OS Neutral Would a MacBook Pro focused "Lets Play" YouTube channel work?

Elmzeh said:

Thing is, with so many others out there how can I separate myself and be somewhat unique? Would it be best to dedicate the videos to gameplay performance based on a Mac/Apple system? General "Lets Play" in my own style focused on the gaming and less on the system being used? A combination of the both?

I've seen a lot of YouTube videos with some brief clips of gaming on MacBook Pro's but nothing that's continuous or too in depth and I feel like this could be an area that if approached correctly could be broken into while remaining slightly separate from others...

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More in-depth looks at gaming on OS X (rather than Windows via Boot Camp) would definitely help you stand out. You could look at OS X ports as well as some Windows only games that can run via emulation (Wine, Crossover, et al).

I would save long, Let's Play style videos for older titles, maybe even a few that are rare or exclusive to Mac, such as Marathon.

Elmzeh said:

This could be a possibilit although gaming on the Mac is quite restricted title wise but I could definitely see the benefit of doing it in the native OSX instead of Bootcamp for the hardcore OSX lovers!

Anyone else got any advice / suggestions?

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If you are recording in Windows use FRAPS everyone I know in games dev swears by it

Edwin

Elmzeh said:

This could be a possibilit although gaming on the Mac is quite restricted title wise but I could definitely see the benefit of doing it in the native OSX instead of Bootcamp for the hardcore OSX lovers!

Anyone else got any advice / suggestions?

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Gaming on a Mac is not "quite restricted" but like you, too many people seem to just accept this as if it is true. I own over 350 games, most highly rated in reviews and all of them run on OS X. I hardly own all there is to own either but those are the ones that happen to appeal to me personally.

I own most titles by Feral and Aspyr for OS X which happens to include a lot of excellent games covering a good variety of genres. I also own everything by Blizzard who in my opinion make great games and always for Mac too. Paradox Grand Strategy games are available on OS X and the list goes on.

This brings me to what I think would be a good You Tube channel on Mac Gaming... a channel that is actually about MAC GAMING - not Windows gaming on a Mac but rather showcases the very many excellent titles one can play right now on OS X.

I should mention also that gog.com has been busily releasing many classic games for OS X, such as the famous Ultima series of RPGs along with many other titles from a variety of genres. You could easily do a number of segments just on classic gaming on the Mac.

You could also do segments on new releases for Mac as they happen. Yesterday Feral released Napoleon: Total War for OS X. Next month they will be releasing Tropico 4. Sometime soon they will be releasing a Sega Tennis game. Meantime Aspyr will soon be releasing Bioshock Infinite along with the latest expansion to Civilization V which is also available for OS X along with Civilization IV complete. Then there is the soon to be released grand strategy game from Paradox, "Europa Universalis IV" which will be released for OS X on the same day it releases for Windows.

You could easily do segments on the major players bringing Mac games to us including: Blizzard (WoW, Diablo III, Starcraft II), EA (Sims 3, upcoming Sims 4, etc.), Turbine (LoTRO, DDO), Paradox, Feral, Aspyr, Virtual Programming, numerous Indies, etc. Speaking of which there is no shortage of noteworthy and very popular indie titles that are not just on Windows but also on OS X.

If you spend some time researching what is available to Mac gamers you will find a great deal of choice in excellent games. There is also iOS ports to OS X that you frequently see on the Mac App Store, some of which are quite good and something not available to Windows gamers.

If you want to do something interesting and informative for the Mac gaming community, how about providing coverage of gaming on our preferred operating system? We don't need Let's Plays of Windows games. There are endless videos of those. Think Different.

We could really use the equivalent of "The Cynical Brit" with coverage devoted exclusively to gaming on OS X. Now, that would be something worth tuning in to and I can assure you, you will never have enough time to cover all the good games available for us but it would be very cool if you were to try.

I'm not against the OP's idea. And certainly not against creating a YouTube channel for the sake of presentation.

But wouldn't it make more sense to have a small editorial spot in a Mac-centric gaming forum/website like IMG or even MacGamerHQ, and then use your blog/editorial section there to directly link to your YouTube videos?

YouTube is Youtube. Most people use it to kill time and browse annoying "funny cat videos" and other stupidly viral videos (e.g. Gangnam). When the idea of YouTube comes to mind, the last thing the average YT user thinks about is "helpful Mac gaming advice". Therefore, you are unlikely to help very many people (in terms of Mac gaming advice) if your comments/editorial/blog is solely inside YouTube.

Elmzeh said:

I've just been checking out some of the "The Cynical Brit / Total Biscuits" work and love the idea of trying to do coverage which is almost a hybrid of Total Biscuits/The Cynical Brit's Style / PewDiePie but purely, as you said, for OSX only gaming!

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How will your video be any different to the current walktrhough/play-through videos?

Highlighting that its OSX version? Does it matter? Its the same game.

But its Youtube and you can do what you want.

Solomani said:

I'm not against the OP's idea. And certainly not against creating a YouTube channel for the sake of presentation.

But wouldn't it make more sense to have a small editorial spot in a Mac-centric gaming forum/website like IMG or even MacGamerHQ, and then use your blog/editorial section there to directly link to your YouTube videos?

YouTube is Youtube. Most people use it to kill time and browse annoying "funny cat videos" and other stupidly viral videos (e.g. Gangnam). When the idea of YouTube comes to mind, the last thing the average YT user thinks about is "helpful Mac gaming advice". Therefore, you are unlikely to help very many people (in terms of Mac gaming advice) if your comments/editorial/blog is solely inside YouTube.

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You make some good points there but I don't think gamers necessarily equal the average You Tube user either. There are actually quite a lot of people who turn to You Tube channels for game related information so why not Mac gamers too? For the Windows world it seems that "The Cynical Brit" and "Angry Joe" are the clear leaders but there are many others and endless Let's Play videos along with a lot of tutorial videos for complex games such as the Paradox grand strategy games. There are some really good video tutorial series on those, for example for "Crusader Kings II." Established gaming review sites such as Gamespot have You Tube channels with all of their video reviews available on them. So You Tube is actually a worthwhile destination for gamers without ever looking at the other crap you mention. But then again, gamers may not be the typical You Tube users you speak of.

I think your best point above was about the need to market a channel for it to achieve any real following or success. Who is going to know about it if it isn't marketed and your suggestions for how to do that effectively are good ones but then again, just posting in relevant forums about the channel with a link isn't a bad start either. I guess it depends on what the OP hopes to achieve here, be it big or small.

I got the impression the OP is about as interested in the entire process of producing the content as in the content itself. Maybe I am wrong. That's fine but one might as well aim high on the content side for the most satisfying experience. If you are going to make something, you might as well make something good and I will say again that something good would be a channel specific to gaming on OS X. And as noted above, if you want anyone to actually watch the videos, you are going to need to do some marketing so people know they exist.

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Wardenski said:

How will your video be any different to the current walktrhough/play-through videos?

Highlighting that its OSX version? Does it matter? Its the same game.

But its Youtube and you can do what you want.

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Many times in various ways it is not exactly the same game as the Windows version. For example, multiplayer options are frequently not the same. A let's play of Black OPS II showing how many servers are populated would have been interesting when the game released. It would be interesting now for that matter to someone considering a purchase of the OS X version.

Setting up Gameranger for multiplayer with a Mac would make for a good segment and then show some gameplay doing it since this is often used in the Mac world.

What about Gamecenter, something else that is sometimes a difference?

What about simply making a Mac audience aware of the many game titles available to them and where they can be purchased? How many people with Macs are aware of the very many OS X options available to them today versus operating on the assumption that bootcamp/Windows is a must if you want to play games? A case in point is the OP right here and the comment about how limited the options are for Mac so of course he is planning 100% gaming via bootcamp. How common is that ignorance among people owning Macs? I don't know but I do read a lot of posts in various places where people seem to think there is next to nothing good to play on OS X and that is simply not true at all. A good You Tube channel geared towards Mac gaming could educate and inform people about all the great options available to them right now.

Keep in mind, I am not talking about someone like you who I presume is well aware of these things. I am thinking about the many people like the OP who clearly are not.

Something else just came to mind about the relevance of Let's Plays of OS X releases versus already existing Let's Plays of Windows versions of the same games.

Sometimes, there are content differences between the games and sometimes there are content differences depending on where you buy the game for Mac. I'll use the recent release of XCOM: Enemy Unknown on Steam for Mac. On the Mac App Store you can buy the Elite Edition of the game with all DLC included. This doesn't exist on Steam for Windows and it does not exist on Steam for Mac either. Instead, on Steam you can buy XCOM and the DLC separately for either platform. This stuff is worth knowing about I'd say depending on what the selling price is where, etc. currently.

The other important consideration is that a new release for Mac is something that may not become interesting at all to a Mac gamer until there is actually an OS X version existent. For example, a Mac gamer may not have paid much attention to nor watched any let's play of Napoleon: Total War in the past since it was not available for their system. Maybe they didn't ever want to spend for Windows, use bootcamp and tie up disk space for that. So before the Mac release, they really didn't care that much about it other than perhaps to hope it would come to Mac. Well, now that it has wouldn't it be interesting to some folks to see it in action and also to hear some feedback about performance and settings, etc. for the Mac version on a Macbook Pro? Watching a Let's Play of the Windows version isn't going to help you there. Wouldn't it be much nicer to see the OS X version running? Of course it would! It's more relevant.

I've seen posts here asking about differences like this before including one recently where someone was wanting to know what was different between Mac and Windows versions of the game RAGE and there are some differences there too. So it was a good question and just the kind of thing that could be covered in a You Tube presentation of the OS X version of the game.

So I think Mac version Let's Plays are quite relevant and would be more interesting to me than seeing a Windows Let's Play which is better than nothing since the basic gameplay is covered but otherwise, it's not as good as seeing the version I'd be buying and running on the operating system I use.

Elmzeh said:

First of all I'd like to thank everyone for contributing to the thread so far. All of your responses have been great and very informative!

Dirtyharry - you're absolutely right with regards to everything you've said, you've almost made me want to delete my Bootcamp partition ASAP

Like you've said many people including myself initially don't understand the gaming capabilities of a Mac but as you've evidenced there is a huge amount of people that love to game on their Mac however there seems to be minimal coverage of this running natively in OSX and instead people gaming via bootcamp.

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Almost??? Well, it's a start! lol

I have to tell you that I still have a bootcamp partition myself so I can play some games I already owned for Windows but its days are numbered. I am working on those now and once done, bootcamp is going bye bye on my Mac. Any AAA games I can't get for Mac I will play on Playstation 4 in the future. But that's just my preference. I respect the idea of "to each their own."

I'm glad you are enthused about the idea of covering Mac gaming. I hope you will keep us posted here on progress as news becomes available. I'll certainly tune in and check it out when you get your debut video up.

I've read good things about the video capture app you mentioned and that is the one I think I want to buy at some point myself. I'd be very interested in hearing about how well that works for you should you decide to try it. I'd like to have some fun with that just to make some videos to share with family and friends.

As for the technical questions about system capability I'm afraid I can't be much help there since I haven't played on it and also have not done video capture on it. Hopefully somebody else will come along with some good feedback about that. I would lean towards expecting it should work well but again, I am not qualified to really say.

I forget now but did you mention 1 gig ram on the GPU being an option? Be sure to get that if it is. A lot of games will benefit from having more than 512 MB RAM on the GPU.

A lot of people seem to have a thing about needing games to all be playable on maximum settings or close. I know it is a subjective thing but honestly, you can scale back many options or reduce resolution and still have a very nice looking result with good performance. I bring this up because I would expect you ought to be able to play whatever you like on that system but you'll need to do some tuning sometimes to get the right tradeoffs for visuals and performance.

I did a little experiment the other day with a free benchmark on Steam. I did run this in bootcamp on my Mac since no Mac version was available. It was the Resident Evil 6 benchmark. By default all the eye candy is turned up and I left it that way. The variable I experimented with was the screen resolution. First I tried it on my native resolution of 1440p and then I tested with 1080p and lastly 720p. Performance was barely passable at 1440p to my taste. At 1080p it was pretty good but nothing to write home about. At 720p it was great.

The most interesting thing about running the RE6 benchmarks for me was observing the difference in visual quality between 1440p, 1080p and 720p. I expected 1440p to look great and it does. I expected 1080p to still look pretty decent too and to my eyes it did. What surprised me was that 720p looked pretty good too. It wasn't as if turning down the resolution made the game look just awful. To read some people's posts you'd think it is the end of the world and a game becomes just unplayable if you have to crank down the resolution. I'd have to disagree with that. Sure, sharper picture is always nice. Who could argue that? But a modern game at 720p with its eye candy turned up looks pretty damned good just the same. At least, I think so.

So, it was a bit of a lesson learned for this old man. If I am playing something and my perception of performance is not good, I wouldn't hesitate to turn down the resolution in favor of keeping the eye candy settings for the optimal experience on my particular hardware. I said all of this because I'd recommend that you consider the same as you approach various games.

I should note that some folks like to take the opposite approach where they prefer the higher resolution over the eye candy when one needs to make choices. So, only you can decide which way to go there. Personally, I favor keeping the eye candy as I mentioned.

Some people are unable to be happy with less than MAXIMUM everything and that is okay too. It's their experience but for that one needs to buy a high end Windows box. No way I'd be willing to do that but to each their own.

Dirtyharry50 said:

Gaming on a Mac is not "quite restricted" but like you, too many people seem to just accept this as if it is true. I own over 350 games, most highly rated in reviews and all of them run on OS X. I hardly own all there is to own either but those are the ones that happen to appeal to me personally.

I own most titles by Feral and Aspyr for OS X which happens to include a lot of excellent games covering a good variety of genres. I also own everything by Blizzard who in my opinion make great games and always for Mac too. Paradox Grand Strategy games are available on OS X and the list goes on.

This brings me to what I think would be a good You Tube channel on Mac Gaming... a channel that is actually about MAC GAMING - not Windows gaming on a Mac but rather showcases the very many excellent titles one can play right now on OS X.

I should mention also that gog.com has been busily releasing many classic games for OS X, such as the famous Ultima series of RPGs along with many other titles from a variety of genres. You could easily do a number of segments just on classic gaming on the Mac.

You could also do segments on new releases for Mac as they happen. Yesterday Feral released Napoleon: Total War for OS X. Next month they will be releasing Tropico 4. Sometime soon they will be releasing a Sega Tennis game. Meantime Aspyr will soon be releasing Bioshock Infinite along with the latest expansion to Civilization V which is also available for OS X along with Civilization IV complete. Then there is the soon to be released grand strategy game from Paradox, "Europa Universalis IV" which will be released for OS X on the same day it releases for Windows.

You could easily do segments on the major players bringing Mac games to us including: Blizzard (WoW, Diablo III, Starcraft II), EA (Sims 3, upcoming Sims 4, etc.), Turbine (LoTRO, DDO), Paradox, Feral, Aspyr, Virtual Programming, numerous Indies, etc. Speaking of which there is no shortage of noteworthy and very popular indie titles that are not just on Windows but also on OS X.

If you spend some time researching what is available to Mac gamers you will find a great deal of choice in excellent games. There is also iOS ports to OS X that you frequently see on the Mac App Store, some of which are quite good and something not available to Windows gamers.

If you want to do something interesting and informative for the Mac gaming community, how about providing coverage of gaming on our preferred operating system? We don't need Let's Plays of Windows games. There are endless videos of those. Think Different.

We could really use the equivalent of "The Cynical Brit" with coverage devoted exclusively to gaming on OS X. Now, that would be something worth tuning in to and I can assure you, you will never have enough time to cover all the good games available for us but it would be very cool if you were to try.

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Including games from GoG would undermine the "native OSX" premise, because most, if not all, of those titles are Wineskin or Crossover ports.

Not native OSX.

By the way, I really dig the idea of an OSX-only gaming channel.

Irishman said:

Including games from GoG would undermine the "native OSX" premise, because most, if not all, of those titles are Wineskin or Crossover ports.

Not native OSX.

By the way, I really dig the idea of an OSX-only gaming channel.

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So, does that mean no Mac games ported with Cider too? Some of these work fine from what I understand, such as Sims 3, others not so much but that is worth coverage too.

I'm of the view, who cares how it works so long as it "just works." If it comes as a .dmg and I can install it in the standard way and then click a pretty icon for it in Launchpad and it fires up and runs well in OS X with zero fooling around on my part - good enough. GOG delivers this experience.

How something is "ported" doesn't matter to me - only how well it works. The GOG games I've played so far work perfectly.

By the way, NONE of them are ported with Crossover. So far a minimal number were done with Wineskin. Most of them use Boxer where they are MS-DOS classics such as the Ultima or Wing Commander games as one example. GOG also sells newer titles that are native OS X games such as currently popular indies for Mac.

Why worry about it being "native" OS X gaming... just be OS X gaming. Running a game on OS X is running a game on OS X no matter if its been re-written to use native APIs and frameworks, or is bundled with a Wine/Cider layer.

Elmzeh said:

Hey Guys!

1) The channel name...

2) Video Capture Hardware/Software: So far I've tested Screenflick and Screenflow and while both seem to be good pieces of software they don't compare to the likes of Fraps...

3) Full Playthroughs, reviews, mini playthroughs with commentary + review?

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Channel name is all yours. I don't have an opinion either way myself.

How did Screenflow fail to compare to FRAPS? I'm curious.

Personally, I cannot imagine sitting through a full play through of a game in episodes. I want to play them myself, not watch somebody else do it. What is interesting is seeing some gameplay with commentary before making a purchase decision. That to me at least, is useful info and potentially entertaining as well, even if the game is terrible. I like TB's format of firing up the game and playing it for 15 minutes or so while he comments on the experience as he goes along. This commentary is generally based on not only what he is showing then and there but the fact that he's already spent some time with the game before doing the video. Ultimately, I am less interested in his opinions and more interested in just seeing the game.

TB is a little over the top sometimes whining about what he doesn't like in my opinion. It makes me want to reach through the screen and slap him one. Just the same, he does do good videos showcasing games. Of course, for really over the top criticism we have Yahtzee who goes borderline insane over games he does not care for which is all about the entertainment value of course. Angry Joe falls in the middle somewhere with his humorous outbursts but fairly decent coverage of games.

I guess you need to consider your own personality and talents and figure out your own approach to presentation but as for content, I don't think there's much audience for watching the entirety of a game being played.

Sounds good. The games I have been playing most recently on OSX are GW2 and the new XCOM.

GuildWars 2: Good game, although the "endgame" progress path is not very clear and not so motivating. OSX implementation is ok-ish. However the OSX client is still labeled as beta and support is almost non-existent.

XCOM: Good OSX port. The game is somewhat different from the RPG/MMO or RTS games I usually play. So far I find it enjoyable.

Witcher 2 seems to be available for OSX. Performance is poor.

Let us know when your reviews are starting to appear.

This is a great idea, it's about time someone did OS X gaming on YouTube. I would love to see Max Payne 3, Real Racing 2 and some of the Star Wars games (Force Unleashed, Jedi Academy). Good luck!

doh123 said:

Why worry about it being "native" OS X gaming... just be OS X gaming. Running a game on OS X is running a game on OS X no matter if its been re-written to use native APIs and frameworks, or is bundled with a Wine/Cider layer.

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This. Games being played on OSX. If it's a port you may want to spend some time showing how you got the port to work, or perhaps a separate video.

I don't know if the bootcamp thing has been completely decided (did not read the whole thread), but IMO doing videos of play games via bootcamp is pointless as this is no different than playing them on a PC. Bootcamp = PC, period. At that point the Mac is just the hardware or the shell.

I know I for one am interested in OSX gaming. I have bootcamp setup, but will only use it as a last resort for a game I really really want to play and if the port option is not acceptable.

All hail Elmzeh! Thanks for doing this. When I get my rMBP I do not want to boot camp just to play games. I'd rather play them natively on OS X.

When will your channel be up and what will be the first game review you will upload?

This is a great idea!

Also I'd like to Bioshock and Bioshock Infinite.

Who needs Windows for gaming, OS X has plenty. I've been playing Real Racing 2, COD 4 and BO on my 2013 MBA, but I'll subscribe and see what else may be interesting! Great idea man!

Suraj R. said:

Who needs Windows for gaming, OS X has plenty. I've been playing Real Racing 2, COD 4 and BO on my 2013 MBA, but I'll subscribe and see what else may be interesting! Great idea man!

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Is Real Racing 2 just a port from iOS or is it optimized for the Mac?

tgi said:

Is Real Racing 2 just a port from iOS or is it optimized for the Mac?

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Optimized for the Mac, its actually really nice. Its on the Mac App Store