Grew up watching things like Freeman’s Mind, and Red vs Blue (their channel is locked behind some kind of ‘join’ thing… wtf…), WoW Machinimas… More recently I saw Neeb’s Subnautica series and it’s a pretty solid step up in quality compared to what I’m otherwise familiar with. I’ve burned through their content, and am seeking more! …and the Subnautica stuff looks like Neeb’s only content that follows this format - the rest of their channel is ‘let’s play’ videos. Boo.

Anyway, nursing student here! …it’s melting my brain. I don’t trust my time-management skills to actually fire up any games right now - the addiction is real, and I’ll fuck up my grades; but the ‘itch’ is also real, so I’m trying to find something to give that gaming fix, but in little short bursts so I don’t one-more-level my way out of the program.

Study up, give my brain a nice 10-20 min break, then get back to it.

Not really picky on the game or genre, just looking for something in-character. YouTube is absolutely STUFFED with videos of people just playing games, but hardly any focused on delivering an actual story. Or rather, I’m sure it’s there, it’s just lost in a sea of low quality slop. Could also be that I just don’t know the right key search term (“machinima” doesn’t seem to really be a thing anymore, and I’m not sure what else to call it).

Any recommendations on picking out the gems?

  • tal@olio.cafeEnglish
    2·
    18 hours ago

    This might be too far into the “watching gameplay” side of things or not up your alley, but I remember watching through some Arma II videos by Jester814 on YouTube and enjoying them.

    He was one of a number of members who play in a group that tries to stay in-character, act as if it were a real Marines operation.

    https://www.506thir.net/

    The 506th Infantry Regiment Realism Unit was founded in late 2014 by former members of the 15th MEU(SOC) Realism Unit. Many of our members are veterans and active duty military from around the world. The primary focus of the unit is light infantry combat in Arma Reforger utilizing real to life tactics, techniques, protocol, and communication.

    While I do like some military history, I’m not really all that interested in light infantry tactics, so the content itself wasn’t an immediate draw…but I wound up finding it fun to watch through the videos.

    One of his ArmA II playlists:

    He’s also done ArmA III videos, which are obviously graphically-prettier, but at least in the few I watched — and I haven’t gone back and looked recently — he didn’t have larger numbers of coordinating players acting as larger, hierarchical military units, just a squad or maybe a couple of squads, and I didn’t find it as interesting.

    That being said, it’s not something like Red vs Blue, which is content scripted purely for the viewer, not the people involved.

    EDIT: Actually, I do remember a couple of large-scale ArmA III operations that he did. Just that there was a lot of smaller-scale stuff mixed in. That being said, could have been that when he was recording them, people hadn’t switched to ArmA III yet — it was still a pretty new game then. I should really go back and see what the situation is now.