First, before I begin, let me make clear that I don't have much of an opinion on Jimmy Kimmel or his show. I've never seen an entire episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live. I know Kimmel best as co-host of The Man Show, and that was so long ago that I hardly remember anything except for girls on trampolines in the credits. My point is that I'm unbiased regarding Kimmel himself. I have no reason to dislike him, but I certainly wouldn't call myself a fan.
My only bias is my affinity for video games. And yet, somehow, I'm finding that my opinion on what follows is practically opposite that of the so-called "gaming community" (or, at least, of those who are so utterly convinced that they represent it).
It was at the end of last week that the Jimmy Kimmel Live segment on the recent launch of YouTube Gaming (embedded below) was uploaded to YouTube itself.
The response was far more hilariously impotent rage than should ever be directed at a comedy sketch. It's no surprise that anything critical of YouTube users would get an incredibly high proportion of "dislikes" from YouTube users (and thus the low rating on the video is expected), but there's also something else going on. The "gamers" of YouTube, perhaps out to prove the stereotype that nerds take things too seriously, have all but formally declared war.
"...sincerely the entire gaming community," writes one presumptuous moron after having a big cry. Try again, buddy. I don't like to call myself a "gamer" but I'm still a part of the so-called community which you're pretending to represent, and I think Jimmy Kimmel did nothing wrong.
Frankly, the whole thing is an embarrassment. I was embarrassed for YouTube even before I watched Kimmel cherry-pick the most insane comments he could find for his on-air response to the idiotic controversy. The fact that people are actually mad about a comedy sketch is bad enough. It was a comedy sketch. Moreover, as comedy often does, it made a good point.
And maybe that's why everyone on YouTube is so mad. Do people get this angry when they actually believe they're right? The point of view put forth in Kimmel's segment — that it's so ridiculous for someone to watch live-streaming or pre-recorded video of a game someone else is playing — could be met with any number of counter-arguments. None of them, however, require all the screaming and crying that the YouTube community has done in the name of "gamers" this week. That's just evidence that Kimmel struck a nerve.
Furthermore, while everyone seems to think Kimmel was mocking "gamers" in that first video, he actually did no such thing. He made fun of people who watch people play video games, a group which surely overlaps with "gamers" but not fully. The backlash against Kimmel, therefore, isn't coming from "gamers" as a whole. It isn't coming from the entire community of video game consumers, a significant portion of whom don't even use YouTube on a regular basis and would agree with Kimmel that watching other people play video games all day is ridiculous. Most likely, the backlash against Kimmel's jokes is coming instead from YouTube content creators and their fans. In other words, it's all of the people who watch videos of Minecraft for hours on end, but not all of the people who play Minecraft for hours on end.
For the record: I'm not saying I hate YouTube, or the people who post videos of video games on YouTube, or the people who watch those videos. I'm just saying the YouTube community, collectively, got a little too heated over this situation. People who are upset with Kimmel should try to be a little more understanding of the fact that, to the uninitiated, the idea of going on the internet to watch other people play video games is a little bizarre.
Technically, people watching other people play video games is nothing new, and it's not that unusual when you think about it. People have been doing it since long before this thing called YouTube Gaming was launched, and I'm not just referring Twitch. Watching people play video games wasn't invented on the internet. Most of the times I ever watched my brothers play video games at home, or watched strangers play video games in arcades, I was just waiting for my turn; however, sometimes spectating is genuinely entertaining, depending on the game and how spectacularly the player is either succeeding or failing at it.
On the internet, meanwhile, the act of watching footage of another person playing a game was old news even before streaming caught on. For many years, players have uploaded video walkthroughs, video reviews, machinima, and speedruns as well as other miscellaneous shows of skill. Video game tournaments have, for quite some time, been a spectator sport. I've seen a few speedrunning events (like AGDQ) and some tournaments (like EVO), and sometimes it's fairly entertaining even if I've never played the game in question.
Much of the "gaming" content on YouTube, however, is of the type seen only offline before broadband internet connections made uploading, downloading, and streaming high-quality video a trivial task. This stuff is more akin to watching your brother hog the television than to watching an e-sports tournament. I'm referring, of course, to the countless hours of videos and live streams of essentially random people — some of them minor internet personalities and other not-really-famous people — literally just playing video games — not for educational purposes, not for bragging rights, and not competitively, but just casually — and sometimes providing commentary while doing so. PewDiePie became the biggest thing on YouTube by doing this. Sure, he's an anomaly, but the popularity of this type of content is not limited to one weirdly successful guy.
I won't waste a lot of space explaining why I'm not the biggest fan of this particular genre of video, mostly because Kimmel already did it for me. His segment on YouTube Gaming was, after all, a mockery of this type of content specifically. The sketch clearly wasn't poking fun at instructional video walkthroughs, it almost certainly wasn't about live-streamed video game tournaments, and I'm pretty sure it had nothing to do with speedrunning. The joke was based on the absurdity of the idea that someone, rather than just playing a game, would prefer to watch someone else do it. There's no mockery of anything educational or competitive. The casual live stream and the "Let's Play" video, collectively, are the butt of this joke.
This is why it's so weird that "people watch sports" is such a frequently recurring comeback to Kimmel's video. Yes, people do watch sports; and in some contexts, watching video games is no different. But you have to be careful about how you use this analogy.
"Why do people watch sports?" the argument goes. "Anyone could just play sports, right?" I suppose we should note here that some people are disabled and cannot, but for the sake of argument, let's just pretend that everyone could play sports. "So why watch them?" It's because the sports on TV are played by professionals. They're good at it. While (almost) anyone could play sports, not everyone can play them at the professional level, and not everyone can play them so well.
So the sports analogy is great if you want to justify watching someone play a video game at a level of skill you are unlikely ever to reach. Unfortunately, much of the content on YouTube Gaming still doesn't apply.
Are you watching a speedrun? Are you watching a tournament? If you're watching either of these, then the analogy works. You're witnessing an impressive show of skill in a competitive (sometimes professional) environment to which you likely do not have access, and this is much like televised sports.
Are you watching some "funny" guy make weird noises and silly faces while playing some meme-game like Five Nights at Freddy's? Are you watching a scantily clad individual pose lewdly while some game is paused and minimized to the corner of the screen (and donations from viewers too afraid to find a proper porn stream are going through the roof)? If you're watching either of these, then no, that's not the same as watching televised sports at all. You could argue that it's entertaining for any number of reasons, but the sports analogy is no good.
Saying people watch videos for educational purposes works much better as a catch-all excuse for YouTube Gaming's entire existence. Technically, it only applies to actual video walkthroughs and other instructional content, but theoretically, any video of someone playing a game might happen to show the correct solution to your in-game problem. The average "Let's Play" series would make an incredibly inefficient walkthrough, but pretending it's educational is a lot less ridiculous than pretending it's anything like a sport.
Less convoluted justifications for watching "Let's Play" videos, and live streams of people playing video games, are these:
- I can't afford to buy every game, so I want to watch a guy play this game so I can see what it's like without relying on carefully edited trailers which are sure to make the game look better than it is in reality.
- The guy playing this game is just entertaining, and his reactions and commentary on this game are doubly entertaining because I like this video game too.
- Video games are basically movies now, full of visual spectacle and humor and drama, and if this kind of stuff happens to be the main appeal of a particular game whose budget was spent on aesthetics at the expense of entertaining gameplay, then I might as well watch the game rather than play it.
- You can't tell me what to do! I do what I want!
In summary: YouTube comments are still the butthole of the internet.
