Ami Langton, PR and Marketing Manager at Ripstone: Vloggers

Ami Langton, PR and Marketing Manager at Ripstone came in to discuss her job working for a small publisher. After telling us the many benefits of using a publisher, she went into detail on the legal work that is required when publishing a game and how developers can fully concentrate on the creation of the game if they have publishers who can handle all of the legal work for them; small things such as short clips of music and even fonts need the rights to use, and a publisher will sort these for you. Another issue they tackle is localisation, allowing you to have you game reach other countries that speak a different first language, as well as advice on solving issues for localisation, like avoiding using skulls if you wish to sell your game in China.

Another topic for discussion was advertising. With the rise of popular YouTube ‘vloggers’ and ‘let’s players’, companies have started reaching out to the most popular personalities for videos of the developers products to hit the YouTuber’s channel, such as TotalBiscuit. These people can hit around 300,000 people viewing each one of their videos, with the most popular Youtubers, like PewDiePie hitting over 2.5 million views on each video. This is an incredible way to get as many people as possible to see your game and consider buying it, but is it ethical? YouTubers receiving payment for promotions on games is a very controversial topic, with the majority of gaming news sites covering the topic. Mike Rose of Gamasutra has written many articles on the issues behind the rise of Youtubers. After various surveys, Mike found that 40% of the surveyed YouTubers that had over 5,000 subscribers were perfectly fine with the idea of paid promotions of games and received a few comments on the matter:

"If the YouTuber brands himself as a reviewer, it would not be ethical. If the YouTuber is more of a Let's Player, it's really up to him as long as he remains transparent."

"It is expected from our work to be free. Copyright holders don't want us to monetize, no one likes ads, no one likes paid content -- but we invest our free time into covering the games we love and want to share, basically giving free PR for the game itself. If a YouTuber asks for money for delivering great content, it's not wrong -- it's compensation."

"You can't be sure the reviewer is unbiased because of that."

All of these comments were anonymous, but it gives you the general thinking behind the idea of paid promotions through YouTubers. It all links back to the question Mike Rose had near the start of his article: “Should Let's Players (people who record and share gameplay for viewers) be bound to the same journalistic ethics and rules as a traditional journalist?”

References:

Rose, M. (2014). Pay for Play: The ethics of paying for YouTuber coverage. Available: http://gamasutra.com/view/news/219671/Pay_for_Play_The_ethics_of_paying_for_YouTuber_coverage.php. Last accessed 10th May 2015.

Bain, J. (2015). TotalBiscuit. Available: https://www.youtube.com/user/TotalHalibut. Last accessed 10th May 2015.

Arvid Ulf Kjellberg, F. (2015). PewDiePie. Available: https://www.youtube.com/user/PewDiePie. Last accessed 10th May 2015.