This is more about something I've seemed to notice, and it focuses on the Let's Play community. Let's Plays are a rather new form of entertainment even by internet standards, so watching it grow is very very interesting. I think this contributes the to the trend I've seen regarding it. Let's Plays seem to have a very odd immunity to piracy. I'd be willing to wager they bring in more profit than your average pirated album does with the "sampling encourages buying" theory at work.
Honestly, the reason behind this is a no-brainer. A CD you just listen to, and movies and TV shows you just watched. Video games, meanwhile, are a different breed. They must be played, and while every player will experience the same story, they will not do so in the same way. Video games are kind of like football: you're in the same place with the same techniques and methods at your disposal, but each instance or game is massively different (not to mention that both tend to be serious business and cause massive, massive rage). You couldn't just watch one game of football and be satisfied for your whole life (unless you're me or my mom) just because you've seen it once. Football is an infinite phenomena. I'd be willing to bet that part of the reason it's secretly so addicting to people is because each game is unique. I mean hell, why DO they do the same exact thing every year?
Dammit, some guy I don't even know did something bad! I'm so mad!
I digress though, video games are even different because they put you in control (and thus the raging is more justified...I love reminding my Dad about this). In that way, they're a marriage of media entertainment and the good ol' days...you know, circa cavemen seeing who can throw stones the fartherst or Romans seeing who can cut the other guy into the most parts. It's really a brilliant medium, and as with all brilliant forms of entertainment, it has a due following.
That being said, it's easy to see why Let's Plays aren't just some style of Youtube entertainment. While you could certainly see a video of a guy hitting his head on the side of a pool while diving in and want to do it yourself, video games are much simpler and arguably more fun. So sure, we see chuggaaconroy play Pikmin 2, but we can also do that for ourselves and still feel like we're experiencing it for the first time, plot twists aside.
Okay, I digress, I'm STILL too afraid to play this level.
It always interests me when I see comments on Lets Play videos in which people list what games they've bought due to the person they're watching. It's kind of surprising what the rate is. This is especially evident when I look at myself. Every single game I've bought since last summer outside of Dragon Ball Z The Legacy of Goku II was due to a Let's Player, and I'm not sure a Let's Play has gone by without me thinking "hmm, I really want to play this game now." It's an odd sensation that becomes downright mysterious when you realize it applies to games you've already played for hours and hours.
This is another place where Let's Plays differ from typical entertainment. They're built entirely on community. They are made by people who feel the same way about games as their audience, and those feelings are at the very center of a Let's Play. This isn't just people playing games. This is people talking about playing games. When you think of it that way, it's stupid really. Why on Earth would you spend sixty hours watching a person play a game that you could just put in your own system and play? Why indeed. I think a lot of the time we watch just because we relate. If they're playing a game I own, I'm always interested in what they'll say about some part of it, or what unlucky fate might befall them. The addiction comes in when you hear they're personal stories mixed in with ones about the game itself and you become emotionally invested in this person and start to care for them as a human being.
After 1000 videos of bathroom jokes, we feel his joy!
I've even been avoiding the sheer accessibility of Let's Plays. Anyone can do it. Chuggaa and NCS were very normal people before turning on a capture card and acquiring millions of views. I've started doing them with little more than what I've got on my laptop, granted I don't get all that many views. For some, LPs are just inaccessible enough, however, that they still only watch. After all, notoriety is still laregly based on luck and sometimes equipment for good quality videos is a little out of reach or tempermental. You know something is a legitimate form of entertainment when everyone can do it, but only a few get famous on it.
Getting back to the anti-piracy end of this, video games themselves are still hard to pirate. Sure, emulators come to mind, but these don't really work for newer games, and gameplay is sacrificed on older ones, so it's not like any other media where the only thing that matters is how it looks or sounds. So when an LPer does a newer game, it will inevitably almost completely immune to piracy, and instead raise sales for game companies. This works in a similar way for older games with remakes. Besides, watching an LP doesn't give you the full experience of the game in question since there's someone yapping all over it. It's just like when my neighbor used to invite me over to play a game, play the game himself with me watching, letting me play for ten minutes before "showing me how to do something cool" and proceeding to play until I had to leave. Even when that happened, I still wanted to play the damn game when I got home.
I really wish I had some numbers for you on the "Let's Plays make people buy the game" bit of this. I do know for a fact that Plants vs Zombies got a nice sales boost when NintendoCapriSun started LPing it because its chart status was all over the comments. I think a lot of people notice it too, and I hope that someone like Congress would notice too, if the legality of Let's Plays ever came into question. Not holding my breath on that one, but I have spoken my peace. Let's Plays are a breed apart, that's for sure, and seem to propel more people into being consumers than any older types of media. Even to someone like me, who still believes in buying CDs over MP3s, the effect is staggering. After all, I went on a full on QUEST to get a game that Chuggaaconroy was LPing, and I went on an even bigger one to meet the average Joes behind my favorite Lets Plays.
While copyrighted content may be an integral part of this type of media, it certainly isn't the whole picture. No LP would be complete without its visuals, and yet, watching a game is certainly not the same as actually playing it. This is why Let's Plays are such an interesting combination of media, and one I've become particularly smitten with. If anything, LPs are more of a "second opinion" on video games rather than pirated media. Their dependence on community and users, which combine to creat their accessibility (there are no corporate-sponsored LPers, or ones that are "signed" to the parody-ready degree that musicians and actors are), should put them on a creative level away from claims of piracy, in the same way that covers, karaoke, and parody should be. You can take away those videos with nothing but a picture and music (as long as it's not of Japanese music that's unavailable in the US, the filesharing of which I fully support) but you can't take away my LPs and the people who have made them an endearing new form of entertainment.
See, even I can do it! Do you love me yet? No? Okay...
No comments:
Post a Comment