I really enjoyed making today's Atari A to Z video on King's Quest. As I noted, a few people had been asking if I'd do full playthroughs of adventure games, so I decided to jump in with this one — one that I knew reasonably well already, if not completely comprehensively.
It made for a long video, of course, but I don't think that's the cardinal sin that it once was — particularly when it comes to "Let's Play"-style content. When putting this together, I specifically had in mind similar examples such as Danny's various Sierra playthroughs on the Game Grumps channel (all 2-3 hours each, several of which do the whole game in a single episode) — and I thought about how I like to enjoy stuff on YouTube.
For me, there are three main times that I watch YouTube rather than doing something else: when I'm bored, when I'm having a meal or when I'm trying to get to sleep. When I'm bored, I'll watch whatever; it's at this time I'm most likely to discover new stuff as I idly click around or, more commonly, look at links between channels or check out specific friends of channels that I already follow. When I'm having a meal, I typically want something about 20-30 minutes in length, so things like episodes of Good Mythical Morning or LGR's stuff generally works pretty well.
When I'm trying to get to sleep, though, that's when the long videos (or the long series) come in. I find it quite relaxing to fall asleep to the sound of someone gently enjoying a game that isn't too strenuous — something like an adventure game, a strategy game or an RPG. With this in mind, I particularly appreciate it when videos err on the longer side, as it means I can enjoy one thing without being constantly interrupted with pre-roll ads (no adblock on Chromecast!), credit sequences or whatever.
Related to this, I've been told by more than one person that my voice is calming, soothing and relaxing, and I'd be inclined to agree with that somewhat. I used to hate listening to my own voice, but since starting to do a lot more podcasting and video-making, I've actually come to quite appreciate what I do; as narcissistic as it might sound, I have been known to watch my own videos. More than once, even. This is down to a combination of pride in what I've created, and the fact that I actually enjoy them for myself.
I've even fallen asleep to my own voice on more than one occasion. Make of that what you will.
Anyway, if you don't stay awake for the full two and a half hours of King's Quest, I hope I at least gave you a relaxing time! And there are more long videos coming up, too; the next couple of Final Fantasy Marathon videos are pretty beefy so we can get through the remaining stuff in the game in a reasonably timely fashion, and I'm sure this won't be the last adventure game I do a full playthrough of.
As always, thanks for your support! I can see the King's Quest video is already doing reasonably well (comparatively speaking, obviously — my channel is still tiny!) so thanks if you've taken the time to watch even some of it.
Now it's off to bed… and hoping that we don't wake up in the morning with an even more disastrous government than we've been enduring for the past God knows how long… sadly, exit polls make it look like this is rather likely, but we'll see!
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