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Zac wrote:

The law's the law.

By assuming everyone I couldn't be sure of claimed Nintendo had no state-given right to do this, I counted six people who didn't agree with this. That means your post completely misses the point of most of the protest, which is the claim Nintendo's action is somewhere between petty and morally unacceptable - neither of which has any connection to what their copyright authorizes them to do(in fact, the two posts above yours explicitly state this).

As for your point about the money, most of the people protesting seem to have decided already it morally belongs to the LPers; most of the rest were probably helped along in that direction by Nintendo's smarmy spinsters. The amount(and your final sentence) just reinforce the argument that Nintendo should've taken to sharing the revenue, not claiming it all.

Zac wrote:

Yes, there are a handful of people who make serious money doing this. There are people who produce Let's Play videos for a living - they don't tell you what kind of ad revenue they make off YouTube, which has some of the best rates in the business, because if they did, suddenly you'd want a cut for being an audience member or they wouldn't seem like "one of you" or whatever nonsense tribalism thing du jour is happening.

I'm not sure why you think professional fans earning revenue would be an issue for fans or why you're bringing tribalism into it. I want people who discuss games I love to be able to earn a living off of it--just like I have no issue with ANN staff earning a living off of their reporting (even if I often disagree) or any other anime writer/blogger. You add value--you deserve to get paid.

For reference, Activision Blizzard, just hired a fairly prominent twitch.tv/youtube video/commentator as a community manager. For the past few years, he made his living making guides, shout casts, answering questions from fans, working for gamebreaker.tv, and streaming. Now, Blizzard gets to tap into in what I assume will be a win-win for both parties. He's hardly the first community manager that started as a professional fan.

If Nintendo was to take a more restrictive policy, that's up to them. But I think it's to their determent because "fan" content helps keep me interested. To me, it's like banning mods or ad-supported fan websites. What the community generates helps keep me interested in a franchise long beyond the actual game itself.

Last edited by Zac on Tue May 21, 2013 1:10 pm; edited 1 time in total

Draneor wrote:

For reference, Activision Blizzard, just hired a fairly prominent twitch.tv/youtube video/commentator as a community manager. For the past few years, he made his living making guides, shout casts, answering questions from fans, working for gamebreaker.tv, and streaming. Now, Blizzard gets to tap into in what I assume will be a win-win for both parties. He's hardly the first community manager that started as a professional fan.

This is great, though. I hope everyone who made a living doing LPs of Nintendo games can turn it into a career that isn't entirely based on "I hope no one ever actually exercises their rights on this content".

All of this becoming official and people getting hired by the companies that control this IP to comment on it is a good thing.

Polycell wrote:

As for your point about the money, most of the people protesting seem to have decided already it morally belongs to the LPers

Ah yes, an angry mob has decided what's morally right and are angrily protesting based on that, not on facts or the law. Seems reasonable.

animehermit wrote:

Doesn't the PS4 have twitch integration? Which is basically allowing this type of action.

This is true, the PS4 is basically largely built around the concept of sharing and streaming gameplay with others. PC game makers are largely promoting this as well, including Steam which also has integrated video sharing, and Valve themselves openly promotes peoples videos (as opposed to the other way around as Nintendo is want to do).

Zac wrote:

So are you just willfully misrepresenting what Nintendo is doing here to fuel the angry fanboy thing or do you not actually understand what they're doing?

Nintendo isn't taking away anyone's ability to livestream their games start to finish. They're taking away their ability to profit from it on Youtube.

Not at all. I know full well what Nintendo is doing, I just simply disagree with it. I don't know where Microsoft falls in the grand scheme of things, but as for the rest of the gamer market it seems that Nintendo is actually in the minority in this stance. Sony openly encourages these videos, including catering to the ease of releasing this content in their next system. The PC market is largely loaded with these, and save for EA it is generally encouraged by PC game companies. So yeah, I know what Nintendo is doing and their reasoning, I just disagree with it and find it shallow, not to mention the fraudulent statement they released to make it seem like some kind of great benevolent action.

Zac wrote:

Yes, there are a handful of people who make serious money doing this. There are people who produce Let's Play videos for a living - they don't tell you what kind of ad revenue they make off YouTube, which has some of the best rates in the business, because if they did, suddenly you'd want a cut for being an audience member or they wouldn't seem like "one of you" or whatever nonsense tribalism thing du jour is happening. There is real money in this. The views are in the millions, the ad revenue is nothing to sneeze at for the top LP people.

As an audience member I contribute nothing other than watching, so no, I wouldn't want a cut for watching. It's their time, their effort, their personality that makes it. Claiming people would want a cut just for watching is something of a straw man since no one claimed as much and it's really irrelevant to the discussion.

Zac wrote:

Mystery Science Theater had to pay licensing fees for the films they broadcast, folks. The law's the law.

And if you watch a movie on MST then you've watched the movie, albeit with some people talking in the background. You watch someone play part of a game for 15 minutes you still haven't played the game. It's apples and oranges.

Plus, the law is the law because Nintendo has chosen this route. As the copyright holder they could have simply allowed people to make these videos like most of the industry (contrary to their own claims) and as long as they allowed it then there would be no copyright issue. It's only against the law because they've chosen to take issue and deny access without the right to take and control all ad revenue.

Last edited by Galap on Tue May 21, 2013 1:18 pm; edited 2 times in total

Zac wrote:

Nintendo isn't taking away anyone's ability to livestream their games start to finish. They're taking away their ability to profit from it on Youtube.

Yes, there are a handful of people who make serious money doing this. There are people who produce Let's Play videos for a living - they don't tell you what kind of ad revenue they make off YouTube, which has some of the best rates in the business, because if they did, suddenly you'd want a cut for being an audience member or they wouldn't seem like "one of you" or whatever nonsense tribalism thing du jour is happening. There is real money in this. The views are in the millions, the ad revenue is nothing to sneeze at for the top LP people.

Mystery Science Theater had to pay licensing fees for the films they broadcast, folks. The law's the law.

Let me preface by saying that I don't like the youtube ad partnership system, and wish all youtube videos were ad free. Hell, I'll even admit I use the controversial adblock for them. However, I'm going to defend the LPers here, because I think the principle of what nintendo is doing is undermining the integrity of youtube even more than the ads, and here's why:

It really boils down to equality, almost like a net neutrality issue (now I admit that this is much lower impact, but the principal is the same). Suppose I'm a heavy youtube uploader, and make a living off of doing this. I would want to have a system where I could decide to make a living off of the youtube partnership before I decided what kind of videos I wanted to upload. See, the way the youtube partnership should work (and I believe it purportedly does) is that if your videos go above a certain threshold of popularity, you can put ads in them and get a cut of the revenue. It's a little scary to see something happening where it's like "you people: you who make these videos with this certain type of content can't profit from it." I think that kind of goes against what youtube should be: not biased in any way about the content of its videos (now I understand that they don't allow stuff like porn or copyrighted material, but that's a different issue. I'm talking within the confines of allowed content).

I don't want to strawman you or anyone else, so correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like the real reason that you and others are on nintendo's side is because you believe that the LPers don't create value independent of the games themselves. I personally don't see terribly much appeal in watching other people play video games, though there are some LPs that I have enjoyed, and I've been known to appear on game streams myself. However, a lot of people seem to really like them, so clearly value is created to someone.

In summary, if Youtube ads are allowed to exist, they should exist in partnership form, and the partnership should work the same way regardless of the content of the videos.

Keonyn wrote:

Plus, the law is the law because Nintendo has chosen this route. As the copyright holder they could have simply allowed people to make these videos like most of the industry (contrary to their own claims) and as long as they allowed it then there would be no copyright issue. It's only against the law because they've chosen to take issue and deny access without the right to take and control all ad revenue.

Can I ask why you're conflating "I can do this" with "I can profit from it"?

I can draw Bart Simpson all day. My ability to profit from my Bart Simpson drawings is another matter entirely. You're conflating the two to the point where your argument falls apart completely. Nintendo is not stopping anyone from streaming the entirety of their brand new games, period.

Zac wrote:

This is great, though. I hope everyone who made a living doing LPs of Nintendo games can turn it into a career that isn't entirely based on "I hope no one ever actually exercises their rights on this content".

I certainly think so. From the perspective of a consumer, I prefer my marketing be relevant and the community's "concerns" be brought to the developers by someone who gets it. From the perspective of a company (speculating), the former pro fan, CM already has a reputation, is liked and trusted, and has an audience. As long as fans don't irrationally think they "sold out" it should be great for everyone. Certainly, I doubt LPs are a long-term career path (the streamers I do follow usually also branch out into commentary, reporting, and/or parodies).

Apparently just recently Nintendo got surpassed in market capitalisation by a mobile/social gaming company called GungHo. I don't know if this announcement is directly related to that, but it seems obvious that Nintendo is trying to take proactive steps in keeping its dominance in the face of big competition.

I personally don't mind too much if the revenue from ads on YouTube videos goes to Nintendo, but the tenor of the announcement does annoy me.

Zac wrote:

Can I ask why you're conflating "I can do this" with "I can profit from it"?

I can draw Bart Simpson all day. My ability to profit from my Bart Simpson drawings is another matter entirely. You're conflating the two to the point where your argument falls apart completely. Nintendo is not stopping anyone from streaming the entirety of their brand new games, period.

Once again, apples and oranges. Bart Simpson is a drawing, that is what he is. You make a Bart Simpson drawing then you are basically making Bart Simpson. A videogame is at its core an interactive medium. You can make a video of someone playing it and it still isn't a videogame, because the viewer isn't actually engaging in the videogame in a fashion that makes use of what it is. No, Nintendo isn't stopping anyone from sharing this content (as most companies don't contrary to what Nintendo claims in their release), but they are essentially hijacking peoples videos and pasting ads on them simply because Mario shows up. People watch these for two reasons. Either as a sort of review to get an idea if the game being played is one they might like, or because of the personality of the person who is playing. Nobody watches LP videos just because they enjoy watching a Nintendo product get played, that's the bottom line. LP'ers will simply play the games of companies that are more friendly to this option (as most are) and Nintendo loses its free advertising.

In the end all it does is harm Nintendo's image to a lot of people beyond the fanboys, particularly when their competitors are taking an approach that is very much the opposite. It also removes what was essentially a whole slew of free advertising since most LP'ers will simply avoid their games and remove videos of their games (this has already started happening quite a bit) rather than allow Nintendo to hijack their channels. And the impact to LP'ers won't even be that huge since Nintendo's presence in that community was already pretty small. Just another bad decision by a company that seemingly loves to prove that bad decisions are the only decisions they're capable of making these days.

Zac wrote:

Ah yes, an angry mob has decided what's morally right and are angrily protesting based on that, not on facts or the law. Seems reasonable.

And why should the law be relevant in a discussion of morality? Why should the authority to do a thing preclude any discussion of whether one should do it? If Nintendo had to lobby for legislation to be able to do this, you certainly wouldn't deny the legitimacy of the discussion then, would you?

As for facts, I don't see many people denying reality - mainly it's disagreement over whether or not the LPers deserve at least a cut of the revenue(after all, didn't the MST3K guys get a cut?).

Getting to the angry mob, as I mentioned earlier, Nintendo's press release was spectacularly impolitic about the whole affair; had they merely stated they were running ads on all videos containing longer clips of game footage and left off the BS about "ensur[ing] Nintendo content is shared" and the self-congratulatory last sentence, this almost certainly wouldn't have been much of a much.

Polycell wrote:

mainly it's disagreement over whether or not the LPers deserve at least a cut of the revenue(after all, didn't the MST3K guys get a cut?).

Whoa, whoa - come on.

MST3K was a completely legal situation where they payed the appropriate licensing fees to rebroadcast and repackage those films. The actors and production staff were paid as per usual, but the people who owned the rights to the films they were riffing on also got their cut.

Surely you're not suggesting that some guy who bought Mario Land 3D and uploaded the entire content of the game while yelling jokes over it and then getting pissed when Nintendo says "uh, you can't make money on this" is somehow the same thing.

I just wonder if Nintendo will retract this after being bullied by a mob. It'd certainly be bit disappointing if the law can be broken just because of peer-pressure and complaining. Maybe the people who upload television episodes to YouTube can keep their videos if they complain and riot enough and threaten to boycott movies.

animehermet wrote:

Some games have seen huge increases of sales purely from a let's play. Can anyone really doubt that youtubers like the Yogscast are part of the reason Minecraft is as popular as it is?

Can you name one game that this has happened to that wasn't a 14.99 or less indie game? Nintendo doesn't need Pewdiepie's help to make Mario, Zelda, or Pokemon popular; they have an actual marketing department to do that.

This is all going to be a case-by-case basis anyway, and it will be up to the developer on how they handle these videos; which is exactly what it should be like in the end: up to the content holders to decide how to handle their IPs.

TitanXL wrote:

Can you name one game that this has happened to that wasn't a 14.99 or less indie game? Nintendo doesn't need Pewdiepie's help to make Mario, Zelda, or Pokemon popular; they have an actual marketing department to do that.

This is all going to be a case-by-case basis anyway, and it will be up to the developer on how they handle these videos; which is exactly what it should be like in the end: up to the content holders to decide how to handle their IPs.

Ah, there goes Titan, grasping at the "you can't prove it" argument when he isn't capable of proving the opposite. Don't sit there and discredit someones argument when you can't disprove it either. I can say I have bought games because of LP and similar videos, including "Bioshock" (not indie), "Sins of a Solar Empire" (not indie), "Amensia" (maybe indie, but high end indie and above 14.99 at the time), "Fallout 3" (not indie), "Borderlands" (not indie), and I can go on. I can safely say that without YouTube videos and exposure it's unlikely I'd have purchased said titles, along with others. Thanks for playing as usual TitanXL.

Keonyn wrote:

Ah, there goes Titan, grasping at the "you can't prove it" argument when he isn't capable of proving the opposite.

This discussion had remained remarkably civil, but now Keonyn is leading it towards mudslinging. A pity.

It's not mudslinging when he's making a legitimate counter-argument.

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