Audience-Producer Relationships and Their Effect on Let's Play

“We can show that!” Audience-Producer Relationships and Their Effect on Let’s Play Production Nikki Miller 1 According to popular belief and Internet rumor, the start of the Let’s Play, abbreviated as LP in this paper, as it became known as a video medium, is attributed to user Michael “slowbeef” Sawyer on the Something Awful forums in 2007. Sawyer used an emulator to provide a walkthrough for The Immortal on the SEGA Genesis. Although there is no in-game audio, Sawyer provides what he described as a kind of “player’s commentary” as he played the game, and thus, the modern LP was born. Sawyer actually goes further back on the forums and credits the idea to text-and-image-based LPs, where forum users would document their playing experience using screenshots, and others would chime in with ideas or hints. Although there is no evidence of it in the archives, Kotaku and members of the Something Awful forum credit the coining of the term “Let’s Play” to a fabled Oregon Trail thread, where “‘someone would start a story and draw panels/images, with thread posters dictating where the story went next’” (Karlsson in Klepek, 2015). This Oregon Trail thread has since been lost to time, as it no longer exists in the Something Awful Forum archives, and exists only in user memories. Following that one, the next LP in this form to gain popularity was one of I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, which itself credits the original Oregon Trail thread. Not only did this LP explode with users who had never even bothered to engage with this kind of post on the forum, it ended with a video file of the end of the game. This very video inspired Sawyer to make his LP, the “Let’s Play” as it is commonly considered. Most literature surrounding the history of the LP as well as the Internet finds itself in contention with this idea, and won’t hesitate to find earlier examples of a “LP” and pose the question—is this a Let’s Play? But one thing is certain, and that’s that Sawyer was around when the term was coined, and his video had something to do with it. 2 They moved to YouTube shortly after and with humble beginnings, some YouTubers not quite having the technology available and filming their TV with a camera in order to make content. The growth happened without mass knowledge of the Something Awful forums at all, and since the barrier to entry for consuming content on YouTube was much lower than other websites at the time, the videos blew up. As opposed to the Something Awful forums’ paid subscription format, where registration costs a one-time $9.95 fee, with optional upgrades for more money (Something Awful), YouTube is free to join, free to subscribe to. In its later iterations, there are some paid subscription services on YouTube, such as YouTube Premium and Channel Memberships, but YouTube does not even require logging into an account in order to gain access to the content. After a rather dark period of harassment and clashing between the Something Awful forums and YouTube LPers, large and popular LPers entered the scene and turned the space into more of what we are familiar with today. Pewdiepie, the site’s most subscribed content creator with 102 million subscribers, JackSepticEye, GameGrumps, SkyDoesEverything (née SkyDoesMinecraft) all surfaced and rose to popularity around 2010. Understanding the origin story of the common LP is key to understanding the participatory nature of the modern LP. LPs come from a very interactive place, typically including communities of people directing the way in which a video game would be played. Video games prior to this were mostly single-player, private experiences. Although LPs have strayed from the text format where anyone and everyone can contribute, there are still remnants of this style still visible in the form of YouTube comments, live chats during YouTube livestreams, and comments on various other social media sites that ultimately 3 affect the content that is produced. As the format has gained popularity, it has taken even MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games), which have large numbers of players online at a time, to a larger level of interaction, creating communities of millions surrounding a specific game or a specific group of LPers, simply by posting their content online. People like the aforementioned creators are the ones who crafted the LP into how it is considered in this research—video game footage of someone playing a game while they commentate, sometimes with a facecam, with heavy editing and large personalities. Personality has been a key component of prior research into why LPs have been as successful on the Internet as they have been; a distinct part of the LP is the personal aspect of these videos. The creator not only talks about the game that they are playing on-camera, but adds in their own personal anecdotes and shares details about their lives; LP’s “allow viewers to gain insights in the feelings and video game experience of others” (Kisser 7). The same can be said about gaming livestreams, even more so—the streamer is typically in their own home, streaming a game for a few hours at a time, talking about their life. “The live experience and social interaction available between viewer and streamer allows for a level of personalisation that is not possible with pre-recorded material” (Sjöblom 7), but there has been significantly more research done on audience interaction with streams than there has been with specific communities on YouTube, hence the focus in this research regarding audience relations in LPs specifically. A main focus of streams is the immediacy of audience interactivity—in conducting research, not much has been said about audience interactivity on YouTube, specifically with LPs. In order for LPers to encourage a similar level of interactivity between themselves and their audiences to 4 livestreams, Kapriyelov states that they “must create opportunities for discussion by enabling comments, by engaging with their audience, by replying to their comments, and by refraining from arguments,” (Kapriyelov 22), and continues on interviewing various LP creators of differing levels of popularity. Kapriyelov does not dig much further into how audiences interact with LPs on a different level than other medias, simply stating that, with media that people enjoy, they will interact more thoroughly with it if they feel that its content is relevant to them. This sentiment of interactivity amongst YouTube communities is echoed in Fjællingsdall’s thematic analysis of LPs, wherein he states that it is not important if a viewer is an “active member”, rather that they simply enjoy the content they are consuming, to varying levels of identifying as a “community member”. The interactivity in this space is less active than what is typically considered in social media spheres, but is still a form of active participation—as Kapriyelov states, “YouTube consumers...actively participate and engage with video producers by liking, commenting, sharing, subscribing, or simply watching the video (a high views’ count can also often encourage producers to continue producing episodes in the future)” (Kapriyelov 48). There is a delay in the audience interaction that is unique to LPs as opposed to other video game content (mainly livestreams, playing a single player game, or playing a multiplayer game online), which has made audience gratifications in LPs a slightly more researched area. In a short article by René Glas, he argues that the LP features a sort of imagined and idealized player in the form of the commentator, and audiences are drawn to this for similar reasons viewers are drawn to cinema. Film caters to the idealized spectator, and engages viewers in both physical and emotional ways, specifically films that make us aware 5 of who, exactly, is behind the camera, and the way they view their subject. LPs draw on this idea and are explicitly making the audience aware of who the “cameraman” is, and “the play practices on display in these videos carry meaning to their audiences” (Glas 84). Possler et. al went further and conducted a study regarding audience gratifications for LPs, which tended to focus more on what audience received from interacting with these types of videos. They state that the gratifications for consuming LPs is similar to that of typical social media networks and video games themselves: “to be part of a community with similar interests, seek and enjoy new friends and exchange opinions online” (Possler et. al 6). In another work of his, Fjællingsdall mentions that LPs often generate groups that are more reminiscent of “a gang of online friends” (Fjællingsdall 2), as well as provide an important link between audience members and game developers/publishers that has previously been unoccupied. YouTube has noticed this trend and in order to capitalize on the growing trend of gameplay content, an entire section of YouTube was launched in 2015 dedicated to gaming video and livestreams, appropriately titled YouTube Gaming, to combat popular game streaming sites like Twitch. A common practice for YouTube LPers is to stream their content live with their fans participating in chat, and then releasing an edited version of the gameplay some time later for mass consumption. As previously stated, the personas that LPers typically use in order to attract more viewers is much easier to cultivate in a shortened video—LPs tend to emphasize the performance of the person playing the video game, and highlight their negotiation with the game (Ngyuen 2016) in typically comedic and improvisational format. 6 At least, this is what Funhaus does once a week, when they play Grand Theft Auto with fans, a staple of their YouTube content since before they were even Funhaus.

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