Livestreaming and video games are intertwined mediums with hundreds of years of history and prestige and self-important awards shows. Some games, like Luxcraft, are made specifically as improv story spaces for streamers. Bigger budget streaming studios make their own games and then provide tightened up versions of them to consumers as playable versions of that thing their favorite streamers starred in. There is a diverse mixture of VR, realcam, and V-Tuber genres doing everything from straightforward letsplays, scripted stories with light audience participation, full improv, and "chat-run" gameshows.
Transcript
Idrisah: Oh, speaking of history… I’ve been meaning to watch this climate wars documentary…She selects a media file with the PC remote titled "Flooded Coasts."
Gillie: (ASL) Hey!! We could watch that ferret soap opera I captioned!
Idrisah: (ASL) Gil, I love you, but those give me a headache.
A diagram shows an example of a bug ferret soap opera. There are many chaotic text, image, and video layers overlaid on the "main" content.
Gillie: (ASL) That’s why they’re fun!
Idrisah: (ASL) There’s also this new story letsplay from RingLight Studios.
Talita: Those are usually big budget awards-bait shlock.
Idrisah: I just wish more series were playing anything other than Luxcraft.
Talita: Yeah… I prefer classical survival games.
Gillie: (ASL) You two don’t get it. You watch RingLight series to mock them.
Idrisah: (ASL) Yeah, but it still gives them views.
Gillie: (ASL) AUGH! Give me that!
She grabs the remote out of Idrisah's hand.
65 thoughts on “Runaway to the Stars: Page 50”
Wasper
yeah I think bug ferret soap operas would explode my brain too tbh
Anonymous
Bug ferret shows look so fun but I would hate them, I can’t even put videos on 2x speed without overloading my attention span. I’ve been enamored with the idea of them ever since they first got mentioned though. Without fail, whenever I see a Tiktok that overwhelms me–title, rapidly changing captions separate from the title, text-to-speech over the background audio, rapid movements and constant video cuts, etc.–I always think “oh this is bug ferret media”.
Redacted
Ooo imagine like a channel that plays only 1 or 2 parts of the episode at once and then rewinds to cover the rest of it. Although that would probably extend the runtime a fair bit.
Anonymous
That’s a good idea! It reminds me of the types of stories that have overlapping character arcs/plots but keep rewinding to focus on one character at a time.
It would definitely make the runtime longer, but while I can’t handle fast videos, I am the type of person who eats through super long game streams for like a week straight when I’m bored, so I’d probably still enjoy it haha.
Green Heron
Maybe some streaming releases let you toggle what you want to see? Like you could play with settings so you’re watching only the main plot with English translated subtitles, but you could still get the full experience, or mix and match?
zofifi
Imagine living in a wold where video games and letsplays have hundreths of years history and tradition. They are classical medium by this point!
Gar G
Exactly. I love that idea tho
Redacted
The Sonic Fandubs are now classics
Flerponius
Talita’s lucky she can talk with her mouth full.
aaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAA
video games? somebody get these funky aliens a copy of spore
Ruby
It’s not a TV party if there isn’t some sort of argument for what to watch
SIGSTKFLT
Luxcraft and such just sounds like they re-invented singleplayer D&D
Jay Eaton
Oh it’s got both multiplayer and singleplayer options
Sio
I can’t stop looking at the tiny fleet of boats under the TV
Jay Eaton
Those are 3DBenchies!
Frustration in Excelsis
I love the idea of let’s plays becoming another form of mass televised media.
ImJustaTourist
Bug Ferret TV for non-ferrets must be like Lost in Translation or when Bojack goes to fish world. Also what good is captioning alien language programming with alien glyphs, or do Idrisah and Talita both read ferret?
Septemberdale
Gillie probably recaptioned it in English and the picture is of the original, if I had to guess.
theplushfrog
the idea of watching a captioned video, that is commenter captioned on top of that, plus another caption for the verbal commenters, then more captions for the visual commenters…. that sounds like something you’d have to “watch”/read frame by frame practically.
Liza
Hey wait is Gillie doing the sign for Bug Ferret in that one panel? That’s so cool!
notanocelot
I would watch a bug ferret soap opera given if the chance. Love the ferret thumbs up live reaction in the top right corner.
Redacted
I’d be really funny if there were “weebs” for alien media and vice versa.
Guest
I love how worldbuilding is so casually thrown into the dialogue here. It feels very realistic, like how people would actually talk. It’s great!
B
Got hit by the lorem ipsum beam
BullCityFats
If getting migraines is why something’s fun…? What?
Jay Eaton
Gillie likes that the bug ferret shows are rather strenuous to keep up with. It’s not Idrisah’s idea of a fun time.
Storel
Aha, thanks. I too was confused by the “those give me migraines” “that’s why they’re fun!” exchange.
Sparky Lurkdragon
I think Gillie’s being hyperbolic/sarcastic. She doesn’t mean they literally give her a migraine, just that they’re so sensory-intensive that they kind of cause the same feeling like you SHOULD get a migraine, but don’t, and she finds that fin. Like, say, a rollercoaster vs. skydiving vs. falling off a cliff.
Iguana
Even in the future, they have Lorem ipsum
Liza
Love the the debate about hatewatching has lasted into the 24th(?) century.
Claire
Gillie, please don’t sign so loudly!!!
Green Heron
Happy 50 pages!
Also, that Flood Wars show sounds very Lorem Ipsum.
Green Heron
Also, I’m a bug ferret! eef! =:>
LegendOfMoriad
Yep, I’m nerdy enough to have zoomed in to read what turned out to be Lorem Ipsum text.
Loving this comic!
Jay Eaton
I might change it later. At the time I finished this comic page I was too tired to do fictional copy writing; copy writing is already my least favorite in real life. Idk how to synopsize or advertise anything well.
Guest
It’s the turn of the 22nd century; political tensions are rising along with the world’s coastlines. In an award-winning documentary by Marissa Knodel, watch as historians recount the tale of one of humanity’s most turbulent points in history.
Or something like that idk
Mr. Son
I think my brain finally wrapped around the scale of Talita vs that hunk of meat. When she first started opening it I was thinking that was a lot of meat to just open up without prepping portions of… but no. She could easily eat that thing in one go if she wanted.
SJ
Like a bucket of popcorn! Not a quick snack but something to nibble on over the course of a movie.
Belladonna
Cool
evileeyore
/spittake
Talita kept her test tugboat 3D print runs! That is such a firggin detail!
SIGSTKFLT
Benchy! That model must be ancient history.
Guest
Benchy and the Stanford bunny must be like ancient glyphs by now
Peter Jensen
Hah, thanks, not being in the 3D printing sphere, I was wondering what those boats were about. Lovely detail!
Rossignol
I lost it because that’s exactly what my tv stand has looked like ever since by bf got a 3d printer. I wonder if there’s something about benchy that is attracted to the left side of tv stands?
Clemmy
I’ve never thought much on where the world of videogame let’s plays and streaming culture might go in the future… This is a really interesting take!
Greenjoe
Talita likes classical survival games? Has she played Minecraft?
hal9000
Set her loose on Rust or Ark, I think she’d do well
BullCityFats
Vintage Story!
Jay Eaton
She watches people play videogames more than she plays them herself, but she probably would enjoy Minecraft et al.
dokki
This also makes me wonder what became of Minecraft. I wonder if it still has an active community 300+ years later, or if it’s format and code now require a zillion adapters for it to work on modern technology. I imagine there’s accessibility mods for alien gamers. Wondering now what bug ferret minecraft looks like…
Joysweeper
I like that let’s plays and streaming-based human stories being really prominent brings a genre of human media closer to bug ferret media, assuming that like now that often involves splitting attention between the streamer’s face or Vtube avatar, chat, and the game footage. Personally I much prefer pre-recorded game footage with a non-intrusive voiceover if anything but there’s no denying a lot of people feel differently lol.
Bug ferret media might have broader human appeal if it was possible to select how much, if any, of the side content was visible, but I can imagine bug ferrets thinking that that compromises their vision too much, too.
Jay Eaton
Actual format varies a lot, there are some streams that lack realcam or avatars and just show the character models interacting in the game. The way streams are recorded in this setting is sort of like if a play or improv session had a camera attached to every actor, and the stage was virtual space of any size. Also, most streams are watched after the fact, sort of like the record of a stageplay– most can only make it to a live stream “in person” without significant chat lag if they live in the same region of space. Though most studios charge a small fee for admission to the chat, or require you to subscribe to send messages…
Robin
The idea that we might be in the Classical era of gaming is so funny to me, I love that. All the speculative videogame cuture on this page is delightful.
Bright
People might be going through things like the Dark Souls Trilogy and writing their PhD theses about their themes the way contemporary people are writing PhD theses about Shakespeare. On the sad flip side, it might be like actual Classical Greek Literature or early film studies where all these seminal works which came to define an era, medium, and/or genre are lost and they can only speculate based on surviving references.
Arcstone
I wonder if they would define any kind of split in eras between 2d sprite games and the first 3d games.
Bright
Heated argument in the Nexxus Jovia forums about where games like Stardew Valley fall on this split because as someone who lived the transition from 2D games to 3D games the change was so fast and so inconsistent. There are probably more 2D games currently in development/published than there were 20 years ago with the proliferation of indie creators/studios and indie distribution.
Arcstone
“What do you mean, shovel knight isn’t from 1988? Yes it is!”
“What do you mean the NES didnt have paralax scrolling, what are you fucking stupid?”
I’m sure things get even spicier too when you bring up games like starfox and stuntracer FX that were 3D on the super nintendo.
un_pogaz
The answer is easy: DOOM
Doom is more than a revolution, it’s a new era in which it’s possible to create complex 3D environments in real time. All modern 3D games (and even more fps) are descended from Doom.
hal9000
Don’t forget about UNREAL & Source engine! Unreal’s engine was so nuts they still use it today
Jay Eaton
Thanks! I feel like watching other people play video games as its own form of entertainment is massively overlooked by a lot of scifi. There’s already groups of players out there making a living doing, essentially, improv storytelling within open-world games, with hoards of teenage fans. I can only take potshots at the potential future of media but I’m very interested to see how that unfolds irl.
Arcstone
I mean, hardly anything new. Remember the machinema days? People were using the halo multiplayer to do what was basically puppet show sketch comedy.
I seem to remember red vs blue was even on netflix for a tiny little bit unless I’m completely hallucinating that.
Jay Eaton
Machinema is like one end of the spectrum and multiplayer Minecraft servers with emergent storylines are another. From what I’ve seen the latter tends to more seriously engage with the game and its mechanics, the former uses the game like an animation program to record prewritten scenes. It’s all super interesting, and I think it follows from older traditions of watching over people play games, like TV gameshows and sports.
Teod
I wanted to ask what SMOHS are, but then realized that even in the far future user interfaces are just still bad sometimes.
Also, a device that plugs into a monitor to turn it into a tv, with integrated remote? It feels like a real thing someone could make right mow. Not sure it would be popular, but it definitely could be made.
evileeyore
Now I’m totes stealing smohs as my goto for the shows I’m watching. Gotto stay caught up on my smohs and my blorbos.
Daedalus
Isn’t that basically just a Roku stick?