Let's Play is all over YouTube, I was lucky enough to get the inside scoop with someone who has recently started pursuing Let's Play videos. His online name is DeKode It!
Q: In your own words, what are Let’s Play all about?
A: Let’s Play is about three things to me, making people happy through the entertainment value, reviewing the game to help people decide whether or not they want the game for themselves, and just having a good time playing video games.
Q: What inspired you to start doing Let’s Play?
A: When I was a freshman in high school I was introduced to Toby Turner (Tobuscus). He was amazingly funny, and a great person, and I loved his videos, they made me smile and laugh really hard, but my Sophomore I fell out of YouTube since I became extremely busy in school. Then the biggest push for it happened my Junior year, I had just moved to San Pedro, California and had no friends at all, so I spent a lot of time on the computer. I'm big into the horror genre and especially creepy pasta, so I'd looked up Slender playthroughs and found Mark Fischbach, better known by his YouTube name, Markiplier. He had maybe 50,000 subs and not a single one of his videos wasn't entertaining, he was also so supportive of his fan-base, always telling them to follow their dreams. His supportiveness, humble nature, and how much I enjoyed his videos made me want to be like him. I just felt like I could do it, and it became my dream.
Q: Your first Let’s Play was with the game BioShock, that game is a couple years old. Why choose that game and not a more recent game?
A: I had three main reasons for that; money, fan-base, and time. I'd gotten a bunch of games off of Steam for really cheap since I didn't have too much money to buy big named games after having spent the money for me computer and recording setup. I asked my friends, since they were the ones who were really going to be watching right now, which of the games I should play and it was a pretty even tie between Shadow of Mordor and BioShock. Here is where time comes in, my internet was SO BAD the day I was trying to download Shadow of Mordor that it would've taken a year for it to finish downloading. So I settled for waiting for a few hours for BioShock to download. Now, I actually do have the money for larger games so I will be playing them, but I am not against playing old games at all because I haven't played a lot of them.
Q: What up-and-coming projects do you have?
A: Well besides a lot of indie games, because I love supporting indie development, I'm going to be trying to play Tales of Zestiria, it is part of the larger "Tales of" series (my personal all time favorite series of games), but this gameplay series with only be getting released if I don't receive any problems releasing the videos, so if there are videos of this game on my channel by now then there were no copyright issues! Some companies don't really like having people release videos of their gameplay and monetizing the videos. The big project that should be starting the day this is released is a humongous personal project called PokeMonth for the 20th anniversary of Pokemon where all of my other games will be taking a short hiatus while I play some Pokemon games and do some fact videos along with Top 10's so if you are into the Pokemon franchise I'd say now would be the Perfect time to check the channel out, otherwise definitely come by to check out some of the other videos I've posted to be prepared for when they come back in March.
Q: Do you play games besides the ones you record, or is every game for the channel?
A: I do play games outside of the channel. I have no way to record system games yet so all of my Nintendo, Playstation, Xbox, and old school console games are for my personal pleasure. I'm huge into nintendo games, being one of the biggest Pokemon nerds around so I am always playing those! Also there are some games I just feel may drag on and people may not enjoy the ride with me, for example I am playing the Game of Thrones RPG right now, but it is rather long and story driven so I felt that I'd get more out of it myself.
Q: Who are other people/companies that do Let’s Plays that are your inspirations?
A: As I stated before Markiplier and Tobuscus are two of them, but if I had to give you the people who inspire me the most to Let's Play they are Markiplier, Tobuscus, The Game Grumps, Cryaotic, and Jesse Cox are my top favorite YouTubers followed Closely by JackSepticEye, Mini Ladd, Vanoss, H2O Delirious, Dathidenogla, BasicallyIDoWork, and I Am Wildcat. All of them bring a certain charm to the table that keeps me coming back to watch their videos almost every day.
Q: Any advice to those interested in starting a Let’s Play channel?
Work hard! Just follow that dream no matter the cost, I literally spent almost all of my money to start Let's Playing. I had only about $20 left to my name, but I kept my head held high. And make your videos your Own, do not try to be another YouTuber, be yourself, people like transparency they don't want a fake person they want You. Also just because you've been working at the channel for months and don't have a million subscribers should not stop you, if you believe you will get there then it will happen! You can do it as long as you work for it, it will take it's toll on you, but once you overcome that you will feel like you can do anything.
Q: What is your favorite part of doing Let’s Play?
A: My favorite part is knowing that somewhere I'm making someone smile. I know I'm not the funniest, and I know my videos aren't perfect, but I know that at least one person somewhere is smiling and that one smile is worth more than a million subscribers.
