“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. Before

Funhaus was Inside Gaming. Inside Gaming worked under Machinima, an online entertainment network owned by Warner Media. Inside Gaming began in 2008 as solely news about the Halo franchise (aptly named “Inside Halo”), and quickly shifted gears into ​ ​ news about the entire gaming industry. While still continuing to do daily video game news videos on Machinima’s main channel, Inside Gaming spun off to their own channel and started making gameplay videos. They amassed a decent YouTube following, and continued making videos under Machinima until January 2015. They announced their departure from the company, and the next month, they named themselves Funhaus under Rooster Teeth, another online entertainment network that produces a range of original video content.

Rooster Teeth then absorbed Machinima in early 2019 and revived Inside Gaming as its own video game news entity, and now manages the back catalog on their own website.

With Rooster Teeth, they have amassed over 1.7 million subscribers since 2015, creating LP videos almost every day as well as streaming and interacting with fans on various forms of social media. Funhaus now consists of Supervising Producer Omar

DeArmas, Co-Creative Directors Adam Kovic, James Willems, and Elyse Willems, as well as

Lindsey Washburn, Jon Smith, Jacob Fullerton, Daniel Schneider, Ryan Hailey, John Holland,

Don Casanova, and Adam Brouillard. They also hire a couple interns every season, and some members who have come and gone throughout the past five years. The group puts out videos once, sometimes twice a day, every day, and have held steady in the hundreds of thousands of views their videos receive. They’ve even branched outside of improvisational 7 comedy through gameplays, and had an animated limited series called “Sex Swing”, a number of weekly podcasts, and a season of a scripted sketch show called “Arizona Circle” on the Rooster Teeth site, with more plans for non-LP shows in the future. They also have a stream that runs twenty-four-seven with past videos of theirs and a chat that they sometimes pop into to talk to their fans.

Their LPs are what brought them into the limelight, and are what most people know them for. Not only were they acquired by Rooster Teeth into the Let’s Play Network, but their previous experience at

Inside Gaming was strictly limited to LPs (on their personal channel, that is, they also talked video game news on the main

Machinima channel). Their top most viewed videos are all gameplays of some kind, either their show “Demo Disk” where they attempt to play incredibly old video game demos, Wheelhaus, where they play randomly generated Steam games, or drunk gameplays that they have previously livestreamed and then edited down into smaller, more manageable pieces. They are a LP channel first and foremost—a cursory glance at the rundown of their content reveals a new

LP more often than not.

As a member of their community, it is hard to miss how frequently they interact with fans. Those who play Grand Theft Auto with them become recurring characters in their ​ ​ LPs, their interactions at the forefront of these videos as they talk with (or, well, scream at) 8 their fans over GTA’s online service. Their main Twitter page has over 279k followers and is a source of updates on new videos, pictures of the crew in their day-to-day lives, and mostly retweets of fan art and jokes made at their expense. While the main Twitter account often doesn’t reply to fans when they ask questions, the members themselves are always readily available to answer questions on their personal accounts. Over the thirteen core members of the group they have amassed over 1.5 million followers on Twitter, and each of them is more willing to talk to their fans with the last. Not to mention they have a show where they answer fan questions and comments every week, and previously had a podcast post show where they highlight art from fans for an hour. Social media for them, like most

LPers, is the main source of interaction with their fans. Let’s Play communities are formed solely over the internet, and yet possess a deep sense of community that is often found elsewhere, like people who frequent a specific church, or sports fans. LP communities have a much more interactive quality than other YouTube communities due to the cooperative nature of the video games that are played themselves.

Amidst all of these LPs, they also produce a number of podcasts, the longest running being Dude Soup. This weekly podcast covers anything and everything, including news, gaming culture, or things the hosts want to talk about, and typically end by reading comments left on previous videos of theirs. This is frequently referred to as a place where they can be more open and honest with their fans about things—podcasts as a format are generally more conducive to honest conversation than edited down LPs, where Funhaus and (more broadly) creators put on a more entertaining and exaggerated persona in order 9 to garner views. Dude Soup functions as a place to listen to more intimate conversations between the hosts at Funhaus as they talk about life, comedy, and entertainment.

Backtracking a bit to early LPs you find some of the origins of the interactivity of the medium. With screenshot and comment threads a la Oregon Trail or I Have No Eyes and I ​ ​ ​ Must Scream, the OP (original poster) would post their commentary and screenshots, and ​ any interested commenters would provide insight into the game, suggest names for characters, or other random things they find interesting about the walkthrough. The interactivity of modern LPs has been bolstered by live streams and Twitch, mirroring early

LPs—a live chat alongside a streamer playing a game, providing commentary and hints for the person playing, as well as talking amongst themselves and garnering a small community. However, YouTube LPs have modified this idea of interactivity to create a more community-based experience. YouTube is, by design, a participatory website; anyone can create a video, anyone can comment on a video, anyone can be a part of a community.

Participatory culture is defined by five characteristics, as described by Clement Chau in a journal article titled “YouTube as a participatory culture”:

Relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement

Like previously stated, YouTube is a participatory website where anyone can create content and cultivate a fanbase. Some choose to remain unregistered to the site and view videos as they please, so their participation is clocked by the algorithm that reads view counts. However, registering for a free account allows for the user to subscribe to their favorite channels, comment, and like videos to provide more feedback for the YouTubers themselves. This low barrier to entry allows for these communities to develop at a rapid 10 pace and in confined spaces within the YouTube site. It is easy to locate and identify these groups on the site. LPs function as a form of video that is low effort for many beginning

YouTubers—the bar for comedy is much lower, since the game being played is the focus of attention for those watching it. Comedy, although a common trend in LPs as a form of entertainment, is not necessarily a feature of all LPs, and if a user simply likes a game and wants to play it for an audience, YouTube provides a great way to do so.

YouTube, however, has seen a rise in content creators and influencers who are making money off the site by being the “best” at what they do. That’s not to say that amateur LPers don’t exist anymore, but incentive for people to create videos has shifted slightly into a more monetary want. Funhaus, for instance, makes money off of YouTube’s monetization system. The bar for entry-level creators to be able to access this kind of privilege has raised slightly, now at 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watchtime per year in order to qualify for the YouTube partnership program. Although the entry to

YouTube in order to participate as a money-making member of the site is now more difficult, fans find themselves more drawn to the pre-existing creators rather than seeking out smaller YouTubers. The algorithm favors popular content, like any other site, and it is much easier to follow along with a large creator. YouTube users are then encouraged to create for and alongside that specific LPer on various other forms of social media, or in the comments section of videos.

Strong support for creating and sharing one’s projects

YouTube, since its formation, has made it increasingly simple to cultivate an audience on their site. Their interface is very user friendly, and anyone can simply upload a 11 video, tag it with trending and relevant tags, and blast it out into the broader Internet.

YouTube’s database also provides similar video recommendations once a user watches a video. For LPs, this will often be either another video from the user, or even someone completely different playing the same game that was just being shown. The gaming section of YouTube divides its live streams by game, similarly to Twitch, as well as highlights

videos by trending games (at the time of writing, Death Stranding videos were ​ ​ recommended), and even highlights up-and-coming creators within the gaming sphere.

YouTube claims to support its creators, and all the controversy regarding the Trending page and demonetization aside, it does a good job of pushing its users towards related content through the use of user-added tags of the games being played, of the content, or 12 going ahead and suggesting another video from the same creator in the lineup. The

YouTube homepage often also has a Suggested For You section, which, if you are consuming LPs, will be videos from the same or similar creators and games.

Informal mentorship

A popular trend on YouTube is people asking creators how they recommend others get into making a career off of content creation. Many popular YouTubers make extremely candid videos about becoming a YouTuber, either in the form of its own video or in the context of other videos. The YouTube space is very conducive for helping others out (a cursory search for “how to become a youtuber” produces hundreds of videos from creators of all sizes), and definitely extends into the LP community. Funhaus themselves have addressed this question on a couple of podcasts, one titled “ARE WE YOUR FRIENDS? -

Dude Soup Podcast #122” addressed not only how they got where they were and gave advice for aspiring LPers, but touched on the important topic of parasocial relationships regarding YouTube personalities, especially in the LP sphere, due to the close personal nature that comes from improvisational comedy and personal insight into playing a game with your fans.

A belief that contributions matter

As mentioned before, YouTube is a user-dominated platform, and the site would not be one of the most successful video platforms on the Internet if it weren’t for its users, plain and simple. A repeated sentiment amongst YouTubers is how they genuinely could not do what they do without their fans, and it’s completely true. Part of building a community surrounding LPs centers on the idea of feedback and support—this comes in the form of 13 views, likes, comments, and an ever-rising number of subscribers. “Fans use this feedback system to encourage and support the content creators, and content creators in turn are more likely to produce additional content for viewers to enjoy” (Chau 71). Funhaus has explicitly stated that the views they get on certain series’ determines whether or not they will continue it past its original run. Sure they may enjoy making the series (a personal favorite titled “Force Quit” comes to mind), but if the fans are not engaging with it as much as they had hoped, they move onto the next new idea.

A sense of social connection

While YouTube comments are generally hard to keep tabs on, the site has tried to engage more with the social media aspect over the years. Recently YouTube has implemented a “Community” tab in which creators can chat with their subscribers in a comment-like way that is much easier to follow. Many YouTubers seek to involve their communities in some way, either in doing Q&A videos with questions, playing games with their fans in videos, even “loving” a comment so that it’s pinned at the top of the video for all the fans to see. Some will even lurk in their comments section after their video airs to talk to their fans. Similar to the above section, feedback is a key component to building these communities on YouTube.

The problem with this participatory culture model is that it does not take into account the financial component of websites such as YouTube. A lot of YouTube’s content creators depend on the money they make through the system; monetization is not available to every single person who uploads to YouTube, they have to apply to the YouTube Partner

Program. This includes following all the monetization policies set up by YouTube 14 themselves, living in a specific country/region where partnership is possible, have more than 4,000 public watch hours in the last year, have more than 1,000 subscribers, and have a linked AdSense account, which is an entirely separate system owned by Google for advertising. LPers and, more broadly, YouTubers, function in a space where they could be considered microcelebrities.

Microcelebrity is defined by Alice Marwick as “both the state of being well known to a niche group of people and a practice where people present themselves as carefully constructed personas, create affective ties with audience members, and view followers as fans” (Marwick 1). YouTubers often follow this model in order to generate a crowd for themselves, and LPers like Funhaus are no exception to this rule. The microcelebrity model actively accounts for making profit off of a fictionalized persona that is strictly for the cameras. Within this model, Marwick states that there is a general need to self-brand, or as presenting oneself as a fully edited “brand” in of themselves. On YouTube, a specific persona is what draws audiences to a form of content, and creating this type of personal relationship with an audience is what enables people to move up the YouTube ladder—to go from making no money to turning a profit off of videos. The goal is to market yourself as a commodity that is wanted by the YouTube community at large, as opposed to the participatory culture model, in which people participate simply because they can. Although this isn’t technically untrue of YouTube as a service, more and more in recent years will people hedge their bets on becoming the next viral YouTuber. Studies in this regard center mainly around YouTube (Merwich 2014, Jerslev, Driessens 2012), but there has been little done to add to the literature surrounding microcelebrity and LPers. 15

LPers tend to follow this trend as well, specifically in the traditional LP format, which is what makes them more interesting to study in regards to audience-producer relationships. MacCallum-Stewart (2013) touches briefly on the concept of microcelebrity

(although not referred to as such) in her research centered around popular YouTube group

Yogscast, but is more focused on the fact that the group are fans of a game and thus perform gameplay of it. This forms their own idealized player as a persona, showcasing their own personal views of the game, how they play it, and showcase their personality in how they interact with the game and, with groups like Funhaus where multiple people sit in on a LP, with each other (Possler et. al 2017; Nguyen, 2016; Postigo, 2016). Content is highly edited in order to present a certain persona to the audiences; Funhaus has regularly mentioned that they are not the same people that they are in most of their content, and this is very apparent in their longer, mostly unedited podcasts that are released every week.

LPers know that in order to survive on YouTube and generate profit, they must present a persona that is wanted by the masses. The concept of an idealized persona that is palatable and enjoyable has been considered greatly in media studies, but little research I have found has discussed how audiences interact with these producers specifically in the LP format.

Understanding how producers utilize these carefully constructed personas in order to get across to their audience, while also performing authenticity is a key component of understanding micro-celebrity culture (Marwick 2015).

The profitability of this kind is discussed in interview format in Fjællingsdall’s research. One of the subjects mentions that because they watched Achievement Hunter, another LP group owned by Rooster Teeth, they thought that “‘These untrained idiots are 16 sitting in front of a screen making money playing video games. Why can’t I do that?’”

(Fjællingsdall 33) and chose to become a LPer because of it. This directly ties into the participatory framework as mentioned previously, but leans significantly on the money-making aspect of the YouTube system. Although the financial aspect of fan interaction is not a main focus of my research, it is important to understand the difference between participating for fun and for free, and performing labor and turning profit. Hector

Postigo makes the very important distinction in his research between “making gameplay” and “making game pay”, and goes on to define this dichotomy as the way that YouTube works to facilitate the commercialization of video game playing. Creating a LP, he argued, is not as simple as “work” or “play”, but rather “the creative and the productive processes are melded in the context of making gameplay, and play and production are unified processes” ​ ​ (Postigo 9). This format is celebrated on YouTube, and is integral to the production process.

As previously touched upon, another key component and one of the biggest hangups of the micro-celebrity format are parasocial relationships. Defined as a one-way relationship to a person, generally of a higher status, who you know on a personal level, but they do not know you. The term “parasocial interaction” generally describes “the imaginary relationship between media users and media figures (from celebrities to fictional characters)” (Stever 5), if these fantastical relationships between producer and fan escalate to a certain degree, they can be detrimental to both parties, namely the producer themselves. Often overlooked in these relationships is the reciprocation that comes from the creators, and how interactive Internet communities are (Stever 2008). These 17 relationships tend to develop through the LP format because of the exposure of the audience to a player’s gameplay style and personal anecdotes. This isn’t dissimilar to how these relationships form in the gaming world, and although research has focused mainly on livestreams (Blight 2016) and discuss the lack of formal presentation that allows audience members to view this seemingly authentic experience with streamer and audience tuning in simultaneously, and suggests that interacting with fans alongside the consumption of the product allows for a greater enjoyment of the product (Blight 2016). Although interaction is different in streaming, this still applies to the typical LP—commenting suggestions (like games to play or helpful tips), interacting with fans on other social media sites, and even so far as being featured in a video are all ways these parasocial interactions are bolstered in the LP world. Lawrence Sonntag, previous of Funhaus and now full-time streamer, said of fan relations,

“It's an interesting hybrid of expressing gratitude and even sharing a connection over humor and gaming culture, but also trying to maintain and reinforce healthy relationship boundaries. Since I am now streaming a TON, I feel that relationship maintenance is more important than ever. It can be scary since new media passively encourages over-investment. It's in my interest to make people like me more or invest more in me emotionally because then they will watch more content, support advertisers, recommend content to their friends, etc.”

New media, in Sonntag’s case the modern LP, encourages interaction through tuning into videos, sharing with friends, playing the games with the creators, and reaching out on social media to form a relationship on a base level. The question I will be posing is how ​ ​ these relationships come to factor in the production of this content and, more broadly, what goes into creating LP content on a massive scale.

Understanding the relationship between LP producers and audience provides some insight into the way these creators can bridge the gap between their audiences and their 18 content. Maintaining a healthy audience relationship is key to not only keep a steady viewer base for content, but cultivate an image of the creator(s) themselves. Content on

YouTube, as exemplified by the participatory culture model, has a very low barrier for entry, and can provide a very one-sided sense of communication: you watch the video, sometimes leave a comment, and that is the extent of social interaction. However, LPs, due to their interactive nature, prove that the viewing experience on YouTube does not have to be one-sided, but rather a comprehensive dialogue between audience and creator, in order to maintain relationships, gain and expand ideas, and grow as creators on the platform.

The ways creators relate to their audiences can help understand the space that LPs fill between longform livestreamed gaming content and more traditional media forms, such as television and film, or even other forms of YouTube content. LPs, as previously stated, are less interactive than the average Twitch stream, but maintain a level of connection that is frequently missed out on by other genres of YouTube video. The conversation that occurs between LPers and their audience allows for a much more nuanced relationship between the two. Whether it be on social media or YouTube comments, these avenues of communications are much more open with LP content. Truly understanding why this is, and just how this nuanced relationship is formed through understanding ways creators, like Funhaus, talk about and consider their fans, can shed some light on the LP landscape and, more broadly, audiences on new media and how to navigate interactions with them.

Getting a deeper understanding of the way Funhaus consider their audience every step of the way has shown that audience relationships, despite how daunting they can be in the age of new media, are important to the creation of content online. There is a fine line to 19 walk in order to cultivate an audience that is wholly supportive of one’s content. YouTube is an ever-changing platform, and despite all the changes that may prevent creators from generating profit and being successful, keeping an interested and active audience is a great way to get them to support any and all efforts by the LP person or group. By showing these examples of the way creators can interact with and think about their audience, there can be more understanding in the new media age in how to navigate these interactions to be the most successful. Success with communication, relationship maintenance, and balancing work-play dynamics is important for everyone participating in new media, and are key components to maintaining a good image for the average microcelebrity. Since LPs depend heavily on the LPer representing an idealized player, it is important to know how much of that persona comes from the self they present on other forms of social media. How do they interact with their audience? Does it abide by their on-camera presence? Even if not in

YouTube content, keeping a healthy distance from one’s social media followers is what prevents these parasocial relationships from occurring, and can lead to successful interactions elsewhere. This very specific phenomenon of audience-producer relationships can provide a framework for successful audience interactions elsewhere, either on

YouTube, or social media otherwise.

Method Due to the participatory nature of YouTube Let’s Plays, interviews were to be conducted with various members of Funhaus to gauge their interactions with their community members, as well as the process of creating videos for the Internet. However, 20 due to unforeseen circumstances, interviews were no longer an option, and alternate research methods had to be considered.

Dude Soup, Funhaus’ first and longest running podcast, almost constantly asks for audience interaction, and in celebration of the company’s five year anniversary, did an episode that discussed the history of the company and fielded audience questions, to which they responded earnestly and openly. They also did a similar thing as a 2019 year in review, where they only discussed audience questions in order to look back on their time and look forward into the future. Since this topic heavily relies on audience interaction with this type of content, looking into these two podcast episodes was a great way to highlight and showcase one of the ways previously mentioned about audience interaction. This was the most direct and visible way to see some of these interactions in motion. YouTube, as previously mentioned, is a participatory website, and success on the platform is dependent on the audience a content creator caters to. In order to gain insight into the way this content is produced on such a scale, the type of audience these videos garner, and how interactions between creator and audience work, viewing an example of audience interaction seemed appropriate. In a primary source for this topic, “Let’s Graduate — A thematic analysis of the Let’s Play phenomenon” by Kristofer Fjællingsdal, he states in his limitations section that “studying specific Let’s Play communities instead of Let’s Plays on

YouTube in general would be a good strategy in order to find community-specific motivators” (Fjællingsdal 54). This was a major factor in deciding how this thesis would develop. As someone who is an active participant of a specific LP community on YouTube, 21 using this to my advantage seemed like a great way to understand community-specific behaviors regarding how audiences are involved with the LP-making process.

Alongside this close analysis of podcast episodes, two creators were also reached out to in order to gain outsider insight into the YouTube and LP worlds. Freddie Wong, creator at RocketJump on YouTube, and Lawrence Sonntag, former Funhaus employee and now full-time streamer on Twitch, were asked to talk over Discord Direct Messages and email, respectively, and sent questions that relate to their fan experiences online.

In analyzing the data, previously mentioned ideas from other literature were utilized and analyzed alongside the questions and answers provided within the podcast episodes. This is not only to provide specific examples for some of the previously discussed topics, but come to some new realizations regarding LP production on YouTube. Common themes present in the questions as well as conflicting answers from the Funhaus members are then lumped together to approach conclusions relating to Funhaus’ relationship with fans.

Since this is still a performative podcast that is posted to the public, there was also the possibility that Funhaus’ answers are skewed for the public eye. Previously, the members have stated that they are more open on their podcast than their shorter videos, but any potentially negative commentary about the fanbase would be left out. There is no way of knowing if what they are saying is the full truth, but I am approaching it as such, due to the personal nature of these specific podcasts. Any pulled quotes will be edited only for clarity. 22

Analysis

The podcast format is more focused on transparency, and the audience questions that were selected by the Funhaus team were more targeted to how they create their content and the inner workings of Funhaus as a business, rather than a video being watched on YouTube. “Ask Funhaus Anything - Dude Soup #259” starts with a similar disclaimer about transparency. James Willems, host of this episode, says, “We love being transparent with everyone, we’re very transparent on the SubReddit, on social media, in our content, about things we do and how we do them” (Willems). As mentioned previously, this proves authenticity as a key component to creating content online, specifically microcelebrity culture, and the work that goes into cultivating an online persona that is accepted by the masses.

On a more personal level, finding that work-play balance between a persona and real life is seemingly something Funhaus struggles with in their day to day lives. In discussing the history of the channel, they talk about one of their previous office spaces in which other members of the group would be working in the same space while the content would be made. Striking that balance between being an active persona in a video and doing a job was especially difficult in that setting, Adam Kovic saying that, “This is one of those things where I remember the audience has an issue with, where they go, ‘It’s really great when everyone’s in the office when you guys are recording!’ and it’s like, yes, those people are working,”(Kovic). James Willems continues describing the personal problem. “Get up to speed on this bit, say something funny, and then go back to doing work because it has to be ​ ​ done by 3:30pm” (Willems). For an audience, as Kovic points out, this struggle is often 23 overlooked. The desire to see a LP creator as an idealized player of a game or an almost fictionalized person is what causes detrimental relationships to occur. Gaining this personalized insight into the struggles they have as content creators can either lower that desire to see them as just a face, or raise the belief that these creators have personal relationships with the question asker and the audience at large.

However, this disconnect between the on- and off-camera personas seems not to be as much of a problem in the Funhaus community. One of their desires is for the audience to understand that what they do isn’t just put a video up on YouTube, but is a full-time job with responsibilities behind the scenes. In the other episode, they’ve commented on this, stating that they always find it impressive when fans can accurately point out certain things about how their job works. Sonntag said, “the community is INCREDIBLY savvy in understanding and seeing a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff. They've accurately noticed on-screen tensions or straight-up nailed some of the business implications of how we worked or what we did,” (Sonntag). This is interesting, and almost directly contrasts with earlier researched sentiments about parasocial relationships. Parasocial relationships imply that a fan will view their relationship with a creator (or more broadly, a famous personality) as much more personal and friendship-like than it actually is. Although there is no way of knowing that this is a commonly known thing within the entire Funhaus community, it seems to be a widespread enough sentiment to fully recognize that they are doing a job that involves more than posting a LP on YouTube and moving on.

Funhaus seems to do quite a bit on their end of things to try and prevent these relationships from getting out of hand, and many audience members seem genuinely 24 concerned with their feelings when asking them questions. In episode #259, a Reddit user named FurnaceHobo asked, “Is there something that we, as viewers, could do to improve your experience as content creators?”, allowing the hosts to discuss things they would appreciate seeing in the community. They understand that they simply can’t listen to every audience opinion, because the results would be flat out “boring”. Lawrence Sonntag said, to expand on this idea of taking audience consideration to heart:

It's really hard to do that since fans all want different things... mostly. Some factors are universal. Fans want you to be funny, good looking, and relatable. To that extent, it's a process of examining what gets a positive or negative reaction and leaning into / avoiding those elements respectively. The downsides are that it can cause a bit of a dissociative spiral. Fans ALSO want someone with strong identity and self-confidence. If you pattern your entire behavior after what fans say they do and don't like, you lose any distinguishing features that help you stand out.

Work is put in constantly in order to cultivate a positive community, and it seems as though these people actively seek out their audience-producer relationship to the best of their ability. It’s popular for social media personalities to say to reach out on platforms to talk to them and ask them questions in order to reduce these assumptions, but James Willems knows this is an unreasonable ask, saying they cannot answer everyone who has a clarification about that (Willems). Nothing they say or do is shutting down avenues of communication, and seems to be doing the complete opposite—Adam Kovic actually calls for criticisms to be made in a positive and helpful way, and mentions times where audience members truly helped out with things in their content. “Those [suggestions] are helpful, those are good. They’re critiques but they’re also trying to be helpful,” he continues. Aside from being conscious of the views their content is getting, they are hyper-aware of other avenues of interaction that they get on YouTube and elsewhere, and want to work to mold their community into something that is positive and wholesome to interact with. Elyse 25

Willems later says, “I think it’s fine our audience likes to joke around with us, but...the genuine approach is just so refreshing. I love it.”

That being said, Funhaus, when talking about the things they make, consider view counts quite a bit. It almost sounded detached from their considerations of who they consider to be active members of the fanbase—numbers are numbers, fans are fans, and the two are regarded as separate entities. A common phrase among the Funhaus folks is that they will make something that the audience wants, as long as it actually gets the views.

Sonntag also says this about the process of considering fan response. “When I was producing media for Rooster Teeth, the most important audience response was simply watch time. Gotta get those numbers. To some degree, that could be leveraged against audience sentiment. A video could get one million views and that would be worth it if a portion of the audience didn't like or agree with the content.” Although it could be due to the public forum in which this discussion occurred, or the fact that the Funhaus hosts are obviously still employed by Rooster Teeth, their idea about numbers was a bit different.

Freddie Wong said that “We only consider audience response in that if people seem to enjoy it or not, and not much deeper than that. We have to ourselves enjoy what we're doing first, and fan enjoyment comes secondary out of necessity as often a lot of the stuff we've made has no intrinsic reward other than our own enjoyment from creating it,” which seems to ring true for Funhaus as well.

That’s not to say that what Sonntag is saying isn’t true, but pushing for numbers and fan enjoyment tend to go hand-in-hand in the YouTube sphere. Funhaus has repeatedly said that if a series does not get enough views, they discontinue it, even if it’s something 26 they very much enjoy doing. Wong’s experience is a bit different, since RocketJump has seen pretty major success in most of the main channel content they release. Casting a glance at their main channel reveals quite a ton of videos with over one million views, with a few stragglers in between not dipping below 150k, and their channel boasts nearly nine million subscribers, significantly more than Funhaus themselves. Considering fan interaction, of course, varies over the channels to understand how to cater to an audience specifically. And with numbers, they can be extremely fickle.

With Funhaus’ self-described “crapshoots” for other endeavors, like an animated show and a sketch comedy show, those can require a lot of money and time spent. LPs, as

Sonntag stated to me, are an easy fallback. “They're cheap to make (short record time, no production cost, standard edit) and they let you swim in the wake of other products' popularity (Grand Theft Auto 5). In terms of YouTube content, they're nearly perfect.”

Grand Theft Auto 5 has been out since 2013, and still remains a constant series on the

Funhaus channel. In those videos, even the people starring say that those videos aren’t even about the gameplay, and more about the people talking about random nonsense while they race or fight. Obviously there is quite a bit more effort that is put into these gameplay videos, but the overall sentiment is that they are a good go-to for people to latch onto and enjoy. There is a reason that they are primarily known as a LP channel, it’s because they are good at what they do. Kovic echoes this sentiment, saying, “Some of my favorite things have more or less been our failures...I like being able to switch things up,” in regards to going back and forth between other types of content and LPs. Audiences seem to stick around for the gameplay videos because they enjoy them, and that kind of interaction is very valued in 27 the LP space. Other LP creators may not have the luxury of being able to make leaps and bounds across content types, but knowing that an audience enjoys one specific type of content that is being released is valued across the board. In this sense, audiences are more like numbers on a screen instead of a person being interacted with.

Funhaus is really attentive to audience perceptions of what they do and how they do it, as previously mentioned. A big part of microcelebrity culture is managing a social media presence and presenting an idealized player in the videos. An outside example is the twenty-four hour livestream of old content that premiered on YouTube. The chat, over time, became toxic because of the lack of supervision, the moderators couldn’t control it at all hours of the day, and Funhaus was on top of it before the complaints could get out of hand. Multiple times in these two podcast episodes do they mention something that occurs in the audience. Kovic brings up a common misconception that they script out their LPs, and immediately addresses how they go about making them. They also care a lot about telling the audience about things they might have missed about the production process.

This makes the audience move up from just the “numbers on a screen” phase, viewing them as a type of contributor. Or, what is more likely is that by addressing these misconceptions, they make sure their audience stays positive and continues pushing other people into watching their content, thus turning a profit again and again. That way, they can continue making LPs, making money, and getting the opportunity to branch out into something greater.

The money aspect of their content is a huge part of the production process.

Dependency is placed on the audience to rake in numbers, contribute to sponsorships 28 when they are offered and spread the word however they can. However, they seem to consider how to integrate sponsored content into their regular rotation without compromising their content at its core. Omar De Armas says on the topic of pursuing a creative sponsorship, “Even if [the sponsored content] was a medium success, but it was really fun to do and really challenging and brought up new ideas that go into ten different ideas that happen in the future—totally worth doing.” They continue to talk about how hard they work to make sure that their sponsored stuff blends in well with their regular content. Same goes with understanding YouTube’s policies on gaining ad revenue from videos. With the Adpocalypse, in which large sponsors started retracting their support for certain types of videos on the platform, they have to heavily consider YouTube’s rules about videos that are eligible for ads. The easy way out would be to edit their content so heavily and differently from their norm just so they can make money off the platform.

Instead, they work hard to game the system, Willems saying that they look at the notes from their quality control process about what needs to be cut, ultimately deciding, “At what point in addressing these notes to make it okay is it no longer a Funhaus video?” (Willems) and pushing forward from there. This was, he continued to say, not just for their brand as

Funhaus, but for audience enjoyment. Retention of an audience is almost more important than recruiting new fans—maintaining hundreds of thousands of eager and active participants in the participatory culture of YouTube is difficult enough. The YouTube landscape is ever-changing into something new and exciting. As Willems continues on to describe, when talking about YouTube’s ad revenue policies, “It just feels like you’re always trying to stay above water. I don’t think there’s any point where we were like, ‘Alright! 29

We’ve made enough money, everyone’s happy, and we can just...walk away.” (Willems) So sticking to what they know will get people to interact is more important than ever. As

Sonntag described, the goal was to continue releasing LPs because of their ease of recording, and then hope that inspires audiences to move to a sponsored video, and gain revenue that way.

Typical of LPers and general YouTubers, the podcasts end with a call to action, as well as a thank you for the audience. And not only creating but demanding that kind of respect with your audience is very important to new media. Wong says it when describing the type of feedback they would solicit from RocketJump’s audience, “I think if there isn't a setup expectation of respect for your work as a creator, you create an entitled fanbase.”

(Wong), and this seems to be a more difficult cross to bear in terms of LPs. A LP can easily be seen by an audience as “just someone playing a video game”, but Funhaus demands that their audience know the amount of work that goes into creating their content, thus demanding respect for their work as comedians, as content creators, as producers. In turn, you gain creators and pages dedicated to your work, a nice kind of feedback loop outside senseless consumption. LPs, I feel, are unique in this sense—Wong stated that in his career, he never really had any popular creators in his fanbase create things. Funhaus, however, has tons of active artists, dedicated meme pages, a twitter page titled @Gif_Haus that creates gifs and clips of them (with a follower count of over 51k), and various other active creators on a range of social media sites. Sonntag says about these creators:

I want to buy them a beer and offer a genuine thanks. I've gushed at Maudorator [owner of GifHaus on Twitter] a number of times. And YOU, Nikki - your participation in the Funhaus community is the reason I'm writing this right now. Seeing people express creativity as inspired by anything I've been involved with is probably the most satisfying part of the process. It's one thing to put a baby out into the world and have people laugh at 30

it (maybe this analogy isn't working), but to see that baby go on and make other babies... ok yes this is working. I guess it's the creative equivalent of having grandchildren, and I don't think I'd ever be able to fully express my gratitude about that.

Funhaus displays their gratitude in a number of ways, either through retweets or comments on Twitter, or even exclusive content for those who have spent money on premium memberships, like RoosterTeeth First (membership on the RT site that has perks), or a YouTube channel membership.

Mutual respect is a key component of continuing to create LP content online. Just as much as the audience depends on the producers to make content to consume, producers also depend on the audience to like, comment, subscribe, and spread the word to people who they think would listen. The best form of advertisement, as the saying goes, is word of mouth. Garnering this kind of respect can be scary, especially in the age of new media and of parasocial relationships becoming more commonplace, but a healthy audience-producer relationship can go a long way in terms of success in the massive battlefield of YouTube content creation.

Conclusion and Reflection

Overall, I believe that Funhaus is a good model to understanding how to healthily cultivate audience interactions in the LP community. There are some advantages they have over smaller creators or single-person teams, like being able to have many points of contact with fans in order to get their ideas across, but the core concepts still ring true. The LP world is inherently more interactive than other forms of content on YouTube due to the playable nature of the video games, allowing audiences to view their idealized player participating in video games. Finding a way to handle this level of interactivity in a space 31 that is seemingly clouded by this threat of the parasocial relationships can be incredibly difficult. Members of Funhaus themselves have had creepy DMs, personal stalkers, the whole nine yards of what can be considered healthy relationships. But from my experience, and from what Funhaus seems to put out into the world, maintaining a healthy relationship with fans is what continues to keep these LP videos at the top of the food chain.

Seeking out this level of audience interaction seems to be unique to new media,

YouTube videos included. There is an extra level included in LPs, being that audience can suggest games to play, solutions for problems, and in Funhaus’ case, people they want to see starring in more content on their channel. Funhaus has made it abundantly clear that audience interaction functions as somewhat of a producer-producer relationship.

Obviously they all bounce ideas off each other to come up with ideas for videos, but some come along through the audience. Demo Disk would not be able to continue without audience members sending in disks. Wheelhaus wouldn’t be the same without a fan-created website that randomly generates games for them to play. And overall, without people watching their videos, their content would simply cease to exist, not unlike any other forms of media like television and movies. Seeing how Funhaus picks and chooses their interactions with the audience is a good guide for understanding more broadly how these relationships are formed in the LP world.

There were, of course, a few problems with my method of research. Podcasts, especially the two I used for my research, basically function as public interviews with the

Funhaus members, therefore skewing their answers to be acceptable to public consumption. This podcast serves as a platform for the hosts to form an authentic self to 32 present by disclosing certain information about themselves. Microcelebrity, as stated over and over again, is about creating this idealized self that is put out to the world. Although this open-ended format allowed for more truth, this has the same effect as a public interview, where you put your best face forward and hope nobody pries too deeply. If I were to continue on with this research, the personal interviews would be conducted as planned. The members expressed great interest in being included in this research, and I would feel as though my findings would be much more detailed and open about the way the Funhaus audience is considered in the production of content.

By conducting this content analysis, I hope to provide insight into the LP world, and specifically how audience-producer relations can be helpful to maintain on a small scale.

There is a lot of conversation in the LP community about toxic relationships getting wildly out of hand, as well as research on LPs as a whole. New media such as this invites itself to generalized research in order to understand the topic as a whole and make assumptions about the whole entire source of media. I am not saying that the way that Funhaus regards their audience is universal for LPers or even YouTube as a whole, as evidenced by some of

Freddie Wong’s sentiments regarding the audience. But, in trying to understand community-specific behaviors towards being an attentive audience for the creators,

Funhaus provides a pretty sane model in how to cultivate an active and excited group of people. They put in hard work in order to view their audience as not just numbers to achieve, but people who are invested in them as people and will support them any way they can. The YouTube landscape can be an absolute wasteland, and understanding an example of profiting in the LP world while still respecting fans can encourage further 33 research into audiences for this type of content. This research can also be compared to interactions within other fanbases, on other YouTube channels, and even other social media sites, to gain an understanding of how to navigate this landscape successfully.

There are obvious tensions between being a content creator who produces LPs for fun, and being a business that makes money off of a product. Time and again the Funhaus members have not only stressed that they do this job because they love playing video games with their friends, but that they are a business who relies on making money off the platform. The two sides of YouTube production cannot exist separately—in order to cultivate an audience that respects you and your content as more than just a video that magically gets uploaded, some type of relationship has to be maintained between audience and producer. If, like Wong mentions, you have an “entitled audience”, a LP group can fall pretty quickly into a negative feedback loop, which then turns into an unhealthy audience mindset. The audience is the same as the numbers below every video, after all. Being transparent about the fact that Funhaus is a business that creates content for money is a ​ ​ large part of the way Funhaus maintains this relationship.

Because LPs encourage over-investment in personalities because of their interactive nature, Funhaus seems to work on relationship management constantly. Putting a limit to their relationship with the audience while also regarding them highly as a voice into their content, is key to their continued success on the platform. This respect is something to look up to, and I hope more research is conducted in the future to see if these sentiments are echoed throughout the LP world, with creators big and small. Like and subscribe for more content like this (Every YouTube Video, ever). 34

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