This is not a topic I foresaw myself writing about, but since I got the idea to (follow with me) play the Nightingale update, record it, edit it, post it, and maybe keep going with that pattern, I kind of enjoyed the process of reviewing the footage, cutting out slow and janky parts, and putting together something that is hopefully better to passively watch after the fact.

But I had a question, and it was reinforced by @Tipa who mentioned about how she doesn’t do live voice-overs in her videos. One thing lead to another, and I settled on the question of “what makes a good video game video, and how to achieve that?”

Real talk: I don’t watch many streamers, and I don’t watch too many video game videos that haven’t really “proven” themselves to be palatable; my videos are significantly less than palatable as it’s mainly me mumbling to myself while I try and figure out what I’m doing at any given moment. I can look at examples of people who make more structured content, like Bored Gamer who creates videos on Star Citizen, to get ideas, but his videos have a specific theme and cadence and his presentation works for the kind of video he wants to produce.

My situation is “live game-play videos after the fact”, meaning that the original video wasn’t streamed live but was recorded instead. As such, how interesting is watching someone play a game, really? How interesting is watching someone play a game when you can’t interact with the person playing, really? How can such a video be made more interesting?

Whenever I have made a gaming video my goal has always started with the “introduce people to the game”, and that’s pretty easy to do assuming I’m not also learning about the game (although “shared discovery” is an offshoot brand of such a take). I usually think about what a person would do or would need to do when starting out, do those things, explain what and why I am doing them, and then show the outcome. Reviewing all menus and user interface items is also an essential part. Thing is, that’s mainly good for the first video, maybe some of the second, but after that? After that it’s “just watch some random dude play a video game, but without the ability to interact” so my efforts have traditionally dropped off after I get past that kind of video.

Another thought I had during my conversation with @Tipa was to forego the live voice over and record it after the fact. That would produce an entirely different type of video. The first step would be to ID the parts of the recording that were interesting or of-interest. The video would need to be edited down while a script is written to ensure there’s enough footage to talk over when focusing on a subject, but not too much footage that there’s dead-air. Then the audio recording would happen. Then the whole thing would be put together, effects and transitions and all that would be added, and the final editing would occur before rendering. I would expect this to be a significantly shorter video than what I posted for Nightingale (which is about 40 minutes after editing).

My final concern is how exactly to record “good gameplay”. I’m always torn by a desire to create something, but also play the damn game. When I’m not worried about things like getting decent video or doing something that’s clip-worthy, I can take my time and relax. When I am recording for the purpose of making something after the fact, I am always thinking about how it’ll play when the public sees it; same with streaming on the occasions where I decide to settle in for that. My Nightingale video was one uninterrupted video file which got imported into Resolve, watched, paused, and cut for clarity, brevity, and bullshit, spruced up a bit (but not anywhere as much as I probably should have), and rendered out for upload. Is there a better way? Should I only record when I suspect something cool is going to happen? Or should I contrive to make something happen for the express purpose of recording it? In that case, I guess I’m not playing to play, but playing to present, and I’m not sure what that would do for my enjoyment of whatever game I am presenting.