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YouTube “Let's Play”s are preserving video game history

341 points by danso 8y ago

d33 8y ago
You can only talk about preservation if you actually can pull the content out. It's not like Google doesn't shut down a handful of projects early - at some point they might decide to wipe unprofitable videos as well and we might end up with no preservation whatsoever.
- velcrovan 8y ago
  https://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-dl/index.html https://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-dl/index.html
- thatannoyingguy 8y ago
  But there are people who are constantly downloading the let's plays of those youtubers, so there will nearly alway be a copy of a video if it isn't on youtube and it might end up on archive.org later on
  - nostalgk 8y ago
    Are there any concerted efforts to archive these videos currently?
  - ru999gol 7y ago
    Are there really? I do watch a lot of let's plays and sometimes download them in bulk, but I don't keep them around for long. 1080p60 takes a lot of space and recently a lot are even in 4k.
    - zrobotics 7y ago
      You just need to visit r/datahoarders to verify this claim. No, I don't understand it either, but it is definitely something people do.
- danso 7y ago
  Hopefully fans are archiving dedicated channels, like speedrunning groups, e.g. AGDQ, which is easy with youtube-dl's playlist command-line option. I'm probably being naive but deleting unprofitable videos seems like a remote risk compared to DMCA takedowns. But even without legal issues, YT seems to be finding more and more ways to stuff ads into the normal video viewing experience.
velcrovan 8y ago
Does YouTube have any incentive to “preserve” anything once it costs them more money than it brings in? If not, maybe it's a little early to say they are actually preserving anything. (The article does kind of acknowledge this.) Maybe its real role is as a link in a chain that leads to /r/datahoarders
- cobookman 8y ago
  You overestimate the cost of storage at this scale. It's totally worth them storing the data given the marginal cost. A 10TiB HDD is only 150$ retail. These videos can likely be stored in less than 200MiB on average. Storage has gotten cheaper YoY
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - kibwen 7y ago
    I'd like someone to do the math on that 200MiB estimate. YouTube stores every video at multiple resolutions, and has replicas in data centers all around the world.
    - zegl 7y ago
      For low-traffic videos they likely only keep a copy in a single region.
      - 1f60c 7y ago
        That, and I’m sure they employ “cold storage” using slower (and cheaper) spinning disks.
      - netsharc 7y ago
        Interestingly they could also just keep the best resolution version of rare videos, and have really powerful encoders if anyone suddenly asked for a lowres version. Then they can deliver as well as cache the lowres version in case someone else wants to look at it an hour later, but maybe drop it after a week of no access.
plibither8 8y ago
Could the story be renamed to 'How YouTube's "Let's Play"s are Preserving Video Game History'?
- danso 8y ago
  Good suggestion, and done. (I originally submitted it with the headline as formatted in the article, How YouTube let's plays are preserving video game history)
- Yajirobe 7y ago
  why
nostalgk 8y ago
Owing to that I simply no longer have space or money to repair my older consoles, I've often turned to these let's plays to relive some of my favorite video games. With every new console generation, backwards compatibility is discussed as one of the main points of contention, yet continually it is shelved. Because of this, I am skeptical of the rumors of the supposed universal compatibility that the Playstation 5 may have. I will note, as someone who hasn't played since the 360, that Xbox appears to be taking steps in the right direction. I hope that continues to put pressure on Sony to allow their own games to be compatible with the new consoles, and maybe Nintendo as well to offer better virtual console offerings (a long shot, I'm sure).
- jon-wood 7y ago
  The XBox One's emulation is fantastic in the odd occasion I've used it to play a 360 game - other than the shape of the controller you'd be hard pressed to tell that you're not in fact using an XBox 360.
  - stordoff 7y ago
    Actually in a lot of cases, the games run better on Xbox One[1], and an increasing number are enhanced for the Xbox One X, which means that by default they run at a 9x higher resolution (so 720p -> 4K; 3x vertical, 3x horizontal). You can see here[2] some comparisons for Forza Horizon and the difference is quite striking. [1] https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2016-vs-xbox-one-backward-compatibility https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2016-vs-xb... [2] https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2018-forza-horizon-back-compat-looks-stunning-at-4k https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2018-forza...
    - nostalgk 7y ago
      This is especially striking and a huge step in the right direction, in my opinion. Oftentimes these days I've turned to emulation to older games due to the resolution on, say, PSX games being very low, but often easily scalable through an emulator. I do hope the industry trends towards this.
SimeVidas 8y ago
Until something happens to Google, and youtube.com goes down (^_^;). Can we consider any website to be permanent?
- pcpie 7y ago
  Can we consider electricity to be permanent?
  - mrob 7y ago
    Seeing as electricity is a commodity, made by many different suppliers, we can consider it much closer to "permanent" than a website existing at the whim of a single company.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- Narishma 7y ago
  You don't even need to go that far. They can just decide to remove the video for any reason, or block it in some parts of the world. This happens all the time.
jordigh 8y ago
Call me old-fashioned, but I often prefer screenshot-based LPs. LParchive is a great resource for those. I did enjoy Void Burger's video LP of Silent Hill but I liked that she used subtitles for commentary instead of her voice (I think the only time she spoke was to grumble after a particularly frustrating game over).
- surye 7y ago
  This makes me think, YouTube could really use multiple audio tracks that can be selected by the end user for commentary in general, not just LPs.
  - frosted-flakes 7y ago
    This is something I've always wished for. That way, I could turn off the annoying background music that makes it hard to hear what's being said, or if there's a copyright strike against some music, only the music track gets deleted.
  - jplayer01 7y ago
    I don't understand why this isn't already a thing. The audio is already separate from the video on their end.
ru999gol 7y ago
Unfortunately disk space is still expensive and rather limited, its unfeasible to really preserve YouTube in any meaningful sense. Maybe someday, like Google Video, YouTube videos will disappear forever.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- nullandvoid 7y ago
  Perhaps we may have a data revolution before the point of having to delete this old content arrives. I remember watching something on the possibility of storing data within DNA ( the long-term storage possibilities looked very promising not that long ago ). Is there any other exciting tech which may be on the horizon / advancements in this field?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
Noos 7y ago
I don't know if they are. Emulating games is not really preserving them in a sense, because it can't reproduce the hardware or experience as it actually was very well. Like you can play Ridge Racer type 4 in emulation, but part of that game's history was the special controller it was bundled with, which let you twist the middle of it to enable analog steering wheel control. Like you can't emulate Boktai without the solar sensor on it, and also you don't get the sense of how dark the game boy advance's screen is. Or another example is Trace Memory for the Nintendo DS, which made use of the fact that the DS can close like a book (to simulate stamping on an ink pad) or that the screen is reflective when closed at an angle (to cause two screens to reflect into each other to make a single word.) It works to show a boosted version of the original game, but something like sprite flicker or having to use passwords to continue gets dropped out. Or something like the dreamcast's VMU, which displays info on it as you play or can be used for minigames to boost the character in the main game. The games kind of get divorced from the hardware and media they were played on, which reduces them some.
- reificator 7y ago
  So you're saying that if I emulate I can not only play these older games, but I also don't have to deal with limiting hardware and annoying gimmicks? Count me in!
- aasasd 7y ago
  > having to use passwords to continue Nothing like writing down forty Japanese hieroglyphs in ‘Captain Tsubasa.’ I don't have a remote knowledge of Japanese of any of Asian languages.
- jonhohle 7y ago
  > which reduces them some This is absolutely true, however, I favor availability over attempting to recreate the experience perfectly. There is, in fact, no perfect way to recreate the experience because everyone’s experience differs. I played 8- and 16- and even 32-bit systems over RF on a 19” Magnavox, recording gameplay to VHS. Others may have gotten Ridge Racer secondhand and never had the custom controller. A CRT was integral to my experience, but is impractical for most people. I enjoy retro gaming and go through stupid lengths to get classic systems looking good on modern displays. It’s expensive, takes up a ton of space, and requires a depth of knowledge in broadcast standards and signal processing beyond what most are willing to dig into. When I want to sit down and enjoy a favorite game with my kids, Virtual Console, Classic/Mini systems, or emulators (software or hardware) allow us to focus on having fun together. Cycle accurate reproduction doesn’t come into play.
gallerdude 7y ago
I love Let's Plays, I basically grew up watching them. As a kid a little interested in video games, they gave me a lot of context of how games changed overtime (how the transition to 3D affect Mario, Sonic, and Zelda), which gradually lead me into Computer Science. I only had a few friends as interested in video games as I was, so it was huge to see these people who knew everything about their favorite games. And most importantly, Let's Plays are really casual, the people who commentate are funny, and it feels like hanging out on someone's couch. I remember when I accompanied my mom to her spin class, I was reminded a lot of Let's Plays - the instructor would give some commentary to a shared enjoyed activity.
shmerl 7y ago
What you need to preserve it are games sold on GOG and other DRM-free stores.
- drbawb 7y ago
  Completely agree. There's no "preserving" a game that requires online-services to run. As an example: I can play CS 1.6 as long as I have binaries for the client & server. (As well as an OS to run them.) Overwatch, on the other hand, I can only play for as long as Activision/Blizzard continue to operate the servers. They won't do that indefinitely: running dedicated servers in regional datacenters dotted across the globe isn't free. Once OW stops being profitable those servers will go dark. The same holds for any number of games that rely on DRM & proprietary online services to run. Videos of the game being played on YouTube may be preserving _one person's experience_ of the game, but it's not preservation of the game. In my opinion a "video game preservation effort" looks more like the communities producing server emulators for now-defunct MMORPGs, and less like people recording their screen in OBS for their ten minutes of fame.
- clarry 7y ago
  Nah, you need pirates. You need something like what what.cd was, an archive built by enthusiasts driven by quality and the desire to have untampered original copies. (Plus patches & cracks when needed). You need abandonware sites. GOG and other DRM-free stores are subject to the whims of publishers & developers and random rightsholders. They are not in the business of archiving games. They will host censored versions, patched versions that differ from original releases, you don't get original ISOs and you don't get to choose your patch level, you don't get to reject tweaks that break compatibility with the systems the said games were originally supported on, etcetra. And then games get pulled from stores, for any number of reasons. If you want an archive, don't leave it to a commercial entity who aren't and couldn't be in the archival business even if they wanted to. GOG doesn't want it, what they want is a curated storefront and it's notoriously hard to get your game on GOG, because they don't want it. You know all this, I know you do.
  - shmerl 7y ago
    GOG is surely quite curated, but for older games they usually don't have many objections. There is also itch.io where there is almost no curation at all. As for preserving in other ways - I agree, you can't expect any specific store to be around in the future. Internet Archive also work on preserving old games.
nindalf 7y ago
> If you rip out all the pages of existential angst and whining from Hamlet and jump straight to him stabbing motherfuckers, you lose the understanding of the full experience. Thought this use of "motherfuckers" was unnecessary, but then I remembered the plot of Hamlet.
- devoply 7y ago
  I see what you did there, Oedipus.
  - pretendscholar 7y ago
    Eye see what you did
minimaxir 7y ago
It's worth noting that video game LPs as a format in general have been on a downtown lately, likely because streaming (a la Twitch) has been on the rise, is more profitable, and requires substantially less post-production work. The implosion of the Something Awful forums which incentivized the creation of high production-value LPs didn't help.
- Qwertystop 7y ago
  What happened to SA?
- greiskul 7y ago
  True. And one extremely sad thing for conservation, is that Twitch does NOT save all streams forever, it only keeps vods around that have been marked (I think by the creator?) as interesting. In one of those speedrun history videos, there was actually a case of a world record in a game, that was streamed, had many people witness it, but was not saved, and deleted by Twitch, and now we are not exactly sure how the run was actually performed, we just have the time for it. Luckily I think the record I mention was broken, but I can imagine that there are similar important moments out there that will be lost before anyone notices their value. Imagine if we only had Twitch Vods of PT, and nobody actually saved them cause at the time there was no point to it, and they were all lost now.
cabaalis 7y ago
Non-techies that are my age don't get the value of let's plays. When I was a kid, it was NES and then Sega. You'd go over to your friend's house and would take turns playing Mario, Ninja Gaiden, Contra, etc. When you weren't playing, you were watching your friend play. Sure, some games were multi-player, but not all of them. Let's plays capture that same feeling of watching your friend play the game.
- JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
  Should I point out the obvious that you aren't friends with the youtuber doing the Let's Play? You can't form a real two-way bond with one another, and that is the foundation of friendship. Real friendship could bloom in many other ways and you guys could go get a pizza, go climb Everest, help them work on their car, etc. In a nutshell, that describes my fears and reservations about the way the current age is going. It's all watching and commenting and not enough back and forth interaction and doing.
  - falcolas 7y ago
    You may not be their friend, but they are (frequently) interacting with you.
  - Tehnix 7y ago
    It’s different but similar. Streamers usually build a community around their streams, and this is the part that is equivalent to the friendship part in the “physical let’s play”.
  - ryanstorm 7y ago
    There's a concept called Parasocial interaction that describes the relationship between an audience and a media personality (originally observed for tv personalities, but more recently YouTube and internet ones apply too). "Viewers or listeners come to feel and consider media personalities almost as friends." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_interaction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_interaction
  - zrobotics 7y ago
ErikAugust 7y ago
What Archive.org does to preserve actual games (ROMs) should be talked about. YouTube does not have the right motives in place to thought as reliable in this regard.
JohnFen 7y ago
YouTube is not a good place to preserve anything, though...
pmarreck 7y ago
https://archive.org/ https://archive.org/ is preserving it by letting you play them right in the browser via emulators compiled to Emscripten. For example here is the Macintosh version of Dark Castle, which I spent some number of hours winning at the time (circa 1986, digitized sound was still a brand-new thing) https://archive.org/details/mac_DarkCastle_1_2 https://archive.org/details/mac_DarkCastle_1_2 If you hit "Options" you'll notice the familiar WASD keyboard control layout. Well, this is the earliest game I'm aware of that used that layout... Here's The Dungeon Revealed, an early Mac dungeon-crawler I also spent a lot of time in: https://archive.org/details/TheDungeonRevealedMacintosh https://archive.org/details/TheDungeonRevealedMacintosh Here's Crystal Quest, the first color Mac game (although the emulation is in black&white which was also supported): https://archive.org/details/CrystalQuest_2_2_5M https://archive.org/details/CrystalQuest_2_2_5M Here's NetTrek, one of the first LAN multiplayer games I ever played (was fun!): https://archive.org/details/NetTrekTheRealVersionMacintosh https://archive.org/details/NetTrekTheRealVersionMacintosh And then there is Bolo, the one game I wish there was a modern-day version of that is remotely similar: https://archive.org/details/BoloMacintosh https://archive.org/details/BoloMacintosh (Wish this was the color version, but anyway... It was a network tank battle game where you could capture points and build autotargeting defense turrets by harvesting trees via sending out your tank pilot (who was then vulnerable and could get killed, the respawn penalty was not trivial as I recall), it was INCREDIBLY fun at the time, literally hours in the computer lab with a group of other nerds) It's amazing that I can even give other people a hands-on look at this stuff in their own browser. It's too bad that I can't show off the early network-gaming the same way (firing up Bolo or NetTrek in different browsers on the same LAN... It's probably possible to do, right?)
- TAForObvReasons 7y ago
  Emulators don't tell the whole story. Sometimes features depend on the physical game, as in the case of mario tennis and the n64 transfer pak https://youtu.be/QbRkBTMRxZQ?t=653 https://youtu.be/QbRkBTMRxZQ?t=653
  - pmarreck 7y ago
    I know. But I don't see how watching a "Let's Play" is going to get you much closer to those experiences
HHalvi 7y ago
I find myself hearing about weird titles & demos in a lot of places (IRC's, Comments on Gaming Forums and Other places) and search for their videos all the time. And I do go back from time to time to appreciate how far gaming has come and for the memorabilia of childhood games by watching the gameplay/trailers of the same. Someone needs to step in and do a Gameplay/Letsplay database of sorts for future reference maybe?
linuxftw 7y ago
At this point, saving video games seems like saving examples of drinking glasses from you local discount store. Humanity simply can't save a copy of everything from all time. We should let more go. By preserving everything, we're decreasing signal to noise, IMO.
- stordoff 7y ago
  Incidentally, a point raised in Metal Gear Solid 2 (2001): > But in the current, digitized world, trivial information is accumulating every second, preserved in all its triteness. Never fading, always accessible.[...]All this junk data preserved in an unfiltered state, growing at an alarming rate. > an overabundance of digital information -- the world will drown in the coming flood of information
ccnafr 7y ago
Depends on the "Let's Play" quality. Most I've seen are just garbage. Only a handful of channels are actually playing these games without curse words or social commentary
Nition 7y ago
The article is written as if YouTube started the trend of "Let's Plays", and that it's the only place you'll find them. As far as I know it really started with the "Let's Play!" subforum on forums.somethingawful.com, many of which are now archived outside of the forums at lparchive.org.
unixhero 7y ago
XBoxAhoy aka Ahoy is the best retro-documentary channel I've ever seen: https://www.youtube.com/user/XboxAhoy https://www.youtube.com/user/XboxAhoy Highly recommended!
asyncanup 7y ago
Couldn't agree more. But how will YouTube itself will be preserved beyond Google's economic interests?
godelski 7y ago
> It’s a long-observed fact that the phenomenon of the YouTube let’s play has benefits beyond just entertaining viewers and gradually introducing teenagers to neo-Nazism via YouTube’s algorithm. This is really poor wording. Maybe s/benefits/affects? Because I don't think anyone (well maybe neo-Nazis) think "introducing teenagers to neo-Nazism via YouTube's algorithm" is a benefit.
- Noumenon72 7y ago
  That's why it's funny -- because no one would say that seriously, so there's a contrast between the serious tone and the content. Rock Paper Shotgun is a funny site, and manages to gently editorialize like this without seeming strident.
simonebrunozzi 7y ago
On this topic: I'm sure there are a few "epic" let's plays that have left a mark in history, for most games. You need to be a gamer to know, though. To the gamers on HN: can you post your favorite "let's play", specify which game and year it is, and maybe why you like it so much?
- wingerlang 7y ago
  I'd guess the opposite, that there is not a single video/series that have left any impact. I think they are quite internal to specific communities. Maaaaaaybe Freemans Mind, but that's more of a comedy "series".
- hnick 7y ago
  I watch them mostly for self-indulgent reasons, so I don't think a non-gamer would enjoy many. The main reasons are to preview a new game before buying, to relive a childhood game, see the end of games I remember not completing, or to watch someone go through a game I've finished and see how they react to various situations. Depending on the game and streamer this can be entertaining for different reasons, such as their personality or skill level. On the last point a recent one I enjoyed was Joseph Anderson's Undertale blind playthrough. The game is notorious for throwing unexpected meta-narrative about games, gamers, and even stream viewers, and seeing a critic encounter that where he didn't expect it was entertaining. It also has a very difficult boss as "punishment" for certain choices you make on a typical third playthrough, and he definitely proved himself as a competent gamer when it only took him a few hours to beat that encounter. I could hear the change in tone as he got quiet and entered the zone and knew it wouldn't be long. Like all Let's Plays though it is long and probably best viewed while you are doing something else.
- roryokane 7y ago
  There are Let’s Plays that I think are better than others, but I don’t think any of them, even the best of them, are popular enough to be part of gamer culture. However, the gameplay video that I think comes closest to leaving “a mark in history” is this single video by pannenkoek2012: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpk2tdsPh0A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpk2tdsPh0A “SM64 - Watch for Rolling Rocks - 0.5x A Presses (Commentated)”. That’s the only video I’ve seen referenced in comments on videos of completely different games. The references are to “parallel universes” and “0.5 A-presses”, terms that are explained in this video. I don’t know if you could call this video a Let’s Play, though, since the commentary is recorded after the gameplay, it’s not part of a larger playthrough of the whole game, and the video has custom-made animations to aid in explaining the game, not just raw gameplay footage. It’s quite interesting, though, especially to a programmer. Among popular Let’s Play series, one I recommend is the Achievement Hunter Minecraft Let’s Play series: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA689F118656DB852 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA689F118656DB852. (Yup, they snagged the username “LetsPlay”.) In each episode, members of the Achievement Hunter group of players play some custom-made activity together in Minecraft. I don’t like the personalities of the players/commentators that much, but the immense creativity of the challenges and the players’ occasional funniness make it worth it. After 100 episodes it started getting repetitive though. A few other lesser-known Let’s Plays I recommend: • Cryaotic’s Undertale playthrough, Pacifist route: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwPDQB0EVbY&list=PLeqwXTaiY-Oz7jlfV6MO9A9MW2K_e_ONF https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwPDQB0EVbY&list=PLeqwXTaiY-.... He is generally calm and empathic, which means he isn’t distracting and he roleplays a pacifist character well. • After that, NateWantsToBattle and Brett Ultimus’s Undertale playthrough, Genocide route: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6kpGtgy3bQ&list=PL_IirJiXdcmVqs5EWX2J3b_t72FYf6_8f https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6kpGtgy3bQ&list=PL_IirJiXdc.... They add a sarcastic “don’t-care” layer of commentary on top of everything that makes the violence easier to enjoy without feeling bad for the characters who are killed. • CarlSagan42’s playthroughs of online levels in Super Mario Maker: https://www.youtube.com/user/CarlSagan42/videos https://www.youtube.com/user/CarlSagan42/videos. He is better at the game than me, so he can beat levels that I couldn’t, and when he does a hard trick or glitch that is necessary to beat the level, he explains it for the watchers. Also, when a level does something interesting with the limited objects that can be used, he goes into the level editor and figures out how it works. He doesn’t throw a tantrum when he fails, and his video-end responses to watcher questions about science are often interesting, as well. The downsides of his channel are occasional Twitch subscriber banners interrupting the video, and Carl sometimes missing the obvious solution, which viewers call “Carl Blind”. There are more Let’s Play series I have watched and enjoyed, but this list is big enough already.
myself248 7y ago
I wish we had a "let's play" for mundane stuff like logging into WinCIM and AOL back in the day. Nobody would've thought to commit those things to VHS.
baud147258 7y ago
In addition to video let's play, I've also read a lot of image Let's play on forums. On one hand, you have the issue of link rot, with LPs which relied on Dropbox and Imageshack becoming lost. On the other hand, it's way better for interaction between the player and the reader, with the writer able to offer the reader to choose on different in-game choices. Of course such things are possible with video, but I don't think it's as easier on a forum than on YT. Image Let's play are also superior for text-heavy games, it's way easier to skim a text on a series of pictures (or typed if the author has taken the time to do so) than in a video.

341 points by danso 8y ago

d33 8y ago

You can only talk about preservation if you actually can pull the content out. It's not like Google doesn't shut down a handful of projects early - at some point they might decide to wipe unprofitable videos as well and we might end up with no preservation whatsoever.

velcrovan 8y ago
https://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-dl/index.html https://ytdl-org.github.io/youtube-dl/index.html
thatannoyingguy 8y ago
But there are people who are constantly downloading the let's plays of those youtubers, so there will nearly alway be a copy of a video if it isn't on youtube and it might end up on archive.org later on
- nostalgk 8y ago
  Are there any concerted efforts to archive these videos currently?
- ru999gol 7y ago
  Are there really? I do watch a lot of let's plays and sometimes download them in bulk, but I don't keep them around for long. 1080p60 takes a lot of space and recently a lot are even in 4k.
  - zrobotics 7y ago
    You just need to visit r/datahoarders to verify this claim. No, I don't understand it either, but it is definitely something people do.
danso 7y ago
Hopefully fans are archiving dedicated channels, like speedrunning groups, e.g. AGDQ, which is easy with youtube-dl's playlist command-line option. I'm probably being naive but deleting unprofitable videos seems like a remote risk compared to DMCA takedowns. But even without legal issues, YT seems to be finding more and more ways to stuff ads into the normal video viewing experience.

velcrovan 8y ago

Does YouTube have any incentive to “preserve” anything once it costs them more money than it brings in? If not, maybe it's a little early to say they are actually preserving anything. (The article does kind of acknowledge this.) Maybe its real role is as a link in a chain that leads to /r/datahoarders

cobookman 8y ago
You overestimate the cost of storage at this scale. It's totally worth them storing the data given the marginal cost. A 10TiB HDD is only 150$ retail. These videos can likely be stored in less than 200MiB on average. Storage has gotten cheaper YoY
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- kibwen 7y ago
  I'd like someone to do the math on that 200MiB estimate. YouTube stores every video at multiple resolutions, and has replicas in data centers all around the world.
  - zegl 7y ago
    For low-traffic videos they likely only keep a copy in a single region.
    - 1f60c 7y ago
      That, and I’m sure they employ “cold storage” using slower (and cheaper) spinning disks.
    - netsharc 7y ago
      Interestingly they could also just keep the best resolution version of rare videos, and have really powerful encoders if anyone suddenly asked for a lowres version. Then they can deliver as well as cache the lowres version in case someone else wants to look at it an hour later, but maybe drop it after a week of no access.

plibither8 8y ago

Could the story be renamed to 'How YouTube's "Let's Play"s are Preserving Video Game History'?

danso 8y ago
Good suggestion, and done. (I originally submitted it with the headline as formatted in the article, How YouTube let's plays are preserving video game history)
Yajirobe 7y ago
why

nostalgk 8y ago

Owing to that I simply no longer have space or money to repair my older consoles, I've often turned to these let's plays to relive some of my favorite video games. With every new console generation, backwards compatibility is discussed as one of the main points of contention, yet continually it is shelved. Because of this, I am skeptical of the rumors of the supposed universal compatibility that the Playstation 5 may have. I will note, as someone who hasn't played since the 360, that Xbox appears to be taking steps in the right direction. I hope that continues to put pressure on Sony to allow their own games to be compatible with the new consoles, and maybe Nintendo as well to offer better virtual console offerings (a long shot, I'm sure).

jon-wood 7y ago
The XBox One's emulation is fantastic in the odd occasion I've used it to play a 360 game - other than the shape of the controller you'd be hard pressed to tell that you're not in fact using an XBox 360.
- stordoff 7y ago
  Actually in a lot of cases, the games run better on Xbox One[1], and an increasing number are enhanced for the Xbox One X, which means that by default they run at a 9x higher resolution (so 720p -> 4K; 3x vertical, 3x horizontal). You can see here[2] some comparisons for Forza Horizon and the difference is quite striking. [1] https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2016-vs-xbox-one-backward-compatibility https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2016-vs-xb... [2] https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2018-forza-horizon-back-compat-looks-stunning-at-4k https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2018-forza...
  - nostalgk 7y ago
    This is especially striking and a huge step in the right direction, in my opinion. Oftentimes these days I've turned to emulation to older games due to the resolution on, say, PSX games being very low, but often easily scalable through an emulator. I do hope the industry trends towards this.

SimeVidas 8y ago

Until something happens to Google, and youtube.com goes down (^_^;). Can we consider any website to be permanent?

pcpie 7y ago
Can we consider electricity to be permanent?
- mrob 7y ago
  Seeing as electricity is a commodity, made by many different suppliers, we can consider it much closer to "permanent" than a website existing at the whim of a single company.
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Narishma 7y ago
You don't even need to go that far. They can just decide to remove the video for any reason, or block it in some parts of the world. This happens all the time.

jordigh 8y ago

Call me old-fashioned, but I often prefer screenshot-based LPs. LParchive is a great resource for those. I did enjoy Void Burger's video LP of Silent Hill but I liked that she used subtitles for commentary instead of her voice (I think the only time she spoke was to grumble after a particularly frustrating game over).

surye 7y ago
This makes me think, YouTube could really use multiple audio tracks that can be selected by the end user for commentary in general, not just LPs.
- frosted-flakes 7y ago
  This is something I've always wished for. That way, I could turn off the annoying background music that makes it hard to hear what's being said, or if there's a copyright strike against some music, only the music track gets deleted.
- jplayer01 7y ago
  I don't understand why this isn't already a thing. The audio is already separate from the video on their end.

ru999gol 7y ago

Unfortunately disk space is still expensive and rather limited, its unfeasible to really preserve YouTube in any meaningful sense. Maybe someday, like Google Video, YouTube videos will disappear forever.

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nullandvoid 7y ago
Perhaps we may have a data revolution before the point of having to delete this old content arrives. I remember watching something on the possibility of storing data within DNA ( the long-term storage possibilities looked very promising not that long ago ). Is there any other exciting tech which may be on the horizon / advancements in this field?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

Noos 7y ago

I don't know if they are. Emulating games is not really preserving them in a sense, because it can't reproduce the hardware or experience as it actually was very well. Like you can play Ridge Racer type 4 in emulation, but part of that game's history was the special controller it was bundled with, which let you twist the middle of it to enable analog steering wheel control. Like you can't emulate Boktai without the solar sensor on it, and also you don't get the sense of how dark the game boy advance's screen is. Or another example is Trace Memory for the Nintendo DS, which made use of the fact that the DS can close like a book (to simulate stamping on an ink pad) or that the screen is reflective when closed at an angle (to cause two screens to reflect into each other to make a single word.) It works to show a boosted version of the original game, but something like sprite flicker or having to use passwords to continue gets dropped out. Or something like the dreamcast's VMU, which displays info on it as you play or can be used for minigames to boost the character in the main game. The games kind of get divorced from the hardware and media they were played on, which reduces them some.

reificator 7y ago
So you're saying that if I emulate I can not only play these older games, but I also don't have to deal with limiting hardware and annoying gimmicks? Count me in!
aasasd 7y ago
> having to use passwords to continue Nothing like writing down forty Japanese hieroglyphs in ‘Captain Tsubasa.’ I don't have a remote knowledge of Japanese of any of Asian languages.
jonhohle 7y ago
> which reduces them some This is absolutely true, however, I favor availability over attempting to recreate the experience perfectly. There is, in fact, no perfect way to recreate the experience because everyone’s experience differs. I played 8- and 16- and even 32-bit systems over RF on a 19” Magnavox, recording gameplay to VHS. Others may have gotten Ridge Racer secondhand and never had the custom controller. A CRT was integral to my experience, but is impractical for most people. I enjoy retro gaming and go through stupid lengths to get classic systems looking good on modern displays. It’s expensive, takes up a ton of space, and requires a depth of knowledge in broadcast standards and signal processing beyond what most are willing to dig into. When I want to sit down and enjoy a favorite game with my kids, Virtual Console, Classic/Mini systems, or emulators (software or hardware) allow us to focus on having fun together. Cycle accurate reproduction doesn’t come into play.

gallerdude 7y ago

I love Let's Plays, I basically grew up watching them. As a kid a little interested in video games, they gave me a lot of context of how games changed overtime (how the transition to 3D affect Mario, Sonic, and Zelda), which gradually lead me into Computer Science. I only had a few friends as interested in video games as I was, so it was huge to see these people who knew everything about their favorite games. And most importantly, Let's Plays are really casual, the people who commentate are funny, and it feels like hanging out on someone's couch. I remember when I accompanied my mom to her spin class, I was reminded a lot of Let's Plays - the instructor would give some commentary to a shared enjoyed activity.

shmerl 7y ago

What you need to preserve it are games sold on GOG and other DRM-free stores.

drbawb 7y ago
Completely agree. There's no "preserving" a game that requires online-services to run. As an example: I can play CS 1.6 as long as I have binaries for the client & server. (As well as an OS to run them.) Overwatch, on the other hand, I can only play for as long as Activision/Blizzard continue to operate the servers. They won't do that indefinitely: running dedicated servers in regional datacenters dotted across the globe isn't free. Once OW stops being profitable those servers will go dark. The same holds for any number of games that rely on DRM & proprietary online services to run. Videos of the game being played on YouTube may be preserving _one person's experience_ of the game, but it's not preservation of the game. In my opinion a "video game preservation effort" looks more like the communities producing server emulators for now-defunct MMORPGs, and less like people recording their screen in OBS for their ten minutes of fame.
clarry 7y ago
Nah, you need pirates. You need something like what what.cd was, an archive built by enthusiasts driven by quality and the desire to have untampered original copies. (Plus patches & cracks when needed). You need abandonware sites. GOG and other DRM-free stores are subject to the whims of publishers & developers and random rightsholders. They are not in the business of archiving games. They will host censored versions, patched versions that differ from original releases, you don't get original ISOs and you don't get to choose your patch level, you don't get to reject tweaks that break compatibility with the systems the said games were originally supported on, etcetra. And then games get pulled from stores, for any number of reasons. If you want an archive, don't leave it to a commercial entity who aren't and couldn't be in the archival business even if they wanted to. GOG doesn't want it, what they want is a curated storefront and it's notoriously hard to get your game on GOG, because they don't want it. You know all this, I know you do.
- shmerl 7y ago
  GOG is surely quite curated, but for older games they usually don't have many objections. There is also itch.io where there is almost no curation at all. As for preserving in other ways - I agree, you can't expect any specific store to be around in the future. Internet Archive also work on preserving old games.

nindalf 7y ago

> If you rip out all the pages of existential angst and whining from Hamlet and jump straight to him stabbing motherfuckers, you lose the understanding of the full experience. Thought this use of "motherfuckers" was unnecessary, but then I remembered the plot of Hamlet.

devoply 7y ago
I see what you did there, Oedipus.
- pretendscholar 7y ago
  Eye see what you did

minimaxir 7y ago

It's worth noting that video game LPs as a format in general have been on a downtown lately, likely because streaming (a la Twitch) has been on the rise, is more profitable, and requires substantially less post-production work. The implosion of the Something Awful forums which incentivized the creation of high production-value LPs didn't help.

Qwertystop 7y ago
What happened to SA?
greiskul 7y ago
True. And one extremely sad thing for conservation, is that Twitch does NOT save all streams forever, it only keeps vods around that have been marked (I think by the creator?) as interesting. In one of those speedrun history videos, there was actually a case of a world record in a game, that was streamed, had many people witness it, but was not saved, and deleted by Twitch, and now we are not exactly sure how the run was actually performed, we just have the time for it. Luckily I think the record I mention was broken, but I can imagine that there are similar important moments out there that will be lost before anyone notices their value. Imagine if we only had Twitch Vods of PT, and nobody actually saved them cause at the time there was no point to it, and they were all lost now.

cabaalis 7y ago

Non-techies that are my age don't get the value of let's plays. When I was a kid, it was NES and then Sega. You'd go over to your friend's house and would take turns playing Mario, Ninja Gaiden, Contra, etc. When you weren't playing, you were watching your friend play. Sure, some games were multi-player, but not all of them. Let's plays capture that same feeling of watching your friend play the game.

JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
Should I point out the obvious that you aren't friends with the youtuber doing the Let's Play? You can't form a real two-way bond with one another, and that is the foundation of friendship. Real friendship could bloom in many other ways and you guys could go get a pizza, go climb Everest, help them work on their car, etc. In a nutshell, that describes my fears and reservations about the way the current age is going. It's all watching and commenting and not enough back and forth interaction and doing.
- falcolas 7y ago
  You may not be their friend, but they are (frequently) interacting with you.
- Tehnix 7y ago
  It’s different but similar. Streamers usually build a community around their streams, and this is the part that is equivalent to the friendship part in the “physical let’s play”.
- ryanstorm 7y ago
  There's a concept called Parasocial interaction that describes the relationship between an audience and a media personality (originally observed for tv personalities, but more recently YouTube and internet ones apply too). "Viewers or listeners come to feel and consider media personalities almost as friends." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_interaction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasocial_interaction
- zrobotics 7y ago

ErikAugust 7y ago

What Archive.org does to preserve actual games (ROMs) should be talked about. YouTube does not have the right motives in place to thought as reliable in this regard.

JohnFen 7y ago

YouTube is not a good place to preserve anything, though...

pmarreck 7y ago

https://archive.org/ https://archive.org/ is preserving it by letting you play them right in the browser via emulators compiled to Emscripten. For example here is the Macintosh version of Dark Castle, which I spent some number of hours winning at the time (circa 1986, digitized sound was still a brand-new thing) https://archive.org/details/mac_DarkCastle_1_2 https://archive.org/details/mac_DarkCastle_1_2 If you hit "Options" you'll notice the familiar WASD keyboard control layout. Well, this is the earliest game I'm aware of that used that layout... Here's The Dungeon Revealed, an early Mac dungeon-crawler I also spent a lot of time in: https://archive.org/details/TheDungeonRevealedMacintosh https://archive.org/details/TheDungeonRevealedMacintosh Here's Crystal Quest, the first color Mac game (although the emulation is in black&white which was also supported): https://archive.org/details/CrystalQuest_2_2_5M https://archive.org/details/CrystalQuest_2_2_5M Here's NetTrek, one of the first LAN multiplayer games I ever played (was fun!): https://archive.org/details/NetTrekTheRealVersionMacintosh https://archive.org/details/NetTrekTheRealVersionMacintosh And then there is Bolo, the one game I wish there was a modern-day version of that is remotely similar: https://archive.org/details/BoloMacintosh https://archive.org/details/BoloMacintosh (Wish this was the color version, but anyway... It was a network tank battle game where you could capture points and build autotargeting defense turrets by harvesting trees via sending out your tank pilot (who was then vulnerable and could get killed, the respawn penalty was not trivial as I recall), it was INCREDIBLY fun at the time, literally hours in the computer lab with a group of other nerds) It's amazing that I can even give other people a hands-on look at this stuff in their own browser. It's too bad that I can't show off the early network-gaming the same way (firing up Bolo or NetTrek in different browsers on the same LAN... It's probably possible to do, right?)

TAForObvReasons 7y ago
Emulators don't tell the whole story. Sometimes features depend on the physical game, as in the case of mario tennis and the n64 transfer pak https://youtu.be/QbRkBTMRxZQ?t=653 https://youtu.be/QbRkBTMRxZQ?t=653
- pmarreck 7y ago
  I know. But I don't see how watching a "Let's Play" is going to get you much closer to those experiences

HHalvi 7y ago

I find myself hearing about weird titles & demos in a lot of places (IRC's, Comments on Gaming Forums and Other places) and search for their videos all the time. And I do go back from time to time to appreciate how far gaming has come and for the memorabilia of childhood games by watching the gameplay/trailers of the same. Someone needs to step in and do a Gameplay/Letsplay database of sorts for future reference maybe?

linuxftw 7y ago

At this point, saving video games seems like saving examples of drinking glasses from you local discount store. Humanity simply can't save a copy of everything from all time. We should let more go. By preserving everything, we're decreasing signal to noise, IMO.

stordoff 7y ago
Incidentally, a point raised in Metal Gear Solid 2 (2001): > But in the current, digitized world, trivial information is accumulating every second, preserved in all its triteness. Never fading, always accessible.[...]All this junk data preserved in an unfiltered state, growing at an alarming rate. > an overabundance of digital information -- the world will drown in the coming flood of information

ccnafr 7y ago

Depends on the "Let's Play" quality. Most I've seen are just garbage. Only a handful of channels are actually playing these games without curse words or social commentary

Nition 7y ago

The article is written as if YouTube started the trend of "Let's Plays", and that it's the only place you'll find them. As far as I know it really started with the "Let's Play!" subforum on forums.somethingawful.com, many of which are now archived outside of the forums at lparchive.org.

unixhero 7y ago

XBoxAhoy aka Ahoy is the best retro-documentary channel I've ever seen: https://www.youtube.com/user/XboxAhoy https://www.youtube.com/user/XboxAhoy Highly recommended!

asyncanup 7y ago

Couldn't agree more. But how will YouTube itself will be preserved beyond Google's economic interests?

godelski 7y ago

> It’s a long-observed fact that the phenomenon of the YouTube let’s play has benefits beyond just entertaining viewers and gradually introducing teenagers to neo-Nazism via YouTube’s algorithm. This is really poor wording. Maybe s/benefits/affects? Because I don't think anyone (well maybe neo-Nazis) think "introducing teenagers to neo-Nazism via YouTube's algorithm" is a benefit.

Noumenon72 7y ago
That's why it's funny -- because no one would say that seriously, so there's a contrast between the serious tone and the content. Rock Paper Shotgun is a funny site, and manages to gently editorialize like this without seeming strident.

simonebrunozzi 7y ago

On this topic: I'm sure there are a few "epic" let's plays that have left a mark in history, for most games. You need to be a gamer to know, though. To the gamers on HN: can you post your favorite "let's play", specify which game and year it is, and maybe why you like it so much?

wingerlang 7y ago
I'd guess the opposite, that there is not a single video/series that have left any impact. I think they are quite internal to specific communities. Maaaaaaybe Freemans Mind, but that's more of a comedy "series".
hnick 7y ago
I watch them mostly for self-indulgent reasons, so I don't think a non-gamer would enjoy many. The main reasons are to preview a new game before buying, to relive a childhood game, see the end of games I remember not completing, or to watch someone go through a game I've finished and see how they react to various situations. Depending on the game and streamer this can be entertaining for different reasons, such as their personality or skill level. On the last point a recent one I enjoyed was Joseph Anderson's Undertale blind playthrough. The game is notorious for throwing unexpected meta-narrative about games, gamers, and even stream viewers, and seeing a critic encounter that where he didn't expect it was entertaining. It also has a very difficult boss as "punishment" for certain choices you make on a typical third playthrough, and he definitely proved himself as a competent gamer when it only took him a few hours to beat that encounter. I could hear the change in tone as he got quiet and entered the zone and knew it wouldn't be long. Like all Let's Plays though it is long and probably best viewed while you are doing something else.
roryokane 7y ago
There are Let’s Plays that I think are better than others, but I don’t think any of them, even the best of them, are popular enough to be part of gamer culture. However, the gameplay video that I think comes closest to leaving “a mark in history” is this single video by pannenkoek2012: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpk2tdsPh0A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpk2tdsPh0A “SM64 - Watch for Rolling Rocks - 0.5x A Presses (Commentated)”. That’s the only video I’ve seen referenced in comments on videos of completely different games. The references are to “parallel universes” and “0.5 A-presses”, terms that are explained in this video. I don’t know if you could call this video a Let’s Play, though, since the commentary is recorded after the gameplay, it’s not part of a larger playthrough of the whole game, and the video has custom-made animations to aid in explaining the game, not just raw gameplay footage. It’s quite interesting, though, especially to a programmer. Among popular Let’s Play series, one I recommend is the Achievement Hunter Minecraft Let’s Play series: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA689F118656DB852 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA689F118656DB852. (Yup, they snagged the username “LetsPlay”.) In each episode, members of the Achievement Hunter group of players play some custom-made activity together in Minecraft. I don’t like the personalities of the players/commentators that much, but the immense creativity of the challenges and the players’ occasional funniness make it worth it. After 100 episodes it started getting repetitive though. A few other lesser-known Let’s Plays I recommend: • Cryaotic’s Undertale playthrough, Pacifist route: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwPDQB0EVbY&list=PLeqwXTaiY-Oz7jlfV6MO9A9MW2K_e_ONF https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwPDQB0EVbY&list=PLeqwXTaiY-.... He is generally calm and empathic, which means he isn’t distracting and he roleplays a pacifist character well. • After that, NateWantsToBattle and Brett Ultimus’s Undertale playthrough, Genocide route: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6kpGtgy3bQ&list=PL_IirJiXdcmVqs5EWX2J3b_t72FYf6_8f https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6kpGtgy3bQ&list=PL_IirJiXdc.... They add a sarcastic “don’t-care” layer of commentary on top of everything that makes the violence easier to enjoy without feeling bad for the characters who are killed. • CarlSagan42’s playthroughs of online levels in Super Mario Maker: https://www.youtube.com/user/CarlSagan42/videos https://www.youtube.com/user/CarlSagan42/videos. He is better at the game than me, so he can beat levels that I couldn’t, and when he does a hard trick or glitch that is necessary to beat the level, he explains it for the watchers. Also, when a level does something interesting with the limited objects that can be used, he goes into the level editor and figures out how it works. He doesn’t throw a tantrum when he fails, and his video-end responses to watcher questions about science are often interesting, as well. The downsides of his channel are occasional Twitch subscriber banners interrupting the video, and Carl sometimes missing the obvious solution, which viewers call “Carl Blind”. There are more Let’s Play series I have watched and enjoyed, but this list is big enough already.

myself248 7y ago

I wish we had a "let's play" for mundane stuff like logging into WinCIM and AOL back in the day. Nobody would've thought to commit those things to VHS.

baud147258 7y ago

In addition to video let's play, I've also read a lot of image Let's play on forums. On one hand, you have the issue of link rot, with LPs which relied on Dropbox and Imageshack becoming lost. On the other hand, it's way better for interaction between the player and the reader, with the writer able to offer the reader to choose on different in-game choices. Of course such things are possible with video, but I don't think it's as easier on a forum than on YT. Image Let's play are also superior for text-heavy games, it's way easier to skim a text on a series of pictures (or typed if the author has taken the time to do so) than in a video.