NDM

Let's Play – the YouTube phenomenon that's bigger than One Direction

For the past five years, a silent army of video makers have been populating YouTube with clips of themselves playing computer games.

What might once have seemed an unlikely sub-genre has proliferated across the network and been rewarded with its own channel, called Let's Play, or LP. For gamers, it's a chance to combine their video production skills with an innate understanding of the connective power of the internet to create channels dedicated to clips of their game-play. 

The goal is not to get laughs, create a viral hit, or even to be competitive; gamers and their subscribers simply love games enough to want to watch other people play. Playing well helps, as does focusing on a popular game – MineCraft channels are particularly popular.

The figures speak for themselves; 24-year old Swedish gamer Felix Kjellberg’s channel, PewDiePie, is the most successful Youtube channel ever with more than 17 million subscribers. He has left One Direction’s channel, with its measly 10 million subscribers, for dust.

But it's not all about the unifying love of gaming. Youtube, which is owned by Google, runs a Partner Program which means that the owner of a video channel can earn a share of the money made from video ads on the site. 

This will encourage a lot of professional gamers to try and make their own youtube channel talking about new games coming out. This will help non gamers understand the features of each console and what you can do in the game to improve your skills. Making the videos on a youtube channel will help the people gain more publicity and views; making it more world wide. The target audience for this story would be teens and young adults.