Weird game mechanics, drama and alien invasions – How live streamer Vinesauce (Vinny) creates narratives and plotlines through the affordances of non-narrative games

Vinny Vinesauce

Vinny is the original creator of the live streaming group Vinesauce – the group’s name was and still is the name he uses for his game characters and personas. Although the group creates a variety of gaming content, my personal favorites are edited compilations of Vinny’s “let’s play” streams, in which he creates narratives to non-narrative games like Animal Crossing and Tomodachi Life.

Vinny’s way of playing and narrating these games is creative and playful: instead of taking the games “as they are” he reads into every coincidential game event, the game characters’ behavior and their dialogue, and builds a larger storyline by giving meaning to and finding connections between seemingly trivial details within the game. His livestreams are then edited down and uploaded to the Youtube channel Vinesauce, sometimes adding fanart to the mix. This is how the Tomodachi Life 1-57 Extended Special, a 90-minute-long compilation of Vinny’s Tomodachi Life gaming streams, came to be.

Tomodachi Life as the setting, Miis as the characters

The story begins with Vinny first setting up the game Tomodachi Life, naming the island in the game Vineland Island, and moving in the first Miis (Nintendo’s player avatars made by players themselves). The Miis Vinny adds to his island create a chaotic group of characters from all across the board: well-known Nintendo characters like Wario and Waluigi, obscure characters from Vinesauce’s old videos, pop culture celebrities like David Bowie and Gordon Ramsey – even Jesus and Satan make an appearance.

Tomodachi Life lets the players design these characters themselves and give them different personalities, which then leads to the characters creating varying types of relationships with each other, even leading to marriages and children. One character became a target for Vinny: Two Faced is one of the first islanders to be added and after seeing her perform a song on stage, Vinny decides she’s going to become his avatar’s girlfriend. This decision leads to a love triangle (or rather an unrequited love) as Two Faced starts dating Walrus – a Mii designed to look like, you guessed it, a walrus. Warlus becomes the sworn enemy of Vinny, and Two Faced lives up to her name when she ends up leaving Walrus and getting together with another islander later in the game.

                                                

While at its core, Tomodachi Life as a game is purely a collection of randomized events without clear end goals or established roles for the islanders, Vinny’s narration and interpretation of everything happening on the screen turns these random events into a somewhat coherent plotline. The humor of this “let’s play” video comes from the coincidences within the game that give Vinny material on which to build stories. I specifically enjoy Vinny’s reactions to whatever absurd situation the game puts the characters in – I have played the game myself and watching another player be confused by things I’ve already become accustomed to adds another layer of hilarity.

However, the plotlines don’t end up with just interpersonal conflicts and love triangles: at one point the game crashes and thus data is lost, which to Vinny means a split in timelines. After the halfway mark of the “let’s play”, islanders start vanishing and being replaced by aliens. In reality this is due to Vinny himself deleting and adding islanders offscreen, but within the story of the “let’s play”, it creates a new experience and plotline for the audience. Vinny acts suspicious of the aliens called Jahns, but soon enough familiar faces come for rescue as the island welcomes Mulder and Scully from X-files. The aliens leave peacefully, but one stays behind to integrate into human society, being given the nickname LumberJahn (Vinny gives him a lumberjack outfit). LumberJahn later appears in Vinny’s “let’s play” of Nintendo’s Miitopia, which has a lot in common in Tomodachi Life.

Although many of the characters in Vinny’s “let’s plays” are only familiar to those within Vinesauce’s fan community and followers, Tomodachi Life’s absurd dialogue and game events together with Vinny’s narration create a chaotic and humorous experience even without the full context of Vinesauce. The extended special gives a look into the world of Vinesauce and Vinny’s live streaming, but also works as a stand-alone piece.

The game: Tomodachi Life for Nintendo 3DS, by Nintendo (2013)

Video name: [Vinesauce] Vinny – Tomodachi Life 1-57 Extended Special

Video link: https://youtu.be/tVKHNmmaFkc

Featured image: the thumbnail of the video

Other images: screenshots of the video, taken by author

Additional info: the livestreams of which the video is made are from the years 2014-2017

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