That Dragon, Cancer hit Steam early this year to widespread praise. It’s a documentarian game about lead designer Ryan Green losing his infant son to that titular dragon. It was a game that defied description and categorization and we as players still don’t really have a way to talk about.
Green let this detail be known on the game’s blog: ”our studio has not yet seen a single dollar from sales.” He attributes this in large part to streaming and let’s plays of the game, and while there are a lot of sensationalist headlines out there saying ”dev blames let’s plays for lack of sales” the response is a lot more nuanced than that.
”Despite,” he says, ”infringing on developers’ copyrights, [let’s plays] can especially benefit those who make competitive or sandbox games. However, for a short, relatively linear experience like ours, for millions of viewers, Let’s Play recordings of our content satisfy their interest and they never go on to interact with the game in the personal way that we intended for it to be experienced.”
It has to be frustrating as an independent developer to see people enjoying your game and sharing it and not see that positive response reflected in sales. Is he right about let’s plays? To an extent, probably. I’ve certainly watched games that I’ve no interest in playing but bought the game anyway because I enjoyed seeing it so much. But that’s not a reality for the vast majority of cases. And games like That Dragon, Cancer, simply aren’t worth watching someone else play. They’re too personal, a conversation between you and a developer that is poorly served by having an intermediary translating it.
The full blog post is absolutely worth a read. Do you think let’s plays are a more positive or negative force for the gaming industry? Or is it somewhere in between?
