00's obscurity to internet-age pastime.
THOUGHTS ON #11: WATCHING GAMES
My creative output comes in waves, as does interest in my hobbies. Usually one thing takes priority, either writing, drawing, blogging, photography, gaming, reading, or screen watching. I'm currently in a screen watching phase, and I can feel the end of it coming, but it's been a particularly long one. I used to get agitated when my creativity seemed to shit the bed, but in recent years I've come to terms with the cycle as I think that’s just how I get things done. In my current phase of doing absolutely fuck all of worth, I have watched an ungodly amount of gameplay videos these past few weeks, but rather than feeling guilty about my lack of output, I've decided to just enjoy it, and in my musings, I have considered where my joy of watching gaming footage has come from.
I have early memories of two occasions in particular of watching games being played, the first, and the more cherished of the two, is watching my dad playing our PlayStation. We played collaboratively for the most part, and he often helped me out of certain jams in the early days. I had reservations about jumping across the pits in Crash Bandicoot for example, and some of the Tomb Raider jumps proved tricky sometimes. Perhaps I just didn’t like jumping… explains my indifference to Mario I suppose. Anyway, watching my dad tackle these challenges proved just as enjoyable as when I was playing, and I suppose solidifies my first fond experience of watching games being played. A second, and not quite as enjoyable memory came around the same time. I went to a birthday party of one of my classmates in junior school, and myself along with a large swath of my class had to watch as the birthday boy played his new tobogganing (or at least snow based) game on his N64. I did not enjoy, and the atmosphere in the room echoed my distaste for the situation. The exchanging of fed up glances was akin to the parsing of parcels - except the parcels contained a near unbearable amount of boredom. Shortly after, seeing as he would not be disturbed, and was seemingly fine with the chaos of twenty eight children rampaging about his house, I departed the living room see what else was going on. I ended up standing in the garden and watching as one of the savages of my class destroyed a Cosy Coupe (those plastic red and yellow cars you propel Flintstone style). That act of destruction didn’t sate him, and he continued his aggressive rampage right up until cake was distributed. I returned home from that party a little dismayed. That distasteful situation was luckily a one off, and somehow didn’t diminish my appetite for watching games being played, and I suppose my being an audience for that lad’s ruinous play wasn’t far off in terms of a pastime as the watching of videogames.
Other than odd occasions such as these, the watching of games was rare indeed. I've mentioned several times about the drought of gaming information I had access to as a young lad. There were magazines and playground conversations, but that was pretty much it. The Internet arrived eventually, but prior to that, news or general content was sparse, and even when dial-up (and later, broadband) became just about affordable, it wasn’t necessarily much good, and when dial-up was my only option, it was a military operation to log on and speedily find the cheat codes I needed or a Pepsi machine mod for the Sims or whatever. After getting what what I needed, I had to get the fuck out of internet land ASAP and log off before my mum needed to use the telephone. There was absolutely no hanging about on forums until the broadband came, and watching the likes of YouTube or Twitch for some good gaming visuals would of course have required a time machine. I didn’t have one of those knocking about, but that didn't lessen my desire to watch footage of games.
From 1992-1998, Channel 4 provided all the gaming content one could want on terrestrial television with GamesMaster. I was a little too young to appreciate it as it came out, but I caught the latter seasons on occasion. Arguably one of the best gaming shows of the era. Anything game related on the telly was appreciated, and skipping forward a few years my parents (although a little late to the Sky party) eventually acquired themselves a satellite dish, and at that point, I rather promptly sought out what little gaming content was available there. The satellite offerings were somewhat different beasts to GamesMaster, and all of them have since blurred together in my mind - firstly because I never managed to watch with certain regularity, as they often seemed to be reruns, and I also frequently forgot the channel number… Anyway, these shows were the likes of Game Network, Games World, and Gamezville. These programmes aired from around the late 90s to the mid 00’s, and as I said, they are blended together in my mind, but they held sway, and I found them fascinating. This is likely due to the severe lack of other sources for this kind of stuff, but I knew no better, and ignorance is often bliss. When I could recall the channel number, or when my dad wasn’t watching Poirot, I tuned in, and my enduring memory of these shows is the absolute joy of watching games being played on the telly - it made what felt to me like an obscure hobby a bit more proper, the same way magazines did in the 90s.
Watching games being played, accompanied by some voiceover talking about the merits of whatever it was they were playing, back then, seemed so fresh an idea. It’s so ground into the dirt these days, and so accessible, both as a creator and a consumer, that some of the magic is gone. Merely seeing the footage on the TV was somewhat mind blowing back then, but despite how prevalent the form is these days, I don’t enjoy it any less. Back in the day, my watching wasn't a habit, but it would have been given the opportunity. Now as an adult, watching games has, or at least it does on occasion, take over from my actual playing of games. I’ve spent hours watching Twitch streams or YouTube playthroughs, or videos on general gaming topics. I’ve spent just as many listening to podcasts on the subject too, and although more rarefied these days, I'll still pick up a magazine (when I can find a bloody shop that sells them), or in place of that I'll read a blog on the subject.
It does, at times, feel like I do everything to do with games other than playing them, but as with my other hobbies, my desires are circular, and I know that the second something gets its claws into me, I’ll be back to gaming, and I’ll be successfully ignoring the telly… that is unless Richard Hammond comes back with another series of Time Commanders, which successfully filled in the gap between the dial-up era drought and the absolute flood of content we swim in these days.
If you enjoyed this ramble, keep your fingers crossed that another writing wave is on its way, in the meantime, I’m going to continue watching someone other than myself enjoy videogames.
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