A wise man once said, “If everyone is Han Solo, No one is Han solo.” This is in reference to why Junior Brown doesn’t like Firefly. While he’s wrong for that, The statement did stick with me and I feel like It can and should be applied elsewhere. Also, he’s a fictional character so I shouldn’t let it hurt me as much as it does. I freaking love Firefly. So as unpopular as my opinion on some games is, I just can’t help but have no interest in the most recent gaming and streaming sensation, Elden Ring. The idea for this article came from a random encounter with an old friend earlier this week. He used to stream a lot but hasn’t done so recently and we talked about how I’ve been going twice a week for our channel here on the Domain (twitch.tv/thedomaingpce if you aren’t already following us there) and how everybody keeps suggesting I play Elden Ring. It’s almost annoying how much I get asked to play this game. I have zero disrespect for it or its community of players, I even have a great deal of respect for the speedrunners out there. However, it’s just not for me.
So let’s flashback to 2009, I was in college and the Playstation 3 was King. My brother from another mother Cody comes busting through our apartment door with this brand new game, Demon Souls. He says “It’s supposed to be the best new game, we gotta play it!” and play that game we did. Three days later, we had decided that Demon Souls is for the birds and everyone lied to us, big time. This game was hard, really hard. Game Informer even made a joke that if they were to make a sequel, you would randomly just be flung into orbit, because… well, die. I remember my first playthrough vividly. I got my buttons figured out, my gear looked at, and like right off the bat a skeleton soldier jumps out and one hit kills me. This happened Immediately and the rest of the game was much like that. On one hand, the open ended-ness of the OG Demon Souls was excellent. However, A few times we both ran right into bosses that were meant for much higher level characters. This was nuts but it was not for me.
From what I understand everyone else loved that game and more were made following after, now called Dark Souls. This phenomenon just snowballed real big and kept gaining momentum. This begat Dark Souls 2 and then Blood Bourne and now Elden Ring. I get that this is a different game but I just can’t get around that it’s a different experience. I may play this game later on, but it’s doubtful. I have had so many other streamers ask me why I don’t play. This may be the “It” game to play right now but playing it doesn’t really set myself and our channel apart from the crowd. I like to play games that I’m good at, and I have fun with. I just don’t see that happening here because these games are freaking hard. I won’t even talk too much about the “get gud” culture because some of these players have learned the mechanics of this game to a T and like I said earlier, much respect but I work a full-time job outside of The Domain. I simply do not have the time to “get gud” and that’s pretty detrimental to keeping an online following. Simply put, if you do bad, no one watches.
I have watched a few streams (shout out to my buddy FierceLeon) and if you don’t already have a large following or a niche, no one cares. I’ve seen Sasha Grey play this game with hundreds of thousands of viewers, but, let’s be fair… she already has a huge following for completely different reasons. She even stopped to eat a sandwich in the middle of her stream. I could never do that and keep viewers. I had to take a call tonight during a stream and literally saw viewers leave the broadcast in real-time on the dashboard. To be simple, this game is not my forte and I don’t want to bore and or alienate my audience who, to be honest, is the most important part of the Twitch channel. I prefer horror survivor games. My personal channel got a small pop from me playing Resident Evil a lot because Im good at it and it brings me joy.
With that being said, what non-Elden Ring games would you like to see me and Brian play? let us know in the comments and I’ll catch you on the flip side.
