Troping Let's Plays

I think gameplays can be tropeworthy, it's just that some users trope videos without any narrativity under the pretense of the creator being a character made for the channel, apparently. For example, in Brazil there is a website called Jovem Nerd whose let's plays are always full of edition made by official studios they pay for, like insertion of songs, clips, animations etc.. The things the people playing the game do aren't tropeworthy, only the narrativity the editors make by molding the video. My opinion is that there isn't a need for a namespace for those specific cases; putting them under Creator/ pages is enough by me.

This is late but if we make an administrivia page of any sort, I guess making one for what works are considered tropable and what's not could be useful but not sure.

to the concept of a broader "Tropability" page that would cover current standards in general. Would that be best workshoped on the Outdated Administrivia thread, or elsewhere?

100% on board with such an idea. We’ve been having this tropability debate a lot lately with all the namespace stuff and a rules page may help with settling several debates.

Don’t know where we’d workshop such a page but I guess the Outdated Administrivia pages thread?

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Aug 18th 2022 at 5:03:09 AM

If someone drafts what Tropability means, it'd really help, as I hear answers anywhere from nothing to anything.

Yeah Administrivia thread may work better.

Edited by Amonimus on Aug 18th 2022 at 12:15:05 PM

I would prefer to lump a discussion of Tropability in with There Is No Such Thing as Notability, which also covers the concept of Verifiability.

• Notability: how popular or important a work or creator is
• Verifiability: the ability to confirm that the tropes claimed to be in a work are actually in it
• Tropability: the amount of creative content a work contains

We may or may not want the relevant administrivia page to be about Work Page Requirements. Notability and Verifiability are requirements for examples, but Tropability is more about the minimum(s) needed to make a work article.

Creative Choice or Creative Input is a significant factor here as well, because a straightforward demonstration of gameplay doesn't really add anything to the derivative compared to things like roleplaying a separate personality for characters and Talking To Himself.

...Verifiability is also a requirement for works, or else Unpublished Works wouldn't be segregated.

The thing I don't like about verifiability is that a lot of people consider works you need to buy "verifiable" but not websites that require subscription.

Definitively no to adding it to There Is No Such Thing as Notability - "verifiability" applies to examples and works, "notability" isn't a concept on TV Tropes and "tropability" seems like a different thing too.

As I said in the other thread, the basic requirement is that if anyone wants to pay to see a work, they can. A website subscription fee isn't a problem as long as there isn't an invitation-only or other exclusivity component. There have been debates about whether works that are released early for members can be troped, but I don't remember what we decided on. I think it was that it's okay for examples to be added but they have to be tagged as spoilers (or a spoiler warning added to the article header, or equivalent) until wider release.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 19th 2022 at 9:12:06 AM

You're misreading/misunderstanding. An example from a work is likely to show up on a trope page before a work page is made. Examples from unpublished works are forbidden because they have no verifiability. Work pages require a minimum number of examples. Since a work page cannot have examples that aren't verified (because works need examples and examples need verifiability), articles for unpublished works are segregated from the rest of the website. The Unpublished Works index is essentially an exception made for articles which otherwise violate the rules. In this case, the rule is primarily about verifying the examples.

The counter-example is Upcoming Works, which has a dedicated cleanup thread to permit unverified (because they're not yet distributed/published/finished) works to have articles if they have produced enough tropes via marketing.

I'm of the mind that to start this, we ought to step back and take a look at another namespace entirely: Radio. There are a number of format similarities between radio shows and online broadcasted works like let's plays, podcasts, and such, and they thus share a good bit of troping ground. The difference being, of course, radio shows definitely predate the internet (and most of the people here on the site) as a whole.

This would allow us to develop a more unbiased standard, since as this thread has noted, a lot of people are going to be more attached and/or have stronger opinions on online content. If something is okay to trope in regards to a radio show, it should be allowed for web video works as well.

If you mean if a Letsplay was sound-only like on radio, it would still depend on what is own and what is just reacting.

There actually is an interesting case of Retro Game Master, which is TV Show with 70% of episode time being Let's Play.

I noticed Markiplier is still under the "Let's Play" header. Assuming his page doesn't get axed, would it make sense to move him to the "Creator" or "Web Video" namespaces?

Sounds complicated. I think it should be Creator.Mark Fischbach with a list of acting roles, with WebVideo.Markiplier effectively being one of the "roles".

Mark is more known as Markiplier, so this is likely the same case as PewDiePie, except that the Let's Plays may potentially be tropeable in Mark's case.

...We have a Radio/ namespace?

For broadcast audio-only works, yes. Things like X Minus One and The Lone Ranger. We even have a dedicated forum for it.

The main purpose of a Creator page is to bluelink creator names in articles and to show works by creators, enabling wiki walks.

If Mark Fischbach is Markiplier's real name, and he is credited in roles under that name, then there should at least be a redirect from Creator.Mark Fischbach, just as there is a redirect from Creator.Toby Turner to WebVideo.Tobuscus.

Markiplier is the name of his channel and what he is best known for, so there definitely needs to be a Web Video article.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 30th 2022 at 8:02:37 AM

Even in his own recent project, the credits say "Mark — Mark Fischbach".

Edited by Amonimus on Aug 30th 2022 at 3:11:05 PM

Question: Where do LetsPlays even go on a trope page? Despite how many there Let's Play pages there are, I've noticed almost no trope pages have Let's Play sections.

Er, since most of them aren't tropeworthy they won't go anywhere anymore anyway... but the ones that can be kept would go under Web Video.

My $0.02 on reading through this thread after reading the Light Novel discussion:

Post #14, emphasis as original:

I could use Fighteer's argument to say that traditional Game Shows are not narratives, outside of possibly the interview segments. And, yet, speaking to Ars' point in Post #25, there are several mechanics that are common throughout the genre that they have their own index.

Conversely, I could use the last sentence in the above quote to lump Reality Shows (including the Reality Game subgenre) into the Documentary genre in the cases where a narrative can be discerned. Such a narrative may be constructed from real-life interactions, in a way similar to "The Life of Kevin" cited by War Jay in Post #44, but it's a constructed narrative about real persons nonetheless.^note Albeit, about otherwise non-notable persons outside of the "Celebrity Editions".

I think that Freecom's mention of several LPers engaging in Kayfabe in Post 11 has weight, albeit not sufficient weight for the individuals themselves. But said Kayfabe evolving into a common "lore" for Fan Works would, IMO, be enough to pass the bars of Notability and Verifiability, allowing those personas to be discussed in a broader context, albeit as Characters. It's kind of an inversion of the "Reality" genre I just mentioned: that genre is a manufactured narrative using real persons whereas e.g. Vinesauce are characters without a narrative; if they had a series of narratives, then they would be no different from a Theater Troupe (see Reymma, post #28).

Post #26, emphasis and potholes added:

I think that this is the key. Yes, as Fighter said in post #41, "People play video games" and "People have opinions" are both "People Sit on Chairs". But "People having opinions about video games", while being "Chairs" from the perspective of the LP viewer, are also Reactions with respect to the game being played. This is supported by what Ars thinks is the narrative of an LP in the post immediately prior:

So while I agree with Fighteer that LPs are not tropable in their own right, save for those transformative enough that the transformed elements would be tropable, I disagree on them having no purpose on This Very Wiki. Rather, they serve as evidence of notable reactions to the work covered. Thus, the LP in question can be cited in the game's entry under the appropriate reaction, and vice versa. Of course, Editors need to remember that Weblinks Are Not Examples and so would need to provide context that doesn't violate the Spoiler Policy with regard to the reviewed game.

With regard to Post #95, I would like to present a counter argument: Official Strategy Guides of that timeframe often included a story within their pages and the plots took some liberties: e.g. Keyan Farlander's amazing player-driven feats were treated as Keyan being Force-sensitive.^note So The Player is The Force? It introduced side characters with their own mini-arcs but were mostly independent of the game itself. By the developing standard, these Strategy Guide stories would be more tropable than most LPs.

Please summarize your arugments into basic points, you're referring to posts that were over a year ago and we've significantly moved on since then.

"they serve as evidence of notable reactions to the work covered", I'm not sure what that means, because tvtropes isn't for collecting reactions, those are secondary to works, and non-creative letsplays aren't works.

Edited by Amonimus on Sep 3rd 2022 at 8:59:21 PM

A work consisting entirely of Audience Reactions is not tropable.

Game shows have tropes in the sense that they embody a sort of fictionalization, but that fictionalization is the playing of the game itself. The players of the game are not characters, and neither are the hosts. The game mechanics are the tropable part, just as with video games. There are also tropable elements to the production and presentation of the show, plus things like memes and catch-phrases that are completely contained within the show and the audience's reaction to the show.

Reality shows are marginal in that they are mostly unscripted content and are often just people doing stuff, albeit that there is some amount of narrative in the selection of participants and in the editing. If they're framed around some kind of game or contest, then that is of course tropable, but not the contestants themselves.

Consider this: Call of Duty is a game, with tropes. José streaming himself playing Call of Duty is not a game, nor is it not a documentary about a game. It's just "person plays game". All of the tropes are in the game itself, and you cannot apply the tropes in the original work to a derivative work. Sure, José may react to the game as he plays it, but as I said above, Audience Reactions are not tropes and do not count towards tropability.

Therefore, a Let's Play is only tropable if there is substantial transformative content that gives rise to narrative tropes solely within the context of the derivative work, not the game being played.

Edited by Fighteer on Sep 3rd 2022 at 4:44:36 AM