Troping Let's Plays

The difference there is, we don't trope the creators, we trope their content. And with a few exceptions, Let's Players don't create creative content. Their content is transformative, as they do consist of unique playthroughs and commentary, but that's not the same as creating something. When the story you play is just one of the stories the game allows, and you don't really have any creative input beyond what your character looks like, it's hard to be called a proper creator in the TVT sense.

It's the same reason why we don't trope typical reaction channels- because even in the best cases, their reactions don't constitute creative content. Someone needs to do more than just scream at a game or video clip.

Some Let's Players create entire narratives using the game as a medium, or have other tropeworthy content besides. Some reaction channels make skits or parody content that can be troped as creative. But the actual gameplay and reaction content isn't tropeworthy without that personal and artistic touch.

That's why I think it would be productive to first go through the Let's Play index and sort them by "without that personal and artistic touch" and "with that personal and artistic touch" to see how exceptional they are. Article Count shows there are 548 pages.

Recap.Trolled appears to be recapping episodes of a Let's Play series. It's a bunch of redlinks and stubs.

There's a Recap cleanup thread.

So I'm reviving this discussion because there was support for abolishing the "Let's Play" namespace, but nothing was really done. I would ask for a crowner, but I'm not sure one would apply here.

Do we need to start another discussion for the crowner? Would we even do one?

I'm for abandoning it, especially since it lumps in video and text LP's.

I agree that "Let's Play" should be abolished as Web Video and Web Original already cover them.

I'm still against cutting the pages, but if they're moved to WebVideo/ or WebOriginal/ then it's okay.

I support checking whether pages are sufficiently troped as a step to moving everything to other namespaces.

Edited by Noaqiyeum on Feb 23rd 2022 at 5:22:56 PM

I'll oppose for the sake of opposition.

Web Original is a depreciated namespace, but maybe Blog could work?

Stuff that doesn't fit anywhere else can still go on Web Original.

I'm not opposed to the namespace itself as long as everything kept is tropeworthy, but it'd make it easier to keep track if they were all being moved, so eh, I'm fine either way as long as the bad ones do get yeeted away.

I'm opposed to the LetsPlay/ namespace because namespaces are generally a medium/format level of distinction between works. Genre differences, such as reviews, is handled by indexing. WebVideo and WebAnimation should be able to handle all of the works from a medium perspective.

Well, they do have tropes, so why not?

The problem isn't the placement of video LPs; those can easily slot into Web Video. The problem is what namespace text/screenshot LPs would go in.

A lot of weird miscellaneous text-based stuff already goes in Blog/, as the namespace isn't limited to literal blogs.

Why not split video letsplays to Web Video and text letsplays into Blog?

If we're going to get rid of Let's Plays that aren't "creative" enough, it would definitely be easier to do that before moving all Let's Plays to a different namespace.

Just to clarify, when I said get rid of the Let’s Play namespace, I specifically meant the namespace, not all Let’s Plays. Although it might be worth including both on the crowner.

Good point.

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Feb 23rd 2022 at 6:01:59 AM

Not necessarily. Treat it like wick cleaning- move the good ones while cutting the bad ones.

We really ought to evaluate these case-by-case instead of banning an entire genre from the wiki. Some LP's do try to incorporate a storyline similar to a Mid-Review Sketch Show, or they make tropeworthy jokes and recurring bits.

Game Grumps being a go to example, though obviously they're in Web Video/ anyway.

Good points all. Maybe it isn't a good idea to include it on the crowner then.

I stand by what I said about crownering the namespace though.

Since many of these pages have a lot of subpages and wicks, I suggest making a cleanup sandbox for now and one by one note where the Letsplay/ pages would be best to go. Later we can review the choices before the moves.

e: Brainfarted that subpages aren't going to be affected unless the main page is cut, but it would still be a good idea to track which channels were already checked.

Edited by Amonimus on Feb 24th 2022 at 5:24:09 PM

Moving the articles from Let's Play to Web Video would have no effect on the subpages, aside from the need to fix any back-links. I've already said that I strongly support this. We might then set up a Projects thread to evaluate each article as it is moved to determine if it's worth keeping.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 24th 2022 at 9:21:30 AM