I had stopped playing games for 10 years before TWP reIighted my passion. So this “let’s play” thing is new to me.
Is it legal to do a let’s play video? Can the owner ask youtube to remove the videos?
Do you think they harm sales in general?
And in the special case of Thimbleweed Park? I’m guessing the kind of player who likes puzzles will stop watching the videos because they want to solve the puzzles themselves, and buy the game. So the kind of people that will keep watching the let’s play instead of buying TWP are those that don’t like puzzles and are only interested in the story per se. What do you say?
There was some discussion in one of the podcasts about this subject, where the developers talked about their opinions about the “Let’s Play” concept. Does anyone remember which? This is where it would be nice to have a text version of the podcasts, so we could easily search them.
I think in general, it ends up being a great way to advertise your game. I would have thought the opposite, though. I guess people who like to solve puzzles themselves don’t really watch these, I think, except perhaps after their own first playthrough. My daughter loves to watch them, and then play the game - which I don’t really understand. I don’t really find them that interesting, but I suppose if you get a player with good humor and charisma, it could enhance your enjoyment of the game.
No it is fair use, (I did tweet it to ThimbleweedPark tweet to see if they said NO, though) and statistics have shown that Let’s Plays actually increase sales…many viewers of Let’s Plays use it as a in depth review and theorize "they could play it better"
It’s technically free marketing…at least 8 people I know of purchased the game after seeing how much fun I had with it
Imagine a medium or large channel, as I just started and am small
From a legal stance, it’s not “fair use”. If we (or any dev) wanted, we could legally shut down all the let’s play videos, but we don’t because it is good marketing, and we’d look like complete jerks and it would back-fire on us.
Let’s Play videos are death for small narrative games. We also don’t know what large narrative games like TWP wouldn’t have sold more without Let’s Plays. It’s true that some people bought it due to the videos, but how many felt they saw enough and didn’t? Personally, I’m in favor of them, but it’s impossible to truly know if they help or not.
Fortunately TWP is not only a narrative game, but a game with puzzles.
All the same, would it not be a good idea to put a screen after 30 minutes of play, saying “after this point, please do not put let’s play videos on youtube, because you risk putting us out of business”? I don’t see why this should make you look like jerks.
It won’t stop anyone, unless you’re willing to start sending take-down notices and sue people. That is when you start to look like jerks. If you sent take down notices to the larger Let’s Players, they have a ton of money and would let you sue and take it to court. No, small developer has the money to create a legal test case.
It made Nintendo look really bad. I don´t know what the current situation there is, but I seem to remember last time I checked Let´s Player´s had to turn off the sound or skip cutscenes. People were upset. Nintendo can afford nonsense like that,
They will remove them, but they can be put back if they are challenged. But its moot, you’d look like a complete jerk in the process. You might be in the right, but the internet mentality would come down on you like a ton of bricks.
It makes nintendo look bad because nobody would believe that let’splay can put nintendo out of business. It does not immediately follow that it makes an indie dev look bad.
I think Let’s Play series likely helps sales for games generally, though not in a uniform manner across the full gamut of gaming. Some people who are deciding whether to buy TWP are glancing at LP series to see what they’re getting themselves into but it probably helps less with the sales of PnC adventures than most other genres of games for reasons you’ve stated. Still, I think it results in a net gain overall even if only 8% of viewers end up buying the game (and let’s say 4% are put off buying a game they had planned on buying). I think more or less any publicity tends to amount to good publicity. If a really really famous streamer/youtuber did a LP of TWP – say, Pewpiedie – then I’m sure the game would see a huge spike in sales. It might be worth asking some more well known LPers to run the game for the sake of increased exposure. Perhaps one or two would take up the offer for a small price…
Also, you stopped playing games for TEN YEARS – WOW. I didn’t stop playing but I’ve certainly been reinvigorated by adventures and puzzlers since playing TWP and have been bingeing somewhat.
@seguso
What other games do you like other than PnC? That’s one heck of a sabbatical.
Well, the only non-point-and-click game I have ever really liked is Ultima 7 (especially part 2). And I liked it even more than Monkey2 and Indy4. The sensation to be in a world and just interact and explore, with no puzzles, is not something to be overlooked.
I would like a game where you can interact but without puzzles and story-centric (and with no fighting). Heck, I might even make one.
Very interesting. So you’re more or less almost all for one type of game but for the odd exception. I haven’t played Ultima 7 but it seems that if you’d like games where you interact and get deeply involved in the story but don’t perform puzzles then you’d get on well with some RPGs. Or, perhaps these walk simulators (which I haven’t tried yet) might suit your wishes such as Firewatch and Dear Esther (I plan on playing the latter soon).
I like a lot of games – especially Metroidvania games in recent times. They’re more or less about free exploration of a large world with combat (and sometimes tricky puzzles and navigation).
I must say, I’d never met people who only played more or less one style of game until very recently (yourself and @LowLevel — though he branches outside of just PnC type adventures).
And that´s the problem. There are Let´s Players out there who make 100% of their income from their videos and those who aren´t among those few huge ones who make enormous amounts of money, really get hurt by copyright strikes.
Yes, I play also games focused on narrative and exploration, even if they don’t have (much) puzzles. Some of them, especially those with puzzles, could be considered in theory similar to an adventure game, but usually people have labeled them in a different way.
It’s also true that I don’t like games with action, because I’m not interested in developing physical dexterity, but if I really really liked other aspects of the game, I made exceptions in the past. For example I’ve played a few Zelda games on Nintendo DS. I’ve never finished one, though. The more you advance in the game, the more it’s important to be good at this button-pushing thing.
So this “let’s play” thing is new to me.
I could stand it in Ultima 7 because the rest was so good.