For an experience so built around the reality of the player, backseat gaming?sitting and watching someone else play a videogame?plays a surprisingly big role. From the inexperienced gamer watching an older sibling play, to one gamer insulting with mounting exasperation another?s tragic incompetence, to the recent surge of popular playthroughs put up on YouTube, backseat gaming is and has always been a huge part of the gaming experience. So why is this? What is it that we get out of backseat gaming, and how and why do we relate to the player-oriented experience when our hands aren?t at the controls?
The most direct analogy to pull from the concept of backseat driving is the frustration and interference part, the conviction that you could do it better than the player is doing. The part where your friend is watching and says to you, ?You are the worst.? (It happens.) Watch any of those gameplay videos on YouTube and you?ll have at least one person telling the uploader of the video that there?s a better way to do it. It turns gaming into a kind of spectator sport, paying equal tribute to the image of the guy in the armchair criticising sportspeople on TV.
But it?s easy to open up the term to a whole range of behaviour relating to what the presence of this strange non-gaming ?gamer? does to the experience for everyone involved. And it?s not always obnoxious.
Early on in gamer life, backseat gaming is a way of learning. When I was younger, I used to watch my older brother play, or even friends who had more experience. You watch someone play, you see how they do it. More than just videogame induction, though, backseat gaming is also a way to experience much of what a game has to offer without having to deal with the actual playing part, maybe because you imagine dealing with that is too scary or difficult. You get to treat it kind of like a film, watching someone else succeed or fail. It?s often the result of an interest in the game coupled with a lack of confidence in your own gaming abilities.
But you still get to chip in, and this immediately opens up a dialogue that makes it a different experience not just for the backseat gamer but for the player, too. To borrow from film again, it?s a bit like when you watch a film with your friends and form your own running commentary, one that makes it more of a shared social experience and maybe even fonder for that.
On the one hand this can lead to a self-consciousness that pulls you out of it, also like with films. Peer presence might give you extra awareness of the game?s flaws and goofiness, maybe its inadvertently comical or absurd gameyness (happens a lot when you?re playing with someone who doesn?t really game giving commentary on accepted gaming conventions you don?t think twice about normally), maybe even your own playing style. But on the other hand, you have those moments where this dialogue gets you both (or all) invested even more in the game?either over the technicalities and technique of gameplay, or over the narrative decisions you have to make. It leads to a different kind of co-op.
All the times I mentioned the non-gamer in this article, I?ve been mentally alluding to my sister?who does play one or two videogames, but almost none of the games I play. Most of the time she?ll watch five or ten minutes of a game, and then wander off to Tumblr or something. But a few months ago she got pretty invested, as a backseat gamer, in the world of the latest Deus Ex.
I?ve already covered some of Deus Ex?s interesting interactions, and the experience of confronting Wayne Haas, as one example, actually became a pretty big point of discussion between us. I lost patience a lot faster, while my sister stayed sympathetic and encouraged me to see it from his point of view, until the extremely fussy and seemingly impossible nature of the interaction, wrought by Wayne Haas? many layers of emotional awkwardness, wore us both down. The point being that we sat there and evaluated it all pretty thoroughly, in a discussion that amped up the whole thing in a really cool way.
My sister kept on watching. When we parted ways for uni and whatnot, she actually picked up where we?d left off on YouTube, with somebody else?s playthrough, watching the more interesting parts right up until the end. The same dialogue wouldn?t have been there, but it goes to show that she was still interested enough in what she saw on screen and got something out of it even if only as a backseat gamer.
As for myself, I?ve watched the occasional playthrough video too. Watching somebody else play is still tedious and annoying at times, but it can also be pretty interesting, and with some of the things people get up to, often funny too. A lot of people also seem to watch to relive certain moments, seeking them out of nostalgia. But it?s interesting how watching somebody else?s playthrough can become the starting point of a shared, even communal experience.
About Chris Jordan
Hurry! Everything collapses.
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