This week, we take a mid-week breather from all the E3 madness to talk about a subject that's actually one of the bigger features of both Microsoft and Sony's new consoles: screencasting. What once started out as "Let's Plays" on obscure corners of the internet have now become regular events for a growing multitude of players. Inspired by
Kris Ligman's article on the origin, evolution, and struggles of the Let's Play scene, we discuss everything from intellectual property to editing techniques. We're still pretty new to this entire scene, so we're interested to read your thoughts in the comments!
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Show notes:
- Runtime: 28 min 11 sec
- "
Opinion: Let's Play crackdown is an attack on game culture," by Kris Ligman via Gamasutra
- Music by:
Brad Sucks
Loved the podcast as usual, guys.
ReplyDeleteI'm also an avid consumer of Let's Play - and I don't even know how that happened. I think that working full time, LPs are the only way to vicariously enjoy the more time-consuming games. I like to play them in the background while I do some sort of repetitive, mindless task.
I think Nintendo's worry is that it will cause them to lose sales, because people won't need to play the game after watching a LPer go through it. I think it's both a valid worry and a stupid one. Valid, because it's a possible scenario, and stupid, because I think the new sales they do get from added exposure more than offset the few that they lose. I personally bought tons of games that I wouldn't have without LPs, including The Binding of Isaac, one of my favorite games of 2012.
I think the games that could be hurt by LPs are story-driven ones. There were some Assassin Creed games that I hadn't played, and I watched LPs just to understand the story. I have no wish to buy them now, to be honest. Then again, I did buy the Yawhg thanks to LPs...
Apparently, Let's Play videos, as they are presumably not considered transformative, are considered audiovisual presentations and are therefore subject to Nintendo's copyrights and therefore any ad revenue generated from.
ReplyDeleteInteresting further reading: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/07/why-nintendo-can-legally-shut-down-any-smash-bros-tournament-it-wants/