For me, Let's Plays fall into two categories. Some are like audio commentary tracks on DVDs - they can be entertaining and informative but you'd never listen to

For me, Let's Plays fall into two categories. Some are like audio commentary tracks on DVDs - they can be entertaining and informative but you'd never listen to it without watching the film alone first. Others are more like MST3K/RiffTrax, where it's a particularly bad game that I wouldn't have played anyway made funny by the audio commentary. Some good examples of the latter are the famous Let's Play of Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 [0] or the Retsupurae guys doing Dark Seed [1]. Basically, I've never watched an LP instead of actually playing a game and I've actually avoided watching LPs of games I intend to play at some point, just to avoid spoilers. There might be a few people who have but, overall, the marketing benefit outweighs the downsides (unless, of course, you release an awful game that gets famously ripped apart). Interestingly, Michael "slowbeef" Sawyer, the Something Awful goon who's credited with creating Let's Plays, can't stand a lot of YouTube Let's Players. He and diabetus do Retsupurae [2], which is basically them commenting over other people's commentary tracks and mocking them. [0] http://lparchive.org/Sonic-The-Hedgehog-2006/ http://lparchive.org/Sonic-The-Hedgehog-2006/ [1] http://blip.tv/slowbeef/real-estate-headaches-5568062 http://blip.tv/slowbeef/real-estate-headaches-5568062 [2] http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Retsupurae http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Retsupurae