Let's Play are basically piracy.

k.

+1

nope.avi

Yeah, I pretty much opened the topic because of the That Dragon, Cancer "controversy" it is somewhat sad the discrepancy existing between the youtube views of the full experience and the amount of sales.

Maybe a warning label at the front. I would imagine most lets players would not play the game if at the front the dev kindly asks the story not to be streamed.

Basically, the way copyright laws are written presently, the content created by a person playing the game is unique, and therefore not created by the developer. Music and cinematics on the other hand can, and can often be taken down easily, much like when someone uploaded the entirety of MGS4's cinematics.

All this in mind though, there's been an incredible amount of data found showing that games that are popular to let's play generally get higher sales than games that aren't.

You'd give the right to permit/deny the publishing of video content to the developers/publishers? Have you not paid attention to what sketchy companies already do to mold public perception of their products? Promo vids that disallow negative criticism, false copyright claims/takedowns...

I wouldn't say "That Dragon, Cancer" wasn't really fucked up because of it. When you make a software that's closer to interactive movie than game, and THEN make it that you always lose AND make ending where kid is dead, AND then tell people all that in first trailer, you really can't expect people to buy it in millions, heck, you can't even expect them to buy it in thousands.

Most of times, people play games to be entertained. Sometimes we can be entertained by sad things (like Telltale's The Walking Dead). But TD,C from start is saying "there's no fun here".

But still the youtuber is getting revenue from using another person, ianal, and from what I understand fair use doctrine is a wee bit unclear, but I consider it's similar to pirating a game.

You also adressed one point I did not bring up. I did not state that these LP equal to lost sales, because that is still not clear in the case of (let's call it) traditional piracy, so it's even a muddier ground to enter.

sadly i 100% agree with OP, once i watch a full lets play game, i have zero desire to ever buy or play the game cuz i feel like i already played it

?

I did not state that watching a Let's Play equals a lost sale, because as I said above, it's already difficult to establish that relationship between traditional piracy and sales, so even harder to do in this case.

You raised a good point, tho, games are meant to be played. Should we consider this kind of games where the player input doesn't really matter, games? What defines a game?

How about kinetic visual novels? Essentially the same as a picture book, except you click to advance the text instead of flipping pages.

Yeah, this is all theoretical discussion, I'm aware I'm not changing the world from the SG forum :p

Well, the difference could be both the scale at which you are broadcasting it and wheter or not your monetizing said stream. It is indeed impossible to control, though some measures could be placed if the developers don't want their games streamed.

What's the problem then? The content id system of youtube is bullshit, and there's no automatic way of detecting if images of a videogame are a review (which would fall into fair use) or a let's play which (in my humble, uneducated opinion) doesn't. IIRC Nintendo doesn't allow streaming most of their games, for example.

and we are now at the centuries old debate of whether piracy construes lost sales or not, do people who wach it on youtube didn't buy it because they weren't going to? Or because the watched it on youtube? Do people buy if after seing it on youtube?

Yeah, I do agree that in most cases games are distributed to internet personalities in many cases to give them exposure or whatever. But that was not the point. There are companies that choose not to, and still have their games uploaded to youtube.

There's no way it can be stopped, the same as piracy of any kind, it will just keep happening no matter what. We got a saying that basically goes " you cannot fence the countryside"

I agree that it's a different experience to play and to watch, to me it's like that too, but to some people it may suffice with only watching the game.

Thanks for the answer, and your English is good, mate, don't apologize :p

Discussing in a public forum (which are mostly intended for exchangin opinions and information) ? That's my point? What's yours?

there's a degree of interactivity that gets lost when you watch an LP

And I would agree with you, but I've seen so many others argue that the level of interactivity on offer is "not enough" for them to care.

I can see how in a world where money and time are limited and there's more games competing for your attention than ever, some would prefer to give up something (playing their game at their pace, exploring at their leisure, etc, rather than live through another person's recorded experience) in exchange for some savings.

Like I said in my post below, however, I wonder whether those people would ultimately buy the game, if they had no such alternative, or not.

But they are still using copyrighted third party content to provide a medium to create these videos.

For a long time libraries have been the largest purchasers of books. It's a means for publishers to display books. It's an interdependent relationship. I know some devs use LPers as a means of presenting their games to a large audience, but that isn't always the case. It's not necessarily a mutually profitable situation.

Public libraries are the best thing ever. Everyone should have the possibility of free acess to culture, if their situation doesn't allow it, that doesn't mean the publishers (specially indie ones, to be honest, and call me a hypocrite, large corporations don't deserve my concern) should be perjudicated.

explain it with gifs :3

View attached image.

thought the same here... let's cry together.

I'm all for fair use, I consider it necessary, however, is uploading the whole contents of a videogame fair use?

I am not saying that.

I don't watch crap LPs, it's an example.

I do agree on your second point to an extent, split revenue could be a fair compromise.

Don't know anything about that game, could you fill me in on its situation?

I've already stated this several times throughout the thread.
Piracy is
2.
the unauthorized use or reproduction of another's work.
Is uploading the full game to youtube unauthorized reproduction? I think so.

But couldn't that be done with a review? Without the need of showing the whole's game content on the interenet?

I guess the point to make with this analogy would be that the TV station supposedly would've had to buy the rights to air the movie to begin with.

Actually, no. A much closer equivalent is that some streamer you like bought the DVD and is streaming the movie while talking over it. And that's something that is illegal. The only reason it's allowed with games is because the act of playing the game is legally considered a substantial enough contribution to count as fair use.

So the question being asked here is, how little gameplay does there have to be before the contribution is no longer substantial? For example, visual novels often boil down to just making plot choices. Is that enough contribution? How about if the VN has no choices at all, and the streamer is just clicking through the text? Is that enough contribution? And what if there are no choices and the streamer puts it on auto-advance so he can just comment over it without any inputs? That's definitely not enough contribution, because it's literally the same thing as the illegal movie example.

Some of the best games I've ever played are visual novels with very minimal player input. 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors is one of my top ten favorite games of all time, and you can go an hour at points in that game without any actual decision making.

I don't know if you should classify visual novels as games, but to tell the industry to stop making them? No.

Using meme arrows.