veloper said:
As for advertisement, a LP can be that, but it can also be anti-advertisement and in any case it is still unasked for, so the LP isn't doing the developer any real favor.
This is true. It can drive people away.
Because LPs are the hardest truth in advertising you can get. They expose the real gameplay and not just the parts the producer wants you to see/advertise. It's true transparency.
And that transparency is a BENEFIT for the business in the long run. History proves this.
A lack of transparency was a huge contributor to the crash of 83' because nobody had any idea what few games were good in the sea of exploitative shovelware shit. Consumer trust evaporated, and the market crashed.
Following the crash, firms appeared specifically to provide more critical coverage to games (mostly magazines and small time reporters).
Shovelware and bad games never disappeared obviously, but we haven't had a crash since. Why? Because the consumer has the ability to become better informed, and that ability forced the producers to step up their game; to exploit what gamers like rather than what gamers don't know.
Fast forward to today, and LPs are helping to fill that important role WHILE (potentially) being entertaining.
I'd argue that LPs are becoming even more necessary as the critical press becomes less trustworthy to consumers and more beholden to the same companies they're supposed to keep in check. (Doritogate and collusion is a very real problem in gaming, as much as we try to ignore it)
But back to the main point:
Suppose a developer makes a shitty game and someone LPs it. That exposure will drive down sales.
And that's good. Bad for the developer, but they earned it.
Conversely a good game that gets exposure drives awareness up and generates interest in the hobby as a whole.
That's transparency, and LPs are absolute in it.
The other major benefit, is that assuming the game is worthwhile, the developer who put that effort into their game doesn't have to pay extra on advertising; which is only growing more pricy over time since a given "mark" (that's us) only has so much attention to divide in their daily life (and many marks are becoming increasingly tired and resentful towards overt advertising).
Buying exposure, actual exposure, is difficult, risky (it's possible you have the right pitch, but the wrong audience, or wrong direction to reach the right audience) and pricy because it's so competitive.
LPs bypass two of those issues, because gamers are the most likely population to be interested in watching LPs, and the LPer is (almost always) independent of the source material, so it doesn't cost the producer anything.
It works in practice: I've bought MANY games that I never would have because of LPs and with no instances of buyers remorse vs "traditional" shopping and critiques. I just bought Defense Grid and it blows my mind how I missed that title given how much I enjoy tower defense titles.
All that said, I will acknowledge that certain kinds of games lose value due to exposure, good games even, but they're a tiny minority compared to the bulk of what gets made. (that, and it's simple enough to not watch LPs of puzzle games or the like)
In that, I think LPs, while not perfectly fair to producers, still provide an overall net benefit to the market as a whole by promoting transparency and providing advertising directly to those in the audience who are most interested in it.