Fez Creator: YouTubers Are "Stealing" Content From Game Developers

[Snotnarok]

He should be ignored, his statements are baseless and have no grounds to stand on while the opposite; that LPs help game sales has much support. You don't even need to look past comments in videos to see people asking where, how much or flat out saying "I bought this game because of you" hell, people go post on LPs "This game is on steam sale right now! Get it quick!"

Companies have sent LPers games to play, they KNOW it helps sell games or at the very least get word around.

So, the guy has nothing to back up his flimsy statements, so his words are worthless. He's an egotistical whiny baby who wants more money after screwing people out of theirs previously, and members of his dev team for FEZ2.

The only response worth giving to him is a slap to the face and tell him to do some actual research before opening his stupid mouth.

 

[CriticalMiss]

In Indie Game: The Movie doesn't he say he isn't in it for the money (said whilst he wasn't making any) and yet now he's complaining about not getting every penny he can?

I'm curious as to whether this was a real post by him or if he is really just a massive idiot who can't not rattle peoples' cages. He'd done a good job of fucking off when he quit and it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to just reemerge and complain about youtubers when he could have done so a few months ago when Nintendo were on the warpath against video footage of their games.

 

[Magmarock]

Oh Fish. Between you and cliff bleszinski I think I could design a table top bored game based on the quotes you two have made. And no, I would pay you for it.

 

[Scorpid]

I think the bigger problem was that this was on Twitter, which means the argument isn't exactly going to be detailed and nuanced.

I do understand where he is coming from though, having exploited it myself, and there are certain kinds of videos that feel like they're exploiting the format. To do this, though, we need to differentiate what kinds of videos are out there. I have made three broad categories to best describe them:

1) Short clips. These are the most common and most viewed, as they contain short bursts of the gameplay, usually no more than a few minutes, either to demonstrate something (how to do x), review a game or just to show something brief and entertaining.

2) First impressions/vertical slices. These are videos containing long (20 min+), uncut segments of gameplay, usually right in the beginning or in the middle of the game, where the purpose is to essentially show what the game looks like when it is being played (totalbuscuit, for example). While substantial amounts of the game are revealed, the purpose is to demonstrate the various elements of the game and not to show a complete playthrough.

3) The Full Game. These are your "let's play" video series,' often spanning several hours and videos. They contain essentially from beginning to end of the entire game, often with commentary. But here's where I get really concerned.

With the first two, the creativity of the video makers is on display, with the selections very carefully chosen to convey certain specific elements. With the last one, it varies heavily by video. Some videos have barely any addition other than simply viewing the game as played by the video maker, often with sparse comments just to make the series legal, particularly in linear story games (survival horror is what I tend to view). And this is where I think videos cross the line. The video is not being watched, in that case, to determine whether to buy the product or for the commentary, but rather clearly to have watch the game being played as is, no different than watching a friend play in your living room. And this understandably will frustrate a developer who feels like the video maker is getting paid for what is overwhelmingly his own content.

Yeah I think he has a point kind of. I mean I understand the idea of his problem but the medium of video games is unique from movie by being interactive. Also if video games can be equated to movies in this manner than they are very shitty movies. The pacing is mostly watching someone do the same things over and over and often if there is a plot it's probably not going to be War and Peace. Personally how I use lets plays is first to see how the game is without the filter of a journalist playing fifteen to an hour of gameplay than writing about it in a article. See it first hand compared to print is really different. The second way I use lets plays is to see how other players are playing the game while I play it. I do this for Crusader Kings 2, Darksouls, and Victoria specifically.
I personally see games saved by lets plays and the industry clearly agrees for the most part with PS4 and Xbone including recording options. I mean Amnesia and Darksouls wouldn't of become the mega hits they are without them and Minecraft I don't think would of been nearly as much of a mind blowing hit. I understand that he's not arguing lets plays should be banned but this I think would lead to industry controlling who gets to see and talk about their game. Like the NFL with the Super Bowl aka the big game.
The only games I see harmed by this are the games that are really wanting to be movies like CoD single players, as well as perhaps games that want tip and tricks to be talked about by kids in the cafeteria and not just shown in videos of "Hey this is exactly what you need and how to get to this secret".But this is unprovable as well, like the game industry insisting pirates hurt their bottom line absolutely but unable to prove it.

 

[FFMaster]

The problem is, he is right, and I say this as a maker of videos (ones that get a total of 10 views each but that's not the point). All of the arguments saying that the devs already have their money are predicated on the idea that games change depending on the person playing them, which is true.

But the art assets, the sounds and the way the game works doesn't.

If you remix a song or make a parody of it , the original song creator is due a cut of the money made from it, because you still used part of there work. It should be no different here REGARDLESS of how its being used. Doesn't matter if its for a review, a lets play or a speedrun, you are still using their game. People always shout free advertising but the YouTubers that say that should think about what they mean by that, as if its really free advertising they are admitting that they have no creditability. For it to be advertising the developer has to have a hand in how its presenting, in making sure that its presented in a good way to show there product how they want it to be seen, they don't have that with the youtubers.

If they say they are giving free EXPOSURE then I would agree, but that's a different thing. I would also expect when you say that people would be more likely to say "ok so why don't you give the dev some of your cash".

Oh and the idea that game devs should pay youtubers for the extra sales the youtubers make, thats one step away from "pay us money to show us your game, you will tend to make x% extra sales" level of dickbaggery. Youtubers are getting there money, building the fanbase and the big ones also have there own fan stores as well.If they want to sign up for a commission based store then go ahead, but make it obvious you are making money if you click the link under the video. This already happens for some.

The idea that the game dev should take a "big" cut is a bit silly however, but they really should get a cut, and this is irregardless of what you feel about Phil Fish, its like the CliffyB stuff on reddit yesterday about NeoGaf. Just because you don't like the guy doesn't mean hes wrong all the time.

In England even the Tories manage to do something sensible now and again, even if that is once in a blue moon.

 

[Haru17]

Said 2013's most mentally stable game developer...

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

Aside from the fact that Fish can't shut up even after he's taken his ball and gone home: why should it come out of the share of the people making videos? The lion's portion of ad revenue goes to Youtube, so surely if anyone should be ponying up for some extra funds to developers it should be them.

 

[Hiramas]

First, i belong to the group that is convinced that YouTube Let's plays help sell the games.
Now, you could divide the issue into two groups. Developers that need the money and dev that don't need the money.
Let me explain:

I do not believe that Let's Plays hurt sales. If I see a game played, I know quite soon if I would buy it myself. I have stopped watching videos because i went and bought the game myself.
The only case where youtube might hurt sales is in BAD GAMES.
So as long as you as a developer have a big publisher machinery behind you, you don't need the money that may come in from youtube. Apart from a few well earning personas, it is not THAT much anyway. It won't make a dent in the devs pocket and beeing an advocatus diaboli, in this case the money would go to the publisher anyway.
Since Youtube (and piracy btw) provenly HELP sales, every sold game is good for the dev because the publisher considers him worth more. In Effect, the free exposure from youtube helps the developer more that a little bit of money would.

The other side are indie devs where every cent may be important. I could see a making a deal in this case. But again, the free exposure of the games without a big publishing machinery behind them, without a million dollar ad budget, can only help, too.

Last but not least, please consider that most people that watch Let's Plays would not buy the game ANYWAY. They are little kids with no disposable income, the watch because of the Host not the game (that is mostly what I do). Add to that the console and hardware barrier and you do not have a big loss because people who have watched a let's play wont buy the game. It is miniscule.

SO, the most important argument is the fairness one I guess. Yes, if you use music from a band publicly you have to pay for it (what is exactly what many people do, even on youtube)
But Games are different, because you dont experience them if you watch someone else play it. You don't play the game.
But in the end, I truly believe that Youtubers bring more value to the industry than they supposedly take away. All big consoles, tons of games have now twitch integration or video sharing. A lot of people who sit high up believe in the positive effects.

At the end, Phil Fish is wrong and it was a BAD idea to post such unpopular opinions to twitter of all places.
He has not even made an argument, because of the way he delivered it.

edit: after the youtube fodder episode, this could be a good topic for JimSterlings Jimquisition!

 

[Alterego-X]

But, just like piracy, I imagine it also causes a loss in sales at the same time it causes an increase.

This idea never seemed to make sense to me. Copyright is about increasing the industry's profitability, and not about "avoiding losses", as if there existed a fixed amount of inherent incomes that copyright merely "restored".

Is the industry earning more money due to Let's Play's existence, or less? If it's the former, then there is no meaningful way to talk about "losses" at the same time.

If a video game series goes through an art shift, and the next installment sells 2 million units instead of the usual 1 million, there is no sense talking about how it "lost 200k potential sales but then it earned 1.2m new", because it's all just hypothetical guesses, the actual increase is the only real or relevant thing.

The same applies for how content access changes buying behaviors. Sales are either increased, or decreased, but it can't really be both at the same time.

 

[themilo504]

His argument fails because video games are interactive, just because you watched a walkthrough or let?s play does not mean that you get the full experience, so unless YouTube makes it possible to play walkthroughs and lets plays its not theft and it?s not piracy.

With that said I don?t think it?s unreasonable that people who monetize gaming videos pay money to the developers, I disagree with the idea that it should be a large part of their income, 10% would be much more fair and reasonable.

 

[LosButcher]

Oh Phil, I might disagree with you, but thanks for being honest and speak your mind

There is a problem though with story driven games though. I have skipped games that I might otherwise have bought, after watching a youtuber play it.

 

[DirgeNovak]

"If you generate money from putting my content on your channel, you owe me money. Simple as that"
Except I already gave you money, Philippe. Because I bought your shitty game.
Please stay gone, prick.

 

[vagabondwillsmile]

I find it amusing that instead of seeing it as "Free Advertising" he sees it as "WAHHHHHHHHH! Someone is watching my game! They might decide to buy it in future but I'm not getting money now! WAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!"

Dude, if your game is so boring that someone watching your game can get the same experience as if they were playing it(and thus doesn't need to bother playing it), you've got bigger problems then people using pieces of your game to make a video.
Last I checked, you don't own Square-Enix *rimshot*.

I probably should be relieved he's not making any more games. I already own fez and won't have to worry about buying anything else from him.

Exactly. I remember being on the fence about buying Shin Megami Tensei IV - leaning heavily towards skipping it - because I was COMPLETELY turned off by the idea of first-person battles.

Then I watched a gloriously commentary-free (screw whiny, annoying, mouth-breathing voice-overs, and bad commedy) / spoiler-free LP of randomly selected portions of the game. That FREE ADVERTISING convinced me not only to give the game a shot, but to go all out and buy the special edition. Seriously, this guy is one of those very STUPID, smart people.

The account that had the videos has since been deactivated. Garbage.

 

[Alterego-X]

The problem is, he is right, and I say this as a maker of videos (ones that get a total of 10 views each but that's not the point). All of the arguments saying that the devs already have their money are predicated on the idea that games change depending on the person playing them, which is true.

But the art assets, the sounds and the way the game works doesn't.

No, saying that the devs already have their money is predicated on the idea that whatever money they are owed is determined by practicality, not by an inherently "right" way to determine their deserved copyrights.

If you remix a song or make a parody of it , the original song creator is due a cut of the money made from it, because you still used part of there work.

Then again, to a smaller degree, this is also true if you quote a single line from a book, or take a single screenshot from a game.

Creative works are not sacks of potatoes, that you can just give absolute control over them to one "owner" and call it a day because the creators got exactly what they deserved.

Information is the act of a messge being conveyed. When you limit access to potatoes, that's possession. When you limit usage of publically available information, that's censorship. Even if it can be a particularly useful and just one, that's just what it conceptually is.

On one extreme end, you could say that the creator only made one copy of the game and that's the one that he owns, if others are able to make more, too bad.

On the other extreme, you could try to give them absolute control over every instance of access to the assets, (and to the franchise conncept too), greatly penalizing public communication in the process, by limiting the conditions under which people allowed to create new works, or describe the former ones.

Ideally, regulations should be somewhere in the middle, so enough information creators get to make a living, but without giving them an overbearing control over our freedom of public communication, and our own ways to make money.

This should be based on practical arrangements, whatever is the most useful for society, not on some nonsensical semantics-based moralization about how people should "own their work".

 

[Ed130 The Vanguard]

I thought you wanted to stay away from gaming Mr Fish?

Because I sure as fuck want your ignorant opinions to stay away as well.

 

[Alterego-X]

This pretty much demonstrates everything that is wrong with the IP culture, more obsessed with penalizing how people freely enjoy themselves, just for the hell of it, than actually caring about securing a stable business model.

Like building a dome of black fabric around your house, just to make sure that no one gets to benefit from the light pouring out of your windows. After all, what if someone passes by the street trying to read a map, and they get to derive a value out of YOUR photons, that you have paid for with your hard-earned money? Entitled freeloading pirates!

 

[Middle_Index]

I like fish, i like that he gets people talking. Maybe it would go down better if he got someone else to voice his concerns o for him because no one seems to like him just for having an option. Is this not something worth checking out? if he feels something is wrong can we not check the facts first then point it out to him if hes talking out of his arse? Instead of going "oh hes saying things again, i hate that guy". If its legit, that devs arent getting a cut from people making money off a game that is his own surely hes allowed to ask "whats the deal here?"

 

[Amaror]

Well it is a difficult subject.
Yeah, youtubers are earning money from the game you created. In the same way a company is earning money using the office software created by microsoft. But suggesting that these companies give microsoft part of their revenue is insane.
They allready bought the licences to buy the software.
In the same way the youtubers allready bought the game.
Besides most of the money comes from the youtuber, not the game.
You can post videos of games all you want, when the quality is shit, your not going to earn any money.
The youtuber is making money because he spents a lot of work on recording, commentary, rendering, editing and uploading.
You can try this yourself. record some video game footage and upload it. No commentary, no rendering, no editing.
See how much money you make with this method.

 

[alj]

I work in IT should i give some of my wages to NEC as they made the monitor, Lenovo for making the computer, flico for the keyboard Logitech for the mouse.? What about paying the power company some for the electricity? See how totally retarded that sounds! Well that's what you sound like fish.

Whist i agree that 90% of lets plays have terrible production values and have voice overs from childish or downright boring people that is there job, they must be doing something right as they are quite popular despite the fact that i don't like most of them. And on reviews, first impressions and so on they are a important consumer tool and if developers steal there hard earned ad revenue then they will stop making that stuff and that is bad for the consumer and ultimately bad for the developer.

And why would you not want free advertising and free exposure of your game to 100s of thousands of potential customers? Oh and if someone can get the full experience of your game from a lets play then you are doing something wrong, the story should be told through the world and the mechanics not via cut-scene and then a walk along a linear corridor.

Just another developer (sorry, ex-developer) who is totally ignorant to how the industry works, we have had all this "new thing" will kill the games industry we had it with floppy disks being copied being "the end" for games same with bad reviews and so on ALL of them have been proven to be bollocks, just shitty developers looking for an excuse as to why there shitty game did not sell.

 

[Scars Unseen]

I thought you wanted to stay away from gaming Mr Fish?

Because I sure as fuck want your ignorant opinions to stay away as well.

To be fair, he didn't come back to gaming; he just revisited his hobby of impotently whining.