Infinitap Games

Firstly, sorry for the delay! this was supposed to go up Friday, but we had a full day recording the voice overs, so I just didn't get a chance. anyway, here it is! (I'm still in Austin, which is why I'm behind on checking the forums. Everything will return to normal to Monday.)

YouTube personalities have become important taste makers for the video game playing audience. I talk about what sort of games appeal to them.

Do you know if there has been any info studied on the correlation between numbers of Youtube views for an LP, for example a 2 million+ Pewdiepie video, and an increase in game sales? I'd be really curious to see how much engagement with viewers there is, or are they more interested in just watching their favorite Youtube person play through the game for them?

Anyway, how did the VO recording go? Have you done anything like that before? It's really exciting to hear about, I think I recognize Gabrielle's voice actor, who you mentioned in the update a week or so ago, from a few things!

I don't know if there have been formal studies, but I've heard evidence that streamers increase sales from various developers. Some people post graphs of sales spikes on gamasutra's blogs, but I don't have a link handy.

I imagine the engagement varies from steamer to streamer. I think people mainly watch PewDiePie to see PewDiePie - not to get game recommendations. It might be different for Jesse Cox, who's Greenlight special on Neverending Nightmares seemed to push probably as many people into backing (at least it seemed like that to me from what I read on various comments).

All I know is I want to hit every popular streamer I can!

I've never done anything like direct a VO session before, but it went really well. I'll write more in my update. I also filmed about 7 hours of footage, so I can cut together some interesting behind the scenes stuff after the game ships, but probably not before because *spoilers*!

Awesome, that sounds great! Looking forward to it.

There's definitely an audience for people freaking out over horror games. Amnesia: The Dark Descent is really popular for that. I have to wonder how much of that is just playing it up for the camera, though. I liked Amnesia, and there were definitely scary parts about it, but I'm pretty sure it never got me to scream, either. But people's ability to tolerate that sort of game definitely varies.

Personally, I wouldn't want to watch a Let's Play of something like Neverending Nightmares before I'd played it myself. If I watched it first then I'd already know the story (or at least one path through it), where the jump scares are, etc. I feel the same way about something like Telltale's The Walking Dead, even though my playthrough wouldn't be identical to their's. I wouldn't worry nearly as much about an action game, especially if it's procedurally generated like Spelunky.

I'm guessing they play up to the camera, but I certainly won't complain if people ham it up in Let's Plays of Neverending Nightmares. I am looking forward to people freaking out to our "shocking" plot twists. hahah
Honestly, I expected more people to express some disgust/surprise/confusion when Gabby switches from sister to wife. Adam our artist was kind of freaking out about it, and he's been working on the game for a long time, so I expected more of a reaction from players, but it seems like everyone just accepts that anything can happen in nightmares. For streamers, that'd be a good time to emote great surprise or disgust, so I am looking forward to seeing them react. Maybe it's just not as "shocking" as I thought.

I'm not sure I'd want to watch a Let's Play for any game except one that:
A) I developed or
B) I'm playing and stuck. (Although text walkthroughs are much more helpful for that but they seem to be losing popularity)

However, I'm not "hip" or "with it", so I guess I'm not the Let's Play audience. I suspect people watch it for long enough to decide if they want it and then turn it off, but who knows. All I know is apparently they are important for selling indie games these days.