Don Caven

Video games are very popular. Gaming consoles are now present in over 50% of American households, and in 2015, “a device that can play games” was found in 80% of households in the United States. Similarly, around 75% of Americans are active YouTube users; many of those users are watching videos about video games. In fact, as of 2017, more people are watching video games on the internet than HBO, Netflix, and Hulu combined. Video games are the subject of a massive amount of content on YouTube, and virtually the entirety of content on livestreaming sites like Amazon’s Twitch.tv and Microsoft’s Mixer. Some of this gaming content takes the form of trailers, reviews, and critiques put out by publishers and media organizations; some of it is “machinima,” or narrative stories animated using gameplay and video game engine assets. The most popular and influential gaming channels on the internet, however, are the ones known as “Let’s Play” channels; these content creators play video games and publish or livestream their gameplay on the web; the videos draw viewers in with the promise of gameplay footage, and then convince those viewers to stick around with improvisational comedy and situational humor. Amongst gaming journalism conglomerates like IGN, Polygon, and Gamespot, which have been producing online video reviews since the dawn of the online video format, and long-standing machinima shows like Rooster Teeth Productions’ Red vs. Blue, which holds the record for the longest running episodic web series at 16 seasons and counting, “Let’s Players” have taken the internet by storm since the early 2010s. Whether they’re playing kid friendly games like Minecraft and teaching younger viewers about creation and friendship, or making off-color jokes while mowing down opponents one after another in an giant, meme-filled battle to the death in games like Fortnite, these gamers have a tight grip on many of YouTube’s top spots, hold records for some of the most-viewed streams on Twitch.tv, and draw massive crowds for live events in cities around the world.

The biggest question, when asking about videos of other people playing video games, is “why?” If four in five Americans have access to a device that will itself play games, why are they instead choosing to spend hours of their time watching other people play games? Alongside convenience and the fact that online streaming content from YouTube and Twitch is effectively free, Let’s Plays provide a viewer with a sense of companionship. Epic single player stories like Bioware’s Mass Effect series offer an impressive level of an immersion, but sometimes require dozens of hours of solitary gameplay. Conversely, in a series of ten-minute YouTube videos, one can watch the game play out in bite sized chunks while someone else plays through it, often joking and laughing along the way. Viewers can watch as much or as little as they want, either by toiling through every video in a one-hundred-plus- episode playthrough and watching their favorite sequences over, or by skipping through to attain just the basic plot points and be done with it. All the while, viewers are watching the actions and listening to the voice of the content creator. Humans are attracted to intelligence; sometimes it’s displayed through humor, and sometimes it’s shown in the ability to analyze problems and respond aptly. Watching and listening to someone else play video games provides viewers with plenty of ammo to gauge the cognitive fitness of the player. While many of the original Let’s Players strove to be competent at the games they were playing before anything else, the majority of popular gamers on the internet now have a basis in comedy and personality. They riff on the gameplay, starting bits from character dialogue, joking and laughing at glitches, and telling anecdotes related to the events occurring on screen. While the gamers themselves are often talking to a screen or to their co-op partners, viewers on the other end are consuming everything from the comedy stylings of a rowdy bunch of Texans playing Hitman to the from-the-heart life stories told by a stoner-turned-rock star playing Super Mario Sunshine. Whether a viewer is watching on a phone on the bus or on their laptop at school or even on their own TV at home, listening to a content creator talk while watching them play games provides a feeling like sitting on a couch playing games with a friend, and is an on-demand dispenser of laughter and companionship. Livestreams on Twitch, YouTube, and Mixer drive this feeling even further; instead of just watching games after they’ve been recorded and posted online, viewers can watch as their internet friends play through games in real time, leaving messages in the chat to be seen and responded to either by the streamer or any one of the other thousands of viewers watching with them. While game reviews and trailers are a valid way to lean back and relax for a few minutes at a time, they are effectively just research; similarly, while it may be funny, listening to a reviewer talk about how cantaloupes relate to video games is a study about video games but not actual gameplay footage, and thus doesn’t accomplish the same purpose as a Let’s Play nor does it establish the same draw. Effectively, watching a let’s play is like backseat gaming with a friend.

The psychological hold of Let’s Plays on YouTube and the like are huge influences on the streaming services they inhabit, as well as pop culture and the video game industry as a whole. Gamer Felix Kjellberg, known to the internet as PewDiePie, is the most-subscribed user on YouTube with over 76 million subscribers; Kjellberg is closely followed by an Indian music video conglomerate, but the other channels beneath him have more than thirty million fewer subscribers, and many of them are corporate channels rather than solo content creators6. Kjellberg’s channel is estimated to earn more than $8,000,000 in ad revenue per quarter, and nearly half of that is taken back as a revenue stream for YouTube itself. Let’s Plays by Kjellberg, as well as others like Achievement Hunter, of Electronic Arts’ 2010 title Skate 3 spawned so much renewed interest that EA printed more copies of the game four years after its release and beyond, long after the discontinuation of the original disks.

Achievement Hunter was spawned as a division of Austin, Texas-based Rooster Teeth Productions, after Red Vs.Blue co-creator and voice actor Geoff Ramsey became tired of producing solely narrative content9. While the channel was originally spawned as an instructional walkthrough site to help viewers acquire achievements in Xbox, Playstation, and Steam games, it later evolved into the now-traditional Let’s Play format, Achievement Hunter even going so far as to acquire the official YouTube channel “LetsPlay.” Since the division, the LetsPlay YouTube channel has acquired more than double the number of subscribers of Achievement Hunter, and as of December 2018 has over one third of the subscribers of Rooster Teeth’s own YouTube channel despite being around for only a fraction of the time and producing solely non-narrative content. Achievement Hunter grew LetsPlay, adopting other popular internet personalities like Mica Burton and groups such as Screw Attack Gaming, Funhaus (formerly known as Machinima’s Inside Gaming), and The Creatures (which later disbanded and formed Let’s Play and sketch group CowChop).

The popularity of the Let’s Play format prompted Rooster Teeth and Achievement Hunter to produce the first live Let’s Play event, Let’s Play Live, which after its wildly successful pilot event in their home city of Austin, was developed into a traveling show: In 2016 and 2017, Let’s Play Live sold out shows at major venues in Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles, and toured through numerous other cities on the East Coast of the United States. In 2018, a Let’s Play Live tour was announced for Australia, becoming the first international event of its kind. Let’s Play Live paved the way for other similar events, such as popular Fortnite streamer Ninja (a.k.a. Tyler Blevins) playing in a live tournament in Las Vegas with fans for a chance at a $50,000 prize, and Game Grumps’ aptly named Game Grumps Live. Game Grumps Live even drove Game Grumps creator Arin Hanson to create a touring production company that specifically caters to internet-based talent, aiming to provide a constructive, passion-focused outlet for smaller content creators to produce live events without the fear of being taken advantage of by larger conglomerates.

Reviews provide an undeniably necessary source of criticism. With everyone from indie producers like Mojang to triple-A studios like Bethesda Softworks able to release “early-access” versions of their games in buggy, unfinished states of development, the gaming industry is in serious need of a watchdog now more than ever. While review-specific channels like Jim Sterling do a good job of calling developers out on poorly produced cash-grab titles, they aren’t wholly necessary anymore, as nearly every new game is played by reviewers and streamers alike. Content creators with large audiences are often provided free copies of new games, similarly to how reviewers are provided early access to movies and games before they release. Just like reviewers, Let’s Players are sometimes subject to suspicion that their enthusiasm and willingness to promote a game is solely due to a monetary bias; however, also just like a reviewer with journalistic integrity, any Let’s Player with respect for their image and their fanbase will refuse to create positive content for a poor product. Effectively, Let’s Plays can all but replace game reviews; long-form Let’s Plays are slightly less convenient than a four-minute summary of a game’s strengths and weaknesses but do provide hours of new and exciting content for viewers to both learn about a game and listen to their favorite online personality.

Gaming content is big. Nearly as many people subscribe to watch PewDiePie play video games as have purchased Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft Auto V, one of the best-selling video games of all time, to play for themselves. Let’s Plays open the experiences of amazing games like Earthbound and Dark Souls to people who might never play them for worry of the length of time needed to complete the games or the cost-benefit question. Let’s Plays are easily the biggest development in content format of the 2010s, taking advantage of everything from pre-existing video hosting sites to online streams and even live performances. Celebrities of all media are giving the format attention, and Let’s Players are becoming celebrities themselves. With a chokehold on YouTube, a hand in Amazon’s pocket, and a demographic as broad as a world-cuisines food court, Let’s Plays steal the show from all other forms of gaming content.