here's the link in the reply

anyway thank you for reading my ted talk i'm now going to go to tesco which i should have done an hour ago :)

... that's not going to change how you feel about posting two characters next to each other followed by that one screenshot of a shen comic with that guy saying "they're dating", which is what true fandom is all about

the purist in me still says the answer to the original question should be "no" just because games still need a gameplay element to them, and the way you interact with that does change how you percieve everything else about the game, but i think practically, for most games...

((and ironically enough, i wouldn't go as far as to call myself a fan, but i have absolutely spent more time watching mortal kombat's story modes than i have actually playing the games. from memory, what i played wasn't particularly fun.))

in short, i am a fan of <sport>. other people are a fan of <televised sports league>. both are different from each other. both are good. good video games have both good gameplay and good narrative and i think it's fine to latch on to either of them.

and i think it then becomes important to draw distinctions as to what it means to be a fan of a video game. in video games, i like the minutae, the mechanics, the feeling of playing the game. other people like the characters, the worldbuilding, the narrative, the experience.

because if you _have_ watched the mortal kombat cutscenes, and you know the lore of the characters and everything that happens in the story, what are you if _not_ a mortal kombat fan?

so my answser then becomes "maybe for some games yes, but if you told me you were a fan of e.g. mortal kombat without the context of you watching a cutscene compilation i'd expect you to have _some_ opinions on the gameplay". however, i'm still not done being an idiot.

if you prefer your video games <televised sports league>, you want the narrative, the characters, the drama, and plenty of games have that even without requiring player interaction. cutscenes are an excellent narrative tool and also really good at ending up on youtube.

there's two problems with my first answer. first, i'm taking my very narrow view of video games, ones which provide immense value in the "what you're doing" portion of affairs with little to no attention to narrative. i, personally, like my video games <sport>, not <televised sports league>.

when i first saw the question i immediately went to my own personal preferences of video games (typically mobas or racing games) and thought to myself "could a person get a true feeling of what trackmania is about without having played it?" and the answer to _that_ question is "i dont think so, no."

the important distinction is in how you interact with the media; <sport> requires you to go and get your ass physically and mentally beat for years to get good; <televised sports league> requires you to watch the magic pixel box.

((to be clear, there's nothing wrong with being a fan of <televised sports league>, and some people who say they're a fan of <sport> are absolutely a fan of both <sport> and <televised sports league>, but i'm trying to generalise for the sake of a dumb metaphor))

the response given from a fair few people i've seen has been "yes, people are fans of <sport> without actually playing <sport>" which is... technically true? but it also belies the fact that most people aren't actually fans of <sport>, they're fans of <televised sports league>.

this probably should have been one of the bruiser brothers but idk something about sandman gives me steiner vibes