Troping Let's Plays

i think another issue is that let's plays, for the most part, tend to be purely Audience Reactions (or discussing tropes and audience reactions) in what they're playing. like for example Alternative Character Interpretation in the examples warjay brought up. there aren't a whole lot that advance a narrative beyond that, at least without going into the fan works of those let's players. you kind of have to draw a line between what counts as a tropeable experience and what is just reacting to the media that's already there

i don't mind erring on the side of caution, but if the Let's Play namespace becomes retired, what happens to the subpages of their respective "works"?

also where does that leave Virtual YouTuber and other stuff that intentionally blurs the line? do we just trope the purely fictional, scripted stuff (if any exists) or nothing gets troped at all?

weaponizing Dungeon Fighter Online elitism since 2018

About Vtubers: hololive at least is a case where the characters are tropable, but are very light on tropable stories. The company designed the early avatars and assigned them to streamers, intending the characters to be their IP that would be changed between voices as needed. Then they tried to change a voice actress and the fan reaction made them retreat. Now the avatars are de facto owned by the streamers, but still played as characters. Sometimes it is clear that they are simply playing up their own reactions, but these are made into a consistent persona for their audience. Some (Rushia is perhaps the clearest) clearly craft their character using pop-culture tropes.

When streaming single-player games, there is little other than reactions and comments about the game, very rarely tropable on their own. But in collabs, things liven up. Basically they are doing improvised theatre using their characters. There is little continuity and rarely any story structure, which is why I say they can be difficult to trope as stories, but the characters are consistent and can be troped. (And fans often create story structure when they edit clips together.) There are also animated short, which tend towards Random Events Plots, but are definitely tropable and use the personas. These personas arise from a mix of initial design, actor's kayfabe and fandom memes, which makes them a challenge to trope, but it should be doable. One thing of note is that the CEO of Hololive (Tanigo Motoaki) has become a memetic persona called YAGOO often brought up for Biting-the-Hand Humor; we must distinguish the real person and the meme.

Some other Vtubers like Vshojo are allowed more leeway and often talk as themselves to each other and fans. Ideally we should only trope their performance segments, but the border between them can be hazy.

Stories don't tell us monsters exist; we knew that already. They show us that monsters can be trademarked and milked for years.

That one is not in the Let's Play namespace, and it sounds like LPs are only part of their content, so troping them doesn't seem like it would be a problem.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I think this topic should be expanded to discuss the Video Review Show and its sister, the video essay, and how to trope them.

Video Review Shows are weird. A lot of them are just straight reviews of a work, and obviously those aren't tropable. But then you have stuff like the Angry Video Game Nerd or The Nostalgia Critic or JonTron who have characters and plot lines in their reviews. I think those are tropable. Hell, some video essays have fictional elements in them such as RedLetterMedia and Philosophy Tube and I think those could be tropable too, depending on the level of fiction in them.

Stuff like videogamedunkey, RT Game, Jerma985, or Vinesauce (and I watch all of those channels) do not work, however, due to a general lack of original content to trope. Same for some essayists who lack much in the way of fiction, such as Lindsay Ellis.

The problem is, a large number of the latter exist across the wiki, and cleaning them out will be a massive task. What does everyone here think we should do about them?

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Apr 15th 2021 at 9:59:15 AM

TRS Queue | Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall

Analysists are different, I think. Even if they don't use tropes, they do discuss them, which I think is just as tropeworthy.

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

I don't know. The way Fighteer is making it sound, they seem like they can't.

For me personally, there's a difference between someone like The Nostalgia Critic or JonTron, who do reviews that include large amounts of plots and original content, or something like RebelTaxi or Lindsay Ellis, who mainly discuss tropes without having much in the way of plotlines. The former, if what I am hearing is correct, is very tropable, while the latter isn't.

TRS Queue | Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall

Well, Fighteer's not talking about analysists at all. He's talking about LPers, who add no original content to the work and just post videos playing games.

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Ah, I see. I still wonder though—what is the official stance of TV Tropes towards troping essayists?

TRS Queue | Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall

"Official stance"? Umm, I'll have to get back to you on that. I am speaking as a moderator, but as only one moderator, not the entire staff. I used to make unilateral policy declarations but I don't do that as much any more.

Anyway, I feel that a similar standard would apply to "video essayists". Take Jim Sterling, for example. They put out a variety of work including reviews/impressions, opinion pieces, analytical pieces, and satire. In them they craft personas and characters to illustrate various points, many of them recurring like Duke Amiel du'Hardcore and the Cornflake Homunculus. They also have a professional wrestling career.

By comparison, take Yong Yea, an extremely popular YouTube essayist who focuses on the game industry. He has a studio setup in which he talks to camera as himself, reading from a script, with no particular improvisation, acting, or roleplaying.

Yong Yea would not qualify for a TV Tropes article, while Jim Sterling would (and does). This is because we can derive trope examples from Sterling's roleplaying, comedy, and satire. However, our article should focus on the creative elements and not on the person behind them. It could potentially be trimmed down a bit because a lot of the examples boil down to "Jim has an opinion on something", which is not tropable.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 15th 2021 at 11:15:07 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

It would mean that we would favour performers over technicians when it comes to presentation for Let's Plays.

Kirby is awesome.

Yes, exactly. Because the performance is what is tropable. "Person plays video game" is as Chairs as one can get.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 15th 2021 at 11:20:47 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Thanks for the info. I apologize if you felt I was singling you out—I was talking the wiki rules as a whole, but if it isn't set in stone I understand.

TRS Queue | Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall

Hmm, that's interesting. I think that this is where my own disagreement on the matter of let's plays—and indeed, video essays—stems from: to my mind, such a thing is eminently tropable.

I definitely disagree that let's plays are just a chairs-y "person plays video games"!

However, I mention this, I think, mainly as a matter of interest, and I suppose to register my position on the matter in general, and not as an argument for admitting either video essays or let's plays. If this is where TV Tropes, specifically, draws the line, then fair enough!

Indeed, with the above said, let me bow out of the discussion for now! (Although I intend to keep reading.)

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Apr 16th 2021 at 10:55:10 AM

My Games & Writing

seconding this sentiment.

if a cleanup effort ever crops up from this thread to fix this problem (if the other mods even think it's a problem), i personally can't contribute much to it. i mostly only hover around hololive, Vinesauce and some game pages, which being fictional to begin with don't have this issue. but the former two have enough "borderline troping real people" that i could at least offer some help on that.

weaponizing Dungeon Fighter Online elitism since 2018

There are two issues or problems that combine to tell us where the line needs to be drawn: troping real people, and People Sit on Chairs.

1. It is objectively demonstrable that most articles about LP'ers or video essayists or vloggers or whatever are about that person more than they are about any putative creative content. This constitutes gossip and troping real people.

2. "Person plays video game" is chairs. "Person has opinion about video game" is chairs. "Person makes funny faces while playing video game on stream" is chairs. There is no narrative intent or structure to these things.

I disagree that the mere act of playing through a video game creates a unique story that is tropable. The story is in the game itself. If Ursula the Pro Gamer decides to go left instead of right in Doom Eternal and kills Imp 2 before Zombie 4, that's just... nothing. It's a complete zero as far as interesting storytelling goes.

Even in Skyrim, the stories are built into the game's interactions. Just because one player may choose to make a Nord mage who joins the Thieves' Guild while another chooses a Redguard warrior who becomes an assassin doesn't mean the players are creating those narratives. It's only possible because the game allows you to choose it. All narrative structure is in the game, not in the playing of the game.

In Disco Elysium, which is a hardcore RPG, all choices that the player can make are coded into the game. "Player chooses a dialog option" is not tropable.

Now, obviously there are games that lend themselves to player-invented narratives, and some LP'ers go out of their way to craft elaborate stories and be creative in how they approach the games. Those are indeed tropable, but represent a very small portion of overall content.

Edited by Fighteer on Apr 17th 2021 at 12:13:58 PM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

"Listen up, Marina, because this is SUPER important. Whatever you do, don't eat th“ “DON'T EAT WHAT?! Your text box ran out of space!”

I'm inclined to agree.

Yes, it's true that with some games no two players will have an identical experience, but that's really stretching the definition of "narrative".

Yeah. If the player goes out of their way to create their own story, and give their characters some personalities, backstories, or motivations beyond what the game itself can do, then I think that's tropeworthy. But just because one player chooses to be a Nord and the other an Elf doesn't mean either of those playthroughs are inherently tropeworthy just because they chose different actions- the game's narrative is still what's being used here.

I'm reminded of LetsPlay.Captainsauce's Sim's 4 series, which is dubbed "The Life of Kevin". Instead of just playing the Sims and doing a normal Sims LP, his series actually uses a lot of narrative tropes that he himself incorporates into the story through editing tricks, creative use of characters, and setting things up ahead of time while presenting it all as organic and spontaneous. For example, one arc involved the characters dealing with a "Groundhog Day" Loop and characters changing into children, while another involved the Goth family stealing their art work and putting it up in their house, spiraling into a criminal-conspiracy plot where even the police were in on it.

This is all very much tropeworthy, because instead of just playing with mod packs or attempting to make a narratives out of what his sims actually do, Sauce created these elaborate stories and then made them play out with careful planning and editing, turning "The Life of Kevin" into a proper, tropeworthy story that just uses the Sims as a medium.

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

If we decide to get rid of Let's Players who don't contribute substantially to the narrative, I'd be sad to see pages like Chuggaaconroy go, but I can accept it. However, I agree with WarJay that analysts like Lindsay Ellis who discuss tropes should be allowed to have pages, even if their work doesn't have a narrative of its own.

This reminds me: about a year ago, it was brought up that Logan Paul tropes him as a person and discusses his controversies, and it was brought up that his vlogs aren't really tropable on their own, and suggested it should be turned into a page for just his music.

Edited by rjd1922 on Apr 17th 2021 at 2:17:28 PM

Keet cleanup

This actually builds into why I am sometimes arguing that when a derivative work uses a trope in the exact same way as the original work, it shouldn't appear in the examples for the derivative work. If the Let's Play is just telling the story of "this questline" or "this order of questlines", then the examples are all from the original work and the derivative is providing nothing unique to experience.

A work (even a derivative work) has to provide a unique storytelling experience, and our standards for "unique" are otherwise pretty low. To visit another medium that tends not to have many tropes, I wouldn't want to encourage people to create an Art/ article for a painting that has three or four tropes. I'd rather encourage them to make a page for the artist and describe a dozen of their paintings with three or four tropes about each one. That's what an article should look like; a dozen or more examples about how the work/creator provides a new artistic experience. If the vlogger or player can provide that experience (invented backstory, having conversations with their characters, giving lines to the Heroic Mime, etc), that's a different beast than simply someone giving their opinion on a game/build.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I agree with all of the above. This is also why I don't think Let's Play should be a namespace at all. Web Video is the namespace that encompasses all forms of media that involve someone putting out content on a streaming service like YouTube or Twitch. I guess we have Web Animation as a specific subset, although I don't entirely agree with it.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

I have a secondary concern about the LetsPlay/ namespace, that is breaks with our "media are namespaces" convention.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

I will say that, while I may disagree on the question of let's plays being tropable, I do very much agree with the above.

Having "Let's Play" as a separate namespace is a bit like having "Fantasy Epic" as a namespace: namespaces cover media (in general), and like "Epic Fantasy", even if you consider let's plays to be tropable, they're a genre, not a medium.

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Apr 18th 2021 at 12:13:02 PM

My Games & Writing

Agreed about Let's Play being a genre, not a medium.

TRS Queue | Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall