Nintendo To Begin YouTube Affiliate Program

[KingVamp]

By the YouTube affiliate program gets up and running ... Nintendo won't have to worry about "YouTube LP pirates" because no one will care about Nintendo.
.....etc

Spoiler

Congrats. You won the biggest hyperbole of the year award.

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

Well ..doesn't seems like that bad of a approach for a big player like Nintendo ...is this that bad? ...never saw others like Sony and Microsoft pavement their way so others could use their contents like this (don't know if others care, or just remove content that they don't like without asking questions..)

It's because they don't care, they love free advertising, whereas Nin10doh thinks the internet is a terrible place that ruins all of the things. I guess they assume that by setting up an affiliate program they'll be able to control their content on Youtube rather than have everyone "ruin our games "

 

[FAST6191]

You're talking about video walkthroughs with no planning or voiceovers involved, I'm talking about Let's Plays and proper ones focus on recording the fun of interacting with the game, not sharing the game's full story (if there is one to begin with).

If you are going to define them like that then sure, looking around it probably started out like that (the longer form stuff being a "longplay") but the area does seem to now encompass everything.

 

[drakorex]

Let's Playing isn't advertising, it might as well be compared to fucking video game piracy.

One time I watched my friend play Metroid Prime all the way through.
Quick! What's Nintendo's address so I can give them my money?

 

[osirisjem]

whereas Nin10doh thinks the internet is a terrible place that ruins all of the things.

Maybe Nintendo CAN stop the Internets.

 

[Dork]

One time I watched my friend play Metroid Prime all the way through.
Quick! What's Nintendo's address so I can give them my money?

Redmond, Washington

There offices close in less than an hour so you better get there fast.

 

[FAST6191]

One time I watched my friend play Metroid Prime all the way through.
Quick! What's Nintendo's address so I can give them my money?

Depending upon where you are in the world and when you did it you may have committed the greater crime of lending or borrowing a game.

 

[Gahars]

On the one hand, at least they won't be taking down hour long podcasts for using clips from their trailers.

On the other hand, this is still stupid. A lot of the let's play community is cancerous, don't get me wrong, but at the same time, it's the sort of tumor you'd do more harm in trying to remove. Let's Plays can be a huge boon to a game, promoting titles to an audience that might not have cared otherwise. PewDiePie is... well, he's a lot of things, but I guarantee you games like Amnesia would not have sold as well as they did without his videos and other videos like them.

Wrong or right, as a company, you're much better off working with the Let's Players than trying to cut them out. There's plenty of games to choose from nowadays, and if you're not going to play ball, it's easy for them to take their "business" elsewhere.

 

[FireGrey]

I don't know why foxi4 is raging, they've already been putting ads on YouTubers videos for months now, the fact that they are starting a program to give some ad revenue to youtubers is positive news, we don't even know how much they are giving them, it could even be more than before Nintendo did content ID claims

 

[Hells Malice]

I used to hate LPs, till I found some people I actually enjoyed watching/listening to.
I've bought a LOT of games because i'll watch an LP of it and then think "God I REALLY want to play this game."

Nintendo is just doing what Nintendo does best, not understanding todays people. They're fucking themselves out of a tremendous amount of free advertising, and simultaneously making themselves look incredibly stupid. Nintendo has not aged well as a company at all.

 

[Gahars]

I don't know why foxi4 is raging, they've already been putting ads on YouTubers videos for months now, the fact that they are starting a program to give some ad revenue to youtubers is positive news

Not really considering almost every other company lets these videos be as is. This is a baby step forward when they're a mile behind.

we don't even know how much they are giving them, it could even be more than before Nintendo did content ID claims

This is going to be on top of the cut Youtube already takes, so no, it won't be. For all intents and purposes, think of it as a Nintendo tax.

This would be all fine and dandy if Nintendo existed in a vacuum, but it doesn't. There's plenty of other developers out there that won't cut into Let's Players' revenue, so why would they bother with Nintendo?

 

[Daku93]

That reminds me of this: "The new Smash Bros. won't have a story mode because the cutscenes of the last one ended up being uploaded to youtube."


I personally often watch some Let's Plays for a few episodes, and if I think that I would enjoy that Game, I buy it for myself and stop watching the Let's Play until I've made more progress in the game than the person let's playing it, to not spoil myself.

 

[chavosaur]

snip

I don't even know what to reply to this argument other then what the dillydamn fuck.
First of all, not every lets play is based on just a playthrough of the game to show you how to beat said game. There is a difference between a WALKTHROUGH and a LETSPLAY. A lets play exists for the sole purpose of providing the user entertainment through banter and in game antics. If you've ever watched a RoosterTeeth let's play or Gamegrumps, this would be painfully obvious.

Second, You're argument about the soda is fucking stupid. You argue that seeing a person drinking a Pepsi isn't terrible advertising compared to a full LETSPLAY that shows the entire game. Guess what. You watched a person drink the Pepsi. Did you taste it? Did you get the EXPERIENCE of Pepsi from watching someone drink it? Absolutely not. Do you get the experience of a game just by watching someone play it? Hell no. Just because I watch someone playthrough Resident evil 4 doesn't make me not want to play it OR experience it for myself. It affirms my want of the game.


If you're so pissed off about let's plays ruining game experience, why aren't you shitting on Game Guides? I've been able to buy Physical Game Guides since the 80's, I don't see you shitting your pants over those either. Those "ruin the experience" and "make money off the content of the game don't they?"

And lastly the argument of "they shouldn't make money off this it's wrong." Is so goddamn stupid. They already bought the game so the game makers made money off said game. If anything, people watching them PLAY said game will convince them to want to BUY the game, resulting in MORE sales of the game.

I've never heard of someone not buying a game because "well I can just watch someone else play it." I guess back in the 80's when you sat next to your buddy on the couch and watched him play Mario, you just said "well I already watched him play it I guess I don't have to buy it now." Fuck that. You would run home to mom and say you wanted to get it too so you could both play it and experience it in your own way.

I've never heard someone so pissed off about let's plays before, it's the most asinine and bizzare thing I have EVER heard.

 

[Qtis]

Don't get me wrong I'm not criticizing anyone who finds LP entertaining, because I'll be honest I found some to be enjoyable. However if someone is profiting off of it and the publisher wants it down they have every right to. They shouldn't be demonized for making that move when there was nothing inherently wrong with. In this case with Nintendo it seems there was a compromise so they're not going anywhere.

Remixing material is legal and should not be copyrightable or monetized by a third party. Let's plays can be equated to mix tapes from a few decades ago.

 

[MarioFanatic64]

Yeah, some people have managed to make enough money from YouTube to get by. Good for them. But if you really expect to make a living from making videos of yourself playing video games then you need to face reality. YouTube ad revenue should at most be a little extra cash in the wallet.

 

[Monty Kensicle]

Yeah, some people have managed to make enough money from YouTube to get by. Good for them. But if you really expect to make a living from making videos of yourself playing video games then you need to face reality. YouTube ad revenue should at most be a little extra cash in the wallet.

I'm sorry but recording yourself doing something and producing anything of quality takes a lot of money for microphones, cameras, capture cards, editing software and computer to edit on not to mention the games and consoles themselves.

If you plan on putting all that time and money in you'd be stupid not to try and make a living from it.

 

[Gahars]

Yeah, some people have managed to make enough money from YouTube to get by. Good for them. But if you really expect to make a living from making videos of yourself playing video games then you need to face reality. YouTube ad revenue should at most be a little extra cash in the wallet.

...Except the reality is that Let's Players can earn millions a year from their videos, on top of things like sponsorships and promotions. These things make people more than a living.

It might seem bonkers that Youtube Ad revenue can earn people so much, but it serves the purpose of attracting talent and effort. Without it, a lot of content producers couldn't afford to make their videos.

 

[kuwanger]

The thing, it's not that Nintendo thinks "the internet is a terrible place that ruins all of the things". It's that they've got too many producers who are stuck in the past when FMV was really important.

"Unfortunately, the movie scenes we worked hard to create were uploaded onto the internet." Sakurai lamented. "You can only truly wow a player the first time he sees [a cutscene]. I felt if players saw the cutscenes outside of the game, they would no longer serve as rewards for playing the game, so I've decided against having them."

This same mindset is precisely the reason why Metroid: Other M turned out to be such a mess*--with literally an hour of unskippable cutscenes the first play through. And here's yet another example where they're so gun-ho about video and how it somehow replaces game play. Yet I don't play SSBB for the cutscenes, no matter how much of a "reward" they are--and here's a tip, the "wow" factor is basically lost on most people regardless if they go out of their way to try to find out information about something without first experiencing it. The internet may make it easier to choose to ruin the experience and "spoil" it, but it's nothing unique to video or audio. I text description in a review of the cutscenes in SSBB would be just as damaging to the "wow" factor, and game reviews have been around long before the internet.

Overall, game play is king. Nintendo says it all the time, but their producers clearly don't think it. They think FMV is king--which makes sense if you've got such a comparatively horrible system CPU/GPU wise and want to fake high quality, "wow" graphics. Good thing the Gameboy, Wii, DS, etc were were it's at with graphics or their competitors would have mopped the floor with them. Oh, right, yea...

*Okay, one could argue a lot of other things as well like the characterizations of Samus being entirely pathetic...but if you could skip the cutscenes, you'd never really have to think about it in much the same way you really just don't care the reason why Mario is doing what he's doing or Sonic is or whoever and you're generally able to ignore instead of being forced to watch because the producer "worked hard to create" them which means the gamer MUST watch them. Sure, at some level, a "die hard" fan (and I'd say I'm one of Metroid) would care, but then you can just enjoy the game and try not to think too much about how yet another producer wants to spin the story in some fashion that so goes against your preconceptions. Hence, I still like Metroid: Other M because it's a good game gameplay wise (and I guess I'm enough of a masochist who can stomach bad movies).

 

[chavosaur]

If you think people can't make extraordinary ammounts of money off stupid game videos, take a look at Roosterteeth.
Red Vs Blue was successful enough to create a fucking COMPANY, that can throw its own cons (RTX), create successful content and benefit from it. Seriously.

 

[grossaffe]

The way I see it, Let's Plays are the equivalent of Mystery Science Theater 3000. They played a movie and talked over it with their witty banter. They had to either acquire the license for the films or had to use movies that had lapsed copyrights. Nowadays you have the spiritual successor, RiffTrax, which instead of licensing movies, just makes an audio track that will sync up with the movie. The movie creators still get their cut, though, from the viewer needing to purchase the moving to play alongside the RiffTrax.

The difference with Let's Plays is that they don't bother with the whole licensing thing. They just go out there and make money using somebody else's product without permission. Nintendo is protecting their intellectual property and have created a method to essentially mass-license through Youtube. Otherwise, the proper course of action for Let's Players, which apparently has been ignored to this point, is to individually come to terms with Nintendo or whatever company to license their product to make money off of.