Wouldn't LPs be a great way of getting publicity for games? I'd think more people would play their games if an Average Joe gave them the recommendation instead of some professional marketer. Also, I saw your post about Rifftrax. I'm thinking that it would work for video games too. The game just needs some sort of demo recording software, like the source engine has, or most TAS emulators have.
Who’s to say that’s going away? It’ll probably still be an integral tool for indies - Shovel Night has already used it to great effect; every “professional let’s player” I follow had a video where they ran through the GDC demo.
Then there was the whole stupid Dead Space 3 thing - same deal. A strangely large number of LPers I follow on Youtube mysteriously put up videos of an identical demo all in the same week with customized promotion URLs in their descriptions so Electronic Arts could track which group did the best at promoting their product.
Some developers realize and utilize these groups as a marketing tool. The rub is: they don’t have to do that. It’s the same reason print is dying, and is the same reason traditional games media is changing. Companies like Electronic Arts are realizing they don’t need to go to EGM, or Gamespot, or GiantBomb to help promote their game, they can just speak to their fans directly. Instead of sending a trailer for Modern Warcraft 8 to the press, they just post it on their own Youtube channel, host the screenshots on their own site, and let fans get to them that way.
For big studios, the amount of money they throw at marketing completely outpaces a thousand channels like Game Grumps or Two Best Friends Play. Is Zack Scott partnered with Doritos? No. But Halo 4 is, and every time you go to the 7-11 for some snacks, you see Master Chief reminding you that Halo 4's coming out soon and you better play it. Yes, a Let’s Player adds that personal touch - they’re regular, average people. Someone you can trust. When they come away from a game saying, “That was cool!” you trust their opinion simply because you view them as a non-biased opinion. They aren’t trying to sell you that game, they are just reacting to it and providing their honest opinion.
The question is: how well does that work for good games? Is the type of unbias, personal, word-of-mouth promotion from a Let’s Play group going to eclipse the millions of dollars they throw at marketing to get their game shown on Jimmy Fallon? I doubt it. And that kind of word-of-mouth can actually backfire in a big, big way. That’s why it’s better for big companies to pay to control the message.
When you’ve paid hundreds of millions of dollars in development cost, you don’t want some grubby Let’s Player spoiling your marketing roadmap just because he’s smart enough to know your game sucks.
This is less of an issue with smaller, cheaper games like Shovel Knight, because it provides valuable feedback on the quality of the game and helps get the word out in an easy, accessible way. No surprise: Shovel Knight raised enough to meet every single one of its Kickstarter stretch goals. Crowdfunding meets crowdmarketing.
Nintendo doesn’t need that. Hey, guess what: if you liked the last Mario Kart, you’re probably going to like the next one enough to buy it. And with their Nintendo Direct streams, you always know exactly what the company is up to on an almost monthly basis.
Don’t need no Zack Scott to tell you what’s up with Nintendo.
Your recording idea is sound, I guess, but part of the reason Let’s Play works is because Youtube is an easy and ubiquitous place to consume that content. Splitting it out in to a specific commentary-supported emulator isn’t much of a solution if only 5% of a Youtube audience wants bother with it.
