I'm sure you're all aware of the furor surrounding Nintendo's decision to start claiming ad revenue on any Let's Player who uses footage of their games.
While arguing with someone on another forum about whether Nintendo were right or wrong to do this (hint: it's the latter) my opponent posited that while people may claim that LP's serve as free marketing for companies, they can just as easily turn people off games.
This sounded like a whole load of bullshit to me, because I know for a fact that I've bought games off the back of watching an LP (hell, I'd never even have heard of Vanquish without LP's) and I can think of no reason why an LP would discourage me from buying one unless it showed that the game was, in fact, a load of old arse.
'But all of this is just hot air without some actual figures,' he replied, and I guess he had a point, so I decided to get those figures. If you think there should be other options in the poll, let me know.
A couple of things I should point out: this poll assumes you actually watch LP's, and for the purposes of the original discussion it was based on, I feel we should also discount LP's of novelty games; i.e. I don't think anyone was saving up to buy the latest Cabella's before they saw an LP showing everyone how shitty it was.
Edit: I have now added an option for people who have been both encouraged and dissuaded from buying games as a result of LP's but I feel the need to add a caveat: Please don't select that option if you never intended to buy that game in the first place. What I'm really trying to gather evidence of here is that LP's can take a persons positive feelings towards a game and then reverse them, stopping them from buying the game.