices, but taken several steps further.  Customer development strategies tend to be wary of taking people’s feedback at face value, since they will often be too polite or have trouble articulating what they want in a product when asked directly.  Actions speak louder than words: the strategy is to observe their actions, rather than their words.

Customer development methodologies usually lean towards utilizing statistical data as means of “observing” customer’s behavior patterns, but commentary videos provide the humanistic elements of the user’s experience that can serve as distributable examples for developers to see and react to.  (I would recommend capturing facial expressions with a webcam as well, since a picture is always worth a thousand data points.)  The raw and direct nature of these videos makes it harder for companies to rationalize or dismiss feedback and criticisms (which happens often with surveys or data), since it brings the most important parts of the user’s experience to the fore.

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For companies that primarily offer the value of utility to its users, most of the above probably won’t apply.  If the objective is to acquire or accomplish something specific (like picking up a cab), then fast and efficient would likely still be the best strategy to take in most cases.  Speed, however, is not necessarily an advantage in social media because it’s primary purpose is for the experience to be meaningful, or at least entertaining, to those involved with the process.  This means letting events unfold over time, giving users a feeling of accomplishment or progress, and pacing the experience in such a way that makes the user feel connected and in tune with the people and communities around them.

Let’s Play commentators love playing games for what they are, and would consider themselves to be very much part of the gaming community, but the vast majority of them would probably label themselves as being entertainers, first and foremost.  If the experience of the game was fun and exciting to watch, then nothing else really matters.  For tech companies looking to get people to see their products as part of the cultural process — rather than just another utilitarian platform — creating joyful experiences in this way is really they can hope to make a lasting impact for the long term.  Products and gadgets come and go, but memories will always last a lifetime, after all.