i honestly don't really understand why "some people prefer watching gameplay online rather than playing games themselves" is treated as such a taboo when being a spectator is considered a pretty mundane way to engage with most sports, game shows, reality tv or even just like. chess.
We don't demand that football fans pay to see every game in person because 'watching the game on tv isn't really watching it' either. Let alone saying they can't be fans of the sport if they're not actively suiting up and beating the crap out of each other.
I love playing games, but I also love watching playthroughs online.
Playing a game is fun, but watching a story unfold with another person is an entirely different experience, whether you're the one in control or not.
Just as there's a community around watching a sport, there's a sense of community in watching someone else play.
When I hear people complain about people watching others play games I assume their entire mental image of 'game' consists of mobile games like candy crush or older games like tetris or pong. There's far more to games these days than keeping your hands busy. But even those games- when you see a real pro do it? It's incredibly impressive. Sure, I could do it, but I'm not going to break any records like the person I might be watching do it.
I grew up playing games WITH other people. Single player games sitting in a room with friends or family, watching each other play and passing the remote back and forth, enjoying the story together. Or where we would both have the same game or pass it back and forth and share with each other how far we got and how we tackled certain areas the next time we saw each other. I played some of the original Tomb Raider games with an online friend across the country entirely talking over email because things like skype and discord and screensharing didn't exist.
Watching other people play online isn't that much different. You're getting their commentary, you're seeing how they problem solve, you're enjoying a story *with* someone. I'll watch multiple playthroughs of the same game from different people just to see it from another perspective. I'll watch people play games that I've already played because I want to see their reactions and what they choose to do differently.
My friend group is spread out now and too old to be pulling weekend all-nighters at each others houses to finish a game. A lot of people don't have a group of people to game with in the first place.
I hate playing first-person shooters and quick-time events, but a lot of the games that I absolutely love the stories of have them. I'll watch someone play so I can enjoy the story without the frustration that takes me out of it. Just as back when my friend who doesn't like platforming would pass me the controller whenever there were precarious jumping sections. When I played alone as a kid and I got stuck...that was it. I'd try and try and then give up and never finish it. Or the game would glitch and break and be impassable. It's not that I didn't want to see the end, I just couldn't for whatever reason. I wish I had the option back then to just watch someone else play it without all the grief.
This doesn't even get into the fact that gaming is just an increasingly more expensive hobby with increasingly higher requirements to play them.
You used to be able to just rent games for a couple days for a couple dollars to see if you liked them, just like you could rent a movie. That's just...not a thing anymore. You either spend an absurd amount of money to purchase it (and these days you don't even actually own a physical copy, it's all digital BS that could be taken from you the second the company feels like it) and then if you end up not liking it? Well screw you.
I'm not wasting $60+ on a 'maybe'. I'll watch a playthrough, decide if it's something I would like to play for myself, and then invest in it. Maybe I'll like the story but the gameplay isn't something I'd enjoy. Maybe the mechanics are interesting but the story is disappointing. I've bought a ton of games because I liked a playthrough I watched that I never would have even considered trying on my own. I bought the first Danganronpa out of annoyance because Game Grumps wouldn't do the free time events I wanted to see.
Not to mention the consoles and specs themselves required to play them. I have a growing list of games that I've purchased on steam over the years that I just have not been able to play because my computer could not download them, let alone run them without crashing on startup.
They've also removed a lot of backward compatibility from newer consoles. I could buy one console and that played all of the games from the versions that came before it. That's not possible now. You have to buy an entirely new version of that game if you want to play it again, if an updated version even exists. I dread the day my PS2 dies and I lose access to my old games. I'm already sad a lot of my PC games aren't compatible unless I go through all of the work to get an emulator for old windows. Ugh.
Watch whatever you want to watch. You can like the art form that is games without playing them yourself. They have a lot more to offer than pressing buttons and it's stupid to think otherwise.
