Nintendo And The Power Of Let's Plays

Recently, Nintendo announced that it would be placing its own adverts into videos of their games uploaded to YouTube by Let’s Players, essentially removing the uploader’s right to monetise the content and claim the profits for themselves. Personally, I think this is an absolutely absurd move on the part of Nintendo.

The assumption seems to be that once people watch a Let’s Play of a game, they will be less inclined to purchase, costing the publisher and developer money. This is almost entirely incorrect. With the exception of non-interactive games like Dear Esther, watching a Let’s Play is an almost entirely different experience to playing the game yourself. While watching a film or reading a book offers only one form of entertainment, video games are enjoyable to both play and watch, not to mention to added entertainment value of a Let’s Play commentary. The two experiences can be notably distinct; watching a video of Dead Space may be calm and soothing, while playing it will be tense and exciting. Without the interactivity of playing the game yourself, you’ll never be able to get the full experience of a game simply by watching a Let’s Play, which is why the suggestion that Let’s Plays turn people away from games is ludicrous.

In fact, I would suggest the opposite. As opposed to putting people off a game, YouTube videos are perhaps the most effective form of advertising a publisher could ask for. They’ve certainly been more effective than television spots or intrusive banner adverts, in my experience. They impart information that traditional advertising simply cannot, offering lengthy stretches of gameplay footage, demonstrations of graphics and sound, and a variety of well-considered opinions by knowledgeable gamers familiar with the product. All of this is vital information to anyone interested in the game, imparted in a way that is far more immediate and personal than simple reviews or regular advertising. A well done Let’s Play will showcase a game in its brightest light to potential customers, making it far more effective than any live-action trailer will ever be.

Case in point: My favourite game of this generation is Dark Souls. Upon first renting the game, I was of course overwhelmed by its difficulty and as such, I gave up almost immediately. Some time later, I stumbled upon EpicNameBro’s YouTube channel. At the risk of sounding like an advertisement myself, I became a huge fan of his high-quality, well-edited gameplay and lore discussion videos, which convinced me to give Dark Souls another try. After renting it again, I purchased the Prepare to Die Edition brand new at full price, and I’m currently eagerly awaiting Dark Souls 2, which I intend to purchase brand new on Day 1, as well. In cases such as this, a YouTube user has greatly aided the creators of the game. Making videos of such high quality takes no small amount of effort and dedication, and such hard work that ultimately benefits the developer and publisher deserves at least some form of reward.

This is why it’s so baffling to me that Nintendo is seeking to impose any form of punishment on Let’s Players. Removing the monetisation potential from making YouTube videos will greatly reduce the incentive for people to make them. It’s already happened; YouTube user Zack Scott, a proponent of Nintendo games and consoles, has already stated that he’ll stop making videos about Nintendo games due to these policies. From now on, his 194,000 subscribers won’t be seeing what essentially amount to slickly produced advertisements for Nintendo games on a regular basis. Furthermore, since no new videos will be produced, there’s nothing for Nintendo to attach its advertisements to, resulting in a loss of exposure and a complete absence of new advertising revenue. Older videos may still be monetised, if the creators don’t remove them out of spite as I expect them to, but whichever way you look at it, Nintendo has certainly shot themselves in the foot, in this case.

Overall, it’s simply a very outdated and backwards way of thinking, on the part of Nintendo. Failing to recognise the value of a modern phenomenon like Let’s Play videos is a symptom of their lack of willingness to keep up with the times and their insistence on applying old-fashioned thinking to a changing market. Other companies have taken notice of the trend; in its eternal quest to out-do Activision, EA invited Call of Duty YouTube commentators to the Battlefield 4 reveal, in the hope that they will advertise the game in a positive way on their channels. They recognised the power and influence that notable YouTube users can have over the game community and they embraced it. They considered how to best adapt to and utilise something new, rather than attempting to twist it to suit their old ways of doing business. This kind of entrepreneurial thinking should be common sense to most large video game publishers, which is why I’m vastly disappointed that Nintendo has displayed such ineptitude.

Nintendo is not in the best shape as a company, right now. Between slow sales of the Wii U and being snubbed by third-party developers, it seems foolish on their part to employ such short-sighted measures as siphoning away ad revenue from YouTube users, as opposed to recognising their worth and working on better long-term strategies in general. Let’s just hope they see the error of their ways sooner rather than later.