Long story short, the dev of That Dragon, Cancer posted an emotional and controversial post about how Let’s Plays may have affected the game.
The general conclusion of the piece is that Let’s Plays did extreme harm to the game, and there’s a rather emotional backlash towards them.
I’m not entirely happy to write this piece, as I really do wish games like That Dragon, Cancer were commercially viable (or at least, a viable way to live and keep making games), I constantly show Alt Games and all sorts of experimental, noncommercial or generally out-there games on my channel, twitter and website. I love games like this, I want them to thrive.
However. There’s a great deal of problems with this piece that I can’t let go unaddressed. The conclusion that Let’s Plays are harmful, even for a specific type of game, is exactly the conclusion a lot of powerful players in the gaming industry love to latch onto and predictably this story has been making the rounds to show how awful, greedy, and draining these so called “Let’s Plays” are.
So let’s run through the various problems with the points made in this piece.
Continue reading “Let’s Plays didn’t kill “That Dragon, Cancer””