Why so hateful towards Let's Players?

This is a very hostile community.

I remember around 2 years ago during VR Jam 2013, there was this guy who was recording and sharing partial playthrough videos of the jam entries. Then some other guy stole his avatar/icon and created a fake youtube page using his name and uploaded videos insulting the original guy. He also went around to other videos pretending to be the original guy and posted random troll comments.

To answer your question: I don't know but I'm guessing it's mostly bored angry young males with free time who also believe that the Let's Players are making too much money on the internet. And they feel hostile towards these content creators because, in their mind, they feel like something is being taken away from them.

I'm so glad you asked, but before I continue, I don't hate Let's Players at ALL and I don't practice nor condone any of the negative feedback toward Let's Players. Also, I'm fine with Rift based Let's Play vids for obvious reasons, but there is one thing that frustrates the heck out of me.

Too often, I see posts from frustrated, new Rift buyers crying/yelling/asking/begging to know why they can't play games (like Skyrim) on the Rift when they saw somebody on YouTube do it. Or they want to know why their image is "grainy" (SDE), or "jumpy" (judder), or just looks like junk when the YouTube video didn't show or mention that at all.

If you could do a favor. Post your gaming rig specs, mention if you had to use third party software (like VorpX), mention how long it took you to get the game to play properly. Mention things like SDE and judder. I'm not asking you to devote your vid to teaching the masses, but please realize the lack of information originates there and winds up here to be dealt with.

Keep in mind, my response has nothing to do with you personally. You might already do everything mentioned above. I'm just offering my two cents for anyone who wants to read it.

edit: It was a Let's Play vid that caught my attention and started me down the VR road. :)

I think LPs are great, so many people learned about VR from watching Jacksepticeye or Markiplier, and there is a great set of LPers that just devoted to VR. However, Vizion is right in saying that masses of uninformed consumers buying a dev kit also has the potential to harm the long-term success of VR, for the aforementioned reasons. Even given the drawbacks, I still think the LP community has as big a role to play in promoting VR as they have in promoting traditional gaming.

It isn't nearly as bad on the forum as it is on Reddit. It was so bad for one of my friends that he decided to just remove a few of his videos because of the poor reception from the community; just a massive amount of negative activity on his post and in the comments/dislikes. He has a nice setup, and like me is hugely supportive and knowledgeable of VR, so it is quite discouraging.

I do think I need to speak more of the SDE and other shortcomings, you are right on that. The problem is really that people will never do proper research on a product before purchase.

I think it's just the scaring left by pewdpie or however you spell it. there where alot of copycats thus hatred grew to stereotype I'd assume. I'm not into hating now I use channel blocking on youtube, but for a good overall play through I like evrydayvr, rev-kyle etc...(I like jacksepticeye though he did a bit of the screaming thing in the beginning I think been a while since I've looked at his vids) basically people who understand how to give a good we rounded review on the experience and the gameplay and won't suger coat anything. If poeple are hating just get thicker skin, there is an audience for everything, if your passionate about something and not just trying to get subs you'll keep doing it anyway so just stiff upper lip it till they come around i say - edit: or stop screaming like a crazy person during the review (unless it's real).

Yeah, I can only take so much of the overacting, uber-outrageousness. I enjoy watching gameplay without the over the top "watch me react" commentary.
Eh. To each their own, I guess. I'm old and my hip hurts. :)

I don't hate the LP videos.. some of them I don't like, but that is a personal preference thing. I would suggest to LP commentators give a disclaimer that the xyz product is not in the final stages and that they are running it with abc specs though.

"vizionvr" wrote:
Yeah, I can only take so much of the overacting, uber-outrageousness. I enjoy watching gameplay without the over the top "watch me react" commentary.
Eh. To each their own, I guess. I'm old and my hip hurts. :)

The big LPers that do this (Markiplier and Pewdiepie mostly, though I haven't seen a Pewdiepie video in ages) kind of give everyone a bad reputation. Most LPers aren't like that, at least not to that extreme, it's just that those two have built their success off of a very young audience that thinks random yelling is funny and cool. The VR LP community in particular is very different, with people like Cymatic Bruce and D from EvrydayVR being pretty grounded and analytical in their approach, only screaming or emoting when the experience is legitimately getting to them.

I think Jacksepticeye is pretty watchable as well if you like that sort of thing, he has a lot of energy and he does yell certain catchphrases, but he's way less over the top than the big two. He had some good rift videos awhile back, but i think most LP channels have kind of stopped doing Rift content, hopefully it will start up again once it launches officially.

There's nothing wrong with some of the lp-vids, however most of the uploaders epicfail.
By failing, I mean: uploading a footage that might worth something if the uploader would bother to at least mention the title of the demo actually played (or god forgive, a link to it), but almost all of them just advertise themselves and their unrelated other yt channels and vids.
Also the kids who do nothing but yell "holy shit" in the microphone all time (even if a cute manga-style girl appeared in a not-even-surprising manner, they scream like lucifer himself have spawned there in real life.

I've watched a lot of these videos, and I can tell you with confidence, videos that get downrated are usually just that bad.
I don't know much about reddit but in fairness, who cares? It's nothing new from a trolling hub.
Oh, sorry, it's officially called social hub.

Generally, if your video meets a few (obvious) demands, I don't think it'd be downrated.
-a proper narration in cases where the random fella would just scream like a 8yr old girl in the horror house
-information about the demo itself (proper name, how one can access it)
-explanation of the appearing bugs/glitches if any (there are, in most cases)
-at least some hints about how powerful rig you need for a decent experience
-mostly nobody cares how a kid's face looks like with the oculus on so that part should not take more than 15% of screen space

There are plenty GTA V videos and many more related to other games, but barely any of them actually goes into details like injector being used (vorpx/vireio/mod), no hints on other tweaks like fov hack used for showcased video, and they mostly miss the fact that their attempt failed in finding optimal settings, and not even the uploader experienced the game in the way claimed from the video's description.
These kinds of "Look man, got zah oculus, watch mah uber gameplay wiz GTA5 and be jelly" videos simply suck.

As an idea, it might be the makers of the crappy videos that downrate all the others for some random childish reason.

Example of very bad footage:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3H7Lk0qxEE (and generally, all of KSic Games, since the narration is restricted to yelling "holy shit" and "oh my god it feels sooooo reaaaaaaal" 90% of the time.

"Twitchmonkey" wrote:

"vizionvr" wrote:
Yeah, I can only take so much of the overacting, uber-outrageousness. I enjoy watching gameplay without the over the top "watch me react" commentary.
Eh. To each their own, I guess. I'm old and my hip hurts. :)

The big LPers that do this (Markiplier and Pewdiepie mostly, though I haven't seen a Pewdiepie video in ages) kind of give everyone a bad reputation. Most LPers aren't like that, at least not to that extreme, it's just that those two have built their success off of a very young audience that thinks random yelling is funny and cool. The VR LP community in particular is very different, with people like Cymatic Bruce and D from EvrydayVR being pretty grounded and analytical in their approach, only screaming or emoting when the experience is legitimately getting to them.

I think Jacksepticeye is pretty watchable as well if you like that sort of thing, he has a lot of energy and he does yell certain catchphrases, but he's way less over the top than the big two. He had some good rift videos awhile back, but i think most LP channels have kind of stopped doing Rift content, hopefully it will start up again once it launches officially.

I never thought Markiplier was all that bad in his older videos. Honestly he isn't even that bad now, only occasionally. I put Jacksepticeye up there with Pewdiepie though, all they ever do is scream into the mic, the latter more so. Markiplier is a genuinely good man, LP'er aside. His charity work and willingness to do good with his channel is what keeps me interested these days, but I really enjoyed his videos back when he was under 50k subscribers.


I like to think that my videos aren't over the top. I certainly wouldn't say they are very analytical, but I definitely like to get the point across of how good/bad the game/experience is, and what problems I may have encountered. I do believe I've mentioned the need for a powerful rig before, in a previous video.

After watching that KSic video, I don't understand how he possibly has so many subscribers. It was almost painful to watch.