On Let's Plays – That Dragon, Cancer
thatdragoncancer.com
thatdragoncancer.com
Yet I spend most of my work days sitting at a desk writing code with my headphones on. It is much easier to turn on Quill 18 playing xcom, and enjoy the game and his commentary, while working, then it is to try and fit playing xcom into my daily life. Where I play for a week, the put the game down, and having to start over in a month when I have time again, yet don't remember any part of what I was doing.
Also the demographics of games are changing. When I was young, I played C&C, games that took more thought, maybe doom. Now kids are waiting for the next call of duty to feed their ADD. While this kind of game is a more mature game aimed at a more mature player, who may not have the time to play it. Blaming the lets play culture seems like an easy thing to blame, but if your targeted demographic is an age group that has increasing less time to game, then seeing that demographic move to a format that you can't monetize, should be a warning to you before you attempt to target that demographic.
This reaction makes me want to buy the game and tip them just because of their approach to the issue.
EDIT: just bought. I don't have time to play it now, but I firmly believe in supporting people doing commendable things just because they do those things.
The game industry has long struggled with the chicken-egg problem of getting a gamer to make a purchasing decision without actually giving them the whole game to try first. Demo systems like shareware and freemium are some of the more successful solutions to this problem. At the beginning of these models, there was tension because people were getting something for free and might not ever pay for the full game. The counter-argument is that gamers that don't buy the full game after playing the demo were unlikely to have purchased the full game anyhow.
Development studios should be looking at Let's Plays like demos, and it sounds like the author is doing that. The problem his team faces is that their game is highly narrative in nature, and once the Let's Play is finished, the viewer of the Let's Play attains the narrative satisfaction and thus has no reason to purchase the game.
There's a few ways I can think to combat this, without falling back on copyright laws:
For this game:
Sell merchandise alongside your game, and buy advertising on the Let's Plays. Furthermore, send free merch to the more popular creators of the Let's Plays, creating more brand awareness and street cred. A good narrative will create bonds between the characters/story and the viewer - find ways to monetize those bonds for those who don't buy the game.
For the Let's Players that do interviews, go on their shows and do interviews, or bring them onto your own show and do an interview. Sell merch, sell advertising, and make the same pitch you made in this article for tips.
On the next game:
Create a demo anyway, and send exclusive, pre-release copies of the demo to the more popular Let's Play creators. Then sell pre-orders of the game, so those who are anxious to experience the full narrative will buy the game.
Do your own Let's Plays. In fact, do your own Let's Develop and Play - making realtime changes to the game that users can watch you experience. This will give you a competitive advantage over other Let's Players while also allowing you to vertically integrate the entire revenue stream - game sales, merch sales, and advertising.
I think it's clear from the popularity of the Let's Plays that they've created a hit, but a hit that's doesn't have an obvious monetization strategy for a game developer. I say, steer into the skid and find more non-traditional means to monetize.
You can always buy the game to support the devs and make sure that there's an xcom 2 (and now, 3) for Quill to play and you to listen to.
Nobody's forcing you to also play the game, is what I'm saying.
How much of the official Minecraft merchandise do you think was bought for/by kids who don't have a license/machine capable of playing Minecraft but watch any of the huge number of YouTubers producing content in Minecraft?
Here's how: Ask major let's-play channels to explain how it's meant to be experienced firsthand and they should come watch after they've played. Not for money, but for the experience.
Toby fox did this with Undertale on game grumps and it was noted that there is a significant lag time in number of viewers that picked up later which indicates that people actually followed this advice. They trust the let's players' opinion.
In reality it probably still helps sales. I routinely buy games that are high up on twitch that I hadn't heard of before.
• MST3K-izations of movies are plentiful. But there's a higher bar to them; viewers expect the commentator to be enhancing a movie that might otherwise be unwatchable, not just adding their thoughts.
• "Directors' commentary" (and "actors' commentary", etc.) audio streams are also plentiful. If someone's opinion on the movie as it progresses would be specifically interesting, then people will want to combine the two.
Many people do post "blind reaction" videos for various series. They're quite popular; many "reaction" channels have tens of thousands of subscribers.
In those, the reaction is the valuable contribution; it can be fun to watch something you've previously enjoyed and see how others react to it.
Now I'm going to get a bit artsy. Games are typically about the interaction between the player and the game and how that player reacts is a significant part of the experience. Let's plays sort of mediate this experience by allowing the audience to see the reactions of the let's player. This is much less powerful, but sometimes the audience actually prefers the less powerful experience. Horrer games are popular to watch because people don't always like being scared (but watching other people getting scared is pretty entertaining). That Dragon, Cancer likely suffers because it's not a game that makes you feel good, it's an intense experience; it's easy to prefer the less-intense, mediated experience. As a result, the sales overall may suffer (and the artists might be frustrated that people aren't playing it 'properly').
It almost needs a new business model. I think we can agree that more games like this is a good thing.
I'm not a movie guy but for some stupid weird reason I love watching what they think about some movies.
One of the most impactful games I've ever played was a PS3 exclusive called "Heavy Rain"[0]. That game, while having several branching storylines that create vastly different endings, was basically an 8-hour long interactive movie. It is one of the best games I've ever played but I doubt I'll ever play it again. I'm certain that I would make most of the same choices and reach the exact same outcome.
Another recent game that I really enjoyed is called Firewatch[1]. It's basically a three-hour movie. I don't even think it has different outcomes. You experience the story they give you.
That game was excellent (though really short for being $15). That sort of game would not exist in your worldview.
I watch Let's Plays almost exclusively as my digital content of choice. I first discovered Firewatch through an early pre-release copy that Marbozir played[2]. Luckily his pre-release copy only took you through the first 45 minutes or so and I was able to enjoy the full game on my own. Despite enjoying the game, the first 45 minutes of my game was incredibly dull because I'd already seen it played. Had I watched a full Marbozir playthrough, I would have probably never purchased the game. Without giving away any spoilers, once you've seen the whole game, there's really nothing left to experience.
I'm really torn about this article. I'm a game developer myself, so I definitely want to encourage people to buy games and support developers, but I have a family and rarely find enough time to actually play games. I get all of my enjoyment in late-night Let's Play sessions. This is a really tricky problem to solve, and I think being dismissive of a genre is dangerous ground to tread.
Thanks for your comment, though.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heavy_Rain
I don't know why you think I said this. What I said is that games with little replayability will be easily watched instead of played. And when games are easily watched instead of played they will not make as much money for the obvious reason. As such, if you want to make a successful game and have a successful business making games, you either figure out a way to work with Let's Players so that you make money from views (or ban Let's Players from playing your game), or you make a game that provides additional value when it is played on top of being watched, such as a game with high replayability like roguelites, for instance.
I'm not saying that those games shouldn't exist, I'm just saying that you have market disadvantages if you choose to go that way, both because a lot of people don't think those games are actually games and because of the Let's Player effect. And yes, you can point to Firewatch or Gone Home but in my opinion those games are outliers boosted/distorted by media outlets that like those types of games or by studios that spend a lot of money on marketing. If you're not willing to do the homework (i.e. spend a lot of money on marketing) then you shouldn't expect a game like this to be a success because I don't think the market is there at all. Whereas for a game more focused on gameplay the market is obviously there.
"Razer Inc., who acquired the Ouya platform and property in 2015, stated that all revenue from sales of That Dragon, Cancer on Ouya would be donated to the Morgan Adams Foundation and Family House SF, two charities that had assisted the Greens' during Joel's treatment in San Francisco."
(I was expecting a "Plot" section that I could avoid reading.)
But I understand why some developers get upset about it, in the same way Jonathan Blow was upset about piracy despite massive sales. It's a loss of control. You made a thing and you don't want people just taking it.
Emotionally, that makes perfect sense. But empirically, these factors have never been make-or-break for any game. Heavily pirated games are also huge sellers. Firewatch is doing very well right now despite being a similarly YouTube-able game.
That said, the irony is strong here when streamers are complaining about not being able to monetize their stream of someone else's work without restriction.
They are monetizing their time spent/interaction with viewers which is a very different thing and something people do monetize (see: speaker's fees, counseling fees, adviser fees)
That's the idea behind monetizing streams/streamers accepting donations. It's a way the viewers can support the person to stream for X hours a day and have it be something they can routinely do because they are being paid for their time. It just so happens that time is being spent playing a game that is the result of someone else's work.
I think it is stupid to deny free publicity - but maybe there's a reason why I'm not in marketing/advertising.
Not sure if necessary, but possible bias: I don't monetize through ads and prefer to accept donations, but I have streamed on occasion and have received donations for doing so.
To me, the position of enlightened self interest would have the Let's Play creators offering their support by urging their viewers to give Patreon donations or buy the game. Given that is happening, then it's time for the game creators to start rethinking their business model.
Youtube already does this for music (not sure they actually share revenue) but they do at least provide a way for the music creator (or the creator's representatives) to get revenue when someone else uses the music.
A better sharing arrangement sounds like mostly a win/win
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Let me add, while the Let's Player can certainly be entertaining if people are really watching for their entertainment value then they shouldn't need the game to get viewers. In other words, it seems arguable viewers view for the games more than the Let's Player. If people would tune in without the games then there's no reason for the Let's Player to have the games at all. Just be an entertaining person like a some of the more popular youtubers.
A game nobody has heard of and never will hear of vs any popular streamer who has spent 3+ years streaming and has 1,000's if not 10,000's of followers. Some of those followers will buy the game. That's the dev's split.
Even a no-name streamer (like myself) who pulls in 10-20 people tops during a good hour can still manage to sell some copies of the game merely by playing it (assuming they're enjoying it/it's a decent game worth buying). The dev still get's their split: free advertisement.
Dev's are, of course, free to not let streamers stream their game. I think it's stupid and wouldn't buy their game on principle: largely I assume the worst. Is the game so bad they want people purchasing it without seeing any gameplay? Well, I'll pass. Myself and 100,000's of others who have changed their purchasing decisions from "game reviews" to "someone who's gaming taste is similar to mine enjoys it and it looks fun".
Game development is a business. Fail to keep up with the times and find yourself using an outdated business model and you will go out of business. It's just a matter of how long it takes. For better or worse, many people make their game purchasing decisions based on streamers and seeing live gameplay so judge if a game looks fun or not before purchasing.
I think a dev is free to not allow people to stream their game or to profit from streaming their game. But I will point out to them that they're shooting themselves in the foot and that I think they should reconsider.
The only games that I've ever seen hurt by free advertisement are games which are awfully bad. Which I consider a win for the consumer, even if the dev loses out on. Just like any other business: it doesn't matter how hard you worked on something if the end product was bad. It's sucks for the creator/people who spent so much time on it, but that's how business works and I'll side with the consumers every time.
For the game creator, their work is being built upon without permission or license (other than, hopefully, a single game sale) to create something new and interesting, but their name and pedigree is bolstered by the exposure.
For the "Let's Play" creator, their work is produced without expectation of licensing payments but they gain the ability to grow their audience using another's work as raw material.
This comment put into words the weird, hand-wavey feeling I've had about the two being symbiotic. I'm still not sure that we've found a good example of the right balance between the two, but I like the Dragon team's tone when describing the tensions.
I still had to purchase the game to stream it, but your point is taken in this regard...except it goes both ways.
As a Let's Play streamer - why the hell should I play your game if I can play some other game that will allow me to be compensated for my time? Name me an advertisement agency that will advertise your product for free. Because that's essentially what large streamers have become.
Can always license out the rights to stream the game to already large streamers rather than rolling the dice with small no-names.
In any case, I suggested some kind of split would be more equitable. IMO. They already kind of do this for music. Why not for games but give the streamers more than people get for music since they are adding more to it.
Successful Let's Play personalities like PewDiePie or Markiplier, or even the more critique style of TotalBiscuit, tend to get very similar video view counts if they're covering a $2 indie game versus if they're playing some $60 AAA title. I think there'd be a way bigger difference in video view count if the specific game being played was particularly important.
Royalties to the game creator for usage seems fair, but the player should get more.
Adding that to my suggestion for splitting revenue, maybe it should be a sliding scale based on audience size. If you've got an audience of 10 people you get 1%. If you've got an audience of 10 million you get 99%
You could do this all day with products which sell themselves on an experience. You could have a streamer buy expensive clothes, wear them with a secret camera and record the (or produce) reactions they get from a first person perspective. After you watch the video, why buy the clothes since you've lived vicariously through them?
How about food shows, guy goes to diners, drive-ins, or maybe some dives, interviews the chef, orders their specialty and then films their reaction. Is he not literally making money on someone else's work by this reasoning? Without the restaurants he's got no show.
Sure you could argue he needs permission to film on private property and the show is better with their consent but there's nothing really stopping him from ordering take-out and then eating it somewhere else.
Edit: Since I predict responses might be something like, "in these specific instances here's why a person would still pay for the product" you've got to do better than that -- doing something legally that costs someone sales doesn't suddenly make it illegal, and I could make the same point back at you about games.
Surely the relevant question is whether people would be more likely to buy if the game is streamed, but a few more streamers posted a link and refrained from spoiling the ending? That's what the article is asking for, not for everyone to stop streaming.
There's also an argument that only showing a portion of a game would get people to buy the game to finish it themselves. Unless there's an option for revenue sharing between streamers and game makers, which creates more of a win/win situation.
I can imagine arrangements in the future where popular streamers are contracted by game companies, and only those streamers have permission to stream a game. Or they hire a streamer to produce the video for them, then upload it and collect the ad revenue in perpetuity.
Sometimes the arguments against small companies being rightly worried about not generating enough revenue start sounding like the offers of "exposure" that designers often receive in exchange for unpaid work.
Their game is not particularly interesting to me, but it seems they made something unique. I hope it eventually pays off for them.
I've talked to several kids who almost prefer watching Lets Play over playing any given game. That South Park episode was spot on.
Developers should be alarmed!
You're ten. You don't have a debit/credit card. You can't buy games on Steam. Even if you could, your parents might not even let you play them (GTA, Fallout 4, etc).
But you have a smartphone with a 4k display, and probably access to an iPad, and certainly a laptop at your disposal, and all you need is a browser to access Youtube. So you watch games instead.
You don't care much about immersing yourself in the game's world, you care about the guy screaming "oh my godddddd!! what the shiiiiiiiit!" and making comments that ten year olds find funny.
I don't think this equates to "kids will never play games when they grow up since they are so used to watching them instead." Eventually they grow out of this phase and play games like mature people do.
Of course, that only covers the "Youtube Personality" clique of Let's Plays. I myself watch narrative and immersive Let's Plays for games I certainly don't have the time or money to play anyway (Firewatch, a bunch of indie horror games I'm too scared to play, etc).
So I googled a let's play just to check out the gameplay, intending to watch 5 minutes, and ended up watching pewdiepie play the whole game.
Be as disdainful and insulting all you want, but I found him funny, charming and thoroughly enjoyable, it let me watch the story like a film, but with a touch of the camaraderie of playing a game with friends like I used to when I was younger.
I don't know. I know several adults who watch countless hours of Let's Plays but don't actually play anything at all.
My son, and the daughters of a friend of mine, have always preferred to watch me play games that they could play themselves: I'd happily hand them the controller. In this case, their excuse is that I am better at the games than they are, so instead of being frustrated by, say, a Zelda puzzle, or some of the harder sections of a Mario game, they get to see someone that has been playing these games for over 20 years. When they see how much worse they are, they are just not mentally ready for doing so much worse. I get better results getting them to play simpler games: Less Mario, more Kirby.
Now that they are old enough to be trusted with youtube, they watch people play in youtube, when they have the exact same game! Often the excuse is that if a part is boring, they can just skip to the next video, but when a game feels padded, they can't.
If I was designing games today, I'd pay a lot of attention to this phenomenon: Before we had complaints of piracy, used games, rentals and such. Now, if your game is not any more fun to play than it is to watch, people WILL WATCH!
It's very hard for That Dragon, Cancer, because it's more of a linear experience with limited gameplay than a traditional game: Watching and playing isn't very different. But going after the ads of channels that play your game is not impossible, and is probably their only choice, other than just being OK with people watching without paying.
You can look at e-sports to find a similar theme. E-sports events now have 10s of millions of live viewers watching a single match that might have 10 players.
How many people watch the Superbowl compared to the number of people who buy footballs and go play with them outside?
How many viewer-hours are spent watching the Travel channel or consuming travel media (video, TV shows, blogs, etc) compared to the number of hours spent traveling?
What we're talking about is spectatorship. Spectatorship is nearly always an order of magnitude more popular than participation, because the barriers to entry are lower, because it's cheaper, and because humans are lazy and it's easier.
Organizations like the NFL make more of their income through advertising, merchandising, etc. than they does through ticket sales, why should video game direct sales vs spectatorship-related income be any different?
Let's plays could be seen as the viewer watching the Superbowl at home, while buying the game yourself is like being there in the stands or buying a football and playing yourself.
I don't blame primary content creators (game studios) for trying to capture some of this secondary/indirect market (re-streaming of the game / spectatorship). It's proving to potentially be a much larger market.
Thinking back on my other kids at that age, I'm not sure if the 5yr old understands that the play is happening someplace else. It's as if they are right there, playing and having fun with the kids in the video.
South park... I fondly remember having time in my life to watch television :/
Videogames have the ability to deliver as much (if not more) of a serious emotional experience as movies and books. Is this Let's Play trend implying that kids no longer care about actually experiencing the game?
Take "Life Is Strange" for instance. I watched a Let's Play on it and it killed any interest I had in actually playing the game. It was a story based game without much in terms of gameplay and I realised after I'd finished watching someone play episode 1 that the story was all that would keep me interested and I'd already seen that. Narrative games don't translate well into Let's Plays format of helping game sales.
On the other, I have this feeling that let's plays are starting to assert themselves as a strong market force. I've already seen games specifically made to target let's players as a way to reach their fans. Let's plays may just simply be a new reality of the market.
Even if you assume policy ends up entirely in favor of cinematic games, without the ability to take advantage of the "let's play pulpit" then cinematic games are going to find themselves very disadvantaged.
I think we're starting to see the effects of this, games that try to sell themselves on their narrative, which simply end up taking the player through a series of corridors and cutscenes, are losing. Games that sell themselves on their gameplay and build narratives around the player are winning.
Not very nice to That Dragon, Cancer. I know. Sorry guys!
And that's exactly the problem - it creates a monoculture of genres even though those "losing" genres are still popular enough to be at least watched.
They aren't monetizing the game... the game is largely secondary... i find myself (and others i've asked today about this) tend to follow youtubers or streamers, not games. Its the personalities that earn the revenue, the game is just a talking piece...
This is all part of a bigger picture where I think the consumer of media needs to have more rights, not less. People already mostly don't own what they buy, can't do what they want with it, etc., and further limiting that is doing no one any favors, except the people in the business that don't even play games themselves.
Another point is that there are literally tens of thousands of games out there, and people use Let's Play not just for entertainment, but to see if a game is any good before purchasing. Essentially they use it for demo-ing the product, and if your game and your 'demo' are essentially the same thing, then that's a bad business decision, regardless of how much soul you poured into the product. Harsh, but if you're complaining from a business point of view, then you have to deal with harsh realities.
For my own experience, I saw it crop up, and thought "Why would I want to spend $15 for a short game about cancer?". I was curious about it, but not so curious as to drop $15... or even search out a Let's Play myself. I imagine most of the Let's Play audience were similar - suggesting that $1/viewer is somewhat realistic recovery for lost sales... that's nonsense, in my opinion.
Finally, a bonus problem: When your game is two hours long and you distribute through Steam, which has a no-questions-asked refund policy for 2 hours or less of gameplay, then a lot of those casual viewers you're after will just take that money back.
My point was that it was more like a movie, not that the game was ridiculously expensive. But, if you want to go that way, then yes, you need to look at the competition. In the games world, $15 is a price-point where people expect more than a couple of hours of gametime. 'Interactive movies'/'Kinetic novels' are rarely hugely successful, and almost never go above $10-15. Over in the movie world, $15 gets you a movie that cost hundreds of millions of dollars and took hundreds of people years to create.
If you're talking about what something is worth from a business angle, then you can't ignore the playing field and what the product is up against - just saying that it took a long time to make isn't enough.
Sorry, but it's true.
Profits on games aren't always that great, especially for indie titles.
It's not that they're losing sales, it's that they don't have many sales. And you need to pay 8 people somehow.
Realize that most game programmers at AAA studios are far underpaid and overworked.
how long before they target female twitch streamers?
Now I want to both buy this game and not buy this game... :'(
>become unprofitable
>beg for donations
If their game is a "relative linear experience" then why would anyone "go on to interact with the game in the personal way that we intended for it to be experienced".
On the flip side, consider if they aggressively challenged every let's play made of their game. Then their game is again profitable. They are showing courtesy and and doing people a favor by allowing let's plays to exist, but are now kindly asking for a favor back.
> If a fraction of those who viewed a let’s play or twitch stream of our game left us a $1 tip on our website (less than the cost of renting a movie), we would have the available funds to continue to work and create for the benefit of the gaming and the Let’s Play community.
> a short, relatively linear experience like ours
If you want to make money, don't do that.