[hinkley]

I've noticed that I did a lot more theorycrafting in games prior to the easy availability of game streams. I think I am finally coming around to the idea that these videos should inspire me to do more theorycrafting instead of letting other people do it for me, but it's been a long journey.

The safety lectures in videos for some hobbies probably would have let me get farther along in them as a child, if I had bothered to participate instead of just spectate.

[mmcdermott]

I've had the same reaction to watching videos about strategies and combos in fighting games. What I started doing was asking myself how I could have discovered this idea and taking it back to the lab to reconstruct the discovery, so to speak.

What I've found over time is that I got better at discovering what I needed, but that it was still worth looking over some theorycrafting type videos to see anything I might have missed.

This brought me full circle to the point where, even though I was still watching a video, I felt like there was a dialogue going on ("yeah, I know A, B and C, but D is a neat trick. You seemed to have missed E though.").