It's because Let's Players refuse to take suggestions/play what the fanbase asks for. Before that, it was because they dragged series out for 400 parts in 10-30 minute chunks. In 2025, a Let's Play video needs to be an hour or longer, or the host needs to knock the game out in 2-4 videos. Otherwise, it wastes the viewer's time and energy.
Let's Players have also stopped giving interesting commentary on the game. They narrate what they do without giving any deeper thought or impressions, and that's fucking boring. Video essays now contain the commentary that people used to get from Let's Plays.
The number of LPers who have skipped truly interesting recent games in order to play some kind of worthless, unfunny garbage that would have only turned numbers in 2014 is annoying.
ONE of my Let's Players played Crow Country. ONE. And I'm subbed to a number of LPers in the DOUBLE DIGITS. (Purged most of them this week because I'm sick of this shit, by the way!) Nobody is touching Last Look Along Woodward Boulevard. Hades 2, skipped. Puppet Combo games, skipped. Expedition 33, skipped. Pizza Tower, skipped. Death Stranding, skipped. And on and on. I'm watching downright excellent devs on twitter FUCKING BEGGING for Let's Players to take codes and play their games.
Two of the players in your thumbnail have snippy, exhausting attitudes that make playthroughs as painful to watch as possible unless the moons align, their third eye opens, and they decide to fire on all cylinders and actually be fun to watch. I'll give you a hint: Jack doesn't have that problem because he only posts games he's interested in, when he feels like it, and he bothers to be fun to watch and interested in the game when he does.
To be fair to Mark, he's running his channel with one hand tied behind his back. He doesn't give a fuck about games, he cares about movies. The games are an excuse to fund the movies, and he's said that directly. Movies come out once in a blue moon, though. His last great Let's Play was Inscryption. 3 YEARS AGO.
Viewers have just moved on to essays and theories. I don't blame them. Essayists/Theorists do what LPers were SUPPOSED to do: showcase a game, be interested in it, and be funny and interesting themselves.
Imagine failing to clear those bars. You had one job: BE ENTERTAINING. You FAILED THE ONLY REQUIREMENT.
