I find it’s useful to do a little prep work as well - write down some bullet points that cover some things you’d like to show off in the game, or inform the viewers about. Or straight-up write an intro to read aloud. That may get you over the initial hump of breaking the ice at the start of your video, or give you some talking points to fall back on if you find yourself not having anything to say for a while.
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Yep, great idea. I do that every time. While I basically never use my bullet points after I wrote them down it helps me get a sense of the scope of the project.
My first attempt at LP’ing I went with my favorite game of all time, Xenogears. Which, after recording 20 hours of footage that I realized amounted to about 15 minutes of “usable” footage, I gave up. And switched to Septerra Core.
Gave that up real fast (it hasn’t aged well), went with Fragile Dreams for the Wii, which was my first ever LP. That one was great, it’s a game I know way too much about, a game I’ve played a million times, and it takes about 10 - 12 hours to do a 100% completion run of the game.
Because my free time is kind of sporadic I decided in the beginning that I should build up a good amount of episode backlog for any LP I do (for me that was ~six weeks worth), before I start releasing things. That gave me the added benefit of not having to publicly drop an LP a few episodes in; I knew I wasn’t going to make it to the end of the game before I even published the first episode.
When trying to pick a game, either for LP’s or for streaming on Twitch, I rely on https://howlongtobeat.com/ which is usually pretty accurate. Then I decide how long I should aim for per episode, and then think “If I only have time for one 30 minute episode a week, and the 100% completion estimate for Xenogears is 120 hours, I’d be doing 240 episodes, that’s 4.6 years, that’s unrealistic, pick a different game.”
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I’m the silly person who decided to LP the entire Xenosaga series as their first LP, my advice would not be to do what I did unless you’re seriously in it for the long haul.
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If you do try out a big open-world action game like I did with Yakuza 4, don’t get bogged down in any kind of completeionist attitude. That’ll take the wind out of your sail pretty quick.
Keep it casual, get yourself aquatinted with how things are done.
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I LPed Digimon World as my first LP because it was a game I liked and it was a game many people didn’t understand. So part of the decision of what to LP might be finding something you can explain, to open doors, so to speak.
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A short one you like.
Meanwhile, I did the opposite of what everyone in this thread is saying for my first LP; mine was a blind LP of Ocarina of Time with an experienced co-pilot to help me out.
Just goes to show really that there aren’t any hard and fast rules for how to do this stuff, some things work and some things don’t, it depends entirely on the game, the people involved and sometimes just luck. My advice? Do what you want to do, in whatever format you feel most comfortable with. Pick a game that you want to play, or replay and just go with it.
The worst thing that can happen is that people don’t watch it and that’s okay. Its all a learning experience, after all, and you can take that knowledge to other projects!
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Phoenix Wright.
…
(holy hell this is a joke, I’m sorry)
I’d say literally start with a game you know you’ll enjoy trudging through for months to come, depending on how long it’ll take you to finish. It helps tremendously to make some practice posts/videos of the LP so you can better gauge how much time is needed for editing and the like, and plan your schedule accordingly. And also, as several others might have already said, try looking at games that you know you’ll be able to give a different take over all other currently made/finished LP’s of it. No use wasting your time doing something that people will tell you “why should I watch this thing you made when there is another guy who did it 100x better”. Think outside the box.
I actually think it’s better to not worry about bringing anything new to the table. Especially for one’s first LP.
While I won’t watch the nth I Wanna Be The Guy LP people shouldn’t feel pressured to be unique and just do what they want to do instead.
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On the contrary, I think it’s pretty important to realise what your strengths and weaknesses are for a full-fledged LP. You’re right though, the original poster must have meant first LP for funsies but I can’t help shake the feeling that anything past the first few test runs should at least be given decent effort, both for the benefit of the viewer and the sanity of the one making the LP.
I personally don’t think the idea of putting in decent effort and having a unique take or spin on a game for an LP necessarily need to go hand-in-hand. A no-frills LP of Super Mario World can still be done well if you put in the work. Certainly it’s advisable to pick something shorter to avoid putting a bad taste in your mouth early on, and there are other things people can and have and will suggest for what to seek out or avoid. In the end, if you’re playing a game or thinking about a game and you think to yourself “I want to say something about this” or “I want to show this to people” then it may be a good candidate for an LP for you.
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