[Chi]

This is a topic I've wanted to discuss for a while.

I know I'm not the only one who likes to watch Lets Players on youtube. Whether it be favorites of mine like ProtonJonSA, NintendoCapriSun, Luchajin, chuggaaconroy, GameGrumps or others. I really enjoy watching people play games either for educational value such as learning more about a game or just for pure entertainment.

Another subject I wanted to touch on related to Lets Playing is... I started a channel of my own. I'm hoping maybe you guys will give my channel a chance, even if you just watch 3 seconds of one video, I would appreciate it. I just started about a week and half ago but it's given me so much joy. Right now I just have some basic games in mind either SNES or GBA until I get some better equipment for recording.

But, I want to know your guys' opinions. Do you guys watch Lets Players? Who are some of your favorites? Have I perhaps perked your interest in watching Lets Players? Are you a Lets Player yourself? If you are a Lets Player, what are you currently working on? And what do you use to record?

Please let me know! :3

My channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/SerahBear

[littl3chocobo]

i do, i am not picky but i do like dissertations as much as the walkthroughs themselves


though, i would need to know exactly what you did before i would watch you and whether or not you talked during play or just played

[Chi]

I enjoy walkthroughs as well as people just talking about whatever while they play. The Lets Players I listed as favorites of mine do either or sometimes both.

I like talking much better but sometimes I also appreciate just gameplay especially if I get stuck in a game and I'd just like to know what to do next. I enjoy talking more though, it makes me feel the player is more involved in what they're doing.

[Rico]

I enjoy LPs when they're entertaining, funny wise or more educative wise. Or both. My favorite LP is still Deadly Premonition by SuperGreatFriend, available on LParchive. I really recommand this one, it's fun, hilarious and interesting. I watched it like 4 time and still did the game because I love it and it's LP.

Other than that I usualy watch Raocow or GameGrumps, if I'm not going around LPArchive looking for something interesting. Most stuff by Dark ID I believe is pretty good, like Dirge of Cerberus. I enjoy one of the MS Saga a new dawn LP too, in screenshot format. I love the Draw my Thing one but it's kind of dead or really crappy, wich is bad since most of the fun was from the chat log and the ridicoulous stuff they drew :D I miss that one T.T

I also enjoy the Races LP, usualy from the Something Awful People, most of them are on a Playlist on Smite's channel (Itsallup). I god damn love one of the Megaman 5 one because is the most genius troll ever (seriously, WATCH IT, if only for Ragny's trolling, I don't even want to spoil it :D ). This is seriously brilliant and the most hilarious thing I've ever seen in an LP/race LP.

I'll try to check out you're channel if I have some time. I have a couple stuff to get back into since my internet was cut of for like 2 weeks ._.

I kind of would want to do LPs but I have a ''slight'' tendancy to glitch the hell out of games in hilarious ways ._. I guess that could be a good way to get views xD but I can't speak english like at all, that's not helping ._. and I'm not good in the more technical side of things anyway, like editing and such.

Anyway, good luck on your LPs.

[Chi]

Oh, okay I'll look into that. :3

Oh oh, ProtonJonSA is from Something Awful, if I'm not mistaken that's what the SA is at the end of his username. I'm not entirely sure though. Okay, I'll look into those videos too. ProtonJon used to do a lot of romhacks that he got from people. But I think his playthroughs of TMNT and Ninja Gaiden are reeeeeally funny.

That's okay if you can't, I completely understand. :3

Well glitches are pretty funny to see, but not too entertaining if you're glitching so much that you can't even play anymore. Honestly as far as editing goes, I learned all that from NintendoCapriSun. He set up a really nice playlist of advice on Lets Playing. I followed a lot of what he said and it's been rather easy and fun.

Thank you! ^^

[XrosHeartless]

I'm extremely picky about Let's Plays and am very picky about the ones I watch. It'll take a lot to get me to stray from my personal favorites: Game Grumps, Two Best Friends, Super Beard Bros.

[Lucid:]

(It might be relevant to mention that a large portion of my job is sponsoring let's players, so I have a professional relationship with many of them that people who just watch them wouldn't normally see.)

I have a lot of favorite let's players, whether because I like their personality or the games they play. The first person I really enjoyed was Northernlion, who I started watching before I got my youtube job. His Binding of Isaac let's play is pretty much just him talking about whatever he wants and it's pretty funny a lot of the time. The very first time I spoke with him, I could tell he was a really awesome and nice guy.

One of my favorites is Boogie2988. He posts a lot more gaming news than let's plays, but the gameplay videos he makes are all really hilarious. He plays a couple really hilarious characters on his channel, and when he's speaking as himself, he's a really smart guy who has a lot of insight into both gaming culture and the video game business.

A kinda small let's player I really like is AzuriteYT. His original channel was AzuriteReaction and he had about 100,000 subscribers, but the channel glitched out and lost a lot of content, so he had to start over from scratch. He's a really honest guy and is really passionate about the games he plays. He has a really personal connection with his viewers as well. He's really great.

I don't think there's a single person who doesn't like GameGrumps. xD They're pretty nice guys, too, but Egoraptor is really hard to work with. RubberRoss is really approachable and super nice, though. Their content is hilarious and I love to watch them even though it's hard for me to get them to do sponsorships.

Rico, the great thing about youtube is that everybody is looking for something different. There are videos about game glitches that get huge numbers of views because people think that glitches are funny. Speaking english also isn't a huge youtube requirement. I've worked with people who speak Spanish, Portugese, German, French, even Russian, and all have successful channels on youtube. Since it's a worldwide site, people who speak other languages have a strong youtube community. Even people who don't speak at all during their videos can be highly successful if their videos are interesting. Making a channel in your own style is always better than copying somebody else. I say, if you want to make videos, go for it! :D

Chiwi, I'll definitely take a look at NintendoCapriSun's editing videos. I've always been really curious about what kinds of stuff goes into making a gameplay video!

[Rico]

@Lucid Yeah, I've seen so many random LPs in so many different languages. And for some reason everytime I'm actualy looking for a LP of a specific games I can only find them in German. Why is there so many German LPs O.o Like, I've been looking for games that weren't out outside japan/korea and 99% of the time they are in German. I tried to watch some, but I couldn't focus because of the language barrier that was distracting me. Same goes for those without commentary, it just feels like something's missing. I guess I like to have an idea of what's going on in the player's mind or something when I watch LP. That's weird to say but it helps me concentrate on both the LPer and the game, even in cutscene (I focus much more on things when there's a lot, like at work I was doing much better doing 3 task at once than one xD).

Anyway, even if I wanted to do LPs or something, I couldn't because I don't have the technology or time to. (It's a miracle I even have something ressembling a social life and managing to watch so much stuff on the internet while kind of keeping up with my movie/anime DVDs and PS3 games xD .)

@Xeros : I often see TwoBestFriends on my YouTube recommandation, are they good? How would you describe they're content? More informative, more random/crazy, more entertaining...?

@Chi, I rarely glitch things to the point of the game being uplayable, but there's just really weird stuff happening : One time I beheaded Mario in Super Mario World (I've only heard one other person able to do this). I somehow spin exploded out of a car in Saints Row while rocketing across the map in a side mission with Zimmos, that was completely insane. The first time I played that one Sonic game where's he a werewolf or something, not even five minutes in the game and I was floating in the sky with my friend confused as hell (it was his game and he never saw that). Hell, I made Deco infinitely fly and crash very slowly around in Disgaea 4, I never even knew the sprite could get where they we're on the screen O.o Oh and my favorite (I know how to do it :D ) is making Anna invincinble and invisible in Mana Khemia, making her basicaly immortal for the fight, she can still act but the game act like she's not here and can't be targeted xD (Too bad there's only 2 fight I can think of you can do it because you need to have an attack that switches the rows. Too bad also it only last for the fight)

[Chi]

@Xros: Oh, I see. 0:

It is a little hard for me to get into a Lets Player if they're purposely goofing up because they think it's entertaining. I goof up a lot but I'm not doing it on purpose. @_@;

@Lucid: Could you maybe tell me a little bit more about your job? Either here or through a PM? I'm really interested to know what kind of work you do. It's something I'm interested in hearing and because it's you. We haven't had much time to catch up.

Oh is Arin really that hard to work with? He seems so laid back. o_o; Did you get to talk to JonTron at all? He seemed pretty neat too. I like his video game reviews on his JonTron channel. One of my favorites is probably his review of "Stairfax Tempertures". xD;

I use a lot of free software when it comes to recording. Derp derp. I can't really afford all the equipment I want yet.

@Rico: Haha, that's hilarious. xD; You know what I mean though, right? I've seen people play games and get stuck in weird situations to the point that they can no longer progress in the game. Fortunately that's never happened to me before. :P But if it's every once in a while glitches, that's not so bad. Or self inflicted glitches. xD;

[XrosHeartless]

Originally Posted by Rico

@Lucid Yeah, I've seen so many random LPs in so many different languages. And for some reason everytime I'm actualy looking for a LP of a specific games I can only find them in German. Why is there so many German LPs O.o Like, I've been looking for games that weren't out outside japan/korea and 99% of the time they are in German. I tried to watch some, but I couldn't focus because of the language barrier that was distracting me. Same goes for those without commentary, it just feels like something's missing. I guess I like to have an idea of what's going on in the player's mind or something when I watch LP. That's weird to say but it helps me concentrate on both the LPer and the game, even in cutscene (I focus much more on things when there's a lot, like at work I was doing much better doing 3 task at once than one xD).

Anyway, even if I wanted to do LPs or something, I couldn't because I don't have the technology or time to. (It's a miracle I even have something ressembling a social life and managing to watch so much stuff on the internet while kind of keeping up with my movie/anime DVDs and PS3 games xD .)

@Xeros : I often see TwoBestFriends on my YouTube recommandation, are they good? How would you describe they're content? More informative, more random/crazy, more entertaining...?

@Chi, I rarely glitch things to the point of the game being uplayable, but there's just really weird stuff happening : One time I beheaded Mario in Super Mario World (I've only heard one other person able to do this). I somehow spin exploded out of a car in Saints Row while rocketing across the map in a side mission with Zimmos, that was completely insane. The first time I played that one Sonic game where's he a werewolf or something, not even five minutes in the game and I was floating in the sky with my friend confused as hell (it was his game and he never saw that). Hell, I made Deco infinitely fly and crash very slowly around in Disgaea 4, I never even knew the sprite could get where they we're on the screen O.o Oh and my favorite (I know how to do it :D ) is making Anna invincinble and invisible in Mana Khemia, making her basicaly immortal for the fight, she can still act but the game act like she's not here and can't be targeted xD (Too bad there's only 2 fight I can think of you can do it because you need to have an attack that switches the rows. Too bad also it only last for the fight)

TwoBestFriends is much more on the random/crazy/entertaining side of things. I should warn you now their humor can be considered a bit harsh compared to things like Game Grumps, they do both one offs and full let's plays on both their channel: (TheSw1tcher), and they have a series of one offs on Machinima. If you want some good starters I'd reccomend: Dead Rising 2 (one off, machinima), Silent Hill Downpour or Homecoming (Full LP, main channel), No More Heroes 2 (Full LP, Main Channel), Man vs Wild (Both one off on machinima and full LP on the main channel are available, I prefer the one off), Metal Gear Rising (Full LP, main channel) and The Walking Dead (Full LP, main channel).

I'd recommend at least giving them a shot, I'm a big fan.

[XrosHeartless]

Originally Posted by Chi

@Xros: Oh, I see. 0:

It is a little hard for me to get into a Lets Player if they're purposely goofing up because they think it's entertaining. I goof up a lot but I'm not doing it on purpose. @_@;

@Lucid: Could you maybe tell me a little bit more about your job? Either here or through a PM? I'm really interested to know what kind of work you do. It's something I'm interested in hearing and because it's you. We haven't had much time to catch up.

Oh is Arin really that hard to work with? He seems so laid back. o_o; Did you get to talk to JonTron at all? He seemed pretty neat too. I like his video game reviews on his JonTron channel. One of my favorites is probably his review of "Stairfax Tempertures". xD;

I use a lot of free software when it comes to recording. Derp derp. I can't really afford all the equipment I want yet.

@Rico: Haha, that's hilarious. xD; You know what I mean though, right? I've seen people play games and get stuck in weird situations to the point that they can no longer progress in the game. Fortunately that's never happened to me before. :P But if it's every once in a while glitches, that's not so bad. Or self inflicted glitches. xD;

The LPers I watch don't screw up intentionally, (at least as far as I know), but they do mostly make fun of the games they're playing.

[Lucid:]

I would love to talk about my job. *O*

Basically, the company I work for is a youtube advertising agency. We work with a lot of brands, like beauty products, health products, food, etcetera, but the clients that I focus the most on are gaming brands.

A lot of people on youtube put a contact email in the "About" section of their channel. Usually it's something like business@channelname.com if they have their own domain, or channelnamebusiness@gmail/hotmail/yahoo if they don't. We have a database of this contact information and what demographic their channel is. We really only work with channels with over 10,000 subscribers, just to keep the list clean and make sure that people are actually going to see the sponsored videos.

I'll give an example of what I do. One of our company's major clients is Ubisoft, so when Ubisoft wants to promote a game, my job is to contact people who run gaming channels and ask if they would like to help promote the game. Usually Ubisoft has a set budget that they will spend to pay the youtubers, and part of my job is to portion out the payments. Industry standard is about 1 cent per average view on the channel, so it actually takes quite a lot of work to make some substantial money on youtube, but people with huge channels like Pewdiepie and Tobuscus can make a living off of theirs. We handle the distribution of download codes or the mailing of a physical copy of the game; the codes/games are provided to us and we just pass them out. There are always specific requirements that we make the youtuber sign a contract for - things that we need the youtuber to say or not say, and specific trackable purchase links in the description. Most people are really good about following directions, but some people either don't listen or don't care and I have to have them either re-record audio or add things in to their video or something.

Most of the hard part is actually getting people to answer emails! That's what makes Arin hard to work with. I was able to get him to email me back just once, where he told me how much money he wanted for a sponsored video, and he hasn't emailed me back since. :( I just want his address and console so I can ship the darn game to him! I didn't get to talk to JonTron, but I would love to meet him!

There are some people that are hard to work with because they refuse to follow directions or because they demand more money that their channel is worth. For the people who won't follow directions, they don't get paid unless they fix what they did wrong, and for people who demand too much money, we just don't work with them. Toby Games is a channel we work with a lot, but sometimes he wants too much money and he just doesn't get to do the project that time around.

One huge channel that's surprisingly easy to work with is RoosterTeeth. They're so big and get so many sponsorships that they already know what fees they charge (and they are reasonable) and they have their contracts and processes already set. They have people dedicated to handling sponsorships so emails are always replied to quickly. I loved working with RoosterTeeth.

If you've got any questions about some of the stuff I do, I'd be happy to talk about it! It's a pretty neat job. c:

[Chi]

@Xros: Yeah. I was just stating generally. -nod-

@Lucid: Oh wow, that sounds great. If I was actually a bigger youtuber I'd probably have a business email, I know what you're talking about though. And yeah it's way better to have people with a lot of subscribers, it will be more likely that the video is viewed.

Ohhhhh, I see. Yeah, that can be difficult if people don't answer their emails. I'm kind of like that. Haha. I'd probably have an email redirect to my main one so that I wouldn't miss them too much. Toby is such a drama mama sometimes but he's pretty funny. He's gotten a lot of sponsorships it seems like with his commercials with Cartoon Network. RoosterTeeth is really awesome! I like watching their stuff. Haha.

Wow, that's so cool. I wish I could get that big someday.

Go ahead and keep talking. c: It's inspiring.

[Lucid:]

I just don't know what else to say without knowing what people want to know about. @.@

For the most part, I wouldn't go into making youtube videos expecting to make a lot of money. It does take a lot of hard work to build a fan base, but by being yourself and filling a niche that people want to watch, you can do well, and probably make a lot of friends.

Here is a really great video by TradeChat about how to get started on youtube. She's made a very cool channel and was on the King of the Nerds game show because of her youtube success. It's a little long, but it's very informative. WATCH VIDEO HERE

[Chi]

Oh no, I know. I never expected to make it big any time soon. I'm just hoping that I can some day. Making friends would be even better. c:

Yeah in NCS's playlist of advice on LPing and such, he gave advice on getting noticed on youtube like posting on channels where you'll be noticed and people will feel like, "Oh hey, I like what that guy said, I'm gonna look at his channel. Oh he seems pretty cool." Or even if they don't like you, they still saw your channel.

[Tiva]

Smosh Games has gotten pretty big in the past year, what i find so funny is that one of my friends is closely related to Sohinki. They are first cousins, and he has stated that he is coming in for a visit some time in october.