Thomas Was Alone creator weighs in on recent Nintendo YouTube situation
Nintendo has been catching a lot of flack for its involvement with “Let’s Play” videos on YouTube. The crux of the matter: some content that was previously monetized by creators is instead accompanied by third-party ads.
Quite a few folks have weighed in on the situation since the news dropped in yesterday – including developers. Thomas Was Alone creator Mike Bithell had this to say:
Nintendo seems to be taking a very literal approach to the scene. “This guy is making money from videos of Mario, that should be our money”. That is phenomenally silly.
The guy in question is most likely not making much; even the big guys only get a tiny amount of money by international hardware company standards. Nintendo really, really doesn’t need their cash. By taking these sums away, they are massively dissuading them from continuing to make content from their game.
But why should they care about losing an LPer? Well, put bluntly, marketing. The audience of these videos are an excitable, tribal group that go out and spend a great deal of money on the games talked about.
I’ll close with an example from Thomas Was Alone’s sale history. The game launched in July on direct sales, and in November on Steam. The following Christmas I ran a 50 per cent off sale, which was doing rather well.
And then, on January 1st, Total Biscuit did a WTF video about the game. Thomas sold eight times more units than on launch day. In a matter of hours. I was outselling Assassin’s Creed 3 on Steam.
Bithell ended by saying that Nintendo is “doing it wrong.”
