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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 6457988" data-attributes="member: 7006">I think Morrus is right on the money.  Which is why I can watch the Acquisitions Incorporated videos that are filmed in front a live audience all the time,  but could only last a few minutes watching WotC's playtime videos they did on Fridays.The A.I. guys (and girl) all play to the audience... dropping in pop culture references, in-jokes to previous A.I. sessions, jokes at each other's expense, etc.  So we're not necessarily involved in the game itself, we're more compelled by the group "shooting the shiat" as it were.  The game of D&D is just the reason used to bring the players together to shoot the shiat.  I would also suggest that it also only works because there is an audience there laughing as well.  Laughter is infectious as we all know... so hearing the audiences laugh at the A.I. gameplay makes us more likely to find amusement and enjoyment in the videos, than we'd be if they were playing by themselves in a room.Celebrim's "personal investment" comment also applies here, in as much as that if you are invested in who is playing, you are willing to go on the journey with them more readily.  Thus, if you were already a fan of Mike, Jerry, Scott, Wil, Patrick, Morgan, and Chris... you'd be more apt to care about what they were doing during the game because you're more apt to be interested in what they might be doing in general.  And by the same token... if you have no vested interest in any of the players or don't even recognize them... watching them play is less likely to be as compelling.In fact... the only time I watched a D&D gameplay video in which I did not know any of the players, it was not taped in front of an audience, and I still found myself enjoying it... was the Robot Chicken series of videos.  And I suspect the reason for that was three-fold-- I knew of Robot Chicken (if not the participants) so I was more primed to understand perhaps where they would all be coming from; I knew and like the work of the DM (Perkins) so there was at least one familiar thing to hang my hat on; and most importantly the videos were broken up into 25 separate parts each lasting no more than 10 minutes... so I never had a chance really to grow bored, because a video would end before I got there.  So as time went on, I was often willing to give up 10 minutes to watch them and grew to get involved in what was happening over the 10(?) weeks the videos were uploaded.  Whereas a video uploaded complete at one to two hours long is much less likely to get me to stick with it in one setting, plus is less likely to have me watch a bit, stop, then come back to it at a later point in hopes of finding where it was that I left off.  That's purely a psychological thing, but I think has a real effect.</blockquote>

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