BW Media Spotlight

The internet has allowed for new forms of entertainment, including watching others doing hobbies. Either as video or live streaming, you can watch people draw, crochet, build model kits, open trading cards, rebuild an F1 car engine, perform open heart surgery (probably), learn how to do things of various levels of importance to the universe or teach you how to do them. AMSR is just someone making noises that calm people. The trick is that the creator has to be entertaining, interesting, and/or informative if not all three. They even made vacation videos interesting, one of the big running gags of conversation and television, proving it was just that your Aunt Edna got more out of her trip to Oxnard that you do watching it versus when Jackiechanfan85b showed off his.

From the early days of the modern internet, one of the first internet born entertainment options are “let’s play’s”, where you watch other people play video games. Now there are streaming channels on Sling and Plex among other freestream channels that are just people playing video games. That started with short videos posted to YouTube and let’s play websites. Then Twitch came along, and now livestreaming those games while talking to and with the audience made the let’s play, live or recorded, a big part of internet and gaming cultures.

And yet there are people who make the games would rather that didn’t happen. Not all, mind you. Smaller studios see them as free advertising, and it wasn’t just Markiplier making Five Nights At Freddy’s so successful it has novels, it’s own theatrical movie, and enough imitators to fill a pizza parlor. No matter how many people were playing the games on the internet, it needed other gamers to also buy the game and play them…or at least buy the game. They have your money, then it’s only the developers who want to see people playing and loving their games unless they’re in it for the messaging or the money. Or both.

An article came out recently by Japanese site Nikkan Sports. Translated by Google Translate for me, comedian Hidetaka Kano was discussing his own streaming and brought up a conversation with Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami. He also said he went to Capcom for permission to stream the game. We’ve seen Nintendo of Japan push back against anyone streaming their games in the belief that watching a stream means less sales rather than more, though there are plenty of indie game developers who would beg to differ. So then the president of Nintendo Of America at the time, Reggie Fils-Aimé, who fought for the let’s play community. I learned of this interview from a Bleeding Fool article by Mike Murphy. I understand where Mikami is coming from, but I’m not sure I share that perspective, which still isn’t as harsh as Murphy made it sound.

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