A Lets Play of Knytt Underground

I've started doing lets plays and I've been looking forward for a long time (I love Nifflases style) so I'm doing a lets play of Knytt Underground.

part 1	part 2
Part 3	part 4
Part 5	Part 6
Part 7

Thank you Nifflas for making this game.

Nice!  It's always entertaining to watch other people's playthroughs.

Although I always end up going "NO, DO THIS, I DIDN'T DO THAT AND I WANT TO SEE WHAT IT DOES!"

"Go that way" I want to see that" "What was that".  I surprised major game companies don't pay people to LP their games, it's the best form of advertising for games.

I surprised major game companies don't pay people to LP their games, it's the best form of advertising for games.

Why bother paying someone when there's gamers doing it for free? 
I like watching Let's Plays, but I think they can be counter-productive as advertisement at times, as they may spoil the story and/or secrets, so that potential players could think it's not worth buying the game after you've watched someone else play it. There are of course people who buy a game after watching an LP, but I believe this works best for older games.

Why bother paying someone when there's gamers doing it for free?

Thats a good point.

I like watching Let's Plays, but I think they can be counter-productive as advertisement at times, as they may spoil the story and/or secrets, so that potential players could think it's not worth buying the game after you've watched someone else play it.

True, but there are many story based games I've replayed many times. A story based game should have good enough game play or story and game play mix to keep people coming back and only get a small part of the experience by just watching it. There are several games I've played because of watching let splays of them.

It's really weird, but when I watched your vods, it feels like I'm seeing KU in slow motion. I counted a few times how long it takes to walk across an empty screen.

Your time =  6-7 secs
My time = 4 secs

Is this the PS3 version, or does recording slow it down?

Quote from: Lone Wolf on December 31, 2012, 08:32:12

I surprised major game companies don't pay people to LP their games, it's the best form of advertising for games.

Why bother paying someone when there's gamers doing it for free? 

Because people get annoyed when they're watching an LP and while they have already realized the solution the LP'er still needs half an hour to figure it out? Or perhaps because they want to play for themselves, make their own decisions.

Saying this, well, there will be people who decide not to buy it because of this. Whether the amount of people that do buy it after watching an LP is larger than the former number, in other words, if there is a profit in the amount of people buying the game, I cannot say.

Saying this, well, there will be people who decide not to buy it because of this. Whether the amount of people that do buy it after watching an LP is larger than the former number, in other words, if there is a profit in the amount of people buying the game, I cannot say.

I don't know either, that's why I mentioned that I believe LPs of older games are more likely to make watchers buy the game. However, since I don't think any game company has tried to take down gameplay videos of their games, I assume they don't see LPs as a threat to their commercial plans at the very least.

Regarding your first observations, are you suggesting a 'bad' Let's Play (one where the player is often clueless on what to do) is more likely to make people buy the game than a 'good' one?

However, since I don't think any game company has tried to take down gameplay videos of their games, I assume they don't see LPs as a threat to their commercial plans at the very least.

AFAIR, Konamy did do that.

AA: Well, that would be a logical conclusion, but I don't know whether you can just put it like that.
It seems fairly obvious that if an LP of a game is horrible, the watcher will most likely not feel enclined to play it.
However, there are probably a lot more reasons that people watch LP's than just wanting to see the LP so they don't have to buy the game.
For me, a great deal of watching LP's is because they show games I will most likely never play in my whole life, because a: I don't like playing that specific type of game or b: I don't own the console the game is for.

Along with the reasons that people watch LP's in the first place, there's also different things they expect from the LP's that they watch.
Some people like to watch tool-assisted runs, others like 'real LP's' with people talking over the game. There's people who like awesome players, and there's people who just enjoy schadenfreude and love to see people fail. I think it would be difficult, not to say impossible to make such a statement as you did.

Whew, seems like I overdid this a bit. Please don't feel like I'm trying to attack you or anything.

Whew, seems like I overdid this a bit. Please don't feel like I'm trying to attack you or anything.

Not at all.

Just one small question to GrayFace and I'll stop with the thread hijack: I couldn't find out anything about Konami taking down game videos, do you have any links to that? Thanks in advance.

It's really weird, but when I watched your vods, it feels like I'm seeing KU in slow motion. I counted a few times how long it takes to walk across an empty screen.

Your time =  6-7 secs
My time = 4 secs

Is this the PS3 version, or does recording slow it down?

It's an issue with Fraps. When I record with Fraps it slows down the frame rate. When I record the frame rate drops to 30. I had to turn water effects to normal because when they were on high the frame fare dropped a lot when recording while on a screen with water.

However, since I don't think any game company has tried to take down gameplay videos of their games, I assume they don't see LPs as a threat to their commercial plans at the very least.

Some companies have. Off the top of my head I know that Sega has gone DMCA frenzy lately. I can't think of any others off the top of my head  but I know some have. It's not common though.

AA, I watched a video of some YouTuber talking about Microsoft agreement change that would allow such things too, and he mentioned some company that did that. I'm not sure it was Konami. Maybe it was about Sega.

Just like journalist reviews, LPs can be negative, but most of the time the more reviews a game gets the better. As for journalists, companies invite them to the office to see the game and talk to devs, paying for their flights etc. sometimes doing parties or other entertaining events for them. Direct payment is probably too dangerous for reputation, so if it's ever done, it must be a well-kept secret.

Lone Wolf, do you play in full screen? If you set screen resolution to match the game window size in windowed mode, maybe the game wouldn't have to stretch in fullscreen and also Fraps would have smaller area to record.

And for Fraps, the game doesn't have to be in fullscreen anyway. It can record windowed mode just as easily.

And for Fraps, the game doesn't have to be in fullscreen anyway. It can record windowed mode just as easily.

I do record it in a window.