Status: Complete-- For now.
There's a pretty common thing on YouTube for gamers to do, and that's to play through a whole game. It's come to be known in common internet jargon as a Let's Play, since the audience is somewhat involved. Also, if you seem open about it, as in, inclusive, that makes it easier for other people to involve themselves, but, going deeper into that kind of topic is something for its own post, so I won't bore you with details there!
Something I have talked a lot about when it comes to Let's Plays here on my blog is something that I discovered while attempting to complete this game. I chose it based solely on the fact that I knew that I was going to love absolutely every second of the game as I played through it. While this should be something that helps you decide what you want to LP, I think that more importantly you should be looking at the length of the game, especially if you're new to YouTube and LP's in general. Without a cemented audience, it's easy to lose people. It's also easy to become sick of something the longer it goes on.
Another factor that led to this LP becoming somewhat of a problem for me was that I basically ran through the game in almost exclusively co-op. That meant that not only did I have to have the time to play it, but I had to make sure that my partner also had the time to play it. The more people you have working on something consistently, the more difficult it will become to actually get things done. It's kind of like a group project in school, you just know that at least one person in your group isn't willing to put in the commitment and effort that the rest of the group will undoubtedly put into it. I suppose it also doesn't help that both GrimJak and I are procrastinators. 
We started the series on YouTube, but I actually finished it on Twitch, since I didn't really see a reason to extend it past 60 parts, and I had virtually lost my entire audience by then anyway. Another problem I had, that I actually run into quite a bit when I'm working on gaming stuff for an audience is the uniformity of it all. More often than not, I spend my time trying new things and messing around with settings, so the quality of both the visuals and the audio is often all over the place. It's hard to inspire confidence in your audience when your quality undergoes such drastic changes. I've been spending a lot of time on my channel lately just trying to make everything seem uniform, as I think that this will greatly help me in the long run. You want to make sure that others know you for you. Your content has to be consistent if you hope to have a large following, or, even, any following at all.
I mentioned just a bit ago that I finished my playthrough on Twitch, and if you want to continue the action, you can view the final parts of my playthrough of the story on my Twitch channel or click here, then here, and finally here. Now, I finished the story of Saints Row the Third, but I didn't actually finish all the DLC, and that is why my status for this series is 'for now.' The problem with me choosing an open-world game like this to do a LP of is that there's a lot of the time where I'm just wandering around doing the dumbest of things, and that makes the game even longer than it should be, which is already pretty long.
According to the YouTube playlist, there's 13 hours of footage, plus the ~12 or so that's on Twitch. I chose to do this as an actual LP, meaning that I was going to film whatever I did in the game, which actually led to quite a few problems, with me having to set up whenever I was going to play and my indefatigable laziness. When I wanted to play or when GrimJak wanted to play, I had to set up my recording equipment, and sometimes I was unable to do so, or I was just far too lazy to do so, and that really made filming and playing quite a drag. There's also the fact that Grim's mission in virtual life is to be a bullet/grenade/magic sponge for whatever I am trying to do, so that I can hit nothing. FUNNY EXCERPT, ACTUALLY, we started to play Titanfall on PC recently, and not only does he block my shots with his body when I'm just running around as a pilot, but when he leaves his Titan and sets it on AI, the DAMN THING WALKS IN FRONT OF MY BULLETS JUST LIKE HE WOULD. Also, he is not allowed to wield fire anything in games because he will only set every other teammate of his ablaze. Furthermore, I am the most stubborn of gamers, but I love a challenge. I will sit in the same battle the same way at least 400x if I know that there's a chance I will win, that my strategy is sound. Usually though, my strategy is to win in the most ridiculous of ways. Grim, on the other hand, is not like that at all. He's quite the pragmatist, actually.
I have taken all of this as a lesson though, and I hope all of you out there will too. In my opinion, when determining what to go for during a LP, especially when you're starting out, there's got to be things you consider first:
- Will I enjoy seeing this game through to its end?
- Is everyone that's working on it willing to do the same?
- Can I keep a quality standard throughout the process?
- How long will it take me to finish the game? (Especially if you're new to LPs & YouTube)
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