Let's Play

CLEAN UP IN PROGRESS

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.

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. On a whole, they're probably right; But they still look retarded for being elitist over something as stupid as 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.)
• 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.

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

• 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

• PewDiePie

• Roosterteeth

• CaptainSparklez

• The Creature Hub

• Smoshgaming

• NerdCubed

• Tobuscus

• Totalbiscuit

• cr1tikal

See Also

• The let's play wikia
• The LP Archive
• YouTube Commentaries

	Let's Play is part of a series on YouTube.
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Let's Play is part of a series on Gaming Visit the Gaming Portal for complete coverage.