Watching a video game is basically playing it

I turn off my phone and prepare for another round of Dead by Daylight. The last match was tense — in the game, solo Killers need to capture an entire four-person group of Survivors, and this particular Survivor team didn’t want that to happen. Its members milked every exploit possible, running in strategic circles around the reddish desert map, and their mounting confidence quickly began to outweigh mine. But, somehow, we pulled through in the end and won. Or, I mean, the Twitch streamer I was watching pulled through.

Sometimes, I find it difficult to distinguish my memories of playing a game from seeing someone else play it. I’ve probably spent an equal amount of time doing both, becoming a taquito under my blanket on the couch, staring at my TV the way a cat observes a laser pointer. Both playing and watching result in an intimate understanding of how a game works, imparting crucial knowledge of its combat system, story, and weathered characters. Either might make you wish you could scream through your PC and up into heaven. So I’ve come to think of playing and watching games as basically interchangeable.

There are a lot of games — Dark Souls, Resident Evil 4, League of Legends, and others — that I talk about with expert conviction, though, in reality, they’re more like acquaintances. I made it through only five bosses in Dark Souls with my pigtailed powerlifter protagonist before I decided that the game’s pimple-eyed basilisks were too annoying, and it was time to focus on what was for dinner instead.

But in the years before and after I decided I was quitting Dark Souls, I also watched one boyfriend, one roommate, and several YouTubers play the 40-hour game from start to finish. I had the pleasure of meeting Ceaseless Discharge only once in my abandoned playthrough, but, over my hundreds of hours observing other people’s games, the oozing boss became a familiar flame to me. I got so used to seeing Blighttown’s rickety, rotten wooden pathways that they might as well have formed the driveway leading up to my parents’ house. I was so comfortable with Dark Souls that, for a summer, I used YouTube speedruns to help me fall asleep.

Image: FromSoftware/Bandai Namco

So I’d discuss it as if I had played it, because my knowledge of the game matched that of its most dedicated players. I know I’m not the only one who does this. Many of my friends — most of them women — would rather fixedly watch someone else play games than play them themselves. There are many reasons why a person would prefer this. Accessibility options, for one, are slowly broadening, but still lacking. AAA video games’ now standard $70 price tag places them among luxuries, like exfoliating skincare and Marc Jacobs keychains, and not everyone can afford the indulgence. Historically maligned gamers, including women like me, might also find that viewing someone else’s gaming offers a wide-open gateway into the subject. Or, most simply, it’s entertaining to watch someone perform a task with skill or conviction you might not have.

If it weren’t, there wouldn’t be so many opportunities to watch people play. Game-watching is the basis of most gaming-related video content online, including the “Let’s Play” YouTube genre, in which charismatic gamers commentate on their gameplay for an eager audience, and the existence of most Twitch streamers. But popular “no commentary” video walkthroughs also indicate that people like watching games for their stories alone. From these myriad ways that gamers encourage each other to view games instead of playing them, we establish the idea that watching and playing are essentially synonymous. “Chat, is this real?” would not reverberate from ergonomic gaming chairs all over the world if streamers — many of whom excel at their favorite games, like Ninja with Fortnite — didn’t hope that their audience was as equally absorbed in gameplay as they were.

In that sense, being the audience for an active hobby like gaming isn’t much different from attending the opera when you can’t sing, or sitting courtside at a Knicks game when you love basketball, but would rather not attempt hand-eye coordination yourself. And, even if channeling Jalen Brunson made you topple over in a sweaty puddle, you could nonetheless become very familiar with the art of basketball from watching it. In fact, people might even expect you, as a dedicated fan, to represent your team with posters, deodorant-stained jerseys, or by nervously checking the score instead of looking into your date’s eyes at a wine bar.

Image: Red Barrels

But gaming, despite being one of the world’s largest entertainment industries, is often treated like an insular community. People who watch video games, by experiencing them in a slightly different way than their peers, aren’t necessarily equated to “real gamers” the way sports fans or music nerds are identified by their interests. The limitations of “true gaming” make sense, in some cases. Like, while I love telling friends about 2013 survival horror Outlast’s gruesome plot, I can’t speak to what it feels like to stealth through the game with a dying flashlight, because I experienced it by watching a PewDiePie playthrough when I was 15.

But I don’t think that playing is necessarily the most crucial aspect of gaming. I’ve always found it most rewarding to feel like I’ve become an inextricable part of someone’s story, whether it’s a protagonist’s rise to kinghood or the internal monologue of a person in the multiplayer lobby who’s planning to teabag me. These moments of tangible connectivity, whether they move me or make me feel crazy, are why I need games. And if I can get that same sensation from watching my boyfriend play Hunt: Showdown, so be it.