Friday 28 June 2013

How long an LP?

Yep, I'm talking about Let's Plays again. In particular, I've just finished watching an LP of Dark Souls. (Although there's that Stream of the game to also work through.)

Why is that impressive? Well, take that a video is around 20 minutes each... and there's over a hundred of them. So... around 40 hours, more or less. Nearly two days of just one LP. Is that too long to watch? (Granted, at double speed!) [Also, while they were youtube videos, I did download them (I have the technology), which is how I was able to watch at double speed... but at some point VLC should become the online video player, and so we'll have all that functionality online whenever we watch a video. Subtitles, audio tracks, aspect ratios, and variable speeds. Go VLCTube!)

Dark Souls itself is a game I have no interest in playing (just like I don't want to play the predecessor Demon Souls). So watching an LP was the best that would happen... but 40 hours? Just long a game do you need to be watching someone else play? Fortunately, it was fun, being a somewhat blind run and the commentators being amusing, but still... how long should a game be?

Conversely, 24 episodes of a 45 minute show is only 18 hours. So this is a solid two seasons of entertainment. At this point, I'm not watching a game, I'm watching an unusual tv series. For free (legally!). So... yeah, yay that! In fact, where's a Skyrim LP?

(That all said, not sure I'd want to sit through a JRPG LP. There's only so many random encounters you can put up with watching people select 'hit' for everyone.)

[END]

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