So firstly, I need to apologize that the top of my site is clogged by boring Youtube videos. If you’ve had the misfortune of clicking play, you’ll find gameplay from Return of the Obra Dinn, with no commentary.
Ultimately I’m going to clean them out, but there’s a more interesting update attached to why those videos are there. I used them to attempt a live cooperative gameplay session online using a combination of Youtube live streaming and Discord. It was just ok.
The issue is that the live stream to Youtube isn’t exactly live. There was about a 10 second delay between my screen and what was showing on Youtube.
For a game like Obra Dinn, it’s not the end of the world. The game lets you explore and research at your own pace. It was just a little awkward figuring out how to time communications knowing I’d see everything about 10 seconds early.
It worked best when we took long pauses to discuss theories, keeping the screen static so we were looking at the same thing at the same time while discussing. I also found a little rhythm saying “I’m going to do X” right as I do that thing. It just means that I can’t course correct if my fellow players have a different idea.
I also tried streaming my video game capture feed directly via Discord. It didn’t work as well as I thought- in theory there should be less lag, but it ended up being about the same but with more screen glitches.
I’m going to continue to work on finding ways to collaborate online- maybe PC streaming is the only real way to go- but in the meantime Youtube streaming is an ok workaround in a pinch.
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