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Thursday, October 18, 2018

Elevators are Funny, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Stream

By RAWKHAWK2010 - A happy article?!

Over the past year I guess you could say Rawk's article energy has been somewhat downcast. It's true! Almost everything I've written in 2018 has been about something bad. One particular dark moment was symbolized by the Sea of Thieves article in which I told Sea of Thieves "see ya" and formally renounced my (modern) Rare Ltd. fan status. I don't even want to talk about it really, but I must, for it contains significant past experience with the topic matter at hand: streams. See, Rare was banking on annoying cult-of-personality streamers to market the game. That was their goal. The streamers would do what Rare hadn't managed to do in ten or so years and make a Rare game seem exciting to the public at large. It turned out that hinging the game's success on easily-excitable streamers didn't work since even they got bored, but even if it had worked, it wouldn't work for me because I don't get the same camaraderie buzz as everyone else does from this culture. Watching someone do a Fake News screech as they get eaten by a shark, and then comment-screeching alongside a thousand other comment-screechers in response...it's all just too fraudulent. It's counterfeit energy! And too impersonal to boot.

Let's rewind a bit. Kamek's long-ago streaming of Yooka-Laylee -- in which he fortunately had an audience of 2 or 3 at most -- was when I decided his soft-spoken radio voice was made for commentary. Seriously, his voice could reawaken the Beanstar. Anyway, the experience was good (if it wasn't, then his "beautiful chair" for E3 2017 wouldn't have been his streaming center), but its nature as something relatively fleeting meant it didn't play hugely into my view on "streams" or what they might ever mean to KoopaTV. There's also simply the fact that this is Yooka-Laylee we're talking about, developed by a company I was in an abusive relationship with for years where my backing was repaid with all kinds of stupid decisions. (Hence why I was insulting them in the article I just linked.)

Now skip all the way to last week and KoopaTV is treated to a stream of Yooka-Laylee's similarly-Kickstarted rival, A Hat in Time (specifically the "Seal the Deal" DLC for it that came out a month ago), this time by Wendy. (That's right, Wendy! The real-life non-imaginary Wendy that Ludwig didn't fabricate to fill a staff position!) A game I knew little about but had always kinda wanted, I found watching A Hat in Time to be a breath of fresh air on its own merits. More importantly though, Wendy was a magnet for trouble in it, and Wendy made things happen (or rather, things happened to Wendy) that I was adamant about insisting didn't get lost.

Here's Wendy falling through an elevator.

Watch Welp, I fell through the elevator. :( from Capt_Murasa on www.twitch.tv

Tragically untimely, but also tragically funny. And you can't see it in the embed, but Ludwig likened the situation to 17 years ago when Gregory Edgeworth, Miles Edgeworth, and Yanni Yogi of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney fame all got trapped inside an elevator after an earthquake shook the District Court. Makes you wonder what would have happened if those characters approached being trapped in an elevator with the same sugarplum attitude as Wendy and Friends. True, laughing would cut off everyone's air circulation even faster, but what are you supposed to do instead, cry? The only time you can cry is when it's all over!

elevator Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney DL-6 Ludwig Edgeworth Rawk Hawk Wendy Koopa Yanni Yogi
See? We're having fun. Funny.

Meanwhile, I didn't mention it in the chat at the time but I was silently making a parallel of my own:


That's Wendy, basically. He was on a timer and only had three MacGuffins left too. However, Wendy, following her Fission Mailed, at least had the good fortune of being whisked back to the captain's quarters which freed her from the soft lock and saved her life. Same doesn't apply to this dude. What happened to this dude looks worse than what happened to Gregory Edgeworth, and Gregory Edgeworth got shot through the heart.

Funny, but sad on so many levels. Not an elevator joke by the way. Okay maybe it kinda was. Anyway, point I'm trying to make is I would encourage Wendy to use considerable consideration before engaging in elevator antics with such reckless abandon just anywhere -- despite the potential for funny.

Because stairs are funny too, you know. You can't spell hysterical without stair. And rocket belts, because why not? Mobile aircraft are heavily endorsed by KoopaTV transportation philosophy.

Wendy O. Koopa stairs rocket belt Super Smash Bros for Nintendo 3DS
There's no shame in having options.
So that she doesn't have to come back from the dead...again.


The above pic may not actually be the best demonstration, though...because water. If she does fall off those stairs she's going into the water. Shit. If she does run out of fuel she's going into the water. Shit. And that's important to note because underwater Wendy is bad news y'all. She may reside over Water Land, but apparently that doesn't mean anything because when submerged it's like she's on some Gum-Gum shit. Shit.



Lynne Ghost Trick darn this thing called water submarine
rip

So yeah, streams. While I may not like "the streamers'" streams, I think I definitely like my friends' streams -- hence I hope my friends continue to do streams! (Kamek included, because if he wasn't, that would only leave one friend.) I should mention that there doesn't appear to be too much overlap in the two's styles, by the way. They both play their games on different platforms (Kamek = consoles, Wendy = PC), with Wendy owning a lot more games we haven't even remotely heard of. That's been a point of comedy in reaction logs when we're wondering where the hell Wendy is and Discord says she's playing "Black Desert" or something equally-unfamiliar. Kamek's streams are also more "tranquil" (he actually streamed Horizon Zero Dawn right before this article got published and his somber tone made it sound like he was trying to study monsters from afar in real life), while Wendy's are more...I'd say..."visceral." Visceral as in she seemed like she was having way more fun losing MapleStory 2's trivia contest thing (something else we saw streamed right before this article's publishing) than I probably would have, yet the energy doesn't come off as artificial. (Fake News energy is what makes a lot of the Hollywood streamers so bad.)

Wendy plans to stream more A Hat in Time along with Nier Automata in the near future. I have very little understanding of what Nier Automata is, just that it's by PlatinumGames (who I don't credit with Star Fox Zero's bad design) and that for nearly two years I've seen its protagonist literally everywhere, who may or may not only be popular for her [booty] which would actually be a spoonerism of her name ("2B") and now I'm wondering if that's the whole reason. Regardless, we need to know whether to vote for her in the latest GameFAQs Character Battle or not, which begins tomorrow.

I believe Kamek plans to stream that new PlayStation 4 Spider-Man game (see our live-reaction to its announcement here). I have no interest in it and think Spider-Man is a lame af superhero in general, but I have interest in Kamek's take on it and thus would watch it. (And for all we know Kamek will encounter something so bad in it that he lets out a shrill, piercing cry and alters everything we know about him!)

All that said, I recognize the need to not take any of this for granted, since casual streaming may not always be easy. I actually made an effort to stream Jet Set Radio earlier this year (in addition to Dragon Ball Xenoverse + the Sea of Thieves beta) and it went about as bad as you'd expect.



...Wait, this article was supposed to be happy. DISREGARD.


What games do you want to see a KoopaTV person take on one day? Rawk is actually willing to watch games that are awful -- not even awful to the point of being liked ironically -- as long as the awfulness can inspire a mutual dialogue between streamer and streamee.


Wendy came through by streaming NieR Automata less than a week after this!
Kamek streamed Spider-Man for PlayStation 4, as promised here.
Wendy uses more traditional transportation methods in this article.

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