This has been my experience with Life 2 Youtubers, a whole lifestyle transferred to the video game
Succeeding in the world of digital content creation is not easy, because we are talking about a space with so much offer that there is barely room to shine. However, those who make it, those who reach the sky of subscriber counters, ascend to the Olympus of fame. Their success crosses borders and they may end up becoming true pop culture superstars. In the past, that label was reserved for Hollywood actors and great representatives of the music industry, then elite athletes came, with football and the NBA at the forefront, and now there are people who have managed to achieve that level of popularity from their own bedroom. . That is why it is not surprising that a game like Youtubers Life OMG ended up reaching the market, a title that came to light in 2016 and that now receives a sequel ready to update and significantly expand the original offer; Youtubers Life 2.
Behind the project is Uplay Online, those responsible for the first installment released now five years ago. The world of content creation has changed a lot in this short space of time, and the same thing happens with lifesims, titles like Animal Corssing: New Horizons have taken over the market, setting trends and expanding the genre with sales figures never seen before. From what I have been able to see in this test version, Youtubers Life 2 takes all that and uses it to create a proposal that is more complex than expected.
The translation of youtuber culture to videogames
The title is built from the idealization of everything that surrounds the youtuber. So much so that in the introduction, after completing Youtubers Life OMG, we are notified that we have been selected, through a social experiment, to live in Newtube City, the city where the best YouTubers on the planet reside. An idyllic location (with a successful aesthetic that is reminiscent of Pokémon for its way of interpreting the environments) in which to start a new life as an emerging internet star.
The person in charge of receiving us, Xavier, will be our liaison. He will show us our new house and give us a couple of guidelines on how things work in this new community that has just welcomed us, making clear our main objective: to start creating content, improve until we reach the top and become the best youtuber in the world. city. This is where the surprises begin, because I have to admit that Youtubers Life 2 has more systems than I expected, and it implements some of them quite well.
From the first videos to the gameplay
At first, they will give us a humble room made up of a bed and a desk with a fairly ordinary desktop computer. Of course, at our disposal we have a kind of very clever drone-camera-android, which could well be taken from Star Wars itself, and which will take care of reminding us of our chores, taking photos or even recording us. With it we make our first video and discover the recording system, which consists of a minigame made up of phrases that describe unexpected situations, to which we must react by choosing between the three cards that we will have available each turn. Thus the title tries to represent, for example, the unexpected appearance of our cat, an inopportune noise coming from the neighbor's house, and our way of dealing with these unforeseen events. With each choice we will fill in a part of each of the five emoticons that evaluate the satisfaction of our audience, and for each completed one we will obtain a star.
This is how our recordings are qualified, but the thing does not end there, because we are left with the editing of the video. Here we come across a puzzle in which we must link the different shots by matching their shapes to get bonuses. Finally, we choose a thumbnail and a title before publishing. In the title we begin to see some of those winks and details capable of making us smile. We can name it whatever we want, but we can also choose between three predefined titles, and in this case they are classified as "clickbait phrases", each with a bar that marks their visibility and how they can influence the mood of our audience (we will find many such details).
We have already said that the world of digital content creation has changed substantially in recent years, and one of the consequences has been the consolidation of the video game as the flagship product when it comes to generating videos. So sooner rather than later we will place our own playset and we will go to the video game store in the city to get a brand new Honey PlayStudios One. Thus we unlock the possibility of recording gameplay videos, which work more or less like the previous ones, but with nuances. From there we introduce ourselves to the video game today and, if we want to reach the top, we must pay attention to the titles and platforms that are trending, so it will not hurt us to get a NicoSoft zBox Live, and with some I maintain, to be able to publish content related to all tastes.
Social networks and the relevance of trends
The latter serves to introduce trends, which we must review every day, as if it were Twitter, and capture them to introduce them into our videos . For your capture we have Instalife (yes, here's everything, friends), which will allow us to share snapshots of our avatar anywhere in the city. Depending on where we take them, we will get a hashtag that will be recorded on the screen throughout the day, thus, when publishing a gameplay or a video (during that same day), it will have said hashtag and increase its impact.
In this way, a wheel is launched in which we must take into account the energy of the avatar (recording and editing consume energy that we can only recover by eating or sleeping), monetization (which varies depending on the platform on which let's publish) or the large number of activities that we can do in Newtube City, the other great protagonist of the party.
What has been described so far supports the title of the game, it is its raison d'être, the main ingredient of the dish, but it is not the best part. What has made the aftertaste better than expected has been the seasoning, the extras, everything that is scattered around the city and that enhances the main objective. Here the game looks directly at proposals such as Animal Crossing, and pays special attention to the fact that this activity wheel has direct consequences on the improvements and customization options of the character, our house, and our team (which are wide enough to keep staff hooked for many hours).
Newtube City, the heart of the game
In Newtube City we will come across restaurants, merchandising stores, video games, clothes, a cinema, a theater, an assembly hall with its particular version of E3 in which the presentation of both software and hardware will take place, a sports club, a gym and bars, among several other surprises, it even has a town hall where you can obtain a scooter license or get married. A whole string of activities that will transform both the environment and the life of our avatar, combining money and the number of followers as barriers to unlock all the possibilities that the title puts at our disposal. Of course, there are details to polish, such as the occasional transition that at certain times can be somewhat clumsy, the excessive simplicity of the first recording puzzles, and factors related to mobility, such as the scooter disappearing after entering a building and when we leave we have to go back to look for a scooter station.
In conclusion, Youtubers Life 2, despite not detaching itself from its target audience, has ended up breaking down some of my prejudices and generating better sensations than expected thanks, in large part, to its shameless spark when it comes to handling humor . The game, which will be released on October 19 on PC, Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5 and the Xbox ecosystem, is aimed directly at today's kids, focusing on the possibility of playing to live the life of their great idols of Youtube. In fact, it has the presence of creators of the stature of Willyrex, Vegetta777 or Rubius, and it's not hard for me to imagine their fans enjoying the reinterpretation of youtuber culture and iconography that they make. Succeeding in this world is not easy, but in Youtubers Life 2 you will always have a chance.