You Tube: Better than Walkthroughs?

Note: This was originally a long response to Chris Dahlen's excellent post "You Tube: Better than Walkthroughs?" I've reprinted it here so it won't get lost.

Why do I like to view the 'bad' ending of a game on You Tube rather than play through it a second time? Yes, I understand I'm missing the entire experience. However...

Most of us don’t have the time or our interest flags before we can play through a 50 hour game a second time (talking about modern RPGs, not Bioshock). We have a lot of good games on the shelf!
Plus it was tough for me to kill one little sister, I couldn’t stay interested in playing through the whole game a second time just to see the bad ending.
That’s why I Youtubed the bad ending of Bioshock…

And you’re forgetting the games that are so bad / broken we can’t make it to the end. That’s how I felt about Jericho. After being stuck at the same annoying part for hours, then getting on to the next part, and then losing all my progress due to a crash, I said ‘forget this,’ Youtubed the ending (which was awful!) and was glad I hadn’t made it there myself.

So, sometimes you Youtube an ending because you love the game but don’t have time to play through it a second or third time, sometimes you Youtube an ending because it’s awful and you can’t force yourself to get to the end. My personal opinion is that it’s great we have these options these days and we don’t have to feel bad at ‘missing out’ on part of our $50.00 purchase…

ps. Playing through a 50 hour RPG with hint guide in hand to make sure you don’t miss anything is one of the most dull experiences known to man (or woman). The fact that you can miss a little dialogue or an item near the beginning and get a bad ending at the end because of it… this is just poor design.