Sigh..why cant you understand that they are extorting with IP claims to profit from other peoples ads? The ad revenue being redirected to them is just the agreement/compromise they made with google.

Why do you keep talking about them removing their own ads, obviously they can advertise where they want to.
They could use IP claims to extort negative reviews, be they on youtube or elsewhere.

Also not sure why you hate LPers for gaining some money off of their work while providing free advertisements for the games. More money, more motivation, more and sometimes even better content for us, thats pure capitalism.

A) The ad revenue belongs to the owners of the intellectual property. LP barely adds anything to it 90% of the time. If the owner wants the monetization revenue for themselves, GOOD ON THEM. That shit has been coming for a good long while.

B)Hypothetical "if a review is bad" example, I was thinking more of magazine/website reviews than just videos. I was building on that, not just reviews on youtube. They don't demand bad reviews to be taken down, but if it is a reviewing site/magazine, they can stop buying ads on said places. Again, that actually happened in magazines. I am building on a completely different foundation/concept I guess.

C) I consider LP monetization to be the worst thing to happen to LPs. I've been doing and watching LP media since 2006, when it started at SomethingAwful. The hobby has grown, and there is a lot of good content out there, but when monetization started, it exploded in quantity, but the quality went way down in general. "More money, more motivation, more and sometimes even better content for us" is not at all what has happened. A lot of bad content has appeared since then, and the phenomenon of LPs being more about the player than about the game being showcased is completely against what I enjoy in those.
If the main motivation for an LP is to make money, they are in the absolute worst possible hobby for it.


Edit: Also the monetization aspect has lead to the polularization of "THIS GAME IS POPULAR, I WILL LP IT FOR FAME AND FORTUNE" while not caring about the game, not even bothering to get acquainted with it previously. It's one thing to do a blind LP, it's another thing entirely to just OH MY SLENDER IS POPULAR I'LL MAKE YET ANOTHER SLENDER FACECAM LP, YES YOUTUBE SURE LIKES THOSE.

A The revenue belongs to the LPer, because he creates the content, he is not offering the game to play, he is just showing it.
B Yes, that advertisers can withdraw their ads is obviously true, not sure why you feel the need to emphasize this, I have agreed with you about this about 3 times now.The important thing is that if your A would be true, they COULD also take down negative reviews with the same reasoning. "Either give us your (other) ad revenue, or take the review of our game down!"
C I have seen many of my favourite LPers go commercial and they did not change, they only posted more videos, which I like.

D (the edit) That is definitely true. But they might have done that without cash,too. More popularity is always good for their ego.

The revenue does not belong to the LPer unless the original content creator allows it. It is different than a movie review OR content review since the focus of a LP is to show off as much of the content as possible, not to provide a critical look with snippets of footage of the thing. The footage is the game creator's intellectual property.

Let me quote another user from SA that put it in a better way than I could: Also, the opinion of a freeware gamedev about it. It is refreshing.

He's just jealous that someone used their brain instead of being a hipster hippie working for nothing. After all, who forced him to give away his games as freeware?

Nope, he is pissed that someone is profiting from something he released for free with the express intention of it being free. He is mad at that LPer using his material for a quick buck without permission.

So, if a journalist, who gets payed for his articles, uses a photo from Wikipedia released under Creative Commons the photographer gets be pissed as well? No, it was his decision to release his work under CC, and now he has to live with it. The some goes for video game developers, if you don't charge for the game, then don't complain that you don't get any money for it. It was you decision. If someone is more business savvy than you (without breaking legal rights of course), then that's your failing.

Considering that in the case of a journalist the footage is a tiny fraction and used to exemplify part of the article or the critical piece, no. A Let's Play does not show just a tiny fraction of the game, the footage tends to be almost the entirety of the audiovisual aspect of the game. For the most part, the added commentary and editing is a very, very minor part of the LP itself.

Different things! In one the focus is in the critical content. In the other, the focus is (or should be) on the game footage (on the other hand since monetization, a lot of very bad LPs have been more about the player than the game, but eh)

The focus of a Let's Play is not the game, it's the player. If the game is more important than the player, then it's a bad game and it should suffer all the lost sales it deserves. Games are inherently interactive, the setup, the pieces and the rules are just tools, the end result is what the player creates. games are much closer in their nature to sports or board games. If playing a board game can be substituted by just watching other people play it then it sucks, watching people play a good game will make you want to play it yourself. That's why applying such standards to games is wrong.

You said it, the LP is more about the player than the game. Does a comedian have to ask the manufacturer of his clothes for permission to wear them?

If the focus of the LP is not the game, but the player, then that particular player should generate original content. I've been doing and watching LPs since 2006, and ever since then (at the very least in SomethingAwful, where the phenomenon started) it was all about showing off the game. The game being shown off is the entire point of it.
A good LP is not a substitute for experiencing oneself, true, but it does show off the possibilities and variations the game has, since a good one will try to show off as much of the content of the game as it is possible (And in cases of really in-depth ones, like Research Indicates's Trespasser LP, going deep into mechanics, production, and design of it).

Watching other people play a board game also helps to decide if one wants to play it and to get familiar with the mechanics and systems in play. I have played three matches (online) of the Dune Board Game, and without having read a couple of game chronicles I would have enjoyed it way less than I did.


" You said it, the LP is more about the player than the game. Does a comedian have to ask the manufacturer of his clothes for permission to wear them?"
I said that bad, terrible, horrible LPs are more about the player than the game (see: Every single scarecam LP). THose are terrible.
I don't see how the comedian clothes is in any way analogous but let's go with it. If the comedian's routine is all about promoting the clothes he would probably need to contact the manufacturer and see if they are cool with what he is going to do with them. If the greater part of his routine is based on that, yes.

I hope people begin to realize that if you're making youtube videos for profit, you're doing it wrong. Youtube should not be a replacement for your full time job. Sure it helps to increase your income a bit, but if you're doing it for a full time job, that's where I have some problems with the whole youtube thing.

That being said, this is kind of a dick move on nintendo's part. I can understand slightly where they're coming from if the let's players are using emulators and roms for their game footage, and I can understand if they copyright a game from a currently selling game, but if they are using the real game and all of that and for a system that simply doesn't sell new games except maybe through the virtual console, I don't understand what the problem is.

From personal experience, I personally got into animal crossing from a very early let's play of it way back in the day, and I had to buy it, and I've been buying animal crossing since. Hell I'll be picking up new leaf in the next 2 or 3 months.

That let's play made me a fan of a franchise I probably would of skimmed over while looking at it in the store.

There's also the issue of the really obscure games.

What about speedruns? Does that count?

TLDR: I don't know what to think. Should we let obscurity and age of the game slip through the cracks, or be enforced? Does let's plays increase nintendo's profit at all? These are all difficult questions and I simply don't have enough information to make a informed choice.

No, he wouldn't. If you put something out for the public it is up to the public how they use it (within legal bounds of course). A chef doesn't need permission from the knife manufacturer to use their knives on his show. Even if the comedian's clothes are part of a costume he doesn't need permission. Similarly, if I say something stupid in public you don't need my permission to call me out on it, that's where the whole recent Twitter fiasco with XBox 3' always online came form.

One Let's Play almost got me to buy a game just from one video: Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. After watching that video and getting great info on the game I though "This looks fucking awesome, I want this game!" I wish more Let's Plays are like this. Where exactly would TAS (Tool Assisted Speedruns) videos fall under? The players are pretty much using an emulator with ROMs (which the players themselves don't tell whether they obtained them legally or not) to go beyond human limitations and try to make as little mistakes as possible. So I'm not sure about either.

Why are you so sure about this? Are there court cases where letsplays are guilty of infringement? Why are they so different from reviews with less pictures (movies are just lots of pictures)? Your opinion seems to be guided by irrational hatred towards youtubers who earn money.

Because a Let's Play takes almost the entirety of a game's assets and shows them. There are no court cases but it's been coming for a long long time.
Again, I've been watching and generating LPs since 2006 (with varying degrees of sucking at things myself), and I've been interested on that since the start. My hatred is not towards "earning money" for it, (EVEN though I've stated that the monetization is the worst thing to happen to it), but that has caused a lot of very bad quality stuff to appear. Monetization in the Let's Plays has caused things to be done just because they are popular, not because of the player caring for the game. It has led to amazingly terrible trends (scarecam LPs of horror games) and to switch the focus from THE GAME into THE PLAYER, which is the absolute worst path it could take.

Again, quoting this that more or less summarizes everything in a better way than I could:

"Simply Simon posted:
In any case, there's absolutely no reason to cry bloody murder about this. If it's your only source of income and you are for some contrived reason unable to go away from Nintendo games, tough shit. Did you seriously expect to keep up your business model forever? I predict that in a few years companies will either have recognized LPs as great sources of attention, advertisement and therefore money and either support their and only their own LPers while stamping out others or, best case, do what Nintendo has started and accept free entertainment as free money, or LPs as a concept will have died out because the times, they are a-changing and everything will have been oversaturated with cheap YT shit so nobody cares anymore...

In any way, I'm taking the few quids I get from Google, tell people smugly that I'm actually earning money with my dumb hobby instead of spending thousands of dollars on dunno guns or whatever people do and accept everything as it comes. Because LPs are a hobby, yes, not a pseudo-hobby, but never a job or a way of life or whatever.

By the way, while we're at it...does anyone know if Capcom really said "yeah we're okay with people LPing our games"?"



Good on Nintendo. They are not pulling off a Sega, where they closed down entire youtube channels just for mentioning Shining Force. They are just getting the ad revenue of things derivative from their properties.

Chip and Ironicus always provide quality stuff. Real high skill play, going into insane detail into their stuff, and fun commentary. I am hyped for them to do Revengeance. Hell I've played through it TWICE already and the video shows two collectibles I never knew about.