Let's Play Discussion Thread - Format, Length, Replies, Et Cetera

Morning, folks.

Let's Plays are about to turn a year old here on Broken Forum -- ZekeDMS started Let's Play Rig N Roll back on January 9th. In the following eleven months, we've had 433 threads start and almost 100,000 posts go up. We've laughed, we've cried, we've looked weirdly at games and we've had a ton of bizarre in-jokes pop up.

But unless I've missed it in game-specific LP, we haven't talked much about the format of the Let's Play.

This thread serves two purposes -- talking about how we each individually write our LPs, and then things about LPs we like and don't like. What I'm hoping to gain here is a better understanding of how everyone else writes, because that interests me as a writer, and everyone's tastes in LPs, because that interests me as a reader.

Nothing negative here is aimed at an individual writer, unless I'm talking smack on myself. 'Cause I suck.

What I've Written

Ancient Japanese Demon Vampires And The Women Who Love Them: Let's Play Hakuoki!
The Shinsengumi At The Spine Of The World - Hakuoki X Icewind Dale II
Katanas and Cannons: Matt and Nate Play Co-Op Fall Of The Samurai (with Nate as my co-op partner)

How I Write

I don't have a schedule or any planning. I play the game I'm playing, take a ton of screenshots, and then a few days later I sit down at my PC, pull the screenshots up in one window, my notes (if any) in another window, and Google Docs in a third. And then I write. Every now and then I'll think of a joke ahead of time that I want to use and I'll jot that down, but most of it is just whatever comes to mind right then as I'm writing. I do it all in Google Docs, then edit my images to 012.jpg, upload them to my blog, and then post the updates.

I think my average Hakuoki update took about two and a half hours to write, mostly due to length of updates -- I'd often have sixty images across seven posts as an update, and filling that much time with pithy one-liners takes a while. Icewind Dale II takes about as much time, thanks to the increased amount of text that I'm writing each update, plus fitting two narratives in.

I tend not to even think about the game in between updates -- as I've said elsewhere, I feel like I do a lot of stuff, between stupid fantasy football awards, a three-sessions-every-two-weeks tabletop roleplaying game, a book I'm trying to write, a full-time job, two full-time cats, and this whole marriage thing. I switch gears pretty quickly and mentally check out of something once I'm done, which causes no end of problems when my wife wants to talk to me about Icewind Dale plans and I respond with, "I'm on the session now, and I don't have any plans!"

I don't think I've ever made three updates in a single week, though the final Hakuoki update was a double-length post because I was flying through the endgame.

Things I Like About Let's Plays

I like that I have no idea who most of you guys are, and I'll explain that. Angie Gallant, Nate, Kalle, Adam B, sinfony, Mind Elemental, I know you guys, I've fought alongside you, we tight. I know who you are. Soli-Chan, Joie de Combat, Randissimo, Ozzo, Kasumi Tsukiko, I don't know who you are, and that's awesome. We've had a ton of new people come on, I'm really happy about that, and I've had some great conversations with you guys on gender roles in videogames and the differences in the protagonist on different routes in Hakuoki. That stuff? That stuff is gold.

I like that I'm getting to read about games that I don't have any interest in, or wouldn't have heard of otherwise. I've read a few dating game LPs, I've read some of the Crusader Kings LPs that show me more of how that game works, and I read the Wargame: EE one that helped me realize that I liked reading about that game a whole lot more than playing it.

I like gimmicks. A general in Pokemon Conquest, a grown-ass woman playing Call of Duty, a tonberry trying to get this girl hitched -- that stuff is great. I try and do this myself. All three of my LPs do something that I hope makes them interesting -- a straight white man playing a dating game for young girls, Icewind Dale II with an extra narrative put on top of it (plus further writing from Rapunzel for interludes), and my faffing about in Fall of the Samurai as a contrast to Nate actually knowing what he's talking about.

I like audience participation. I like being a soldier in XCOM, I like when people pick a route in a game that has defined routes, and I like party-based RPGs where the people in the party pick the general course of action.

I like when games surprise me, and then surprise other people.

Things I Don't Like About Let's Plays

I don't like pages of reaction gifs. I chuckle at some of them, and I've used a gif here and there for comedic effort, but when an update finishes and there are 10-12 posts of various gifs of people freaking out, it's too much. We have a "Like" system for "this was awesome!" feedback, and if there's more feedback to be had I'd like it to be something constructive. Use them sparingly.

I don't like LPs that are just "here is this game, I like it a lot, now watch me play it." This is strictly personal, but I like something extra to my LPs, be it a journey of discovery ("Let's Play this weird game! I have no idea what it is!") or doing something specific and unusual. Would I read an LP of someone playing Final Fantasy 1? No. Would I read an LP of someone doing the White Mage Challenge in Final Fantasy 1? Yes.

I don't like LPs that overdo audience participation. I don't want to see every dialogue option put up to a vote -- you're telling us a story, just tell us the story and go with what happens. I trust you as the writer to make it interesting, and I don't want to vote on how we respond to X character, I want you to respond to X character and GO.

I don't like it when I can't figure out what's going to happen on the other side of your link from your title. This doesn't happen very much. Descriptive titles help a great deal. (As do the tags, of course.)

I don't like when LPs that don't lend themselves to frequent replies/reactions get knocked off the first page of the forum in less than a day. I have no idea how to solve this, really, but it's still something I don't like.

In Closing

None of this is "I think you're dumb and your Let's Play is also dumb." My top two games of the year are a dating game/visual novel and some outright Japanese madness (Hakuoki and Asura's Wrath), and I enjoyed Hakuoki so much that I crammed it into Icewind Dale 2 and made my life super-hard in writing this LP.

I'd just like to talk some about how we all write. I'm interested in how often you guys work on this, how your writing process goes, what gives you trouble, what doesn't give you trouble, et cetera. And what you like, and what you don't like. I'd like for us all to be better writers when December 2013 rolls around.

My two cents:

A Let's Play should, at its core, explain what the game is about and how it's played. Some games lend themselves better to being told through screenshots that explain the status or plot, while others benefit more from description. It's a judgment call as to where the right balance lies, and that depends both on the nature of the game being played and the talent of the person doing the LP.

For me personally, I look at an LP as telling a story through the medium of a video game. Let's Play Super Mario Brothers 2 - despite being one of the best games ever made, would make a lousy LP. Let's Play Diablo II! would be much the same unless someone were to present it in an absolutely awesome creative manner.

What I could do with less of: the otome LPs that are all identical save for different screenshots. Granted, that's because otome games are pretty much all identical save for different screenshots. If you glance through the forum and see that there are a ton of other games similar to the one you want to do a LP of, then you need to find a way to make your presentation unique or all you're doing is wasting bandwidth. I can't count how many LPs I've started reading, and gotten ten posts in only to proclaim "BORED NOW."

Not everyone's going to be Angie Gallant or Matt Bowyer or Elyscape. Not every game is going to have the kind of story that attracts my interest (and since nobody else's interest is relevant, this is gospel truth).

So basically:
- Pick an interesting game.
- If you can't pick an interesting game, choose an interesting way to portray a boring game.
- If you can't do either, write an otome LP.

I'm doing the Tokimemo 4 LP.

I take screenshots and do the writeups while I'm playing the game itself. If I didn't I'd have to either screenshot or translate every single line of dialogue in advance and that just kinda seems like a pain in the ass. Plus it lets you take new pictures right away if you happen to get creepy eyeless blinkshots without noticing.

On occasion I have gotten really drunk while updating the LP. Try and guess which posts my BAC was particularly high for!

I used to update a lot and it kinda fell off recently for various reasons, but mainly one: I'm convinced that a LP is only fun to read if the person playing the game is having fun themself (with certain exceptions, hi Charles). I have every intention of finishing the LP (and try to do at least an update a week) but there have been times when I sat down with a full evening to spare and consciously decided to put it off because I just wasn't feeling it. It really shines through when somebody is writing about a game they love, no matter how good they actually are at writing, and the LPs that give me that kind of impression are the ones I enjoy reading most.

I go back and forth a lot on how much of the game to display and how much to balance with my own text (particularly because I've never really done creative writing); It shows in my thread because I go from transcribing single lines at the start to full conversations in the second run to a sort of middle ground right now. At the start, I was probably a little too eager to describe things in text instead of letting the game speak for itself. I feel the driving force behind most LPs should be that you really like a game and want to show it to people, and sometimes that means shutting up and stepping back a little.

Conversely, if you show a part of a game, you should always be showing it for a reason; I have deleted many, many paragraphs that I just couldn't justify putting in in retrospect. Thinking about what I liked about TM4, which parts of the game I could display that through and how to frame those parts in a post actually occupied me quite a bit for the first two weeks or so. I wasn't super good at it but I like to think I've gotten better.

I dunno if any of this has worked out, but people Like the posts which makes me enormously happy. That's probably a little hypocritical because I always forget to Like posts myself.

The real beauty of an LP is that there are a number of different ways you can do one, depending on the game itself and your own writing style. I don't know that there's a right or a wrong way to do one, just personal preferences about what entertains you and what doesn't. That said, if there is one rule that must be followed in an LP, it's to put your own stamp on it. This in itself isn't very helpful, since there as many ways to do this as there are people, but don't just take screenshots and toss them up there. Dive into the strategy and planning like Nate does, turn your hobby into a rollicking adventure like Nute and Ferdielance, translate a game that's not in English (and present it like a soap opera while you're at it) like Thasero, offer up awesome commentary on the game story like Joie de Combat - or create your own story to coincide with the events like Bleaktea. There are all kinds of ways to make sure we remember your LP; make sure you're using one.

The one thing that does bother me is when people start a new LP thread and it fills up with a few pages of squealing over (the game or something related to the game) and no playing is actually happening. I don't mind reading reactions to the LP when there's actually an LP. But if I went into a new LP thread, I'd like there to be a game there to look at! Or, you know, to be able to find the game instead of having to skip through multiple pages waiting for it to start?

Some of that is, I think, what this subforum was meant to help with, but unless we start getting painfully draconian modding going on (not actually a recommendation) it's going to be hard to swing a change. But basically, I'd like it if commentary in LP threads was focused more on the LP and the experience of the game as seen in the LP, and less spawning of side discussions among other people who've already played the game.

I like that I am included in this list even though I've only done the one trolLP, and it was yesterday.

I was looking for people that I recognized in the first page of updates! There weren't many!

With my Jade Empire LP, I try to draft several updates in advance because I find I like to do a lot of behind-the-scenes tweaking before I post in order to create what I feel like is a more entertaining narrative. I play a main story quest or a couple of sidequests; I screencap every line of dialogue and as much of the action as I can (because I won't know how the caps come out until I exit the game to review them), and then I draft an update by cherry-picking through the screenshots to find the ones that best tell the story. A lot of the work comes from trying to figure out which bits of dialogue need to be presented in screencaps, which I should quote word-for-word in text, which I can summarize and which I can (or should) leave out entirely.

Once that's done, the actual commentary comes pretty easily, because a lot of it is simply my reactions to what's going on in the game as I play through it, slightly dressed up as pseudo-in-character narration from the PC for fun. I will also admit to shamelessly manipulating and rearranging things to suit my own purposes; I tend to play sidequests first and in great lumps before advancing the story and then work them in where they seem appropriate. I've photoshopped dialogue captions from one screenshot onto the image from another in order to be able to use particularly good facial expressions from characters or just avoid having multiple shots in a row of the same characters from the same camera angle. One of the reasons I draft ahead is to try to have a slightly better sense of what's foreshadowing and should be preserved while overall I still have no idea what's going on, although as I've gone along I've gotten a better feel for the game that lets me seat-of-my-pants it a bit more. Basically I try to convey as much as I can of the experience of playing the game - both in telling the game's story as clearly and in as cinematic a fashion as I can manage in a screenshots-and-text format, and in expressing the experience that I myself am having as I play it.

I mention this mostly because I'm finding the process to be almost as much fun - maybe as much - as playing the game itself, although it does take enough time that I can't update as quickly as I'd like.

When I read an LP, it's usually for one of two reasons: either it's a game I haven't played myself and I'm interested in seeing what it's like (in which case the details of how the LP is crafted are honestly only relevant in as much as it fails or succeeds in presenting the game experience), or it's a game I have played and I'm interested in seeing the LPer's reactions (especially if it's a blind LP) and their take on the game (especially if it's a game they're already familiar with). The latter is how I first found BrokenForum, via Matt's fantastic Hakuoki LP, because the only thing close to as good as being punched repeatedly in the emotions by a work of fiction is the joy of then watching some other unsuspecting sucker going through the same experience.

Ultimately I pretty much agree with Rapunzel that there's plenty of ways to make an LP interesting and entertaining, and for me some of it comes from how I myself am approaching the source game. There's been a few LPs that I stopped reading not because of anything I'd say is a problem with their LP style so much as I just didn't care for their point of view on the game - no harm, no foul. Others, well, the writing just wasn't good enough to hold my interest. But as long as someone at least has an idea for how to approach the material, I'm inclined to say it's all good with me.

Also I will confess that my reaction to being namechecked in this thread is along the lines of "eeee, Matt-senpai and Rapunzel-senpai noticed me!" I may have a problem. XD

Damn, girl, you put more effort into one JE update than I think I did for my entire LP.

Most of it's not really work, though! It's fun, like putting together a puzzle!

I did Curse of the Amsterdam Diamond and I am trudging through Dragon Age II currently, but my approach varied a bit.

Amsterstam...
... was so short and was on a pc I don't use all that much normally, so every update was pretty much on the basis of 'what do I have time for' and anything interesting coming up was depending on the awesome commentary of the people following it more than on anything I did. I took every single frame because it was a relatively short game and in restrospect doing a puzzle game probably wasn't a very good idea, but I knew the game and I knew it was a surmountable challenge. It was also linear as hell with no audience participation, even the illusion of choice.

Dragon Age II...
... is actually pretty much 'I love this game, give me the groundworks and watch me play it', since I got it into my head writing it out like a mix between Hawke's journal and Varric's narration when she was not present/too upset to narrate in person. It also requires a very, very patient audience because hardly anything is ever up to vote once the story got started.
I try to be a bit more systematic about it compared to Amsterdam. Since I played the game around 13 times already, I know what happens when, so I have a pretty good idea what I want to have happen when and the general challenge is making sure every 'day' makes sense so party members don't change without explanation or the likes. I tend to play a session until I feel like I have covered a quest, then I start sorting through screenshots until what I have is divisive by 20 and then write out the update.
It did start with a vote on Hawke's gender, class, disposition and LI, though, and I think I would have opened to more choice if it wasn't going to be a bit difficult without spoiling things to say "SO, DO YOU WANT US TO SIDE WITH THE MAGES OR TEMPLARS HERE?". Instead I left that choice to the general character the narrative was building for me, if that makes sense.
Also, unlike Amsterdam, I cut a LOT of stuff out. Superfluous reaction shots, and pretty much every sidequest that doesn't bear on the main narrative. Combat and 'moving' screenshots go sometimes, and sometimes take priority depending on the general tone of the update.

For both LPs to keep myself motivated, I am pretty sure they all stand at close to daily updates. I know DAII does, I'm more iffy on Amsterdamm but that's personal preference more than anything else. I have such a one-track mind it's daily updating within reasonable limits or I lose interest in the LP and with a long game like DA2 it's also a way to stay motivated when you can see the game chop off. I'm just lucky in that aspect I'm a university student who can plan my own time entirely so that's even possible for me.

(And I like the jigsaw metaphor, because that is my general sense of it, too, and I love jigsaws)

Good thread, Matt.

I've sort of fallen off the LP-reading wagon for the last few months, so I haven't been following many of the newer threads.

I've done two LPs, myself. One is Heian Love (which was, I believe, the first non-angie dating game LP on the forum), and the newer one is Jigsaw. I finished one route in Heian Love pretty soon after I started, and I'm planning on finishing the second after Jigsaw is wrapped up.

Now, those two games couldn't be more different. Heian Love is a really stupid, and often unintentionally hilarious, dating game while Jigsaw is a landmark text adventure. My approach for Heian Love was to screencap the weirdest bits of the game, string them together in a coherent narrative, and provide commentary. Now, like all visual novels, Heian Love has a lot of text. The thing that I dislike about some of the LPs that I've ventured into (especially if they're dating game LPs) is that people screencap every single solitary line of dialogue. I really struggled in my LP to choose the right screenshots and my own personal rule was that I had to have something to say about each and every one of them (I sometimes let myself put two or three in a row, but that had to have a purpose).

As for Jigsaw, that's a game I genuinely enjoy. I decided to LP it because a) it's a difficult game and a lot of people might not have the patience to play through it themselves and since it's a text adventure, an LP would probably be just as rewarding to those people, and b) because I thought I could add to the experience of the game through an LP. I co-opted FerdieLance's style of LPing text adventures, incorporating other media such as images, video, etc. Jigsaw is uniquely suited to this, since it takes place at various real locations during the 20th century. Collecting all of those images really brought home to me how impeccably researched the game was.

As for stuff I like about LPs, I enjoy reading LPs of games I've played because it gives me a different perspective on them. I enjoy discussing the game with people, and for my own LPs I love it when the people reading them discuss the game/my LPing style with me. At the end of the day, I do an LP because I want to engage with people. I want to know what they think of the game, what they think of the characters, what expectations they had going in and how they were confirmed or subverted.

Davian Korran, I really like the narrative style you're using for Dragon Age 2.

My first LP attempt was me trying to be funny. That one doesn't get updated as much because it's harder to be funny than it is to just play a character and recount what happened in-character. (Also I secretly don't think I'm funny at all.)

For A Dance with Rogues, I've been updating every day partly because it gives me momentum and partly because I honestly have not much else to do in my life right now. My system is 1) play the game for a few hours while screenshotting EVERYTHING; 2) transfer the screencaps to my laptop and batch convert them from NWN's default TGA format; 3) go through the screenshots one by one as I write the update, and pick the 40 or so out of the 200 screenshots I have that are actually important to see. (And sometimes 4) find creative censor boxes, which can take up more time than the actual writing.) And then I delete hundreds of megabytes of unused screenshots and feel like this is an incredibly inefficient system.

So far my voting system has been "put things up to vote when I don't want to be blamed for the result" (e.g., romancing Vico). As a reader, I like voting inasmuch as it doesn't get in the way of a fast-moving thread and a cohesive story.

Do you mind if just quote that? Because, yeah.

I had zero interest in Jade Empire, so I mentally passed over this LP. With the amount of work that's gone into it, I'll be sure to check it out. That's a remarkable amount of work, but I also understand how important it is to get all that right. I haven't done any photoshopping myself in writing mine, but I've moved scenes around as needed. I guess the most artsy thing I did like that was go back in time in Hakuoki to cover a scene that I missed. It meant a little more challenge, which I really liked.

Davian, I'm envious that you can put your entire focus on your writing, and I remember when I was that age and could do the same. (I say this like I'm older than 30.)

Nebty, if you don't mind my asking, what made you drop out of reading LPs? I ask because I've done the same thing, and I'm curious as to why.

This is fantastic stuff, guys, and exactly what I hoped for when I created the thread. Thank you.

Thank you! I ended up figuring it was better than mocking up reactions when I knew everything that was going to happen long ahead of the curve. There is a game I would love to blind LP but, alas, it's stuck in traffic.

You mean Puzzle Quest, right? Fabio's face alone is already funny and I really enjoyed it. The party banter especially.

And you know what...

I'll just quote that, too, because it put what I think out much more clearly and eloquently than I could hope to. My best moments in LPing was people helping me make up silly headcanons for the insanity that was Amsterdam or ethical discussions on the Qun/Anders/ideologies/Anders for DA2.

EDIT;

I try to make the most of it. Odds are I'll go from student to unemployed by August, but I know this is the best time of my life in terms of free time.

And you're quite welcome. I think it was a good starting concept for a thread, too.

Am I the only person who clicked this thread only to be disappointed that it wasn't a meta LP about gaming forum threads?

I like when LPs are of games that would not normally be translated or LPed on other forums, and provoke surprisingly meaningful discussion of cultural differences, gender roles, and morality.

The reason why a Megaman LP on BrokenForum would be boring is because A) it's going to have to be video format, which does not lend itself to the style of this forum and B) it's been done a thousand times before and probably better at that, bells, whistles, unique challenges and all. Final Fantasy would lend itself more to LPing in screenshot form, but even then, if I saw the title "Final Fantasy" I'd think, "Wow, that's not terribly original" and probably skip over it unless there was some genuinely interesting or informative writing behind it.

I would like to see more of those games that will probably never be translated into English otherwise, regardless of whether they're otome or not, Ichiro Shounen Kitan is an atmospheric horror game made in what I can only assume to be RPGMaker and thus far seems to be a better version of Corpse Party. My only exposure to the game is through this LP Forum.

I would disagree that all otome game LPs are the same, though many of the same people do post in the threads. I would agree that maybe there are a few too many reaction GIFs, threads get bumped a lot without insightful comment, and LPers themselves put varying amounts of effort into the writing portion of the LP. Your LP forum of predominantly 20-40-something mostly-men with interests in grognard, DnD and MMOs has been invaded by teenage girls, liberal gender-non-conformists, and early 20-somethings of the Tumblr generation with a keen interest in VNs, and it shows in how they express themselves. If others would understand that this is unavoidably happening and give some advice/guidelines/well-intentioned constructive feedback to their faces or in their threads instead of alternately trying to ignore them and hope they go away and muttering to themselves, peaceful co-existence might be possible. I guess this thread is something resembling a start. Time and maturation of the community will also help.

I'm afraid that there are indeed girls on the Internet, they are coming out of the woodwork and breaking free of the ghettoes of Tumblr and Livejournal to which they have traditionally been confined, and I can't say I'm terribly sorry.

Firstly because a bunch of LPs were for games that I wanted to play on my own first. I like my initial experience of a game to be just me and the game (which is the reason I haven't been reading Nery's excellent ADwR LP lately. I want to play the parts she's playing by myself first). Secondly, I guess I'm just bored of dating games, which seem to make up a lot of the new LPs I see being created. Thirdly, I don't like the LPs that just screenshot stuff and provide minimal commentary. An LP is part game, part performance. Give me an idea of who you are, why you're playing, etc. Even if it's just your gut reactions to what's going on. Without that extra layer I might as well just play the game myself. Lastly, there's the mundane reason of life being busy and having a lot of stuff packed into it. I was neck-deep in exams and papers up until about a week ago.

Fairly similar to mine, though replace "exams and papers" with XCOM. Thanks, I appreciate the answer!

The one game I've put effort into LPing, Kara no Shoujo, (still on hiatus but I may be able to get back to it sometime) is one that I've been trying to put very little of myself into the presentation, because I'm trying to present the story as it is for people who can't/won't play the original (because 18+) and because it's a mystery which I'm trying to preserve for the readers. So I don't feel like I should snark or comment much on what's happening, in case I accidentally reveal some of the twists. On the other hand I do try to provide notes with links for more information on any cultural references the game makes which may not be perfectly clear.

I try to keep the number of screenshots down - scrolling past endless screenshots makes reading too slow and sometimes causes my browser to choke completely if the filesize gets too high. (I sadly cannot read the Dragon Age 2 LP regularly because my computer explodes if I try to load it on my normal browser. It works okay on an alternate one though.) This can sometimes make me the complainer who sneaks into people's threads and begs them to reformat, but it's just because I want to read them!

See, I really liked that about your LP because it made sense and fit with what you were trying to do and what the game was. Besides, the best commentary came from the people following the LP, who had no idea what was coming.

My own laptop browser can barely load it - half the time I just get screwed up images all over, so I can definitely see that as a problem, and I doubt you're the only one. I think it's a trade-off, really. I update a lot so there's many, many images (JPEG) per page and even more so because it's hard to go off topic when the thread keeps rolling on. Or that's my theory, anyway. At most there's 7 posts in a row of discussion and then another 60 image dump. I never even considered how hard that had to be on some computers, though... now you mention it the DA2 thread screws up almost every time I load it on this PC. My stationary fares better, but then it can actually run DA2. I never thought of it as anything but coincidence before now.

I've had image-heavy LPs crap out on extended loads, my own included. I think the Icewind Dale one dodges some of that since I use the same six images, tiny headshots, for dialogue.

Another problem being they tend to make you end up at the top of the page no matter what post you were jumping to. Since I started the DA2 LP with a 24 hour vote actual LP doesn't start until page 3 and every time I check the link I put in the first post for convenience so people who read it for the first time can skip the inital chatter, I always end miles away from it as the images load and load and load. I only had your LP blarg out on me once when I was on a truly horrendous connection, so image size has a lot to say. DA2 has come this far and there's very little game left, but I'm keeping this problem in mind if I do another which is highly dependent on my mood, really. I can't write anything if my heart's not in it.

Off memory Love Revo has screwed once or twice and for some reason it also really hates Joie's JE LP and the Tokimemo threads, GS only. But being this is a 5 year old laptop that is barely holding together maybe I should be surprised when nothing screws up and not the other way around.

(I also have no idea what Tumblr or Livejournal is apart from having seen them mentioned before. Modern life, what is that?)

I um.
I did the Sims 3 LP?
It wasn't really supposed to be an LP. I was playing the game and made a file with myself and three other forum-goers for funsies and was nudged into making it something that everyone could read. Which means I had to make a bunch of **witty commentary** for the masses to see and judge, which is kind of terrifying. But I think I'm funny? I think the game does funny things? I don't know?? Recently, I've been contemplating just letting it die because a lot of the things I want to do in the game are things that I don't want to show the masses (get your head out of the gutter). And it's become less "oh man this is so fun let me show you it" and more "okay, so I have to make sure you two don't have babies like you want and you two need to stay out of the same room -- HEY GET BACK HERE NO I SAID NO BABIES."

Sims 3 is really hard to LP because there's no story to roll with. You're in control of the story. But in an LP, you have to take others into account of your story, which makes things a little wonky.

IN ANY CASE, my process was really, really easy.
1) Turn on game.
2) Take pictures of things I knew I would want to talk about.
3) Transfer images to imgur.
4) Post on forum with commentary.
5) Drink in shame.

I suppose it's cool that my LP has encouraged people to buy the buggy-ass expansions EA has spat out?

I just want to say, Mul, that I love your Sims LP. I don't have to worry about spoiling the story for myself because it's a completely new creation. And your drawings are hilarious, by the way. I'm glad you decided to include those (I remember you trying to decide what to do on Skype).

There were a number of times in my Hakuoki LP where I would just post several consecutive screenshots with little to no commentary, because I didn't want to get in the way of the scene. It's a valid tactic to use, depending on what's happening.

Agreed. If it's something poignant or funny, sometimes it's best just to toss them in a row without words. It's very context dependent, of course, but sometimes too much commentary ruins rather than expands what is going on. And sometimes you need the commentary because it's just two characters talking and talking and talking and saying things you need people to know later so you need the shots, but they're still talking and talking...

I like informative, completionist LPs with minimal commentary, if I'm reading an LP to see what the game looks like. I want people to present the game as is without all the frills on the side. If there is commentary, it should be informative (humour is nice, but not necessary), and non-intrusive. I'm really not a fan of people summarizing dialogue - that takes me out of the story and destroys immersion. I want to see the full game in all its glory, enjoy it, and THEN see how people react to it afterwards in the responses, which is usually one of my favourite parts of the LP and one of the main reasons why I keep reading them (I think the audience reactions is every much as entertaining as the OP's posts, and the OP should make room for that). I'm the kind of person who fucking hates it when people talk during movies. It's about the MOVIE, NOT about socializing! I love socializing, but it can and should happen AFTERWARDS. (Gegi's Kara no Shoujo LP is a great example of this kind of LP done well, and I look forward to it finally updating!)

So no, I didn't actually engage too much with Matt's Hakuoki LP in the sense that I wasn't really reading it for the story; I was mostly skimming it and reading the thread mostly for the reactions. I LOOOVED Matt's emotional responses to events, but I wasn't actually too caught up in the events myself, personally, mostly because it didn't transcribe all of it faithfully, resorting to summaries instead, and I'm like... if this was a novel, would you rather read the novel itself, or read a cliff notes version of it? Which would be more engaging? I'm reading a completionist, informative LP of the same VN right now on Something Awful, and this time I'm actually enjoying the story itself, because the OP uses the screenshots + character portraits with transcribed dialogue format (with occasional video to show off the voice acting), which I think is the ideal format for VN LPs because it's the closest, most efficient way of experiencing the game yourself without actually having to play the game. It also includes screenshots of the "tips" screens, the character stats screens, and the OP is also providing historical background on the game. And I still get that sense of community and the fun of reactions from the audience responding to updates. I really like that kind of LP; it's the best for getting a good sense of the game itself without the LPer getting in the way.

And this actually applies to games that aren't narrative-driven as well. I've watched at least two full Catherine LPs that were just playing the game from beginning till the end, showing off absolutely everything with informative, interesting, but mostly importantly, non-intrusive commentary, mostly because I don't have a console and if I had to actually do those fucking puzzles I would just be frustrated. There's something really lovely about watching somebody who's actually GOOD at this game kick ass at it and show the full experience, without mucking it up by trying to be funny. Every time I watch the LPs I keep getting the urge to get a PS3 and get the game and play it myself, but I just KNOW I would suck too horribly to get any enjoyment out of it on my own.

You know what, the main reason why I don't like LPs with excessive commentary, or where the OP is trying way too hard (and failing) to be funny (I'm guilty of that myself *sigh*), is because in a lot of cases, the LPer just isn't that funny. I much prefer LPs where the OP is honestly, sincerely reacting to the events in the game and just putting themselves out there, instead of trying to be all ironic and witty and hip (and failing; if it succeeds, all the more power to them but the fact is most LPs that try to be funny just... aren't). Good examples of this kind of sincere-reaction-LP on this forum are Matt's Hakuoki LP, Merakia's The Knife of the Traitor LP... offsite, a few of my favourites are Cry's Ib LP, and rk47's Magical Diary LP. This is probably the most important factor to a successful LP. If you genuinely love the game and appreciate it, and are reacting sincerely to it, that's entertaining to watch in of itself. Compare the Magical Diary LP here by Soli-chan or the one I just linked to the absolutely ATROCIOUS Magical Diary LP on SA. This is a crowd who generally thinks they're too good for visual novels, and it shows. The OP is doing a fucking stupid gimmick where they're rewriting the story in their own narrative, and the writing is REALLY NOT THAT GOOD. It's incredibly disrespectful to the original game because it's implying that "dohohoho, I can do a better job than you, you lowly dating-sim creator", and trying to piggy-back off Hanako's work to make themselves look good. I'm like... I came here to see people reacting to a game as themselves, NOT as characters, and definitely not poorly-written fanfiction of the game that doesn't even have the exploratory merits of fanfiction because it's basically a retelling of the game, written by a self-indulgent egoistic person who doesn't care about the game they're LPing! UGH. I only like narrative LPs if they're done of games that don't have an inherent narrative to them, like The Sims, which basically HAS to have an LP-er created story to be at all interesting to watch.

Suggestions for improving LPs here:

I'd like to see a lot of indexing and organization going on in the LP threads themselves (though the LP Index is a great resource, thanks to AaronSofaer for keeping it updated)! A lot of these threads can get reaaaaally long, and it would be useful to be able to find updates without manually wading through all those pages. In general, I'd like to see LPs start off with one post for the OP to introduce the game, give us some basic information, and have the post after that reserved for indexing and organization purposes. And THEN the game proper should start. That just makes everything feel neater and tighter, IMHO.

As for myself:

One of the main highlights of LPs for me is the audience interaction. I also really fucking love forum games. Therefore, all of my LPs tend to have a really strong element of audience participation. I'm making LPs because I want to play the game and experience the game together with other people; if I wanted to play the game by myself I'd just... play the game by myself.

I'm currently LPing Zafehouse: Diaries and we're (or at least I'm) having shit tons of fun throwing Broken Forum members into a zombie apocalypse and seeing what decisions they make, how they fare, and how they react to things. It's been having some technical difficulties lately, entirely because of my incompetence (BACK UP YOUR SAVE GAMES, LPERS *sob*), but mostly it's a very easy game to run since the entire game is presented in the form of diary text (the creators were inspired by text adventures and King of Dragon Pass), so it's screenshots of absolutely everything all the way down, interspersed with (un)funny commentary. (I also throw out a lot of info-dumps about game mechanics; since people are actually playing the game, they need it). It has an in-game screenshot button, and the creators just added a way to copy and paste diary text to your clipboard. They're looking to add a way to extract character stats as well in the next patch so I don't have to manually type out all of the stats. The developers are really LP-friendly; they even started a thread on their forum asking they could make things easier for LP-ers, and responded really quickly when I made some requests and suggestions! I was amazed when I saw that because wow. A dev team that acknowledges the marketing power of LPs and tries to support people who are making LPs of their game. I love it. (A few watchers of my LP have bought the game and that is the BEST FEELING IN THE WORLD because I love this game and I want everybody to play it!)

I was actually going to mention Zafehouse as an LP I really didn't think I'd like because I am normally not very big on forum games at all, and not things that require me to remember a set of rules or mechanics, but the idea of various insane characters in combination and the game's more insane moments ended up with it being a thread I often sit and just repeat hit F5 in. Pretty neat when you consider I really only checked the thread when it opened to procrastinate from my paper.

Which incidently is why I didn't write what I like in LPs because it's a spur of the moment thing with me and sometimes it seems utterly random. I always end up liking to a degree what I start reading, so I'm keeping myself limited in terms of what I do start on. I admit, lately if it is a dating game, chances are I won't pick up reading it if only for variation in narrative. If there is a very interesting gimmick present, if know the writer generally has done good stuff before, or if I can tell there's some sincere affection in play, though, chances are, I do pick it up.

*Stops post here in order to not descend into boring gibberish about how this fits with various decision-making schools. You're welcome.*

One of the limits on getting LPs in greater detail rather than summary is that there's a 20-image limit per post, meaning that in order to encapsulate a game in its entirety means making a ton of posts, or having updates go at an agonizingly slow pace through the game. Summarizing large chunks of events is born out of necessity.

I can't quite understand the idea of not discussing/socializing through an LP. If I wanted to get just the game with no garnish or sides, then I would... just get the game. Or read a finished LP on the SA Archives. The LP experience itself seems made to be interactive, just like why people watch That Guy With The Glasses or Egoraptor rant about movies or games and then gather around and laugh at that instead of watching or playing them directly.

Making tons of posts shouldn't be a huge problem, as long as everything's indexed properly.

I actually do this quite a bit! It's a good resource for LPs. Though lately I've been considering shelling out money for archives access, just because there are some old threads that I really wanna read that can't be archived (because broken images), and others where I really want to follow along with the reader reactions.

I confess I'm kind of puzzled by this suggestion, because the only real purpose I can think of behind indexing an individual LP thread this way would be for ease of going back and re-reading specific updates later on after I've already read them, and... do people really do that all that much? I don't think I've ever revisited an LP thread for that purpose - while I have gone back into previous posts on a given thread, it's always been to revisit specific bits of discussion rather than parts of the LP itself, and an index wouldn't help much with that since I rarely remember which updates the discussion I'm looking for would correspond to.

Or is this just me?

The most indexing I'd really feel would be necessary for an individual LP thread would be if it were a game with multiple routes and the LP covers more than one, in which case I can see how it would be useful to provide links to the start of each individual route.

I don't know if it's just me, but sometimes I stop checking an LP for a while, or OP stops updating, and when I come back/it resumes, I'd like to be able to continue straight where I left off without having to search through the whole thread again? And yes, I do like rereading LPs sometimes, especially if there are particular scenes/commentary that I really enjoy, or if it's something like gegi's Kara no Shoujo LP or Kaneda's Ever17 LP where it's a mystery and you need to reread to figure out all the clues. It might also be useful if a thread is clogged with fluff and derails and gifs and you just want to get straight to the updates (the most meaningful/relevant discussions usually take place right after the updates too, so).

I do agree that some threads might need indexing more than others.

Except an LP isn't a movie. An LP is talking about a game - what it seems you want is to watch the demo mode of a game.

So in the instances where that's actually the case, it's okay, right?

LOOK AT THIS FUCKING HIPSTER.

"I liked dating sims only on the original vinyl, the way they were meant to be heard. I was into otome games before they got all popular with the bourgeoisie. How dare you express your enjoyment of this game, plebian. It wasn't meant for the likes of you!"

So long as they stay quiet and only clap when they're supposed too, right? I suppose you boo the faces and cheer the heels?

I like it when people talk about games, that's why I read LPs in the first place! It's just when the commentary is bad, or excessive, or obscures what the game is about, that's really irritating to me. I think of LPs as sort of a book club sort of thing - we all experience this work together, and then we stop and discuss it (or I listen in on discussions) and maybe there's audience participation stuff. Which is fun! It's the way I personally like to enjoy LPs and I don't expect others to hold the same view.

*shrug* Depends on how the LP's executed.

I have no idea how you got this from what I said. I was just talking about the kinds of LP I consider good and the reasons behind it. Isn't that the whole purpose of this thread? Also, that SA Magical Diary LP really is awful and is pretty much a bad retelling of the game. I read enough bad fanfic when I was younger; I don't need more of it now. The whole dismissive attitude that the OP has towards this game just grates on my nerves because it's a game that I enjoy and it HAS been LP'd well in other places, like I pointed out.

Look, I like LPs that have discussions that are relevant to the game. What's unreasonable about that?

Well, it's on SomethingAwful. I don't know why you expected it to be good. "Awful" is in the name.

It seems like you're the kind of person going "Stay on topic! ON TOPIC DAMMIT!" which I can kind of understand - the endless digressions and diversions are why this forum was created, so there's that. But at the same time, you say you like "audience" interaction.

a) It's a recounting of playing a video game. On the internet. It is not a performance, these are not artists, and it is not an audience. It's nerds enjoying a common hobby in their own way and that's just fine.
b) I think you've got a very narrow view of what a LP is "supposed to be". For some people, yes, it's a clinical retelling of a playthrough of a game, accompanied by screenshots and reactions. For other people, it's more about their reaction to the game as it's being played.

Like Angie's... Fat Kid Love Hotel starring Shota-boy and Toru (shoot me, I can't remember the name) LP - I thought that was a GREAT way of going through the game because her reactions to it made it more than just a logic problem with graphics (which is really all otome games are - do A to accumulate blue widgets, B to accumulate red widgets, X will love you if you have 100 blue widgets, Y will love you if you have 100 red widgets).

Still other people use the structure of playing through a game to tell an additional expanded story - RPGs are great for this because they encourage you to be creative outside of the bounds of the game data. Look at the Shinsengumi/IWD2 LP - Icewind Dale 2 is the nadir of plotless hack-and-slash isometric RPGs. As a straight Let's Play it would be more soporific than watching C-SPAN at 2am.

Part of why those LPs are great is that both Angie and Matt are amazing storytellers, and they love the genre that they're using as a tool for their creativity. A lot of that comes from interacting with other people in the threads, letting the LP evolve organically. If people go all squee-tastic about how Hijikata took the Greater Spell Penetration feat at 4th level, I'm sure Matt would focus more on explaining those decisions. When people questioned why certain events weren't happening in Chubby Schoolgirl Princess Adventures, Angie went through and explained what stats she was concentrating on.

A lot of that kind of organic growth practically requires the interaction of other people as more than just theater patrons watching a presentation. I'm sure that's fine, but it's also boring.

I think it's kinda interesting that you're trying to play both sides of this when you pretty much stated earlier in the thread that otome games are not worth reading on their own merits.

You don't read a game, you play a game.

You read a LP or a recap of a game and yes, most of them are very similar and come across as "If you've seen one, you've seen them all". By definition, to make those interesting (again, using my definition of interesting) is to break out of the mold. Try a different way of presenting the LP, use a gimmick - I would rather an LP be bad and fall flat than be boring and clinical. If I wanted boring and clinical, I'd read a QT3 front page review.

Well yeah, no one wants to read the LP equivalent of an RPG sourcebook. And a lot of these games are widely available in English. But some of these games are in Japanese, a language that is so counterintuitive that even Japanese schoolchildren can barely read it until well into their high school years. In the case of a game where the effort is mainly in translating it and bringing it to the masses, I think a lack of additional gimmicks is justified.

Plus, out of these "female-oriented" VNs getting translated from the Japanese, one of them appears to be another take on Alice in Wonderland, one is pretty much The Handmaid's Tale in a Middle Eastern/medieval setting, one is the prequel to Hakuoki and deals with demon politics during the Sengoku era, one is like Game of Thrones if everyone involved was literally a vicious animal, and another is basically taking the idea of Twilight and going "Oh, you think this is hot, huh? Yeah let's push this to the point where you can see exactly how not-hot it would be to be stuck with a bunch of immortal sociopaths." And then there's the game that, while already translated, deals with the painful and realistic ramifications of infidelity and has sparked a bunch of thoughtful discussion on the topic.