Rastan78 wrote:
I totally understand the idea of creating a reference database and using emulator tools since it's impractical to beat thousands of games legit. But if that's your only purpose why the stubborn refusal to label appropriately? What's so hard about that?
So yeah I get that it took a push from Elixir and a bunch of other community people to get it there, but it
is properly labeled now, so it's hard for me to have any issue with that particular aspect.
Again, I really have no reason to defend something as useless as this channel just having found a niche to make a buck with little effort. I don't think it's honorable, and honestly it's the one situation where I think Nintendo's move of putting a copyright claim on videos featuring their games makes a lot of sense, because the only "content" being produced here is the contents of the game - the player is adding nothing of their own, and shouldn't be able to profit from it.
But, purely in terms of the content, it's still weird to me that people spend so much energy trying to portray them as a lying fraud, when they aren't pretending to be anything other than "a longplay".
A TAS is different, even if you don't consider the prerequsite of being a speedrun, a TAS actually takes effort and a deep knowledge of the game, and labeling them as such
would be dishonest. None of the videos are labeled as representing any sort of feat, so they are not doing anything dishonest.
Rather, they are all labeled as Longplay, a term not invented by WOL, but definitely codified by them at this point. Again, lots of the things these videos do to demonstrate certain aspects of games, straight up contradicts focused skill runs.
There are many videos on YouTube that do have the appearance of being a skill based run, or at least a demonstration of "how to play" the game, and World of Longplays isn't that. Again, Shadowserg is MUCH worse, because they straight up label their video as being a demonstration of how to beat bosses without taking damage. If a video is labeled as a Longplay, I know well enough it's not something I can use as a reference for skilled play, and that's fine enough to me.
Some people might not realise that right away, but it's clearly stated in the description now, and I don't really see them doing as much harm as people like to pretend. Yes, they are pushing awesome 1CC runs down the search results, but that has nothing to do with how they are labeled. That's the consequence of their volume and the popularity of the channel, that's just how YouTube works. I'm pretty sure I was among the first couple of people to upload an Arcade Mode clear for Steel Assault, landing it within a week of the game's release, but if you search for that now, my video is far far down on the list, because my channel has absolutely zero clout. Hell, there are tons of great superplays of various STGs on YouTube that you pretty much have to know the name of the uploader (or a specific unique term used in the vidoe title) to even unearth. And that has nothing to do with "longplays" existing.