If you're old enough to remember the world without YouTube, how do you think that site has affected gaming?
The biggest change I can think of is that you no longer have to go to Blockbuster (another thing that is disappearing, heh) to try a game out by renting it. Any game you can think of can be studied in detail by searching for "... gameplay" on YouTube. Even the very rare import-only games! It used to be common for people to buy into the hype for a heavily marketed game (especially around Christmas time), only to be disappointed with how it plays a day after buying it. Yes, many of us relied on magazine reviews for guidance, but those were often biased, and not everyone had magazine subscriptions.
When Gamespot and IGN became the giants that started outperforming print magazines with their quality and up-to-date content, it was a sigh of relief for many gamers, because we could not only read about new games but see lots of screenshots online, and then video reviews came along, which was a whole new dimension, even though the videos were very low-resolution, and you had to pay a subscription fee to get the "high-def" version.
Then GameTrailers, a new site dedicated to video reviews, appeared, which was also terrific, but it wasn't until thousands of people started uploading their captured gameplay videos on YouTube that we could finally insure ourselves against accidentally buying terrible games, because all the truth was out in the open.
This is just one of many dimensions in which YouTube has changed gaming. How has YouTube changed the way you play games?
The biggest change I can think of is that you no longer have to go to Blockbuster (another thing that is disappearing, heh) to try a game out by renting it. Any game you can think of can be studied in detail by searching for "... gameplay" on YouTube. Even the very rare import-only games! It used to be common for people to buy into the hype for a heavily marketed game (especially around Christmas time), only to be disappointed with how it plays a day after buying it. Yes, many of us relied on magazine reviews for guidance, but those were often biased, and not everyone had magazine subscriptions.
When Gamespot and IGN became the giants that started outperforming print magazines with their quality and up-to-date content, it was a sigh of relief for many gamers, because we could not only read about new games but see lots of screenshots online, and then video reviews came along, which was a whole new dimension, even though the videos were very low-resolution, and you had to pay a subscription fee to get the "high-def" version.
Then GameTrailers, a new site dedicated to video reviews, appeared, which was also terrific, but it wasn't until thousands of people started uploading their captured gameplay videos on YouTube that we could finally insure ourselves against accidentally buying terrible games, because all the truth was out in the open.
This is just one of many dimensions in which YouTube has changed gaming. How has YouTube changed the way you play games?