What makes a good LP?

A dude recently left this comment here on my blog thing:

Hey, Brickroad, I am a youtuber who does stupid little videos, and I started to do a LP recently, how do you suggest I get more popular and or make my LP’s have better quality in general? I am in no way trying to ask for publicity from you though. Thanks,
Talant Ninja.

I’d been meaning to write a general “what I like to see in LPs” post for a while now, and this is the perfect opportunity.

First off, it’s a good thing you’re not asking me for publicity, because I don’t think I could give it! As of this writing I only have 1000 subscribers, and most of my videos only get a few hundred views. That’s a drop in the pond compared to what more hardcore LPers from much larger communities have.

I think our adorable Talent Ninja here is already halfway there, though; he knows what he’s doing on YouTube basically amounts to “stupid little videos”. I think that’s one of the most important things to remember: LPing is just a hobby. It’s not going to make you a million dollars, it’s not going to get you laid, and it’s not going to blossom into a career. Lots of people make a living uploading videos to YouTube, but none of them are doing it by playing Mega Man start to finish.

That said, LPing can be rewarding in a couple of different ways. For one, the sheer amount of labor that goes into recording and editing a video can be immense. It really is hard, time-consuming work. You will have to learn a lot of complicated things, often in imperfect ways. Sometimes things will break and you won’t know why. I have spent hours poring over ancient forum threads on long-lost support websites searching for details about video codecs and sound card workarounds. Just getting the tech straight and making something watchable carries with it a very profound sense of accomplishment, especially if you’re a layman.

The real reward, though, is taking a game you love and sharing it with people who may not have played it, or who may not have experienced it in the way you did. That’s why so many of my LPs are games from my childhood. These are the games I know best. Not only do I get to show them off, but I get to tell the story of how I discovered that game and how it fits into my life as a gamer.

So that would be my first suggestion in making higher quality LPs: have something to say about the game that isn’t just describing the action onscreen. If you know some obscure factoid about the game, share it. If you have an understanding about how the inner mechanics work, share those too. Tell us about the time your brother made you die because he spilled blue Kool-Aid down the back of your shirt. That personal connection of, “Here’s why I like this game, and here’s what I know about it” is sort of the point of a Let’s Play. Without it, we might as well just watch a playthrough sans commentary.

The second thing you can do to make higher-quality LPs is to pick games that work with a video format. No video game goes more than five or six hours without starting to repeat itself, which means you’re going to start repeating yourself. What nuggets of wisdom can you impart during the 108th video of your LP of Final Fantasy X that you didn’t already cover in the first 107? Similarly, I try to avoid games that lack on-screen action. Text-heavy games, or games comprised mainly of still pictures, can often be absolutely entrancing to play, but that doesn’t make them interesting to watch.

Seriously, could you imagine someone just playing through all the puzzles in Professor Layton? Snoozeville.

Popularity is a tougher nut to crack, but honestly, I would not worry about it. Make the videos for yourself, first and foremost. If they’re something you’d want to watch, chances are people like you will want to watch them too. This part was easy for me, since my entire LP library just naturally grew out of the internet community I hang out at. Originally my videos were only playing to an audience of maybe a dozen guys who had tastes and backgrounds roughly similar to mine. YouTube is great, but it’s not really a community, regardless of how many people on your “friends list” would like to think otherwise. If you upload something you and your homies are into, that’s more than adequate.

Keep in mind, my “popularity” isn’t the result of how awesome I am; I LPed a somewhat obscure game with a burgeoning cult following, which eventually got plugged by the creators of that game. That’s where my 1000 subscribers came from: pure dumb luck. It’s not something I ever planned for.

One thing I would caution against: try to resist the temptation of playing hard or bad games and just saying “fuck” a lot. Everyone else is already doing that, and none of them are as funny as they think they are, either. If you really want to be the 4000th person to play I Wanna Be The Guy, pretty much the only way you can distinguish yourself is to be the first person who doesn’t die a million times.

And one final note: upload constantly. Nothing turns internet eyeballs away faster than an empty update cycle. If you put a new video up every day, it could be pretty much anything and at least someone out there will watch. If popularity is the goal, a consistent schedule is probably the most important thing you can do. Shovel the shit fast enough and people will be so busy consuming it they won’t actually notice it’s shit. (You’re probably still better off not producing shit, though.)

So I hope that helps, Talent Ninja Inc., and anyone else who had those same questions. Happy LPing!