3 ms·

Why do you think content owners would see this as IP theft rather than free advertising? Are people watching play throughs rather than playing it themselves?

• wongarsu 10y ago
  It heavily depends on the game. There are lots of single-player games where the story is much better than the actual game mechanics. Or where watching somebody figure out all the puzzles is more fun than doing it yourself. Here, streamers and let's-players likely cause a decrease in game sales. In simulation and competitive games on the other hand streamers should usually cause more sales then they prevent. As one less recent example, watching Half Life 2 with funny commentary is great, but I have no desire to ever play the game myself.
  • zapt02 10y ago
    Relevant article on a game developer that did not approve of streaming their game: http://www.thatdragoncancer.com/thatdragoncancer/2016/3/24/on-lets-plays http://www.thatdragoncancer.com/thatdragoncancer/2016/3/24/o...
  • robryan 10y ago
    Even if publishers decided to take a hard line on this I don't think it is too big a deal for Twitch. The majority of their viewership is in esports events and the games that are played as esports.
  • Nydhal 10y ago
    Well that just means that developers will start focusing less on story and more on mechanics. In a way, streaming will change what developers focus on when making their games in order to adapt.
• danso 10y ago
  At least some are. I myself watched a playthrough of "Last of Us" and greatly enjoyed it. But because the game is so linear and story-driven, and the gameplay itself doesn't look particularly remarkable, I'll likely never pick up the game, even though considerable resources were obviously expended for voice acting and writing and direction.
• s_kilk 10y ago
  Depends on the game. Many games are only remarkable for their combination of story and aesthetics, with the minute-to-minute play being fairly mundane. In that case I can see a bunch of people just watching a stream and not bothering to play the game themselves. How many of them would have been so pushed as to play the game for themselves anyway... an open question.
  • pavel_lishin 10y ago
    Games like "The Last of Us" and "Uncharted 4" definitely seem more like audience-participation movies. The fight scenes might be fun to play through, but a lot of the good stuff comes from the scenery, the story, and the acting - both voice and capture. I watched Let's Plays of both because I wanted to see the story, and because the players were entertaining. I don't think I'd have enough time or patience to play through either game, but I definitely got value out of the game itself without having played it. It does seem like a gray zone - I experienced content without paying for it, but I didn't experience it the way it was truly meant to be. Did I come by it unfairly?