With over 35 million users visiting Twitch monthly and YouTube Let’s Play channels accruing multimillion subscriber counts, it’s clear that there’s a huge market for people wanting to watch others play video games. And while streamers and YouTubers offer one venue for gamers to engage with content that they aren’t playing for themselves for one reason or another, online viewing is only one facet of backseat gaming.
Sometimes, it’s an activity far closer to home that involves a couch, some snacks, and a partner or a roommate holding a controller. No matter the medium, here are some of the fun games to watch someone else play.
Updated November 16, 2022, by Avery Lawrence Feyrer: In the age of content creators, it’s common for people to watch others play games. Whether it’s to take notes on how to defeat high-powered bosses or maybe you just don’t have time to play a game yourself, watching someone else play can be a fulfilling experience. We’ve updated this list to provide a few more games that we recommend you should either watch before you play or games that are simply a joy to spectate.
23/23 Halo Infinite
The half-surprise of Microsoft launching the Halo Infinite multiplayer beta early during the company’s 20-year anniversary stream elevated the game on people’s radar. Halo multiplayer held the competitive shooters’ genre in a vice grip, but since the changing of developers in 2012, Halo hasn’t experienced the same level of success.
Halo Infinite’s multiplayer has garnered incredible praise for its solid structure and smooth gameplay, though the ranking system has come under fire. Although Halo Infinite didn’t meet the lofty expectations that fans had, it’s still Halo and that means it’s still a great multiplayer experience. With Forge mode finally on the horizon, Halo Infinite looks to, hopefully, get back in the good graces of gamers.
22/23 Minecraft
One of the most influential sandbox games in history, Minecraft opens the door to pure imagination. This vast world is full of precious resources to enable you to build, well, anything you want. Gamers have created iconic monuments from across pop culture in Minecraft.
Although there isn’t a set objective in Minecraft, there are four difficulty settings that will affect how dangerous the enemies are in the game. Danger might be behind every corner in the form of zombies, spiders, skeletons, and other monstrosities. Many streamers have created their custom servers to freely explore and create with other people, making Minecraft one of the most watched games on Twitch.
21/23 Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
At the turn of the century, multiplayer shooters become more military-focused. Series like Call of Duty and Counter-Strike began to dominate the multiplayer front. Valve hit the jackpot with Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, the fourth installment in the series. Since 2012, Valve’s shooter has remained a premier in the competitive sphere.
The success of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive caused ripple effects throughout the industry and was influential in the development of subsequent games, like Valorant. Absolute precision and concentration are needed to win in Counter-Strike, so the style of gameplay might not be for everyone. Watching someone methodically take down the enemy team without blindly rushing guns blazing is harder than it looks.
20/23 Until Dawn (Or Any Supermassive Game)
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Supermassive Games single-handedly created and conquered the Choose Your Own Horror Adventure genre with their 2015 breakout title Until Dawn. It featured a stacked cast of performers who motion captured every gasp of horror, every corny pickup line, and every gut-wrenching death sequence. For all intents and purposes, Until Dawn IS a playable horror movie.
That’s why it’s perfect to watch someone else play. It doesn’t matter if it’s an online celebrity or your best friend Gary, the reactions caused by Until Dawn are genuinely priceless. While every subsequent game that Supermassive has churned out will suffice for this particular brand of viewable entertainment Until Dawn is the ideal candidate for a mad dash emotional experience.
19/23 World Of Warcraft
World of Warcraft drastically impacted how gamers and developers viewed massive multiplayer online role-playing games. Filled with a multitude of dungeons and different terrains to explore, World of Warcraft takes you on magical adventures across beautiful environments as you work with other warlocks, paladins, and healers to find treasures and defeat high-powered enemies.
Since 2004, World of Warcraft has remained a staple in the multiplayer genre. Blizzard’s MMORPG has over ten million active players and the game continues to receive new content. Currently, World of Warcraft is among the top-watched games on Twitch.
18/23 Getting Over It With Bennet Foddy
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The quickest litmus test to discern a person’s inner peace is to have them play Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy. It was released on Steam back in 2017 and the streaming/YouTube community immediately latched onto it, which was probably a bad idea, all things considered… here’s the deal: Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy is bonkers difficult.
Seriously, the controls are infuriating, the mechanics are unwieldy, and the inescapable running commentary from the game’s creator is enough to send most gamers to the ER for blood pressure issues. If you value your PC, never play it, but if you value your own joy, gift it to your best friend!
17/23 Baba Is You
One of life’s great pleasures is watching someone play Baba Is You for the first time. Why is that, you may ask? Because it’s an FBI-grade torture activity disguised as a cutesy puzzle game. For the uninitiated, the crux of Baba Is you is that you, the player, manipulate word blocks to reshape the puzzle board, the obstacles, and even yourself, to succeed.
The puzzles start out easy enough, but the difficulty ramp is less of a gentle incline and more of a sheer cliff. It’s the kind of game that elicits extreme emotional reactions and, whether negative or positive, that’s the kind of thing that’s worth seeing unfold on another person’s face. In a word, it’s unforgettable.
16/23 The Uncharted Series
An oldie but a goodie, the Uncharted series mashes together platforming, target practice, and a movie, basically. It’s this last facet that makes any Uncharted game fun to watch because, even outside the cutscenes, the characters are actively engaged in interesting, story/character-developing dialogue, which can be heightened or hilariously undercut, depending on the skill level of the person holding the controller.
There are a number of games that fit this particular mold these days, but it’s arguable that Uncharted did it best or, at the very least, first. Can the same effect be achieved by just streaming National Treasure on Disney Plus? Sure, but then you run the risk of missing Nathan Drake’s hilarious death squeals.
15/23 Rocket League
Since 2015, Rocket League has carved out a nice piece of gamers in its highly-competitive unique matches. Players control vehicles in a large soccer-like field trying to score opposing goals. You might think it sounds easy, but there’s a great level of strategy and concentration that goes into having success.
Watching other players can help you develop new tactics to use on your own, as well as see all sorts of interesting car designs. The Rocket League Championship Series is also one of the most watched tournaments in Esports.
14/23 Hades
For the Percy Jackson fans that felt as though Riordan’s modern fairy tale was missing something, there’s Hades. A wonderfully crafted and beautifully rendered rogue-like that goes the extra mile to ensure everyone leaves feeling a little confused.
The reason it’s so interesting to watch another person play is that the cyclical gameplay of a rogue-like is baked into the story, with an emphasis on the minutiae that differentiates every single run. Invisible choices (actionable events without specific in-game indicators) inform the dialogue, which makes each attempt to jailbreak Grecian Hell unique. Also, everyone’s hot. Pretty sure we mentioned that.
13/23 Lost Ark
Initially released in South Korea in 2019, Lost Ark finally found its way to other countries with its launch in February 2022. In just a single day, Lost Ark became the second-most played game on Steam and among the highest-watched games on Twitch. Operating from a top-down viewpoint, Lost Ark is an RPG set in a magical world that’s full of dangerous foes around every corner.
There are five different classes to choose from in Lost Ark: Warrior, Martial Artist, Gunner, Mage, and Assassin. Each class has its own different routes to make them feel more comfortable to you. Lost Ark is the type of game that which players can benefit from watching others play by learning new tactics and abilities to help their own playthroughs.
12/23 The Kingdom Hearts Series
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Its mere existence defies logic and sound reason and baffles even the sturdiest mind… and that hardly begins to cover how complex the Kingdom Hearts series truly is. The briefest explanation requires a PowerPoint presentation because the story is what happens if a Final Fantasy game (which isn’t exactly known for its brevity) paused every fifteen minutes to play an entire Disney movie before returning to the main plot.
And, if we’re being honest with ourselves, that’s kind of the beauty of it. It’s patently ridiculous, sure, but it’s equally endearing, nostalgic, and surprisingly fun to play. Who hasn’t wanted to run around Beast’s castle, or give Frollo a good smack? It’s unbridled silliness that takes itself the right amount of seriousness and is far more enjoyable if shared with a friend.
11/23 It Takes Two
Recipient of the Game of the Year award in 2021, It Takes Two is a touching game that dives into the difficulties of a failing marriage and how to rekindle a dying flame. With one person playing as Cody and the other as May, you must work together throughout the game in solving a variety of puzzles to save their marriage.
Whether you played the game or not, seeing others experience its joy will bring a smile to your face. It’s not a common game that you might find people playing, but if you do, we recommend tuning in. It Takes Two’s runtime is a little over ten hours, so it might take a few sessions to finish the game.
10/23 Dead By Daylight
Whether it’s spooky season or not, Dead By Daylight is an adrenaline-inducing multiplayer experience that’ll leave you, possibly, quivering in fear. One player assumes the role of a bloodthirsty killer, while the other four players must survive by repairing various generators scattered around the map.
There are a total of 28 different killers in the game, each with its own unique set of powers and abilities. Watching others play the game is a great way to see how each killer performs in the game, but also, it’s a blast to watch people get terrified and scream to death.
9/23 Grand Theft Auto Online
It’s a running joke about how impressive Grand Theft Auto 5’s overall sales are and how often Rockstar launches “new iterations” of the same game, just on new consoles. While Grand Theft Auto 5 has a compelling story with a cast of interesting characters, the real money-maker is its online component.
Launching in 2013, Grand Theft Auto Online presents a plethora of activities and missions for you to partake in, but mostly playing online just means doing all the nonsense you’d do in the game but with other people. Eventually, Rockstar added high-quality events to the experience, like the Online Heists. Streamers of Grand Theft Auto Online have also heightened the experience by introducing a role-playing aspect to the game, some even going as far as using voice mods.
8/23 Call Of Duty
Since 2003, Call of Duty has dominated the first-person shooter genre. With each new installment, the war game continued to grow in popularity and quickly became one of the best multiplayer experiences out there. Under the Activision umbrella, the series is spread across a few different developers that rotate production.
Call of Duty has spanned many decades and covered several prominent wars in our history. A few games even explored how our future generations will engage in wars with advanced technologies and futuristic weaponry. There was a brief period of time when Call of Duty seemed too stagnant, but fans have regained interest in the series with the Modern Warfare 2 remake.
7/23 Apex Legends
One of the most popular battle royales on the market, Apex Legends focuses on teamwork and communication for success. Unlike other battle royale games like Fortnite, Apex requires players to have a good understanding of the different champion abilities to properly formulate a winning squad. Currently, there are 20 different characters in Apex, all equipped with unique abilities.
Whether you’re watching streamers such as iitzTimmy or Nick Mercs play Apex, you’re going to be in for a treat. Hundreds of thousands of people view clips and streams of Apex every day, making it one of the most popular games to watch on Twitch. In some cases, playing Apex with friends will make the experience a bit more fulfilling, so if you can’t find a full squad then simply watching how the pros play is a solid consolation prize, especially when you can jot down all the latest strategies.
6/23 Portal
Chell in Portal 2 runs away from a portal containing GLaDOS.
Hey, another puzzle game! Back in the day, before ninety percent of the dialogue was snatched for colloquial memes and YouTube parody musicals, the world did not in fact think with portals. And that’s important because seeing a person try to think with portals for the first time is more precious than a parent witnessing their child’s first steps.
We cannot stress enough how much glorious confusion Portal caused. What’s more, as we collectively struggled to wrap our minds around this new reality, a sassy, homicidal AI was emotionally browbeating us. Was it infuriating? Sure. Was it the funniest thing to watch another person suffer through? Absolutely.
5/23 League Of Legends
Considered one of the biggest esports games today, League of Legends is a team-based MOBA with the ultimate goal of destroying the enemy team’s nexus. With over 157 champions available, League of Legends contains one of the most robust character selections in games. Originally launched in 2009, League of Legends has seen its player base grow to nearly 180 million monthly users over the years.
The popularity of League of Legends has soared to such heights that Netflix released a show based on the game called Arcane. It’s a spin-off series that some feel does the game justice and expands upon its lore uniquely. League of Legends matches can be extremely intense with the outcome flipping in any given moment, making it one of the better games to spectate.
4/23 FromSoftware Games
It might come as a surprise, but games in the past didn’t always have an abundance of save points and checkpoints. Some games required you to commit to the long haul, in fear that all the time invested would go to waste and you’d have to start all over. FromSoftware has embraced that old concept and developed a range of extremely difficult and stress-inducing games that reward determination and hard work.
Commonly referred to as Soulsborne games, the Dark Souls series and Bloodborne are held to such high praise in the gaming community for their unrelenting punishment of players who don’t take the games seriously. Watching others play these games can unearth tips and strategies that you otherwise might’ve never discovered. On the other hand, watching someone else play and succeed at these games would spare you having to go through the same torture if you’re only interested in the story.
