Here's a video that I think has a similar appeal:http://wimp.com/cinderblocks/ - it's just a guy laying cinder blocks, zero consumerism. But relaxing.
My daughter is about to enter Montessori, and one of the techniques they like is to simply demonstrate to a child - not much narration, no shortcuts or summarizing, just demonstration. And I realized how little I do this, even though I describe things to my daughter constantly.
So maybe these videos are filling that gap. The commercialism might be a supply-side phenomena, since that's where the ad dollars are.
That is a great video. You can tell from the way that he is handling the mortar, that its consistency is just so. Each time he gets just the right amount of mortar in just the right place. The blocks get placed oh so easily. There's no wastage of materials, as mortar that gets squeezed out is efficiently reused. In short, he's an expert.
Maybe this type of video is something every tradie [1] should have on their website? Watching this video makes me realise that this guy can do a fast job to a high standard, and that I'd have no hesitation in hiring him if I needed bricks laid, despite my general preference for doing jobs around the house myself.
One, great video, it had a very Zen like quality. However, I fully acknowledge my ignorance in understanding of "Zen" or Eastern philosophies in anything but the most superficial of ways (so it might not be that Zen after all).
Two, did you see that mortar work?! (Full on 1st world problem self entitled asshole rant incoming...) I was told by my house builder that the brickwork of my home, which has a very baby diarrhea-esque mortar application vibe to it, is the current "style". I think it's more likely they didn't want to pay craftsmen like the guys in the video that do good clean mortar work.
Solzhenitsyn's "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich", about a bricklayer at a Soviet gulag camp, has a short section about how getting into the flow of laying bricks (well) is pretty much the only remotely enjoyable part of existence in this frozen hell.
I dunno I think that one is different -- it's nice to watch someone who is good at what they do.
But that's not what unboxing videos are. I've never found one to be enjoyable. I just stumbled across some when trying to search for reviews of products and they can't hold my attention.
When I imagine a toddler watching these videos I think of this - for a toddler these unboxings are the work of people with manual skills they still aspire to.
Since society is happily live-testing (90M instance) videos on toddlers, it could be extended to formal A/B experiments distributed on YouTube. Create variations of this popular video, changing one variable at a time - shapes, colors, voice, manual dexterity. Compare toddler learning with computer vision algos for training robots on manual movement.
If you're considering Montessori, there's a few things I need to warn you of (I speak as a parent who's put 4 children through)
1. You'll never look at normal schooling the same way again. You'll find the thought of sending your kinds to a traditional school depressing and wonder how anyone can think it's a good idea
2. Every parent/teacher you who finds out you send your kids to a non-traditional school, and who hasn't experience of them, will find the need to defend traditional schooling
3. Unless you're lucky enough to have access to a Montessori high school, or you're able to homeschool, you'll have to face the day when you send your kids back into a normal school.
I went through a Montessori school and struggled to make the transition to regular education resulting in poor grades, mostly due to me being bored. On one hand it lets syudents explore curiosity but on the otherhand it doesn't teach important skills like paying attention. As I learned in college not everything can be learned by doing, or perhaps that it would take too long to do everything by hand.
I had to learn these the hard way, my
and cannot recommended the system. Interestingly in practice Montessori education is not a chouce between traditional and experimental education, but rather a choice between dysfunctional public schools or experimental education.
I think my kids are having the same problem (boredom) as you did.
What do you mean by "paying attention"? One of the thinks I really like about Montessori, and I'm guessing each school is different, is that the children are able to develop long attention spans and learn to stay focused on something for as long as they like; half a day is not uncommon, and an entire day is possible. Normal school allows children just long enough to become absorbed in something, then interrupts them with "change class!". Montessori allows that child so keep focused on their activity (drawing a map, writing a story, maths, etc) for as long as they want.
The up-side is that I've found Montessori to be a very efficient means of learning. My kids have no homework and an enjoyable relaxing day, but they're far ahead of their friends in normal schools.
Down-side is, like you say, low tollerence for droning teachers and being bored
I think what frozenport means with 'paying attention' is paying attention when not in an active and participating role and more in a passive, listening role. Where it's much harder to stay focused. But like frozenport said it is necessary to acquire a lot of knowledge reasonable fast in a college setting for example.
Self study is also an option (I have seen many do it) but not everyone is good at that.
>>keep focused on their activity (drawing a map, writing a story, maths, etc) for as long as they want.
Kids can play a video-game for 8 hours straight. Focusing on something you don't want to do, or is hard to do, is a better indicator of discipline.
>>but they're far ahead of their friends in normal schools.
The real problem isn't the failure of an educational style but rather particular institutions. Where I grew up the kids who went to good private schools were at the same level as us. As I wrote earlier we often compare apples to oranges when we compare against Montessori schools, comparing bad (public) to Montessori(more expensive, private). If we can't find a familiarly priced or ranked school, with a similar level of parent involvement, we should avoid making a judgement about the method.
I went to a Montessori preschool for a year or two before doing public schooling K-12, and in retrospect I think it worked out pretty well. I was in Montessori for a short enough time that I didn't feel too weird during the switch (although I distinctly remember wondering why Kindergarten was so easy compared to preschool), but long enough that I was way ahead of most of the other kindergarteners. Then in the following years I was put into various accelerated learning groups with the other smart kids. Once you're in that group it's pretty easy to get a good education, even in public school (that or I got lucky with good public school teachers).
Another reason that these videos are so popular is because of copyright protections. While searching for "McQueen" and Disney Cars related content on YouTube, you will find little else other than toys being unwrapped and played with by adults. The copyright holders are not putting any official content on YouTube, any bootlegged stuff gets pulled, so the only remaining content is these toy videos. I for one am sick of this content but I understand the appeal to the child.
Side note: I wish some deletionist hadn't removed the WP page for "frisson". It now points to "cold chills" which it isn't (it's also not ASMR which is also different).
There used to be a very good page on the phenomenon, but it's long gone and there's not even any history of it existing that I'm aware of. Now, because it's gone, most pages that document frisson are now calling it "cold chills" and referring back to WP.
An experience, commonly associated with especially moving or Ecstatic_listening moments, where a sensation of "shivers" occurs. The frisson experience begins as a flexing of the skin in the lower back, rising upward, inward from the shoulders, up the neck, and sometimes across to the cheeks and onto the scalp. The face may become flush, hair follicles flex the hairs into standing position, and goose bumps may appear (Piloerection). Frequently, a series of `waves' will rise up the back in rapid succession. The experience lasts no more than four or five seconds. The listener feels the music to have elicited an ecstatic moment and tends to regard the experience as involuntary. Http://www.music-cog.ohio-state.edu/Music838/glossary.html
A lot of that traffic is definitely ASMR. The camera is very close to the unboxing and manages to pick up the tiny sounds made in great detail and clarity. Another use for this type of video is also falling asleep, which would explain the sheer amount of views as many people queue up these videos night after night.
Edit: I love how this article just tapers off into nothingness.
Some people feel nice -but in special ways- if they listen to certain sounds. Imagine a bit like listening to a special piece of music that makes the hairs on your neck stand up.
Some people record videos of those special sounds and share them. Some of the people who listen to them are the people who feel nice.
A group of people with a shared interest is a community. There is a community for people who like listening to the sounds or who like making the videos.
Some of the sounds that give people joy are: whispering or quiet talking women; quiet ticks and tacks of fingernails on wood; rustling paper; fingers stroking card; and so on.
There's several similar, but distinct, and highly personal phenomenon around sensory input: Cold chills, ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) and Frisson being the most common.
Cold chills (often called "goose bumps" "goose pimples" "goose skin" "chicken skin") is the most common. Most people experience it from time to time. Like during a scary movie. It feels vaguely pleasant but unusual and is triggered by an emotional perception - like the anticipation of something scary. It's rarely accompanied by a strong emotional reflex in response.
The other two, ASMR and Frisson, are more rare. Most people don't experience these and even fewer experience both. For example, I can Frisson, but I can't ASMR. The numbers for each are something like 3-10% of the population. But it's only recently started to get attention and research.
ASMR is a pleasurable feeling due to a person specific stimulus. It can the sound of whispering, or box flaps rubbing on each other. Usually gentle sounds in certain categories. There are non-audio versions of it as well. something about the stimulus triggers an deep pleasurable feeling in most people who can ASMR. It's probably a little like getting a little endorphine boost or taking a little pleasure drug. It's usually accompanied by "cold chill" like physical reactions but also an internal mental/emotional reaction as well (typically pleasant). People who can ASMR describe an ASMR reaction as being distinct from a cold chill.
Recently the internet has allowed people who can ASMR to share triggers and discuss the phenomenon. I don't know much more about it than any other non-ASMR but I come across it every once in a while while investigating Frisson as the two phenomenon are often confused.
Here's an entire reddit dedicated capturing and sharing ASMR triggers.
Note that this doesn't mean any person who can ASMR can come here and use any trigger. The triggers are highly specific to the individual.
Frisson is a similar phenomenon and a bit better studied. I can talk more about this one since I can Frisson. Frisson is tied very specifically to musical perception, but can occur outside of music as well.
While the general population might be 3-10% Frisson-able, musicians tend to be much higher. It's similar to ASMR in the sense that a "trigger" kicks off an extremely pleasurable emotional and physical response. For different people who can Frisson, it's usually extremely specific passages in certain songs (or even certain performances of a song).
And yes, there are communities who share their frisson triggers You'll often see a link to a song and a description of the specific passage or time index when the sharer typically frissons. http://www.reddit.com/r/frisson
A frisson is like a very intense cold-chill, usually in the upper body. I get it very strongly along the sides of my upper spine between my shoulder blades. If cold chills can be ranked from 1-10 on an intensity scale, the typical frisson would be like a 20 to a 50.
But there's a deep emotional reaction too. I can't speak for all frissoners, but for me it's a transcendent all consuming emotion, like all of my emotions are triggered at once and amplified out of my own control. It feels like you are right in the middle of the most terrible, most beautiful experience a human can have. Like all of your closest loved ones died and were suddenly found alive at the same time.
The same passage can induce a frisson over and over again for a while. But a bit like a drug, you can "get used to" a passage till you've lost the ability to frisson to it. So frissoners are often on the lookout for new triggers.
Not suprisingly, it's linked to rises in dopamine levels and can be addictive in all the ways dopamine addiction works -- including the withdrawal crankiness. It's rare enough that I've never met another person face-to-face who I was aware was a fellow frissoner. Most non-frissoners just think it's "extreme enjoyment of music" but it's quite distinct and different. I never even knew what it was called until I was almost 30 and decided to investigate it a bit.
I discovered it when I was maybe 4 or 5, I found a passage on a tape and my mother found me playing that passage over and over again on the home stereo while hysterically laughing and crying my eyes out. For a long time my mother thought something was wrong with me or that I was unusually sensitive to music. I was actually so embarrassed by it that I hid it from everybody for a very long time.
But growing up I played some tapes to absolute death trying to get my "fix". Later I started to learn that if I over frissoned to the same musical passage it would eventually lose the effect. So I learned to ration it out and collected a sizable library of tapes I could cycle through. I started to mentally categorize music by how much of a frisson it could create. I started to use frisson to deal with stress and anxiety. It had all the hallmarks of a drug addiction I guess except I only had to find a supply of music and not street drugs.
Wow, I haven't heard about Frission before! Thank you for long and detailed explanation. I guess I can relate only to Cold Chills. I tried to listen to some ASMR triggers, and I got the same physical reaction and feelings of discomfort I get from fingernails scratching on a blackboard or hearing someone clean their teeth.
Sure thing. The ASMR triggers do absolutely nothing for me as well.
What really interests me is that there are probably other sensory phenomenon that are equally fascinating that very few people experience that aren't generally known (like synesthesia).
>I tried to listen to some ASMR triggers, and I got the same physical reaction and feelings of discomfort I get from fingernails scratching on a blackboard or hearing someone clean their teeth.
Glad to hear I'm not alone. My wife and I listened to the This American Life program on ASMR and I couldn't even stand the few short snippets in the program. The whispery sound of quiet talking where you can hear the speaker's tongue flapping around in their mouth makes me want to pull my teeth out with pliers.
You may still find that other noises are pleasurable, despite not enjoying that radio show. I find the sound of somebody's tongue rather off-putting but still get strong ASMR to other sounds, particularly foreign accents and rustling leaves.
Heh. Seriously though, it does feel like I have anti-ASMR. I swear, every single thing that is supposedly happy-making for ASMR folks is "please pull my teeth out with pliers" level bad to me. It's like the same neurological response, only wired to my revulsion center. Perversely though, I kind of enjoy the sensation of scratching a chalkboard with my fingernails.
I must be a particularly interesting case study. I can ASMR, but I also suffer from misophonia, which is sort of like ASMR's evil stepsister: an intense anger/aversion reaction to certain sound triggers. I've also got what I'd describe as a very low-grade and occasional capability for synesthesia.
I wonder if any of these conditions are related somehow.
My brother (he's adopted so no blood relation) has misophonia. He absolutely cannot stand the sound of paper and plastic bags and has difficulty hearing people eat. Those specific sounds absolutely enrage him. He runs a business and when he has to do paperwork he locks himself into his office so he can control the noise all the paperwork makes. When he emerges, he's visibly shaking with rage.
When he was younger he had some low grade Tourette's-like symptoms and various other neurological issues. Misophonia is supposed to have some kind of possible connection to Tourette's.
However, he may also frisson or ASMR (or something in the category) and has an intense interest in certain kinds of music and has built quite a few home-made ultra high end home stereos out of car audio components.
Amazingly, almost none of the things we're talking about here are well recognized by the psychiatric or neuroscience communities.
For me the major miso-triggers are the sounds of people eating and the sounds of people typing -- which are wonderful triggers to have in the tech industry. :) Weirdly, these sounds only seem to set me off in an otherwise quiet environment. I can handle the sound of a thousand keyboards aflutter in a busy office. I cannot handle a totally quiet room with one person's typing in it. I can handle a group meal, but if I'm alone in a room, listening to one or two people eating, it drives me nuts.
There are also visual triggers, to make matters worse. For some reason beyond my understanding, I hate when people bounce their legs around in their seats, or tap their feet repeatedly on the floor. Drives me insane.
I've never had Tourette's, or any Tourette's-like symptoms, but I completely sympathize with those who do. My symptoms are similarly uncontrollable. I know they're weird, and I know that telling people about them generally pisses people off. So I am consigned to my own special hell, quietly mustering the mental energy to block these stimuli out in everyday life, knowing that nobody understands the problem nor has the slightest sympathy. Medical research barely takes the condition seriously, and a lot of doctors still refuse to acknowledge that it's real, and not some Freudian, neurotic symptom.
In a way, I feel like what someone with Tourette's must have felt like, back before Tourette's was medically or societally acknowledged. Every now and then, misophonia gets a cursory writeup in a major newspaper or magazine -- but even that coverage typically ends with some dismissive caveat, such as "Medical science doesn't currently acknowledge this as a legitimate condition." Well, I'm certainly not doing this for the fun of it. :)
I always wondered why I can't stand the sound of people eating with an open mouth ('smacking their lips') or a dog licking themselves/chewing on a rawhide. For some reason, closed mouth eating and a dog biting themselves are tolerable. Our dogs are either very good at being dead silent or they do it all at night (and it sometimes wakes me up). I can also relate in how it isn't bothersome if it is amongst a sea of sounds, though I think a group of people eating would bother me quite a bit...
> I can handle a group meal, but if I'm alone in a room, listening to one or two people eating, it drives me nuts.
Hell yeah, my experience exactly. When I'm eating meals with family, I need there to be a conversation going, or at least a TV or radio running in a background - if there's only silence and sounds of eating, I'm starting to go crazy.
If I'm being completely objective and intellectually honest? I can't rule that out for sure. But it seems unlikely, given that most of Freudian psychology is outdated and quasi-animistic. If I have to choose between Freud and neuroscience, I'll take the latter almost every time. But more to the point, Freudian psychology isn't useful for this condition. It offers no answers and no practical guidance. It also offers a sort of intellectual dead-end. By filing this conveniently in the bucket of "neurosis," a doctor or researcher can basically wave his hand and say there's nothing he can do, and no further scientific inquiry is needed. Affected patients just need to "get over it" or "work through it" somehow. Even more sophisticated and modern psychological tools, such as behavioral therapy and sensitization training, don't have a great track record for successfully treating this condition.
As for the neurological explanations: as the previous poster mentioned, recent studies have implicated a lot of the same brain and nervous system structures in misophonia that are believed to be responsible for Tourette's. There is a high degree of comorbidity. While the two aren't causally related, there appears to be a physical/structural cause that results in either or both conditions with a fair amount of frequency.
Again, I have no definitive way of ruling out some blanket neurosis as the underlying cause. But it seems scientifically dubious, and more important, it's often unproductive as a line of inquiry.
Holy crap. Thank you for that link. I never knew about frission before let alone that I could experience it fairly powerfully. It seems like I have to "open my mind" to it before it can happen. Very cool mind hack.
You may not be able to if you don't already do it. It seems to be a bit like synethsesia, some kind of brain wiring resulting a slight perceptual difference that turns out to be like taking an electric shock to the pleasure center of the brain.
Yet another thing that may have never been discovered by most humans if not for high-speed networks enabling mass consumption of p2p multimedia and the discussion thereof.
Thanks for the explanation. I can ASMR but never knew it had a name. I like whispers, the sound of scissors cutting hair, light footsteps, bonfire crackling noises, pencil against paper...
I'll read more about it, but thanks for getting me introduced!
Sounds like the best way to understand it is to consider what might lie at the opposite end of whatever psychological spectrum is occupied by fingernails on a chalkboard.
Thanks, I've been looking for decades for the name to describe what ASMR is. I'm surprised there's any doubt it exists; it's a very distinct sensation with very specific triggers (which I guess are different for different people). I just figured it was common.
I doubt it. That video had 90 million views. That's an absurdly huge number of views. Searching for ASMR, the subreddit is the first thing that came up, and the front page items have an average of 5 upvotes, and 80,000 subscribers.
It strikes me that with "surprise eggs" in particular, the "feeling of unboxing" is actually the entire traditional value proposition of the product. Seeing the contents of all the eggs removed and displayed entirely short-circuits the need to actually pay $1.99 to do that yourself.
I can't say I know much about the range of subgenres that exist withing the unboxing universe, but at least in tech unboxing videos, I've always assumed that the primary appeal was the first-impressions review that comes with the unboxing. After a user takes their new thinkpad out of the box, they might remark about how great the travel is on the keyboard, or about its weigh or build-sturdiness. They're the next best thing to trying a product in person (and real reviews are harder to come by than dime-a-dozen unboxings).
Maybe I'm totally misjudging and the primary attraction that they instill the same reaction as getting a shiny new gadget does.
1) the "first impressions review". Descriptions of how sturdy or flimsy or smooth something feels, how it disappoints or delights compared to the picture on the box, whether it works as expected immediately. This actually seems really useful to me as a supplement to written reviews.
2) the "revel in the thing itself" unboxing. My preschool-aged nephew loves these videos. He seems to have as much fun watching people play with new toys as he does actually playing with new toys, or more. In a sense, this sort of video actually shields him from disappointment -- if the toy sucks, he can just move on to the next video, or he might not even notice since the person on screen is probably having fun anyway.
Some things are attractively packaged. So seeing someone show off that packaging can be quite nice in itself.
Sometimes unboxing can give you valuable and otherwise hard to find information, e.g. how big the transformer is and how it looks. That stuff is typically nowhere to be found, not on the website of whoever made the thing (even if you search for the manual) and often not in reviews (at least if the transformer isn’t extremely enormous or extremely ugly or otherwise noteworthy).
First impressions tend to be pretty useless in my opinion since it’s not very thought out and all very subjective. Maybe sometimes something useful is said, but it’s mostly useless.
It’s also good for getting a non-product-photo look at the product. For some things there just aren’t any video reviews and photos often just don’t cut it. It’s always good to get more than one look at a product.
Not the Bitbox's packaging, but the postal wrapper which came from France. As an American, I've felt a small bit of fear as I've watched our financial resources diminish. When I saw the multi-colored postal package, with its delicate rose-colored gradient, I had the distinct cognition "Hey, there's a country and a people unafraid to spend some resources on making their postal packages look good."
Look for oscilloscope unboxing videos. I've watched a few and haven't pulled the trigger yet. (edit: trigger is a bad pun wrt oscopes, sorry)
I bought a camping tent after watching about 10 unboxing videos. I got a table saw about a year ago the same way, watch a couple videos first.
I am well aware probably 1/2 the video are astroturf. If I tune out the speech the video speaks for itself. Oh, OK, with my own eyes I see thats how you adjust the height of the blade. I like/dislike that particular saw's blade lifting design.
The problem is narrow focus by marketing making at least some purchasers prefer homemade commercials over their hyper focused "professional" commercials which unfortunately suck. Lets say someone is trying to sell a "pro-grade" digital multimeter and I'm trying to buy one. Unfortunately the market "user interface" will be a little too "stylized" and probably rely on sexual objectification of women and business cliche speak.
Some beautiful very young woman who has no idea what the product does reads a script explaining "Our ISO9000 manufactured meter will synergistically energize your resources to proactively meet their key performance indicators". Unfortunately as a mere user of the device instead of being a CEO, that kind of marketing is useless to me as a purchaser, I have no idea how painful the device makes it to switch between ammeter and voltmeter probe wiring topology and how useful is the continuity feature anyway? The official PR materials suck so much I'll just watch an unboxing video. That may be the only way I'll be permitted to get a straight answer WRT the connectors being too tight to easily swap.
I have plenty of experience where the quality of PR has little correlation with the quality of the product, so I'm not overly concerned. I can see why pro content creators are terrified. This is equivalent to when print journalists first noticed some people prefer bloggers to their "professional" productions, following which about 50% of them lost their professional jobs.
From my kids, they like to study stuff they like. In the unlikely event we ever get a Wii-U my son is already an expert on how to connect it to the TV and configure it. I admit I've been window shopping new oscilloscopes, including ones I'll never be able to afford... The article makes fun of a $2 plastic egg, but I don't waste money on that for my kids on a regular basis, so I can see the kid appeal.
> I'm sure some adults watch it to, but it's aimed at very young kids.
This specific video might be aimed at toddlers, but the article notes that there are unboxing videos for all sorts of products with hundreds of millions of views in aggregate. Hundreds of millions of views represents a significant portion of Americans.
This is incredible. The most viewed video of 'RRcherrypie Group' has 80m views. I wonder how these videos spread - are people sharing this like crazy? The comments are a mix of "so cute", "i don't get why i keep watching these", and "where can i buy this??"
It's like the unboxing video in the original article, except given an additional play-cooking element and taken to an extreme of meticulousness.
See all the videos here (the Mentos + Cola one is quite unexpected):
Surely this is more to do with 'getting views' than anything else. To imply that there is a deeper motivation like ASMR etc might be taking it a little too far for the majority of cases.
My guess would be it is just a very easy, non-thinking way of creating content and gaining attention.
In the article he lists some kinds of fetish youtube videos like zit-popping and clean-corn-shuck. One that he didn't mention that I partake in is Earwax Removal -- videos of someone with impacted cerumen getting it removed by a metal rod usually by a nurse.
My daughter loves these 'opening toys' videos -- especially the ones from this woman. I'm very amused to find an article about this sensation, and my wife will be as well. We've been curious about it for a while.
This strikes me as a toddler-specific Ashens (sans dry/sarcastic humour and the iconic couch of course). I watch Ashens regularly, so in a sense I can see the appeal. Yet this woman's content still baffles me.
> Your brain can't entirely distinguish between watching a video game on a screen and actually controlling the action.
I'm not sure I agree with that. I'm an avid gamer but find long gameplay-only vids to be pretty boring. The really successful lets-plays are good because there are one or more people talking over them.
Or, to put that more incendiarily: the degree to which a non-voiceover, 100% completion, edited-for-repetition LP (these are usually called "longplays") of a game serves as a good replacement for playing the game, is inversely proportional to the degree to which the game is actually a game, rather than interactive fiction.
The least interesting longplays are made from games that are games in an essential sense: games that are about the aesthetic of exploring and mastering the mechanics of an environment. Simulation games, procedurally-generated adventure games, etc. If you don't wrap a narrative around these, there's nothing compelling there to watch. It's only compelling to play.
I'm wondering whether the proliferation of LPs will actually kill the market for genres like the JRPG, the visual novel/dating sim, etc. as people feel satisfied with just having watched the-movie-of-the-game and are left with no urge to play.
---
Three examples:
1. I recently tried to watch a Kirby: Epic Yarn LP and fell asleep after five minutes. Yet I'd gladly play it as a game. The same applies to, say, Tetris.
2. Final Fantasy makes for excellent long plays. I played FFVII once and have no urge to do so again, but I'm still waiting for the FFVII-HD longplay well-cut enough that some friends and I can just watch it and Advent Children in sequence as if it were any other movie series.
3. I still do pull out games like FFV every once in a while, just to faff about with the combinatoric possibilities of the battle system and to replay some of the boss battles--but I have no urge to undergo the grindy bits. What I really want from these sorts of hybrids is a CG movie that comes with a "bonus disc" that lets you jump right into the various preset sandbox fights, plot battles, and minigames. As it is, I frequently keep emulator save states to do exactly this.
it also depends on the degree of mastery displayed / degree of difficult of beating the game. I love watching Let's Plays for the Descent series, particularly when I see someone beat a level I've had trouble with by using tactics I haven't mastered.
Several responses have focused on rail games where you watch a predetermined story unfold.
I learned how to make an automatic egg/chicken factory in minecraft from watching a video. I'd never have imagined something so crazy without seeing it live in 3-D first. You do what with wooden signs, and then pour flowing water on them, and then throw chickens on it? Madness! Yet it works!
I imagine this has a lot to do with 3-d and open world type games where having an experienced field guide walk you thru a real world-ish experience helps.
(edited to add, I live in a geographic area where many people make a living as hunting and fishing guides; the "experienced field guide" phrase for video games is very intentional, I suspect in the next decade or so of video gaming, there will be people making a modest living off literally being field guides for video gamers... just kinda escorting noobs and showing them the ropes, maybe not a lot of money but more than they'd get off the mechanical turk)
I watch a few different YouTube videos for different reasons.
XisumaVoid [1] does nice, clear, tutorials of a bunch of different stuff.
Etho [2] also does some tutorials, but he embeds them into his "Let's Play" series. He's also part of a server and I enjoyed the derping around they did.
BDoubleO and GuudeBoulderFist (as OOG [3]) had some funny videos of them playing a challenge map while drunk.
Yogscast [4] had one series that appealed to me at a particular time of my life when I just needed disposable nonsense.
I enjoyed watching my boy play Final Fantasy on the PS1 much more than I would have enjoyed playing it, which is to say, quite a lot.
I even had the emotional connection and cried a little tear when one of the main protagonists is murdered as part of the story arc, I have posted it as "most emotional response to a video game" type threads on Reddit.
Could you explain it anyway, for those of us that are interested?
I've noticed that I enjoy watching youtube videos of other people coding, and I like where you're going by tying watching sports with watching unboxing videos.
I've always thought I liked watching coding videos because I secretly wish I could just think about programs and make them happen, instead of having to sit up, type, switch between contexts, etc. Coding videos go straight to the point and quench a specific thirst I have when I don't feel like coding anymore but would still like the high I get from seeing the coding process unfold.
> Could you explain it anyway, for those of us that are interested?
Not well, because I don't watch sports. I also don't watch unboxing videos - I just watch videogames, for the reasons I explained above.
I'm just sort of assuming that sports are fun, and they're also fun to watch, and a lot easier than spending thousands of dollars and hours of time on equipment.
(I also hate watching coding videos - they never go at the pace I prefer. I'd much rather read a blog entry with code inlined that I could copy, paste, play around with, etc.)
> But you do understand, in principle, why people watch sports rather than play them themselves, right?
Nope. Generally speaking, I don't understand second-degree entertainment (ie. watching other people have fun & do things: sports, video games, unboxing videos, reality TV).
Tldr: watching a video of taking a product out of its packaging gives people the vicarious feeling of newness and ownership without actually buying the product. This is popular it seems, and largest effect is in toddlers.
It's just another trigger the modern world has uncovered in our ape brains. The thrill of unwrapping a banana or mango writ large. It probably won't hurt your kids but if they are watching videos unsupervised and you "come across" them watching that's probably a bigger flag to you.
My daughter is about to enter Montessori, and one of the techniques they like is to simply demonstrate to a child - not much narration, no shortcuts or summarizing, just demonstration. And I realized how little I do this, even though I describe things to my daughter constantly.
So maybe these videos are filling that gap. The commercialism might be a supply-side phenomena, since that's where the ad dollars are.