10(ish) games for the 2010s pt 6

#5 Amnesia: The Dark Descent

The year is 2011.  I’m just getting into the wider video game community and am hip with all the latest hot games that are popping off the charts.  By this, I of course mean Starcraft 2.  I was very much obsessed with the game despite, you know, not actually owning it.  But I was watching all the Youtube vids I could find on it: LifesaglitchTV, HuskyStarcraft, and of course Day9.  And it is to Day9 that this is dedicated to.

For you see, on Halloween of 2011, Day9 streamed a playthrough of the pretty popular 2010 horror game Amnesia: The Dark Descent, a game based around your character chugging some lose-your-memory juice, hunting down some douchebag, and being chased by a monster and some pig-zombie ass bitches.  All in all a great time.  And while I’d eventually play the game in 2012, the video “How Day9 Lost His Manhood” was far more impactful, being one of, if not the most important videos to come out for video gaming.  For it was this video that opened my eyes, and likely the eyes of many others, to streaming.

Truth be told, I don’t know what twitch stream was the first one I watched.  I assume it was Day9 but it might have been a Magic the Gathering one.  But the lesson was clear: this was a new medium, a new way for people to enjoy video games that they couldn’t even play.  A way to interact live with people who were playing games that you either loved or were interested in.  And sure, Amnesia wasn’t the first game to be streamed, but it broke the floodgates for me and others to enjoy this way of sharing games.

While Amnesia may have launched my interest in Twitch as a service (because who doesn’t want to see a grown man scream live?) the game definitely pushed the idea for me of Youtube as a place to view videogame footage.  A year later, I got into League of Legends and immediately went to Twitch and Youtube to learn more about the game and how the people who were good at it played.

Also, while I don’t doubt that his career was launched by other things he did, a particular… ahem… National Socialist was first brought to my attention from his Let’s Play of Amnesia.  Since then I’ve had to live in the knowledge that some Nazi fuck is making more money than me just playing video games and fuck pewdiepie hope he eats shi-

Uh got on a bit of a tangent there.  Anyway, the point still stands.  Amnesia opened the floodgates for Let’s Plays and Twitch streams for me and likely many others.  The game itself? Great fun to play, more fun to watch, and important for what it did for gaming as a whole.