Let's Play

BREAKING NEWS!! YouTube has implemented Content ID, so enjoy not making money off your shitty let's play.

Let's Play is a fancy term for someone playing a video game and recording that playthrough for the enjoyment of the internet (and to become internet famous). Unlike speed-running (and its cousin with a gambling addiction, tool assisted speed-running), the goal of an "LP" is to show off the game, not beat some Japanese basement dweller's time. Though with the way most people do LPs, you wouldn't know the difference.

Imagine a video perfectly lit and in high resolution. It stars a girl dancing rhythmically to soothing music. With her legs slightly torn apart, she finally proceeds to bend her back and slowly take off her panties, revealing herself to be neither too skinny nor too filled but perfectly fit. She goes down on her knees, taking in a man. She says with a high pitched melodious voice "Your penis is manly. It is so proportionally big." Her perky hands grabs for her iPhone but her lover pushes her to the bed and dives into her. They change positions, with the camera following with different angles. For each thrust he can feel as if all cares, worries, pains and regrets he ever had disappears. The camera follows her on her back and suddenly you can see her top going of, revealing erect nipples. Suddenly he explodes, and she tastes him with her finger, as if to make the moment last forever. Then we have a muffled brownie shot in the dark. There we have Let's Plays.

Origin

While people have been doing this sort of thing ever since dial up became obsolete and most peoples' connections could handle it, the Let's Play trend didn't start until around 2006 on Something Awful's Games subforum. After a few threads of watching people play through Oregon Trail, a few goons decided to branch out and show off other games. The most notable of these, if such a thing could be called that, was forum member Slowbeef's runs through Super Metroid and the stupidly hard The Immortal. Afterwards, the forum became so constipated with LP threads that Lowtax gave Games an administrative enema and shuffled all of them off into their own ghetto where they have remained ever since. Over time, the goons perfected their "craft" and everyone else on the internet decided to ride their collective dicks and get in on the action.
Since then, it has rapidly become the scourge of YouTube with many of the most subscribed channels being let's play channels. Today it is almost as popular as porn and even more popular than ED.

LPs Around The Internet

Something Awful

Example of a typical SA LP. Note the unnecessary amount of effort.

Because they started the whole trend and require you to pony up $10 to even be allowed to post, most goons believe that their LPs are the best ones on the internet and ones from anywhere else are complete shit. Technically, they're right; But needless to say they are retarded for being elitist over recording themselves playing video games for the internet. So don't expect to be received warmly if you post your first LP on the same day you register, repost your old shit from Youtube, or post anything without running it by at least 10 people in the technical support thread (dubbed "The LP Sandcastle") first.

Because of this elitism, they are also responsible for starting the Retsupurae trend, where a person mocks other LPs and occasionally other things like bad flash movies and fanime. While the motive for starting this is wanky and stupid, it still produces lulz and hilarious amounts of butthurt.

Youtube

Example of a typical video LP on Youtube. Note the lack of effort. (Not shown: Uninteresting and unfunny commentary.)

One of the tools useful for recording videos from a game console is a USB video capture adapter like this. Dumb YouTube LPers long for such tools.

Since all of the 13 year old boys who normally watch LPs can't post on SA without stealing their parents' credit card and most of the internet doesn't want to deal with SA's probation happy mods, they all conjugate here. Also unlike goons, they don't have money to burn for the sake of "comedy" and want their internet fame right NOW, so expect a lot of these:

• Terribly recorded game footage taken with either a camera pointed at the television or console (because they can't afford a USB video capture adapter or a DVD recorder), or with an UNREGISTERED HYPERCAM 2 capture program (because they don't know about CamStudio and the like).
• Windows Movie Maker subtitles
• 400 part LPs due to Youtube's length restrictions. (They could put their videos on Viddler, blip.tv, or another site that doesn't have a length restriction. But no one outside of the LP subforum on SA goes to those anyway. So they won't get as many views or subscribers. The smart ones simply verify their account to upgrade their time limit, but most are too stupid/poor to do this.)
• Bad blind runs of a game that came out the day the first video was uploaded.
• Dragonforce songs playing in place of the game's actual audio
• The LPer badly singing along to the Dragonforce song playing in place of the game's actual audio.
• Video LPs of text heavy JRPGs and shitty visual novels that would be better off as a screenshot LP (because no one in their right mind wants to watch text scrolling or a glorified slideshow for 15 minutes at a time).
• LPs of foreign games that some idiot just had to show off even though they don't know a single word of the language the game is in.
• Bad and unnecessary storylines that belong on FanFiction.net
• Trailers for upcoming LPs
• Loud obnoxious screaming
• Comment on every pair of tits in the game

Of course, that's not to say that the goons themselves are not guilty of some of these things (especially in the earlier years of the subforum's existence). But through peer pressure, the goons have been forced to put hours upon hours into their videos just to avoid ridicule. While even the shittest Youtube LPer will have at least 2 "fans" defending them from the "haterz". So most don't bother.

TV Tropes

	“	Let's Watch A Let's Play? ...sounds just crazy enough to work...	„
	—Zudak on Let's Watch "Let's Play Sonic 2006"

Unlike the failures at Youtube, the aspies at TV Tropes are too busy arguing over whether or not some minor character from the latest animu could be considered a "moe blob" and sucking Fast Eddie's cock to take screenshots or point a camcorder at their TV. (The ones that do are usually just Youtubers trying to get more hits.) Instead, they have something called "Live Bloginations" where they just write their thoughts of what they are looking at on their TV screen or emulator window. Unlike the other two sites, you don't even get the benefit of a mute button or scroll bar to ignore the LPers' boring commentary to get right to the actual gameplay. So really, there is no point in reading these things unless you want to mock them or suffer from insomnia.

They also do this for other things like TV shows, movies, and other LPs. Because why watch the LP yourself when you can read what some nerd pretending to be an intellectual thinks about it?

Tropers, along with all of the losers who post on Fandom Secrets, also like to idolize other LPers and will always insist that well known LPing duos or groups secretly want to fuck each other or have some stupid sexual fetish that they enjoy as well. But that's to be expected since they do that with every other piece of media in existence.

Notable traits

• The fanbase must be either full of 13 year olds or man children.
• Be as unfunny as possible and try to make as many sex jokes as possible.
• Must be a neck-beard and fat. NOTICE: In the case the let's player isn't a neck-beard or fat, he will compensate it with having a smaller dick than the average let's player.
• The let's player will have the worst gaming skills EVER; no seriously no one sucks at video games compared to let's players.
• Ever let's player has played a horror game and screamed at it, this retarded trend started when pewdiepie played some horror games and fake screamed it to get more youtube jewgold.

How To Make Money On Playing Games

• Enable Monetization on your shitty YouTube channel
• Play the most current games
• Or play Mario or Sonic romhack
• Or play some shitty flash games, with a lot of levels
• BE LOUD
• Comment on all females in-gaming
• Download Fraps illegally
• Invest in a capture device
• Share the video with all your Facebook friends
• Become uninteresting.. Even more so than you already are
• Complain when you aren't allowed to monetize the footage, because all the images belong to the game company

Notable LPers

• PewDiePie - Unfunny, annoying, hyperactive and Disney-sponsored money-machine, that passively forces people with regular jobs to commit suicide. Currently #1 most subscribed Youtuber. Made a special guest appearance on South Park.
• Markiplier - A guy who plays indie horror games and yells like a fucktard. Not quite as annoying as Pewdiepie, as Markiplier actually does commentary on his videos rather than just randomly shrieking like a dying pig. Will currently co-hose the gaming awards 2015 with Janet Varney.
• JackSepticeye
• CinnamonToastKen
• Game Grumps
• Retsupurae - The guys who started this.
• Valis77 - Is an infamous nigger who makes snide comments on underage female characters. Has a rap sheet for actually raping a girl in 2002.
• Chuggaaconroy
• DSPGaming - The worst of the worst. Absolute cancer.
• Roosterteeth - A production company that originally consisted of a few Drunken retards who made podcast episodes of them telling stories about their friends being extraordinarily stupid, and making gaming videos. but now the company resorts to making awful challenge videos that only vaguely resemble anything game-related not even made by the original founders(in fact, most of the founders have left) and have fallen in popularity fast.
• CaptainSparklez
• The Creature Hub - Spawns a shitload of stupid, forced memes that nobody gives a shit about, a member leaves every year because someone was mean to them on the internet.
• Smoshgaming Surprisingly has no ED page but redirects to Unfunny. Maybe they're not worth the effort.
• Nerdcubed Unfunny Britfag, similar to Totalbiscuit.
• Tobuscus
• Totalbiscuit - Elitist douchebag died from ass cancer.
• OMFGCata (Jesse Cox)
• TheSyndicateProject
• Seananners
• Gronkh - The sort-of german version of PewDiePie. Gets hyped up every other day by german game magazines for no fucking reason.
• Achievement Hunter - See RoosterTeeth.
• Pietsmiet
• Ethoslab
• ZombiUnicorn - AKA Titty Streamer. Likes to shit talk to people criticizing the attention whore.
• iHasCupQuake
• OneyPlays - Remember that one shitty newgrounds animator? He sold out alongside two Furfags to joke about vore and rip off Game Grumps.
• iJustine - Talentless camwhore, dumb as a brick. Can't even play videogames, at all.
• ZackScott - Reached 1 million subs recently, and thinks his videos are legit walk-throughs when he doesn't know what the fuck he's doing most of the time.
• KSI - Unfunny nigger and Pewdiepie wannabe.
• Foosytube - ^ but add "Insane" in the end.
• VenturianTale - Homeschooled Christfags who do nothing but play Garry's Mod, Minecraft, Five Nights at Freddy's, and nearly every other game that only autistic lowlife basement dwellers like, has a very defensive fanbase like PDP and Markiplier.
• DashieGames - Some Mexican swearing sick fuck whose fanbase only consists of 12 year olds.

See Also

• YouTube Commentaries
• Fraps
• YouTube

External Links

• The let's play wikia
• The LP Archive

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Let's Play is part of a series on Let's Players [HA HA GAYStart watching] Acerthorn • CallMeCarson • Chuggaaconroy • DarksydePhil • DashieGames • DrossRotzank • DJBPlaythroughs • Egoraptor • Game Grumps • JackSepticeye • JayisCrazay • Jim Sterling • JonTron • Markiplier • PewDiePie • ProJared • Retsupurae • Smoshgaming • TheSyndicateProject‎‎ • Tobuscus • Totalbiscuit • ValisHD • Vinesauce • WingsofRedemption