The only time an LP/stream has ever stopped me from buying a game is if the game looked like trash. With how shitty and underhanded marketing in the industry is, LPs/streams have become a viable resource when it comes to making purchasing decisions.
crazygamer4260 Does it? Usually those lps generate many comments calling out the streamer for their bad gameplay. It makes me curious but I'm just me. As a Final Fantasy fan I started watching lps of Final Fantasy from HCBailey and because of him I found out about and bought a lot of more niche jrpgs like Raident Historia before it was cool. So lps have convinced me to buy games I wasn't otherwise gonna buy. I cant think of a time an lp has deterred me away from buying a game that I wasn't already disinterested in.
crazygamer4260 Someone sucking at a good game should turn you away from their content, not the game. You'd have to be an idiot to base your decisions entirely off an LP by somebody like DSP.
That's a bit of a double edged sword. If a lets player doesn't like a game, you may dismiss it. It's a bit of an issue because your tastes aren't the same as the lets player and what they don't like you may tolerate or even enjoy. It wouldn't surprise me if there's a bit of psychology where viewers realign their own opinions to fit the opinions of their favorite lets players and miss out of a game they could have enjoyed if not for dismissive comments from their fav entertainers. At least, that's one theory.
@@ocarinaplaya this seems like someone who just follow trends in general, a normal person does not buy depending on who likes it or not, even if it is disliked by a lets player a viewer/gamer usually buys games and products depending on multiple reasons like, will my friends get this (due to work we now only ever meet in games) am i a fan of the last game or the series or the producers/directors of the game Does the game offer hype in a direction i am interested in cost and availability will also affect the chance of purchase due to what you have to play on and what you have in funds never have i bought a game depending on a LP'ers opinion ever, and ive watched LP's since 2007
@@cheekyfantasy1314 And, anecdotally, there are plenty of interesting games I didn't bother getting due to a let's play. Usually games with involved single player stories. No point buying the game if the story has been ruined and the gameplay is an afterthought or gimmicky.
I can't think of the amount of times LP's have helped, and even made me pick up a few titles that I otherwise wouldn't have bought. Compared to the times I've been sorely disappointed by a game that was hyped up to being the best thing ever in the game mags that advertised it.
Is there actual statistical proof that The Evil Within 2 sold more after the LPs were released praising the game as an improvement? Because I want to believe that.
It's hard to say. You would need do a side by side day to day comparison between someone's LP and the sales numbers of the game. A good example that might give some insight is looking at the time frame that Markiplier did it. He is a very popular TH-camr who didn't LP that game until a little after it was released a bit so it would be easier to see if that had any impact on sales.
So far, I have bought, The last of Us Deadly Premonition Evil Within 1 and 2 Shovel knight Dark Souls 2 I recently bought Bully, (Canis Edit Canum) RE4and I even managed to suffer through Silent Hill Homecoming, which I already owned but could never bring myself to play until watching Matt suffer through it. All because of LP's. Game companies should be actively encouraging quality Let's players
Games I bought because of these guys: 7 final fantasy games 4 resident evil games 4 Yakuza games Any fighting games Assassin's Creed syndicate but fuck you Pat that game and every AC game after AC4 are absolute shit piles
When I'm interested in buying a game, I don't watch an LP. When I'm not interested in buying a game, I watch an LP, and either it makes me interested, or it turns out I wouldn't have been interested enough to buy it rather than just watch people play it and joke around. The only case in which LPs might be detrimental to game sales is when the game in question is a pile of shit and whoever's selling it hoped for suckers to buy it without checking.
Their Lets Plays got me to give Metal Gear Rising a chance instead of writing it off. I got Nier Automata Day 1 because of Liam's Nier LP. I got Last of Us Day 1 because I wanted to beat Pat to the end of the game. I want to play Yakuza 0 for myself after watching the Yakuza 0 LP (I'm just waiting for Kiwami 2 and 6 in the west, so I can just burst the series).
I would have NEVER bought Metal Gear Rising if it wasn't for me watching their MGR lp and the subsequent constant shilling for Platinum. I've also bought most of the Platinum games on Steam, even though I've only ever completed MGR (those VR missions were infuriating) and barely spent more than an hour on the others. I'm pretty sure lps are a net positive for good games and an absolute annihilator for bad games. Edit for bad spelling
I didn't even know Nier was a thing until these guys started talking about and played the demo for Automata. Now I fucking LOVE Yoko Taro. Same deal with Persona, same deal with MGR, same deal with MGSV, same deal with UNDERTALE. LPs help games so damn much.
Gage Morrison That’s very much how I feel. I bought P3P, P4G, and P5 because of them and I plan on getting Eyes of Heaven soon even though I watched the full LP.
I've bought so many games because of this channel. All of the Telltale games, multiple fighters, multiple David Cage games, Ride to Hell, several Silent Hill games, Bully, ETC. Shit. I even bought Kotor 2 on steam recently due to the adventures of Pockets. I love the trash, and the good shit these guys expose me to. I'm all in thanks to the Zaibatsu.
I bought Revengeance, Double Dragon Neon, The Walking Dead Season 1, and Persona 3/4 BECAUSE of the LPs the zaibatsu did. That includes 3 of my favorite games OF ALL TIME. And the other one was neat for the small little changes. And hell I got into Ace Attorney and Danganronpa via other let's play channels. If the game is good or interesting enough people will buy it.
darkironyoshi They never did an Lp of Persona 3 or 4 and they got cucked by Atlus for starting one of 5. They should totally do an Lp of 3 or 4 though. If Pat is half as good as he thinks he is a playthough of 4 should be incredibly easy.
They didn't do full LPs for most of those. And The Walking Dead has enough player choice that there's still things to see. Right now, I'm seriously considering whether I want to pick up Super Mario Odyssey now that I've seen the main story. That said, I am picking up Monster Hunter World partially because of Pat. So it goes both ways.
I don't watch walkthroughs too often anymore, but back in the 360 era I watched so many playthroughs of games I would later buy once or even twice. I watched the entirety of Brotherhood before I bought it. Black Flag I watched the first mission of before I literally grabbed all my other AC games, walked to EB Games and bought the fucking thing. Publicity is publicity, a good game will SELL people, even if it only sells in it's niche.
Habadashery Jones I wouldn't call that a mixed bag. Like you said, you never planned to play them. I was never gonna buy a single Tell-Tale game, so me watching them doesn't really hurt anyone. If no one LP'd them, I'd just never experience them at all.
Pretty much. It all comes form this really confused and ignorant view that a watch of an lp without a buy is "clearly" a "lost sale". Its the same fallacy with pirated movies. That if the pirated version didn't exist online than all the views/downloads it got were guaranteed purchases otherwise. What's more likely is that the spread of the product through lps gets the game more buyers than it would have otherwise had. And if people were never gonna buy they were never gonna buy it.
Kevin Darce Yeah but it's fair to say especially for story given games, that LPs hurt sales. Just because you weren't willing to pay for it doesn't mean you should get it for free. I don't think watching games is as good as playing them. I do think LPs provide free advertisement for the most part. Still for story driven games, people are getting the story without buying. It's mixed bag.
I actually bought a fightstick and started learning fighting games because of the Best Friends constantly talking about them. So Tekken 7, Guilty Gear, SFV, Killer Instinct, P4A, DOA5 and more all got a sale because of you guys.
It's always bizarre to me that some developers don't see the advantage of having people LP their games. The whole reason I'm into the Soul series is because of TFS Gaming and ENB. I got Saints Row 3 because of Uberhaxornova way back in the day. And now, THESE chucklefucks have me interested in games like Tekken 7, despite the fact that I'm objectively shit at fighting games! So from that perspective, I can't see why developers think they're losing money from TH-camrs.
Scorpio The Scorpion I don't have any numbers to argue one way or the other. I feel like LPs help sells but I don't know that. I think it's fair to say that this fan base has more hardcore gamers but I could also believe plenty of casual players watch lps and never buy the game.
Its just because of their human lizard brains. They look at the sales of their games which aren't what the publisher want and then see some PewDiePie video with 1 million views or whatever and just immediately go "those are lost sales". Its stupid. But that's what they immediately think because lizard brains.
Look at games like The Wolf Among Us or Life is Strange. You can watch LPs for everything that happens in those games and rather or not you liked them you'd have no reason to buy them. I know LPs can help with games sales. its thanks to these guys that Nelo passed its kick starter. With that said its also true that LPs hurt game sales, particularly for story based games. Its not stupid because its not simply a or b. If I made a story driven game and someone showed that story online I would be pretty upset about it.
I bought the following games due to watching Best Friend LPs: I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream; The Wolf Among Us; The Walking Dead Season 1; The Evil Within; Killer is Dead; and Deadly Premonition. Not only that but The Last of Us; Silent Hill 2; Way of the Samurai 4; Until Dawn; and the entire Yakuza series are on my wishlist because of this channel.
I recently bought a PS4 Slim for Bloodborne, Yakuza and upcoming Death Stranding. Thank to this fucks LPs I have a wider spectrum, before them I was just an FPS guy, is not that's bad, but I'm playing Terraria right now and I'am having more enjoyment than any FPS has ever gave me and thank to watching all kinds of LPs I realize how much I was missing!
The fact that I used to learn of the games to play when I was a youngun from shows like x-play/aots, lps filled that void to decide what was worth my time, if a game looks interesting and I have disposable income, I will come back and watch an lp after I had completed the game. Really enhanced my watching of the best friends bloodborne playthrough when I could measure up my thoughts at the same moment in game as they did for a different perspective.
Yakuza was a series I got into explicitly because I finally saw someone play it. Had to stop watching the LP, buy it, beat it, then finished watching the LP.
After years of watching my friends play Devil May Cry I finally bought 4SE after watching you guys play the first one. I got back into fighting games because of you guys too, even bought a fight stick.
I watch the let's plays that you guys do because I don't have the money to play the games myself, but when I see something awesome you guys do I'll always spread the word.
Games I bought cause of tbf playthroughs that I never would have otherwise heard of or considered buying: Metal Gear Rising Vanquish No More Heroes Anarchy Reigns Yakuza
I have been with this channel since around 10,000 subs. Over the years, I have bought a shit ton of games that I would never have normally touched or even known about without seeing you guys play it first. I even stopped watching games so I could buy them myself and play them before going back and watching your playthrough. LP's definately have their advantages.
Griffin1171 sometimes they upload specific segments if it was a good convo. Last time I remember specifically was the Halloween one talking about if ghost are scary.
So basically, Hennig is looking for an excuse by shifting blame on LPs, when it's the corporate, business-minded Publishers who are really the ones to blame for their unrealistic, erratic demands and are out of touch with the people they're making the products for, thus some games not being successful as a result? Woolie and Chromedome, er, Pat pretty much pointed out the flaws in that excuse. On the side note, What the hell, Pat. You looking like Micheal Chiklis there. LOL
Hennig's comment about LPs isn't entirely off base, though. I stopped buying games 5 years ago when I discovered lets plays. No point in playing a game I've already seen to completion. Especially if it's a linear story based game. I'm certain I'm not the exception to the rule.
It goes both ways, though; there are plenty of people who buy games because they saw them played outside of a marketing-focused environment. I personally have never been dissuaded from buying a game after seeing it played, but I've bought at least half a dozen because of it. The former is because I tend to have a pretty good idea of what I'll like before I get it -- I also don't watch ads or press for literally any game -- and the latter is because some games hurt themselves with their first impression, but are actually good in action. Freedom Planet comes to mind, which incidentally was a game I ignored the shit out of after seeing its "cover" in the Steam store, randomly tripped over a TH-cam video of, immediately bought, and have come to regard as one of my favorite games of my entire thirty year run of playing the things. Life's funny that way.
The only real loss of sales come from if your game gets exposed for being trash and the crappy "video games" that just become a movie at some point. Ignoring the "Oh an LP Guess I dont need to buy it" people . Example: The SBF opened my eyes even further to how trash Quantic Dream games are. The strongest resolution was made to never again buy a cage game and THATS where the real loss sale comes from. Having your game exposed multiple times so that it loses all credibility. Then on the other end of the spectrum lets say something like Skullgirls which I have no clue about (for some reason) but I see how legit it is and now i want it!
They *KNOW* LPs hurt game sales, that's why they made an LP channel. They need to cause more havoc, for the more chaos there is on Earth, the greater the depth of the Woolie Hole.
Light Fox Doing a father-son kamehameha clash with Suckles while simultaneously having to figure out the ability of McMahon's stand, *[Money, Money, Money]*
Let that child alone But then sir patrick boivin comes into play at the last moment to save the zaibatsu with *[Crazy talk]* to effectively destroy *[money, money, money]* just to prove the world wrong. Then dio-billy shows up to strike a menacing pose.
There are a few games where LPs were thought to have hurt sales, like Life is Strange. It's fairly popular, but didn't do as well sales-wise as the popularity would make you think. But, that's a game that's basically just a story with some window-dressing "gameplay". Games with a proper focus on gameplay don't have this issue so much.
Crazy Diamond I can see the argument to be made, but I still bought the game to experience it for myself. Also, the personality of the LPers is one of the biggest reason why I watch.
That moment and feeling when they read your question... The window has broken, we are both real, and i have impacted their cosmic trajectory in a small and insignificant way. I will ride this high(low?) for weeks. Ray, from the Home of Wu Tang.
I don't know if people remember this, but once upon a time you used to be able to go to just about any game store and find disk-based demos for games. Sometimes, game magazines would circulate demos for big upcoming games, too. Then, Michael Pachter (I think he was the big push behind this, I may be wrong) started going around telling companies, "Hey, this is hurting your sales. Demos hurt your sales. You should stop doing this." And he was right... for games that sucked. For games that didn't suck, demos actually pushed sales. I feel LPs are probably in the same vein. And Hennig isn't accounting for a serious issue here -- LPs aren't as satisfying to watch as the game is to play. It's not the same experience at all. I think it's probably far more likely that people get a taste of the feel of the game through LPs and then they go out and buy the thing when they have the money available.
You can't trust games media these days. They're bought and sold by publishers. Twitch and youtube are the only way I find new games anymore. I bought Nier: Automata because Pat streamed it. I stopped watching the Yakuza 0 LP because I had to play it myself. Same with Undertale. I got into Dark Souls (All three games!) after watching some of their DS 2 LP.
That's pretty much why mainstream games media/journalism is dying. People have multiple avenues of finding out for themselves if a game looks good or not. We don't need failed journalists to tell us what is good or bad.
SebHighDef Oh no. In his case, it’s more “You have told and spread bullshit about Trump for a year to where no one believes you anymore. And now you’re telling me he likes watching gorillas fighting on TV and he’s responsible for the government shutdown. Not to mention paid for an escort that had him watch Shark Week with him where both parties are saying that it didn’t happen.”
"Let's Play's" of games are 2 things, to me; A preview of a game I do not yet own (or had little interest in, from the outset), or a playthrough of a game I *do* own and would like to see someone else's perspective of. The latter speaks for itself, but the former I like to think of as a demonstration of a product that may convince me, or dissuade me, from buying a game. Similar to how I'll listen to a few tracks of an album online and, if I think it's worth it, I'll buy the hard copy. This is why this issue is so hard to back up. Playthrough's, or product demonstrations of any kind, can either make a person want to buy something, or stop them from buying something. Which is what distinguishes it from advertising. An ad for a game is a totally biased source telling you to buy something, a playthrough is a fair and open display of a product, from a users perspective. So, instead of developers saying *"LP's are killing story based games because production costs are outweighing user expectations"*, what they should be saying is "A lot is expected of a modern video game, so we've decided to make a great game instead of relying on marketing to sell our product".
I think the problem is that Lets Players are Brilliant for the consumer, but not the developer, or rather for specific developers. What I mean is there are some games that are rushed and a mess and in no way finished to a good quality, but they instead put their funding to marketing so they can trick people into thinking the game is much better than it looks. Some developers consider this fair game and (like they said) as long as we get the money from you, we don't care if you don't like it. Lets Players act as a visual demo as to how the game plays and what it's all about. It gives people that window they would usually be denied from the developers who don't want their game to be laid bare for the world to see. Those games do lose sales because their marketing is thrown in the trash when people see what the game's actually like. THOSE developers lose sales with lets players, and I'd argue that's a good thing as it forces devs to make products that are actually as good as they're made out to be, and don't rely on fake hype and pretty stills to sell copies.
+Soarin-Wonderbolt I do get that but not for Let's Plays. It rarely happens but it does happen that I end up being too uncertain about getting a game and thus needing to look up a gameplay video of it. However, Let's Plays and playthroughs definitely makes me buy games far less than I ever would if they didn't exist. I have most likely saved several hundred thousands dollars thanks to playthroughs and Let's Plays. Not everyone is like me but let me share you this detail, many are like me regarding this, many. I know so many people in real life who watch people play the games they want rather than buying them. They would have bought the games if LPs and playthroughs didn't exist but because they do, they end up buying far less games than they would otherwise. When I talk to the many people I know about new upcoming games the topic of "I will just watch someone play the entire game instead of buying it myself" & "I will just watch *THE MOVIE* of the game instead of buying it" appears *constantly.* CONSTANTLY. YT delivers entire game experiences to me for free so why should I buy games then? The only games I buy are those I 100% know I will enjoy playing myself much more than watching someone else play, but there are so many games I skip buying because "Hey! Look! The channels you are subscribed to have started a playthrough or a Let's Play of the games you were planning on buying!" and at that point I go "Well, no reason for me to buy the games then now that I can watch the entire game for free by the people I enjoy watching". I don't believe LPs and Playthroughs increases sales more than dropping sales. Just like Pat and Woolie experiencing people going "Hey! I never knew this game existed, I will buy this" & "Hey Pat & Woolie! I bought the game you played." etc but in my experience it's the *COMPLETE OPPOSITE* to such a powerful degree. I know so many people who so rarely buy games because of LPs and Playthroughs.
Games this channel got me into: MGR, Nier, THE ENTIRE SOULSBORNE FRANCHISE (all five games, yes), The Last of Us, Nioh, Monster Hunter, Shadow of Mordor, Silent Hill series, Killer is Dead, Metal Gear 5, Evil Within, Legend of Korra (The game, yes), Resident Evil Revelations 1 and 2, Freedom Planet, Shovel Knight, both Jojo games that came out State side, Mercenary Kings, Bayonetta, Dying Light, Metroid Fusion, Double Dragon Neon, Gravity Rush, Party Hard, Punch Club, Shantae, Shadow Warrior remakes, Splatterhouse. That's maybe not a complete list, but I feel insane for putting down that much already. The point here is that every game on that list WASN'T EVEN ON MY RADAR before you guys played it. Even if it was old, like Splatterhouse, or new like Metal Gear 5 and Dark Souls 2. You guys have brought me into ENTIRE FRANCHISES AND WHOLE NEW GENRES OF GAMES with your let's plays. Saying that my literal THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS being put into the industry is "killing it" is just stupid. What's killing the game industry is an obsession with graphics inflating costs of simple games to that point of costing hundreds of millions, but I digress. Let's plays do more to get people invested in games that have substance, real depth, than any amount of marketing out there, and it's practically free. If people watch your game, get all the cutscenes, and never feel the need to play the actual game for themselves, they weren't going to play it until it was bargain bin price, if at all, and probably get it used so no money goes to the devs anyway. On top of that, it probably also means your game wasn't mechanically interesting. A linear story game doesn't mean it has to be simple to play. MGR is linear, but it's fun to play, you want to play it yourself aside from the story. Shoot for THAT, not some mediocre gameplay, "BUT TEH SOTRY THO!" piece of shit. And I say that AS an author myself. Games are fun to PLAY, that will get more sales than a good story.
People will buy or not buy a game regardless if they watch an lp of it or somebody playing the game for a video. An LP of a game is no different than a review of a game. Somebody who watches an lp and doesn't get the game ever is someone who didn't care about the game enough in the first place to buy it full price.
I disagree, there are plenty of games that I planned on getting but then didn't because I ended up watching an LP of it. And that's not always because of the quality of the game. Take Platinum's games, besides Nier, all of their game are dependent on gameplay. If I was to watch Bayonetta 2 be played to completion, I would still want to purchase it to play the game part of it myself. But if I watched an LP of Last of Us before buying it myself, I may have never purchased that game and played it. 50% of that game is the story/set pieces, if I witnessed that before buying it I would've more than likely never purchased the game. Watching a MP focused game is going to make me want to buy it if I like what I see, the same can't be said about story driven games. Especially if the SP game is more so on the short side. I don't see any issue with what she said, there are outliers but I imagine more people are like me than in this regard than not.
Richard Hawk Their LP of The Last of Us is the only thing that made me want that game, because I never cared about Naughty Dog once they went for realistic visuals over the fun cartoony stuff they used to make. If it hadn't been for that, I probably still wouldn't care. On the other hand, I never watch their LPs of things like The Walking Dead until I've played those games, because they're more fun to play for yourself than to watch, and once you've watched them you've ruined it for yourself. If you ever fully intended to buy a Telltale game or similar that you wanted to play and could afford and had time to play, and then you watched an LP of it instead, you're probably an idiot.
+AmedeusMkII Heavily agree. This idea that games that rely on storytelling don't deserve to sell is ridiculous. Take Danganronpa for example. Great game, but if you watch an LP of it there is almost no reason for you to go and buy it. Many other games rely on great storytelling in order to sell their game. I disagree with the generalised idea that LPs hurt sales because a lot of games owe their success to LPs. But in some cases, LPing a game (especially a story-heavy one) could hurt sales because after watching an LP there would be no reason to ever go buy it except to support it, which I'm guessing not many would do.
The fact that someone in the video game industry would say, in a post-Wii world, that a developer needs to spend $100 million on a game to meet gamers' demands for fidelity and content is ridiculous and disheartening. The necessity of these rising development costs has been consistently proven untrue for the last ten years. The fact that Amy Hennig believes otherwise is proof that the triple-A game developers exist in a bubble, or echo chamber, where they continue to cling to the 2005-era idea that video games are a technological arms race. There was an entire console generation where the Wii, which was a essentially a redesigned GameCube, trounced the PS3, which was essentially an over-engineered supercomputer with video game controllers attached, and yet the former creative director of Naughty Dog is telling us that developers feel pressure that is "very real internally" to spend ungodly amounts of money to the point where microtransaction bullshit is necessary.
The rising cost of development certainly isn't a response to _my_ demands as a gamer. The tens of thousands of man-hours spent rendering the pores on every characters' skin are hours not spent developing quests, maps, characters, game mechanics--the most interactive, substantial parts of the game. LPs are extremely useful to me in figuring out which games were developed for the player and which games were developed for the trailer.
And then there's Platinum Games that knows where to spend the budget and make people go: "hey the enemies are all the same! Yes, but only until you slice them up into pieces, and you'll not even notice that with how fast you are going"
Literally bought Yakuza 0 , one of my favourite games of all time because of the LP on this channel. Same with Persona 5 and Nier automata. LPs only hurt the sales of games if the game is trash
Zanzibar Junker ok I need to know. How do I buy this??? I need Trouble shooting star as my ring tone. For real it's probably one of the best video game soundtracks I've heard
Amy's argument is basically the blurb on NFL games that says you can't show or even talk about the games without the NFL's permission. Of course people are going to talk about them! Because even if they crack down on LPs to an insane degree, you can't stop someone on Facebook or Reddit saying "Yo, wasn't it sick when Lee got bit by a zombie & died?"
I might also add the point that it helps that sometimes the Best Friends suck at the game, and so us yelling at them going "YOU MISSED THE THING" might make some people pick up the game themselves and try to beat it 'better'.
"If the game costs $100 million to make, how are you gonna make that back?" By not spending a TENTH OF A BILLION DOLLARS on it? It's like someone making a Hollywood Blockbuster complaining about how unprofitable their movies have become as Bruce Willis goes on set to film his 2 minute cameo he's getting paid 10 million for. If AAA gaming has bloated itself to the point where it NEEDS those insanely expensive elements to be competitive and yet can't then milk enough profit out of it from a stagnating pricepoint and/or audience base.....then it's pretty much fucked and out of luck at this point, isn't it? Loot boxes are just gonna buy them a bit more time, but not solve the main, underlying problem.
If anything, Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice shows us that AAA devs can make a game of AAA quality, have it make a good profit, and have it win multiple awards without wasting millions of dollars on stupid, wasteful shit.
Theres been a few times where i went 'Oh shiiiiiiiiit i have to get this game' and watched ya'll play it a little...i then turned back around and went. "HA.HA.HA. Nyoooooooope'. and you saved money in my wallet. Theres been so many damn times, though, where you all convinced me to buy a game purely for the fun you guys had and how much alike i am to you guys in mental wise, turned out i had a fuckin blast with said games.
I've purchased all the Yakuza games since I saw your Yakuza 4 playthrough. Without it I never would've taken a second look at what I thought was a lame GTA clone.
I just remembered that I'm a fan of Platinum Games thanks to you guys. I brought Vanquish way before, but that was when I wasn't paying much attention to who made what video games. So you all drove the point home that Platinum Games is amazing.
Maybe if these developers stayed in a budget they wouldn’t have this problem. If someone has a budget to pay bills and buy groceries you don’t hear “omg everything is so expensive”. Developers complaining about their budget is Ridiculous.
Speaking personally, I have skipped every LP you guys have done for a game I intended on buying or eventually intend on buying. All the ones I have watched are for games I already owned or never want to buy.
I've gotten really sick of hearing how under handed marketing tactics like loot boxes, microtransactions etc are considered the "trend" in the industry. One of the few reasons that is, is because the publishers that push that shit to such a high degree are the ones that have stakes in the stock market; Ubisoft, EA, etc. It's only trending cuz they're the ones stock holders take a look at to see how the business in this industry is done. Those big publishers aren't the only players in the industry, the sooner reporters and high paid "gaming journalists" realize this, the sooner we can get past this crap.
I actually only like to watch LPs of games that I don't want to buy, but I wanna see what it is. Technically not a "lost" sale since i'd never pay for it.
In the four years that I've been following this channel I got introduced to more amazing games (most of them "story based", too) than I ever did in 15 years if my life, and I ended up buying most of them, go figure that out!
Shit. Yakuza, Monster Hunter, Bloodbourne, Undertale. It's hard to keep track of how many games/series I've purchased because of this channel. Hennig is simply mistaken.
No. In fact its the opposite. Lets Play/walkthrough videos are the equivalent of "Car Test" in video game. Its one of the most honest way to figure out if the product/game is suited for a certain consumer. Its also the best way to know if the game is shit or ok in my/you're taste.
I bought my favorite game of all time Persona 4 Golden after pat shilled it. I also had no idea the yakuza series existed before this channel. I also bought a playstation tv to play p4g because of the podcast, now I have to explain wtf that is everytime I mention it, but I like it, over paid, but I like it.
The best way to sell a game is word of mouth. Ive had plenty of friends be like "aw shit this game looks fun I want it" because i'll be playing it and say "this seems like something u'd like." Lps are basically word of mouth on a larger scale. Granted, yes the person is making some money from it. But that is literally advertising that the company DOESNT PAY FOR.
Maybe, but not necessarily. I've bought linear story games at launch in order to support them. That's when I really believe the story and game is great. But if it's a boring story with mediocre gameplay, and I see that on lps, then I'm not buying.
I don’t think so. People watching an LP of Walking Dead wouldn’t just say they’re satisfied and don’t need to buy it. They’d say fuck those guys my choice would be better.
After watching trailers for games like Twilight Princess or Phantom Pain, etc. and then actually playing them, I've since decided LPs by third parties are far more accurate at portraying what a game is actually like.
Literally there are no games in my library that I bought for myself that I didn't watch at least part of an LP for. And most, if not all, of my immediate social circle can say the same. So yes. Citation needed. My anecdotal evidence contradicts everything that person is talking about.
the only time i would watch an LP and not get the game is if the game looks bad and games that are entirely story based with very little like telltale games and david cage games...also the Kotor lp totally reminded me how much i love that game and i rebought it (also its how i found out it was Backwards Compatible)
Obviously these guys will say that they don't think LP's impact sales, it's their goddam job! It totally depends on the type of game, if they do a play through of a game that isn't purely narrative like Dark Souls, in that case the video is only a good thing for the developers as seeing the gameplay isn't a substitute for the experience of Dark Souls. A game like The Walking Dead or The Wolf Among Us rather I would 100% not buy them if I had watched an LP of it, as it really isn't that big a difference from watching and playing.
The deal with specifically TellTale games is that that type of game wouldn't be bought by someone who deep down just wants to know the story. You can read tvtropes, watch twitch/youtube for that. The real kicker even is that exact niche of a game type would get shared among friends back in the predominantly physical copy era. The budget on those also has no fkn excuse to blow up to gigantic proportions where some lost sales from LP's get to blamed for not doing so well. These games sell on the IP they are attached to and are basically giftshop products. TellTale games can't be taken into these debates because of what a weird spot they are in. Episodic, licensed, barebones gameplay where choices really don't matter.
i wouldn't pay for a tell tale game in the first place, so its not a lost sale. ontop of it, the LP's wouldn't hurt them if they were actually good. ya know, if ur choices actually mattered. cuz then it'd be "huh. i wonder what'd happen if i did that differently. or that. or that. better buy it and find out." if i had paid for them and then discovered my choices dont actually matter, oh boy. refund? baby i want a double refund. i want an individual refund for every choice i made that the game ignored. holy shit.
Because of you guys I got into platinum games. When they make a game now I listen. Pats love for monster hunter has me looking at monster hunter world.
I actually bought Yakuza 0 after watching your LP and then proceeded to buy Kiwami and plan on getting Kiwami 2 when it's localized. In short your LP got me into a new franchise.
If you watch an entire LP of a game you haven't played, you didn't care enough about playing the game to buy it in the first place. At best you might have picked it up second-hand, which wouldn't have helped the developer/publisher anyway. I do agree that LPs are a good way to see if a game is something you really want to spend your money on. But you don't have to watch the whole playthrough to get that information. And I agree 100% that the video game industry's marketing tactics are terrible and deceptive. Companies know that we want to see gameplay before we commit our hard-earned dollars to a game. That's why they put out trailers and promo videos. It's just too bad that those trailers and promos contain so much fakery and lies. We NEED LPs and independent reviews, because otherwise we wouldn't be able to make informed purchasing decisions. That at least justifies LPs to some extent, but publishers/developers would argue that they don't have to play through the whole game just to give people information on how the game actually plays. But I would counter that a full playthrough is also valuable for everyone. There's the entertainment value it provides to people who have already played the game, and then there's also the benefit for people who might want to pick up a sequel but don't want to invest time and money into the previous entry/entries in a series first. Say I'm looking at The Last of Us Part II, and I haven't played The Last of Us. I could go out and pick up the original game (and I could get it used for less than $10 at this point--or the Remastered version for less than $20--but it still costs money) and play it through before the new game comes out. I look up how long it generally takes people to beat that game, and it looks like 15-20 hours. My time is valuable. I'm an adult. I got shit to do. I can't play The Last of Us while I'm folding laundry or doing the dishes or making a big steaming pot of Kraft Dinner. But I can watch someone else do it and still get my chores done. Matt and Pat played through the game in about 13 hours. They provided entertaining commentary on the game as well. And it doesn't cost me any money to watch the LP, as opposed to $10-20 to buy a used copy of the game. The publisher wouldn't have seen a penny of that either, so what do they care? Now I've experienced The Last of Us, for free, along with some guys who I find entertaining, and I'm super fucking hyped for The Last of Us Part II. I want to play it for myself. I pick it up on launch day from my local game store so as not to support GameStop, because GameStop is terrible. And when I'm done playing it, then I watch the Best Friends LP because I want to hear their reactions to what I just played. And I'm *even more hyped* for a potential Last of Us 3. The LP of the first game turned me into a fan of the franchise, rather than someone who was mildly interested in the upcoming sequel.
Games I purchased solely from watching this channel: Bayonetta, MGR, wonderful 101, anarchy reigns, Yakuza, persona 5, bloodborne and souls games, nier automata, Street fighter 3 third strike, schoolgirls, enter the gungeon, binding of Isaac and a couple more I'm probably forgetting. If it wasn't for these awesome guys I'd probably be playing cod and battlefield. Thank you zaibatsu!
Man, I had never played Drakengard or Nier, but I bought Nier Automata day one because of you guys. You guys brought one of my favorite anime, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, because of the LP. Keep in mind I only bought the PS4 for Bloodborne, and because of this channel I got The Last of Us, Nier: Automata, and JJBA: Eyes of Heaven!
In the past two months, I have purchased 2 new games that I previously had no interest in specifically because I saw an LP and it looked fun. The guys who made Hand of Fate 2 and Slay the Spire should cut Northern Lion a check. I'll probably buy KOTOR at some point too, after watching the SBFP LP.
Actually there was that whole That Dragon Cancer debacle where the devs didn't see really anywhere near the amount of sales as compared to the amount of views it was getting on TH-cam from different LPers. I think if it's something along those lines to where it's a short enough experience, solely linear story based, the audience is aware of that and their interest is only in the story, it has the potential to cause a loss in sales. Does this happen a lot? Nah so games like The Last of Us, Uncharted, and by extension Persona 5 are more safe due to length than anything, while games like Undertale and most Telltale Games are safe because they make people want to play with their own choices, it's possible for games like That Dragon Cancer and Emily is Away Too to possibly lose sales despite getting millions of views on TH-cam. (EDIT: And not for being shitty games at that.)
Off the top of my head I know I bought Yakuza 0, Until Dawn and Bloodborne after watching LPs. I prefer them to reviews at times but it depends on the game.
i actually dont buy a game until ive watched a playthrough of it, i don't care about surprises i just want to actually play a game i know ill have fun with
Games I bought because I saw an LP and liked what I saw: Every Souls game Bloodborne Infamous 1-3 Uncharted 1-3 Metal Gear Rising Last of Us Nidhogg Hyper Light Drifter Spooky House of Jumpscares A whole fucking lot more I'm gonna save us all some time and just say that 90% of games that I've bought and played in the last 6 years are games that I first watched an LP of.
I got nier and automata, into fighting games, night in the woods, a switch, got into persona and smt, into Jojo, got into dark souls harder than before, got Digimon cyber sleuth and more all because of vids you guys made and stuff you guys have said about these things
I have bought nearly a dozen or so games watching you guys play over the years. Freedom planet, Neir, until dawn, deadly P, and metal gear. For the first time in my life, I became interested in shoot em ups and fighting games. That being said, some Lp's are a better experience than some games. For example I'll use Neir again. You got me into the franchise and got I auto because of it, but man, gestalts game play is really bad in comparison. That's a game format I enjoyed much more by watching and listening than I think I would have felt playing.
Can confirm i've bought at least 6 games because of you guys; Revengeance, Evil Within 2, Last of Us, RE7, Dead Souls and Dark Souls 2 (you guys got me into the souls series!) , and have watched an LP once instead of buying the game (was only on the fence about getting it in the first place).
Patt looks like the Thing before he became the Thing in the Fantastic Four movie and Max payne 3 when he cut all of his hair off (obviously he wasn't a ginger and had a full beard). You look weird but smooth patt 'XD
9:15 Im have to say I would never have gotten into Jojo, or at least not until years from now if it wasn't for you guys never shutting up about it and the few playthoughs of the various games you did.
I would never have purchased or even known about Metal Gear Rising and Nier:Automata without you guys, and N:A is now my favorite game. Ever. Period. I completely understand where she's coming from but I'm going to assume she only has surface-level knowledge about this stuff.
guantanamo bae Its more than likely just a gur reaction. She sees hundreds of thousands of views on a thing and just ASSUMES "Oh. Those are lost sales."
I think it really depends, sometimes on the game, sometimes on the person. I'll admit, there's plenty of games that I lost interest in buying after someone like SBFP played it, especially if the story > the gameplay. However, if the gameplay is the main thing that makes me want to buy it, then a lets play might actually make me end up buying it in the middle of me watching it. For example: as much as I really liked Nier Gestalt's story, I'm not buying that game for shit because I already experienced the best parts with Pat and Liam. However, I was still full well going to buy Metal Gear Rising even after I watched Matt and Pat play the whole thing, because it looked fun regardless of the story.
Maybe developers should respond to the shifting market by making games that have both a linear narrative *and* gameplay that's interesting in its own right. People will buy the game for the gameplay, even if they already know what happens in the story.
Seriously, the enthusiasm (or sometimes lack thereof) can be contagious. I bought The Last of Us after watching your LP. Despite the praise it got, I wasn't sure if I'd dig it because I actually only find Uncharted to be "okay." But I liked what I saw and picked it up, despite having watched the entire LP! And now my playthroughs are full of "garbage." I haven't gotten around to Yakuza yet, but y'all are a big reason I want to play it. Personally, I think LPs are just another way gamers are social about games they enjoy (or don't). A good LP or video can indeed put a game I might have overlooked on my radar. So, keep on spreading all the hype! It's infectious.
LP's replace reviews for a lot of people because they're more raw, it's easier to catch anything being tried to sweep under the rug. A lot of people just watch LP's for the people playing them. If they're gonna come after LP'ers, what the hell are they gonna do about twitch? Amy got duped by working for EA. Take the loss and move on. Big companies handling big IP's is the last place she should have gone to when her entire sthick revolves around a solid product with no horrible press.
In other words, Amy, if you don't want LPs and streams to hurt sales of linear story games, the games themselves MUST BE GOOD. Amy seems to be hung up on people asking for single player story games, but she seems to not know about the implied aspects of that demand. Many gamers want single player focused games, but they also want them to be good and not boring. I guess she's just speaking from a personal place without putting too much thought or independent research into this.
I didn't buy Season 3 of Walking Dead, not because of the LP but because I was disappointed in Telltale after Season 2. Life is Strange is about as close to an LP making me not buy a game, but I'll admit that's mostly because I saw they tried to put a positive spin on FF: Spirits Within. If I didn't find out about that, I might've given LiS a chance.
You showed me Rocket League before it became big and from the moment i saw it i knew it'd be my favorite game ever, i bought that game 3 times. Also the game Nelo was entirely Kickstarted by this channel
The only time an LP/stream has ever stopped me from buying a game is if the game looked like trash. With how shitty and underhanded marketing in the industry is, LPs/streams have become a viable resource when it comes to making purchasing decisions.
N00BSYBORG I mean, on the other hand watching someone be bad at a good game turns you away
*Shhhhhhhhh ..... give us your money* E.A 2018
crazygamer4260 Does it? Usually those lps generate many comments calling out the streamer for their bad gameplay. It makes me curious but I'm just me. As a Final Fantasy fan I started watching lps of Final Fantasy from HCBailey and because of him I found out about and bought a lot of more niche jrpgs like Raident Historia before it was cool. So lps have convinced me to buy games I wasn't otherwise gonna buy. I cant think of a time an lp has deterred me away from buying a game that I wasn't already disinterested in.
crazygamer4260 Someone sucking at a good game should turn you away from their content, not the game. You'd have to be an idiot to base your decisions entirely off an LP by somebody like DSP.
N00BSYBORG
"The controls are bullshit! It's sticking when I try to jump! This game sucks! They're fucking hacking!" DSP summed up.
LP's help me decide if a game is worth my time usually.
That's a bit of a double edged sword. If a lets player doesn't like a game, you may dismiss it. It's a bit of an issue because your tastes aren't the same as the lets player and what they don't like you may tolerate or even enjoy. It wouldn't surprise me if there's a bit of psychology where viewers realign their own opinions to fit the opinions of their favorite lets players and miss out of a game they could have enjoyed if not for dismissive comments from their fav entertainers.
At least, that's one theory.
@@ocarinaplaya this seems like someone who just follow trends in general, a normal person does not buy depending on who likes it or not, even if it is disliked by a lets player
a viewer/gamer usually buys games and products depending on multiple reasons like, will my friends get this (due to work we now only ever meet in games)
am i a fan of the last game or the series or the producers/directors of the game
Does the game offer hype in a direction i am interested in
cost and availability will also affect the chance of purchase due to what you have to play on and what you have in funds
never have i bought a game depending on a LP'ers opinion ever, and ive watched LP's since 2007
@@cheekyfantasy1314
And, anecdotally, there are plenty of interesting games I didn't bother getting due to a let's play. Usually games with involved single player stories. No point buying the game if the story has been ruined and the gameplay is an afterthought or gimmicky.
"Do LPs hurt game sales?"
Perhaps if the game is bad and doesn't look good when people play it.
YES! No more being burned by blind buying anymore. Reviews and LPs are consumer friendly as far as I'm concerned.
I can't think of the amount of times LP's have helped, and even made me pick up a few titles that I otherwise wouldn't have bought. Compared to the times I've been sorely disappointed by a game that was hyped up to being the best thing ever in the game mags that advertised it.
Raven i mean I never bought the last of us because of LPs. Same goes for all story based games
This, perfect. If you think LPs hurt your sales it's probably because your game is garbage and toilets
well no, why watch a story based game like tell tale games, when you can just watch it. When you watch it, the games done.
The answer's NO. I got into and bought many games, and franchises because of you guys. LP ALL THE GAMES
Is there actual statistical proof that The Evil Within 2 sold more after the LPs were released praising the game as an improvement? Because I want to believe that.
AfroMetalMizu Yup after their Deadly premonition LP part 1 I bought the game straight away.
It's hard to say. You would need do a side by side day to day comparison between someone's LP and the sales numbers of the game. A good example that might give some insight is looking at the time frame that Markiplier did it. He is a very popular TH-camr who didn't LP that game until a little after it was released a bit so it would be easier to see if that had any impact on sales.
So far, I have bought,
The last of Us
Deadly Premonition
Evil Within 1 and 2
Shovel knight
Dark Souls 2
I recently bought Bully, (Canis Edit Canum)
RE4and I even managed to suffer through Silent Hill Homecoming, which I already owned but could never bring myself to play until watching Matt suffer through it.
All because of LP's. Game companies should be actively encouraging quality Let's players
Games I bought because of these guys:
7 final fantasy games
4 resident evil games
4 Yakuza games
Any fighting games
Assassin's Creed syndicate but fuck you Pat that game and every AC game after AC4 are absolute shit piles
When I'm interested in buying a game, I don't watch an LP. When I'm not interested in buying a game, I watch an LP, and either it makes me interested, or it turns out I wouldn't have been interested enough to buy it rather than just watch people play it and joke around.
The only case in which LPs might be detrimental to game sales is when the game in question is a pile of shit and whoever's selling it hoped for suckers to buy it without checking.
Their Lets Plays got me to give Metal Gear Rising a chance instead of writing it off. I got Nier Automata Day 1 because of Liam's Nier LP. I got Last of Us Day 1 because I wanted to beat Pat to the end of the game. I want to play Yakuza 0 for myself after watching the Yakuza 0 LP (I'm just waiting for Kiwami 2 and 6 in the west, so I can just burst the series).
I would have NEVER bought Metal Gear Rising if it wasn't for me watching their MGR lp and the subsequent constant shilling for Platinum. I've also bought most of the Platinum games on Steam, even though I've only ever completed MGR (those VR missions were infuriating) and barely spent more than an hour on the others.
I'm pretty sure lps are a net positive for good games and an absolute annihilator for bad games.
Edit for bad spelling
:(
What about Yakuza Kiwami? Not Kiwami 2, just Kiwami.
I didn't even know Nier was a thing until these guys started talking about and played the demo for Automata.
Now I fucking LOVE Yoko Taro. Same deal with Persona, same deal with MGR, same deal with MGSV, same deal with UNDERTALE. LPs help games so damn much.
I bought Killer is Dead when I saw them piss themselves while yelling "MY TURN NOW, GIMME THE CONTROLLER!"
I didn’t know about JoJo or Persona before these guys talked/played them, and now I’m a big fan of both.
Gage Morrison That’s very much how I feel. I bought P3P, P4G, and P5 because of them and I plan on getting Eyes of Heaven soon even though I watched the full LP.
Gage Morrison these nerds introduced me to Jojo and Persona as well. I don't regret it!
Jojo trash
Yeah, these guys put me onto so many niche things that ended up becoming popular years later.
I've bought so many games because of this channel. All of the Telltale games, multiple fighters, multiple David Cage games, Ride to Hell, several Silent Hill games, Bully, ETC. Shit. I even bought Kotor 2 on steam recently due to the adventures of Pockets. I love the trash, and the good shit these guys expose me to. I'm all in thanks to the Zaibatsu.
I bought Revengeance, Double Dragon Neon, The Walking Dead Season 1, and Persona 3/4 BECAUSE of the LPs the zaibatsu did. That includes 3 of my favorite games OF ALL TIME. And the other one was neat for the small little changes. And hell I got into Ace Attorney and Danganronpa via other let's play channels. If the game is good or interesting enough people will buy it.
darkironyoshi They never did an Lp of Persona 3 or 4 and they got cucked by Atlus for starting one of 5. They should totally do an Lp of 3 or 4 though. If Pat is half as good as he thinks he is a playthough of 4 should be incredibly easy.
They talked about 3 and 4 being good on podcast.
They didn't do full LPs for most of those. And The Walking Dead has enough player choice that there's still things to see. Right now, I'm seriously considering whether I want to pick up Super Mario Odyssey now that I've seen the main story.
That said, I am picking up Monster Hunter World partially because of Pat. So it goes both ways.
I would have never bought Dark Souls had I not been introduced to it by SBFP.
Same but Nier: Automata, Far Cry Primal, Heat Signature, RUINER, Injustice 2... I'm certain I'm forgetting others.
I don't watch walkthroughs too often anymore, but back in the 360 era I watched so many playthroughs of games I would later buy once or even twice. I watched the entirety of Brotherhood before I bought it. Black Flag I watched the first mission of before I literally grabbed all my other AC games, walked to EB Games and bought the fucking thing.
Publicity is publicity, a good game will SELL people, even if it only sells in it's niche.
As long as your game isn't shit, boring, or trying swindle people an lp wont ruin sales.
You guys are the literal reason I got into fighting games! I started with 3rd Strike and am still learning!
Love it when they say professional terms like "citation needed" and "anecdotal",
then top it off by saying "anecdotal AS FUCK!".
xkcd.com/798/
It's a mixed bag for me. I'll buy games because of LPs but I'll also watch LPs of games I never plan to play.
That's pretty fair and the general response ussually.
Habadashery Jones I wouldn't call that a mixed bag. Like you said, you never planned to play them. I was never gonna buy a single Tell-Tale game, so me watching them doesn't really hurt anyone. If no one LP'd them, I'd just never experience them at all.
That's not a mixed bag; that's a bag full of evidence refuting the question.
Pretty much. It all comes form this really confused and ignorant view that a watch of an lp without a buy is "clearly" a "lost sale". Its the same fallacy with pirated movies. That if the pirated version didn't exist online than all the views/downloads it got were guaranteed purchases otherwise. What's more likely is that the spread of the product through lps gets the game more buyers than it would have otherwise had. And if people were never gonna buy they were never gonna buy it.
Kevin Darce Yeah but it's fair to say especially for story given games, that LPs hurt sales. Just because you weren't willing to pay for it doesn't mean you should get it for free. I don't think watching games is as good as playing them. I do think LPs provide free advertisement for the most part. Still for story driven games, people are getting the story without buying. It's mixed bag.
I actually bought a fightstick and started learning fighting games because of the Best Friends constantly talking about them. So Tekken 7, Guilty Gear, SFV, Killer Instinct, P4A, DOA5 and more all got a sale because of you guys.
PixelRush Lol I love to hear that shit. Fightin' games for LIFE
It's always bizarre to me that some developers don't see the advantage of having people LP their games. The whole reason I'm into the Soul series is because of TFS Gaming and ENB. I got Saints Row 3 because of Uberhaxornova way back in the day. And now, THESE chucklefucks have me interested in games like Tekken 7, despite the fact that I'm objectively shit at fighting games! So from that perspective, I can't see why developers think they're losing money from TH-camrs.
Scorpio The Scorpion I don't have any numbers to argue one way or the other. I feel like LPs help sells but I don't know that. I think it's fair to say that this fan base has more hardcore gamers but I could also believe plenty of casual players watch lps and never buy the game.
Its just because of their human lizard brains.
They look at the sales of their games which aren't what the publisher want and then see some PewDiePie video with 1 million views or whatever and just immediately go "those are lost sales". Its stupid. But that's what they immediately think because lizard brains.
Look at games like The Wolf Among Us or Life is Strange. You can watch LPs for everything that happens in those games and rather or not you liked them you'd have no reason to buy them. I know LPs can help with games sales. its thanks to these guys that Nelo passed its kick starter. With that said its also true that LPs hurt game sales, particularly for story based games. Its not stupid because its not simply a or b. If I made a story driven game and someone showed that story online I would be pretty upset about it.
*whisper:* "It's free advertising~!"
Sam Lucas Get them exposure bucks.
I bought the following games due to watching Best Friend LPs: I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream; The Wolf Among Us; The Walking Dead Season 1; The Evil Within; Killer is Dead; and Deadly Premonition. Not only that but The Last of Us; Silent Hill 2; Way of the Samurai 4; Until Dawn; and the entire Yakuza series are on my wishlist because of this channel.
I recently bought a PS4 Slim for Bloodborne, Yakuza and upcoming Death Stranding. Thank to this fucks LPs I have a wider spectrum, before them I was just an FPS guy, is not that's bad, but I'm playing Terraria right now and I'am having more enjoyment than any FPS has ever gave me and thank to watching all kinds of LPs I realize how much I was missing!
I don't think I would have ever bought Killer is Dead without their LP.
They introduced me to Persona
The fact that I used to learn of the games to play when I was a youngun from shows like x-play/aots, lps filled that void to decide what was worth my time, if a game looks interesting and I have disposable income, I will come back and watch an lp after I had completed the game. Really enhanced my watching of the best friends bloodborne playthrough when I could measure up my thoughts at the same moment in game as they did for a different perspective.
jaydee152515 It's been so long since X-play and AotS. Those were so fun.
You guys made me buy the Killer is Dead Special Edition. Hope you're proud.
FatPanda54 exact same here.
FatPanda54 killer is dead is an amazing game in my opinion but i dint know there was a special edition
Yep, I probably wouldn't have even heard the name that game without that LP, let alone know whether or not I should buy it.
I literally bought it yesterday after I saw the lp
Lol me too. Forgot about that one, actually. Might dust off my ps3
wait, Woolie is BLACK????????
😂😂😂
*This treachery runs deep in the zaibatsu*
MIND BLOWN
No, no, Woollies the ginger, Pat's the black one.
No. What ever made you think that.
Yakuza was a series I got into explicitly because I finally saw someone play it. Had to stop watching the LP, buy it, beat it, then finished watching the LP.
After years of watching my friends play Devil May Cry I finally bought 4SE after watching you guys play the first one. I got back into fighting games because of you guys too, even bought a fight stick.
I would never have purchased soulss or la noire without the lps
lil cocoa butta
> *Truth*
*lie*
Do you farm for young souls? *detective phelps*
I watch the let's plays that you guys do because I don't have the money to play the games myself, but when I see something awesome you guys do I'll always spread the word.
Games I bought cause of tbf playthroughs that I never would have otherwise heard of or considered buying:
Metal Gear Rising
Vanquish
No More Heroes
Anarchy Reigns
Yakuza
I have been with this channel since around 10,000 subs. Over the years, I have bought a shit ton of games that I would never have normally touched or even known about without seeing you guys play it first. I even stopped watching games so I could buy them myself and play them before going back and watching your playthrough. LP's definately have their advantages.
That's one long podcast preview.
Griffin1171 sometimes they upload specific segments if it was a good convo. Last time I remember specifically was the Halloween one talking about if ghost are scary.
Yeah yeah, but when is the episode OUT dammit!
What podcast?
Still waiting for them to upload the damn podcast lol
Going to work with no podcast
So basically, Hennig is looking for an excuse by shifting blame on LPs, when it's the corporate, business-minded Publishers who are really the ones to blame for their unrealistic, erratic demands and are out of touch with the people they're making the products for, thus some games not being successful as a result? Woolie and Chromedome, er, Pat pretty much pointed out the flaws in that excuse.
On the side note, What the hell, Pat. You looking like Micheal Chiklis there. LOL
Holy shit he DOES! I was trying to think who he looked like now!
Hennig's comment about LPs isn't entirely off base, though. I stopped buying games 5 years ago when I discovered lets plays. No point in playing a game I've already seen to completion. Especially if it's a linear story based game.
I'm certain I'm not the exception to the rule.
It goes both ways, though; there are plenty of people who buy games because they saw them played outside of a marketing-focused environment. I personally have never been dissuaded from buying a game after seeing it played, but I've bought at least half a dozen because of it.
The former is because I tend to have a pretty good idea of what I'll like before I get it -- I also don't watch ads or press for literally any game -- and the latter is because some games hurt themselves with their first impression, but are actually good in action. Freedom Planet comes to mind, which incidentally was a game I ignored the shit out of after seeing its "cover" in the Steam store, randomly tripped over a TH-cam video of, immediately bought, and have come to regard as one of my favorite games of my entire thirty year run of playing the things. Life's funny that way.
The only real loss of sales come from if your game gets exposed for being trash and the crappy "video games" that just become a movie at some point. Ignoring the "Oh an LP Guess I dont need to buy it" people .
Example: The SBF opened my eyes even further to how trash Quantic Dream games are. The strongest resolution was made to never again buy a cage game and THATS where the real loss sale comes from. Having your game exposed multiple times so that it loses all credibility.
Then on the other end of the spectrum lets say something like Skullgirls which I have no clue about (for some reason) but I see how legit it is and now i want it!
They *KNOW* LPs hurt game sales, that's why they made an LP channel. They need to cause more havoc, for the more chaos there is on Earth, the greater the depth of the Woolie Hole.
Let that child alone
*Such a lust for pies and short haired women! Whooo!?*
Light Fox Can't wait for Punished Liam to fist-fight Liquid Woolcelot on top of a Gundam until they give in to their urges and passionately kiss.
Let that child alone
Then it's revealed that big boss matt was alive all along, battling it out against the *Memes* at summerslam.
Light Fox Doing a father-son kamehameha clash with Suckles while simultaneously having to figure out the ability of McMahon's stand, *[Money, Money, Money]*
Let that child alone
But then sir patrick boivin comes into play at the last moment to save the zaibatsu with *[Crazy talk]* to effectively destroy *[money, money, money]* just to prove the world wrong. Then dio-billy shows up to strike a menacing pose.
I bought Monster Hunter thanks to Pat and there isn't even an LP yet. If LP'S hurt sales, it must be a small amount.
There are a few games where LPs were thought to have hurt sales, like Life is Strange. It's fairly popular, but didn't do as well sales-wise as the popularity would make you think. But, that's a game that's basically just a story with some window-dressing "gameplay". Games with a proper focus on gameplay don't have this issue so much.
Crazy Diamond I can see the argument to be made, but I still bought the game to experience it for myself. Also, the personality of the LPers is one of the biggest reason why I watch.
That moment and feeling when they read your question...
The window has broken, we are both real, and i have impacted their cosmic trajectory in a small and insignificant way. I will ride this high(low?) for weeks.
Ray, from the Home of Wu Tang.
awsomesaucekirby That's always a weird feeling. That's part of why I wished they streamed more, then I can tell them how wrong they are in real time.
why don't you just go to magfest, then?
awsomesaucekirby Congrats (σ・ω・)σ
I don't know if people remember this, but once upon a time you used to be able to go to just about any game store and find disk-based demos for games. Sometimes, game magazines would circulate demos for big upcoming games, too. Then, Michael Pachter (I think he was the big push behind this, I may be wrong) started going around telling companies, "Hey, this is hurting your sales. Demos hurt your sales. You should stop doing this." And he was right... for games that sucked. For games that didn't suck, demos actually pushed sales. I feel LPs are probably in the same vein.
And Hennig isn't accounting for a serious issue here -- LPs aren't as satisfying to watch as the game is to play. It's not the same experience at all. I think it's probably far more likely that people get a taste of the feel of the game through LPs and then they go out and buy the thing when they have the money available.
You can't trust games media these days. They're bought and sold by publishers. Twitch and youtube are the only way I find new games anymore.
I bought Nier: Automata because Pat streamed it. I stopped watching the Yakuza 0 LP because I had to play it myself. Same with Undertale. I got into Dark Souls (All three games!) after watching some of their DS 2 LP.
I bought Undertale but never played it just to be supportive of it. Their LP was all I needed.
"You can *Totally* trust us guys, CoD is 10/10 so buy it" *IGN*
That's pretty much why mainstream games media/journalism is dying. People have multiple avenues of finding out for themselves if a game looks good or not. We don't need failed journalists to tell us what is good or bad.
SebHighDef And what does that have to do with anything?
SebHighDef Oh no. In his case, it’s more “You have told and spread bullshit about Trump for a year to where no one believes you anymore. And now you’re telling me he likes watching gorillas fighting on TV and he’s responsible for the government shutdown. Not to mention paid for an escort that had him watch Shark Week with him where both parties are saying that it didn’t happen.”
"Let's Play's" of games are 2 things, to me; A preview of a game I do not yet own (or had little interest in, from the outset), or a playthrough of a game I *do* own and would like to see someone else's perspective of.
The latter speaks for itself, but the former I like to think of as a demonstration of a product that may convince me, or dissuade me, from buying a game.
Similar to how I'll listen to a few tracks of an album online and, if I think it's worth it, I'll buy the hard copy.
This is why this issue is so hard to back up.
Playthrough's, or product demonstrations of any kind, can either make a person want to buy something, or stop them from buying something. Which is what distinguishes it from advertising.
An ad for a game is a totally biased source telling you to buy something, a playthrough is a fair and open display of a product, from a users perspective.
So, instead of developers saying *"LP's are killing story based games because production costs are outweighing user expectations"*, what they should be saying is "A lot is expected of a modern video game, so we've decided to make a great game instead of relying on marketing to sell our product".
Baby face Pat is back
RIGENSTEIN
Lil babby pat and his unfiltered lust for body slamming opponents into tables, and unleashing [Crazy talk] onto the general population.
Oh, God! I hadn't even noticed! He looks like a tiny Wilson Fisk.
Sad Larvae Patto fakkuboibin
RIGENSTEIN I want my baby back baby back pat.
Eggman
I think the problem is that Lets Players are Brilliant for the consumer, but not the developer, or rather for specific developers. What I mean is there are some games that are rushed and a mess and in no way finished to a good quality, but they instead put their funding to marketing so they can trick people into thinking the game is much better than it looks. Some developers consider this fair game and (like they said) as long as we get the money from you, we don't care if you don't like it. Lets Players act as a visual demo as to how the game plays and what it's all about. It gives people that window they would usually be denied from the developers who don't want their game to be laid bare for the world to see. Those games do lose sales because their marketing is thrown in the trash when people see what the game's actually like. THOSE developers lose sales with lets players, and I'd argue that's a good thing as it forces devs to make products that are actually as good as they're made out to be, and don't rely on fake hype and pretty stills to sell copies.
*LP'S ARE WHAT PEOPLE WATCH TO JUDGE A GAME!DEAL WITH IT DEVELOPERS!*
Soarin-Wonderbolt Don't tell me what to think
*No shut up you guys LP's are totally ruining games! Pre-order our games! Give us your money!*
+Soarin-Wonderbolt I don't use them for that.
That's not what I use to judge a game. Hell, I bet _most_ people don't.
+Soarin-Wonderbolt I do get that but not for Let's Plays. It rarely happens but it does happen that I end up being too uncertain about getting a game and thus needing to look up a gameplay video of it. However, Let's Plays and playthroughs definitely makes me buy games far less than I ever would if they didn't exist.
I have most likely saved several hundred thousands dollars thanks to playthroughs and Let's Plays. Not everyone is like me but let me share you this detail, many are like me regarding this, many. I know so many people in real life who watch people play the games they want rather than buying them. They would have bought the games if LPs and playthroughs didn't exist but because they do, they end up buying far less games than they would otherwise. When I talk to the many people I know about new upcoming games the topic of "I will just watch someone play the entire game instead of buying it myself" & "I will just watch *THE MOVIE* of the game instead of buying it" appears *constantly.* CONSTANTLY.
YT delivers entire game experiences to me for free so why should I buy games then? The only games I buy are those I 100% know I will enjoy playing myself much more than watching someone else play, but there are so many games I skip buying because "Hey! Look! The channels you are subscribed to have started a playthrough or a Let's Play of the games you were planning on buying!" and at that point I go "Well, no reason for me to buy the games then now that I can watch the entire game for free by the people I enjoy watching". I don't believe LPs and Playthroughs increases sales more than dropping sales. Just like Pat and Woolie experiencing people going "Hey! I never knew this game existed, I will buy this" & "Hey Pat & Woolie! I bought the game you played." etc but in my experience it's the *COMPLETE OPPOSITE* to such a powerful degree. I know so many people who so rarely buy games because of LPs and Playthroughs.
Games this channel got me into: MGR, Nier, THE ENTIRE SOULSBORNE FRANCHISE (all five games, yes), The Last of Us, Nioh, Monster Hunter, Shadow of Mordor, Silent Hill series, Killer is Dead, Metal Gear 5, Evil Within, Legend of Korra (The game, yes), Resident Evil Revelations 1 and 2, Freedom Planet, Shovel Knight, both Jojo games that came out State side, Mercenary Kings, Bayonetta, Dying Light, Metroid Fusion, Double Dragon Neon, Gravity Rush, Party Hard, Punch Club, Shantae, Shadow Warrior remakes, Splatterhouse.
That's maybe not a complete list, but I feel insane for putting down that much already. The point here is that every game on that list WASN'T EVEN ON MY RADAR before you guys played it. Even if it was old, like Splatterhouse, or new like Metal Gear 5 and Dark Souls 2. You guys have brought me into ENTIRE FRANCHISES AND WHOLE NEW GENRES OF GAMES with your let's plays. Saying that my literal THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS being put into the industry is "killing it" is just stupid. What's killing the game industry is an obsession with graphics inflating costs of simple games to that point of costing hundreds of millions, but I digress. Let's plays do more to get people invested in games that have substance, real depth, than any amount of marketing out there, and it's practically free. If people watch your game, get all the cutscenes, and never feel the need to play the actual game for themselves, they weren't going to play it until it was bargain bin price, if at all, and probably get it used so no money goes to the devs anyway. On top of that, it probably also means your game wasn't mechanically interesting. A linear story game doesn't mean it has to be simple to play. MGR is linear, but it's fun to play, you want to play it yourself aside from the story. Shoot for THAT, not some mediocre gameplay, "BUT TEH SOTRY THO!" piece of shit. And I say that AS an author myself. Games are fun to PLAY, that will get more sales than a good story.
People will buy or not buy a game regardless if they watch an lp of it or somebody playing the game for a video.
An LP of a game is no different than a review of a game.
Somebody who watches an lp and doesn't get the game ever is someone who didn't care about the game enough in the first place to buy it full price.
Or literally can't because their live demands they spend money on more important shit
I disagree, there are plenty of games that I planned on getting but then didn't because I ended up watching an LP of it. And that's not always because of the quality of the game. Take Platinum's games, besides Nier, all of their game are dependent on gameplay. If I was to watch Bayonetta 2 be played to completion, I would still want to purchase it to play the game part of it myself. But if I watched an LP of Last of Us before buying it myself, I may have never purchased that game and played it. 50% of that game is the story/set pieces, if I witnessed that before buying it I would've more than likely never purchased the game.
Watching a MP focused game is going to make me want to buy it if I like what I see, the same can't be said about story driven games. Especially if the SP game is more so on the short side. I don't see any issue with what she said, there are outliers but I imagine more people are like me than in this regard than not.
+Richard Hawk Games that rely only on cutscenes deserve this treatment.
Richard Hawk Their LP of The Last of Us is the only thing that made me want that game, because I never cared about Naughty Dog once they went for realistic visuals over the fun cartoony stuff they used to make. If it hadn't been for that, I probably still wouldn't care. On the other hand, I never watch their LPs of things like The Walking Dead until I've played those games, because they're more fun to play for yourself than to watch, and once you've watched them you've ruined it for yourself. If you ever fully intended to buy a Telltale game or similar that you wanted to play and could afford and had time to play, and then you watched an LP of it instead, you're probably an idiot.
+AmedeusMkII Heavily agree. This idea that games that rely on storytelling don't deserve to sell is ridiculous. Take Danganronpa for example. Great game, but if you watch an LP of it there is almost no reason for you to go and buy it. Many other games rely on great storytelling in order to sell their game. I disagree with the generalised idea that LPs hurt sales because a lot of games owe their success to LPs. But in some cases, LPing a game (especially a story-heavy one) could hurt sales because after watching an LP there would be no reason to ever go buy it except to support it, which I'm guessing not many would do.
The fact that someone in the video game industry would say, in a post-Wii world, that a developer needs to spend $100 million on a game to meet gamers' demands for fidelity and content is ridiculous and disheartening. The necessity of these rising development costs has been consistently proven untrue for the last ten years. The fact that Amy Hennig believes otherwise is proof that the triple-A game developers exist in a bubble, or echo chamber, where they continue to cling to the 2005-era idea that video games are a technological arms race. There was an entire console generation where the Wii, which was a essentially a redesigned GameCube, trounced the PS3, which was essentially an over-engineered supercomputer with video game controllers attached, and yet the former creative director of Naughty Dog is telling us that developers feel pressure that is "very real internally" to spend ungodly amounts of money to the point where microtransaction bullshit is necessary.
The rising cost of development certainly isn't a response to _my_ demands as a gamer. The tens of thousands of man-hours spent rendering the pores on every characters' skin are hours not spent developing quests, maps, characters, game mechanics--the most interactive, substantial parts of the game. LPs are extremely useful to me in figuring out which games were developed for the player and which games were developed for the trailer.
And then there's Platinum Games that knows where to spend the budget and make people go: "hey the enemies are all the same! Yes, but only until you slice them up into pieces, and you'll not even notice that with how fast you are going"
Ackbar Reserve
"YEEES, RAIDEN! SPLIT THEM WIDE OPEN!" - how it feels to play any Platinum game
*Platinum games that know when to grab cash on half-assed licensed games that they can spend on their own IPs.
Yes, that's true too (still crying about Korra, goddamnit)
Literally bought Yakuza 0 , one of my favourite games of all time because of the LP on this channel. Same with Persona 5 and Nier automata. LPs only hurt the sales of games if the game is trash
You sound get the Yakuza 0 soundtrack, it has the side story guitar riff as a track. It makes the perfect phone notification.
Zanzibar Junker ok I need to know. How do I buy this??? I need Trouble shooting star as my ring tone. For real it's probably one of the best video game soundtracks I've heard
downloads.khinsider.com/game-soundtracks/album/ryu-ga-gotoku-zero-yakuza-0-ost-a-and-b-sides
Zanzibar Junker that was fast! Thanks man! Needed this shit in my life
Fuck Yakuza is so good. I would have never even looked twice at that series of it wasn't for their LP. Now it's one of my favorites
Amy's argument is basically the blurb on NFL games that says you can't show or even talk about the games without the NFL's permission. Of course people are going to talk about them! Because even if they crack down on LPs to an insane degree, you can't stop someone on Facebook or Reddit saying "Yo, wasn't it sick when Lee got bit by a zombie & died?"
who is that infant on the red microphone
is that david cage
Don't think so. He's not jacking off to a scrapbook filled with Ellen Page pictures.
Behemothbear
*Detroit become human* coming soon..
*David cage 2018* o3o
I might also add the point that it helps that sometimes the Best Friends suck at the game, and so us yelling at them going "YOU MISSED THE THING" might make some people pick up the game themselves and try to beat it 'better'.
"If the game costs $100 million to make, how are you gonna make that back?"
By not spending a TENTH OF A BILLION DOLLARS on it? It's like someone making a Hollywood Blockbuster complaining about how unprofitable their movies have become as Bruce Willis goes on set to film his 2 minute cameo he's getting paid 10 million for.
If AAA gaming has bloated itself to the point where it NEEDS those insanely expensive elements to be competitive and yet can't then milk enough profit out of it from a stagnating pricepoint and/or audience base.....then it's pretty much fucked and out of luck at this point, isn't it? Loot boxes are just gonna buy them a bit more time, but not solve the main, underlying problem.
If anything, Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice shows us that AAA devs can make a game of AAA quality, have it make a good profit, and have it win multiple awards without wasting millions of dollars on stupid, wasteful shit.
Theres been a few times where i went 'Oh shiiiiiiiiit i have to get this game' and watched ya'll play it a little...i then turned back around and went. "HA.HA.HA. Nyoooooooope'. and you saved money in my wallet. Theres been so many damn times, though, where you all convinced me to buy a game purely for the fun you guys had and how much alike i am to you guys in mental wise, turned out i had a fuckin blast with said games.
I've purchased all the Yakuza games since I saw your Yakuza 4 playthrough. Without it I never would've taken a second look at what I thought was a lame GTA clone.
I just remembered that I'm a fan of Platinum Games thanks to you guys. I brought Vanquish way before, but that was when I wasn't paying much attention to who made what video games. So you all drove the point home that Platinum Games is amazing.
Maybe if these developers stayed in a budget they wouldn’t have this problem. If someone has a budget to pay bills and buy groceries you don’t hear “omg everything is so expensive”. Developers complaining about their budget is Ridiculous.
You guys widened my horizons by double and because of that I've bought a lot of media I never would have.
Speaking personally, I have skipped every LP you guys have done for a game I intended on buying or eventually intend on buying. All the ones I have watched are for games I already owned or never want to buy.
I've gotten really sick of hearing how under handed marketing tactics like loot boxes, microtransactions etc are considered the "trend" in the industry. One of the few reasons that is, is because the publishers that push that shit to such a high degree are the ones that have stakes in the stock market; Ubisoft, EA, etc. It's only trending cuz they're the ones stock holders take a look at to see how the business in this industry is done. Those big publishers aren't the only players in the industry, the sooner reporters and high paid "gaming journalists" realize this, the sooner we can get past this crap.
I actually only like to watch LPs of games that I don't want to buy, but I wanna see what it is. Technically not a "lost" sale since i'd never pay for it.
In the four years that I've been following this channel I got introduced to more amazing games (most of them "story based", too) than I ever did in 15 years if my life, and I ended up buying most of them, go figure that out!
I agree with pat completely. Fuck sake I’m gonna be buying the new monster hunter cause of pat and these guys
Shit. Yakuza, Monster Hunter, Bloodbourne, Undertale.
It's hard to keep track of how many games/series I've purchased because of this channel.
Hennig is simply mistaken.
Same
I watched their LP of Bloodborne from beginning to end and bought the game because it was good.
No. In fact its the opposite. Lets Play/walkthrough videos are the equivalent of "Car Test" in video game. Its one of the most honest way to figure out if the product/game is suited for a certain consumer. Its also the best way to know if the game is shit or ok in my/you're taste.
I bought my favorite game of all time Persona 4 Golden after pat shilled it. I also had no idea the yakuza series existed before this channel.
I also bought a playstation tv to play p4g because of the podcast, now I have to explain wtf that is everytime I mention it, but I like it, over paid, but I like it.
Daydream Anatomy
Heh, I bought a PSP just to play P3P for the same reason.
The best way to sell a game is word of mouth. Ive had plenty of friends be like "aw shit this game looks fun I want it" because i'll be playing it and say "this seems like something u'd like."
Lps are basically word of mouth on a larger scale. Granted, yes the person is making some money from it. But that is literally advertising that the company DOESNT PAY FOR.
I mean if your game is mainly story base or a click adventure then yeah I can see it getting effect sales wise.
Then add more gameplay. Its very simple
Eh, I'm not sure if I want King's Quest to not be a thing because of LPS.
Maybe, but not necessarily. I've bought linear story games at launch in order to support them. That's when I really believe the story and game is great. But if it's a boring story with mediocre gameplay, and I see that on lps, then I'm not buying.
I don't think that's true though. There is no reason for it to be.
I don’t think so. People watching an LP of Walking Dead wouldn’t just say they’re satisfied and don’t need to buy it. They’d say fuck those guys my choice would be better.
After watching trailers for games like Twilight Princess or Phantom Pain, etc. and then actually playing them, I've since decided LPs by third parties are far more accurate at portraying what a game is actually like.
Literally there are no games in my library that I bought for myself that I didn't watch at least part of an LP for. And most, if not all, of my immediate social circle can say the same. So yes. Citation needed. My anecdotal evidence contradicts everything that person is talking about.
the only time i would watch an LP and not get the game is if the game looks bad and games that are entirely story based with very little like telltale games and david cage games...also the Kotor lp totally reminded me how much i love that game and i rebought it (also its how i found out it was Backwards Compatible)
Obviously these guys will say that they don't think LP's impact sales, it's their goddam job! It totally depends on the type of game, if they do a play through of a game that isn't purely narrative like Dark Souls, in that case the video is only a good thing for the developers as seeing the gameplay isn't a substitute for the experience of Dark Souls. A game like The Walking Dead or The Wolf Among Us rather I would 100% not buy them if I had watched an LP of it, as it really isn't that big a difference from watching and playing.
TheJackFroster
That's weird because I did the exact opposite. After they finished their lp's I bought both of those games and played them for myself.
The deal with specifically TellTale games is that that type of game wouldn't be bought by someone who deep down just wants to know the story. You can read tvtropes, watch twitch/youtube for that. The real kicker even is that exact niche of a game type would get shared among friends back in the predominantly physical copy era. The budget on those also has no fkn excuse to blow up to gigantic proportions where some lost sales from LP's get to blamed for not doing so well. These games sell on the IP they are attached to and are basically giftshop products.
TellTale games can't be taken into these debates because of what a weird spot they are in. Episodic, licensed, barebones gameplay where choices really don't matter.
i wouldn't pay for a tell tale game in the first place, so its not a lost sale. ontop of it, the LP's wouldn't hurt them if they were actually good. ya know, if ur choices actually mattered. cuz then it'd be "huh. i wonder what'd happen if i did that differently. or that. or that. better buy it and find out."
if i had paid for them and then discovered my choices dont actually matter, oh boy. refund? baby i want a double refund. i want an individual refund for every choice i made that the game ignored. holy shit.
Because of you guys I got into platinum games. When they make a game now I listen. Pats love for monster hunter has me looking at monster hunter world.
I actually bought Yakuza 0 after watching your LP and then proceeded to buy Kiwami and plan on getting Kiwami 2 when it's localized. In short your LP got me into a new franchise.
If you watch an entire LP of a game you haven't played, you didn't care enough about playing the game to buy it in the first place. At best you might have picked it up second-hand, which wouldn't have helped the developer/publisher anyway.
I do agree that LPs are a good way to see if a game is something you really want to spend your money on. But you don't have to watch the whole playthrough to get that information. And I agree 100% that the video game industry's marketing tactics are terrible and deceptive. Companies know that we want to see gameplay before we commit our hard-earned dollars to a game. That's why they put out trailers and promo videos. It's just too bad that those trailers and promos contain so much fakery and lies.
We NEED LPs and independent reviews, because otherwise we wouldn't be able to make informed purchasing decisions. That at least justifies LPs to some extent, but publishers/developers would argue that they don't have to play through the whole game just to give people information on how the game actually plays. But I would counter that a full playthrough is also valuable for everyone. There's the entertainment value it provides to people who have already played the game, and then there's also the benefit for people who might want to pick up a sequel but don't want to invest time and money into the previous entry/entries in a series first.
Say I'm looking at The Last of Us Part II, and I haven't played The Last of Us. I could go out and pick up the original game (and I could get it used for less than $10 at this point--or the Remastered version for less than $20--but it still costs money) and play it through before the new game comes out. I look up how long it generally takes people to beat that game, and it looks like 15-20 hours. My time is valuable. I'm an adult. I got shit to do. I can't play The Last of Us while I'm folding laundry or doing the dishes or making a big steaming pot of Kraft Dinner. But I can watch someone else do it and still get my chores done. Matt and Pat played through the game in about 13 hours. They provided entertaining commentary on the game as well. And it doesn't cost me any money to watch the LP, as opposed to $10-20 to buy a used copy of the game. The publisher wouldn't have seen a penny of that either, so what do they care? Now I've experienced The Last of Us, for free, along with some guys who I find entertaining, and I'm super fucking hyped for The Last of Us Part II. I want to play it for myself. I pick it up on launch day from my local game store so as not to support GameStop, because GameStop is terrible. And when I'm done playing it, then I watch the Best Friends LP because I want to hear their reactions to what I just played. And I'm *even more hyped* for a potential Last of Us 3. The LP of the first game turned me into a fan of the franchise, rather than someone who was mildly interested in the upcoming sequel.
*leans forward* People still waiting to not be spoiled for Eyes of Heaven
Games I purchased solely from watching this channel:
Bayonetta, MGR, wonderful 101, anarchy reigns, Yakuza, persona 5, bloodborne and souls games, nier automata, Street fighter 3 third strike, schoolgirls, enter the gungeon, binding of Isaac and a couple more I'm probably forgetting.
If it wasn't for these awesome guys I'd probably be playing cod and battlefield. Thank you zaibatsu!
The real question is of game sales hurt LPs.
Man, I had never played Drakengard or Nier, but I bought Nier Automata day one because of you guys. You guys brought one of my favorite anime, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, because of the LP. Keep in mind I only bought the PS4 for Bloodborne, and because of this channel I got The Last of Us, Nier: Automata, and JJBA: Eyes of Heaven!
In the past two months, I have purchased 2 new games that I previously had no interest in specifically because I saw an LP and it looked fun. The guys who made Hand of Fate 2 and Slay the Spire should cut Northern Lion a check.
I'll probably buy KOTOR at some point too, after watching the SBFP LP.
TheDrCN
Get KOTOR 2 and install the restored content mod
Actually there was that whole That Dragon Cancer debacle where the devs didn't see really anywhere near the amount of sales as compared to the amount of views it was getting on TH-cam from different LPers. I think if it's something along those lines to where it's a short enough experience, solely linear story based, the audience is aware of that and their interest is only in the story, it has the potential to cause a loss in sales. Does this happen a lot? Nah so games like The Last of Us, Uncharted, and by extension Persona 5 are more safe due to length than anything, while games like Undertale and most Telltale Games are safe because they make people want to play with their own choices, it's possible for games like That Dragon Cancer and Emily is Away Too to possibly lose sales despite getting millions of views on TH-cam. (EDIT: And not for being shitty games at that.)
Off the top of my head I know I bought Yakuza 0, Until Dawn and Bloodborne after watching LPs. I prefer them to reviews at times but it depends on the game.
i actually dont buy a game until ive watched a playthrough of it, i don't care about surprises i just want to actually play a game i know ill have fun with
If a game's only redeeming value is in the viewing and not the playing, then you should've made a movie instead.
this channel is why i bought one of my favorite games ever night in the woods
Games I bought because I saw an LP and liked what I saw:
Every Souls game
Bloodborne
Infamous 1-3
Uncharted 1-3
Metal Gear Rising
Last of Us
Nidhogg
Hyper Light Drifter
Spooky House of Jumpscares
A whole fucking lot more
I'm gonna save us all some time and just say that 90% of games that I've bought and played in the last 6 years are games that I first watched an LP of.
I got nier and automata, into fighting games, night in the woods, a switch, got into persona and smt, into Jojo, got into dark souls harder than before, got Digimon cyber sleuth and more all because of vids you guys made and stuff you guys have said about these things
Wow, the guys finally got David Cage in-Oh it's Pat
Because of you guys and Maximilian, I have personally made it my mission to buy as many fighting games and character action games as I can.
I have bought nearly a dozen or so games watching you guys play over the years. Freedom planet, Neir, until dawn, deadly P, and metal gear. For the first time in my life, I became interested in shoot em ups and fighting games.
That being said, some Lp's are a better experience than some games. For example I'll use Neir again. You got me into the franchise and got I auto because of it, but man, gestalts game play is really bad in comparison. That's a game format I enjoyed much more by watching and listening than I think I would have felt playing.
Can confirm i've bought at least 6 games because of you guys; Revengeance, Evil Within 2, Last of Us, RE7, Dead Souls and Dark Souls 2 (you guys got me into the souls series!) , and have watched an LP once instead of buying the game (was only on the fence about getting it in the first place).
Patt looks like the Thing before he became the Thing in the Fantastic Four movie and Max payne 3 when he cut all of his hair off (obviously he wasn't a ginger and had a full beard). You look weird but smooth patt 'XD
Since gaming media press i basically a bunch of lying scumbags, I usually watch part of an LP to see if the game is something for me before I buy.
Am I the only one who is not seeing the new podcast on any platform? Its showing last weeks only
I would never played darksouls without you guys
9:15 Im have to say I would never have gotten into Jojo, or at least not until years from now if it wasn't for you guys never shutting up about it and the few playthoughs of the various games you did.
Shoot Hot HoneyShot
*Menacingly poses*
I bought Zone of the Enders because i had never even heard of it until i saw your guys' LP.
I would never have purchased or even known about Metal Gear Rising and Nier:Automata without you guys, and N:A is now my favorite game. Ever. Period. I completely understand where she's coming from but I'm going to assume she only has surface-level knowledge about this stuff.
guantanamo bae Its more than likely just a gur reaction. She sees hundreds of thousands of views on a thing and just ASSUMES "Oh. Those are lost sales."
I think it really depends, sometimes on the game, sometimes on the person. I'll admit, there's plenty of games that I lost interest in buying after someone like SBFP played it, especially if the story > the gameplay.
However, if the gameplay is the main thing that makes me want to buy it, then a lets play might actually make me end up buying it in the middle of me watching it.
For example: as much as I really liked Nier Gestalt's story, I'm not buying that game for shit because I already experienced the best parts with Pat and Liam. However, I was still full well going to buy Metal Gear Rising even after I watched Matt and Pat play the whole thing, because it looked fun regardless of the story.
Where's the full podcast
Maybe developers should respond to the shifting market by making games that have both a linear narrative *and* gameplay that's interesting in its own right. People will buy the game for the gameplay, even if they already know what happens in the story.
Uh, the full audio version isn't up yet, is it?
Owari Dragon just like Pat's beard..
Seriously, the enthusiasm (or sometimes lack thereof) can be contagious. I bought The Last of Us after watching your LP. Despite the praise it got, I wasn't sure if I'd dig it because I actually only find Uncharted to be "okay." But I liked what I saw and picked it up, despite having watched the entire LP! And now my playthroughs are full of "garbage." I haven't gotten around to Yakuza yet, but y'all are a big reason I want to play it. Personally, I think LPs are just another way gamers are social about games they enjoy (or don't). A good LP or video can indeed put a game I might have overlooked on my radar. So, keep on spreading all the hype! It's infectious.
LP's replace reviews for a lot of people because they're more raw, it's easier to catch anything being tried to sweep under the rug. A lot of people just watch LP's for the people playing them. If they're gonna come after LP'ers, what the hell are they gonna do about twitch? Amy got duped by working for EA. Take the loss and move on. Big companies handling big IP's is the last place she should have gone to when her entire sthick revolves around a solid product with no horrible press.
In other words, Amy, if you don't want LPs and streams to hurt sales of linear story games, the games themselves MUST BE GOOD. Amy seems to be hung up on people asking for single player story games, but she seems to not know about the implied aspects of that demand. Many gamers want single player focused games, but they also want them to be good and not boring. I guess she's just speaking from a personal place without putting too much thought or independent research into this.
I didn't buy Season 3 of Walking Dead, not because of the LP but because I was disappointed in Telltale after Season 2.
Life is Strange is about as close to an LP making me not buy a game, but I'll admit that's mostly because I saw they tried to put a positive spin on FF: Spirits Within. If I didn't find out about that, I might've given LiS a chance.
crazyinsane500 thats a dumb reason not to buy LIS, because one line of dialogue that has no bearing on the rest of the game at all
The joke
You down here
You showed me Rocket League before it became big and from the moment i saw it i knew it'd be my favorite game ever, i bought that game 3 times. Also the game Nelo was entirely Kickstarted by this channel