Lock if not convinced this is good
A short article on some fiddledy-piddledy with That Dragon, Cancer and Let's Play videos that I found interesting and also reminded me of some thoughts I've had over the whole Let's Play shenanigans going on;
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To put some of my own perspective on this, Let's Plays (LPs now 'cause I'm lazy) have bugged me for a while. To be clear, I don't have any problem with them as content, if you make that style of vide more power to you. Heck, I even tried my hand at it once or twice, it ain't as easy as it looks.
Now, I want to separate LPs into two discrete categories: Communal and Content-based.
We tend to see the big successes and sudden viral games as evidence that LPs work, but isn't that survivorship bias? Because let's be honest here, how many people actually remember even 10% of what PewDiePie or Jim Sterling or [insert prefered LPer/content creator if any] played, or thought to themselves "that looks cool, I'll pick it up when it's on sale"?
Extra Credits did a video a while ago on demos and listed out the main reasons/theories why we don't have them anymore in that there are very few situations where a demo will actually be beneficial to the product. I think the same can be said about certain Let's Plays. People only tend to remember games that are really/extremely bad, really good, or something they were already looking forward to. And even then, as pointed out in the original article, when you can essentially experience a (generally linear) game from start to finish, why bother with the original product?
Exposure is all well and good for indies, but in the end exposure doesn't pay the bills.
I dunno, I guess I just think it's a bit more of a gray area than people seem to realize. It's something that I think, at the very least, should be looked at to get more hard data on how LPs actually help (or hinder in the case of trainwrecks like Digital Homicide) developers (if there's already some data, feel free to link it). At the very least, I'm sympathetic to Green and others who are a bit more skeptical of LPs.
(and good lord, none of this is covering the legal gray area that LPs exist within in the first place. And let's be real here, it is a legal problem that is going to have to be addressed at some point)
A short article on some fiddledy-piddledy with That Dragon, Cancer and Let's Play videos that I found interesting and also reminded me of some thoughts I've had over the whole Let's Play shenanigans going on;
Describing the reception to his game as “incredible,” Green couldn’t be happier about how people have responded to his family’s tragic story. But it comes with a serious caveat: they haven’t made any money on the game.
“Our studio has not yet seen a single dollar from sales,” he said.
The developers “underestimated how many people would be satisfied with only watching the game,” and became frustrated by the millions of people watching the game on YouTube translating into zero revenue for their years of work.
So when Green saw tweets asking about deprived revenue, it struck a nerve.
“And so yes, Let’s Play person, I agree with you,” he said, “it does suck to have someone else making revenue off your work.”
“If you compare the millions of views of the entirety of our game on YouTube to our sales as estimated on SteamSpy, you can hopefully see the disparity,” said Green. “We have seen many people post our entire game on YouTube with little to no commentary. We’ve seen people decompile our game and post our soundtrack on YouTube. We’ve also seen many, many Let’s Players post entire playthroughs of our game, posting links to all of their own social channels and all of their own merchandising and leaving out a link to our site.”
SteamSpy shows the game has sold roughly 14,000 copies.
Green made an appeal for people to use That Dragon, Cancer videos as a chance to share their personal stories. But more to the point, he hopes they’ll encourage their viewers to support the developers, so that they can make more games.
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To put some of my own perspective on this, Let's Plays (LPs now 'cause I'm lazy) have bugged me for a while. To be clear, I don't have any problem with them as content, if you make that style of vide more power to you. Heck, I even tried my hand at it once or twice, it ain't as easy as it looks.
Now, I want to separate LPs into two discrete categories: Communal and Content-based.
- Communal is meant for the community; these are your Minecraft LP, your Binding of Issac and Mario Maker series LP. These types of LPs I think are fine as they are meant to sustain the community around the game.
- Content-based LPs are usually the one-off videos to show a quick play session, or a "preview" of the game, or an entire playthrough series of a game that isn't necessarily being made for a community (I don't think there's much community in whatever flash game PewDiePie digs up and plays for 3 episodes).
We tend to see the big successes and sudden viral games as evidence that LPs work, but isn't that survivorship bias? Because let's be honest here, how many people actually remember even 10% of what PewDiePie or Jim Sterling or [insert prefered LPer/content creator if any] played, or thought to themselves "that looks cool, I'll pick it up when it's on sale"?
Extra Credits did a video a while ago on demos and listed out the main reasons/theories why we don't have them anymore in that there are very few situations where a demo will actually be beneficial to the product. I think the same can be said about certain Let's Plays. People only tend to remember games that are really/extremely bad, really good, or something they were already looking forward to. And even then, as pointed out in the original article, when you can essentially experience a (generally linear) game from start to finish, why bother with the original product?
Exposure is all well and good for indies, but in the end exposure doesn't pay the bills.
I dunno, I guess I just think it's a bit more of a gray area than people seem to realize. It's something that I think, at the very least, should be looked at to get more hard data on how LPs actually help (or hinder in the case of trainwrecks like Digital Homicide) developers (if there's already some data, feel free to link it). At the very least, I'm sympathetic to Green and others who are a bit more skeptical of LPs.
(and good lord, none of this is covering the legal gray area that LPs exist within in the first place. And let's be real here, it is a legal problem that is going to have to be addressed at some point)