Let's Play videos are similar to a player completing a game via streaming video for an audience. PewDiePie (Felix Kjellberg) has one of the largest subscriber bases for his Let's Play YouTube videos With the onset of user-created video streaming websites like YouTube and Twitch, more users have been able to prepare and share such videos, making the Let's Play format widely popular, spreading beyond the Something Awful forums. From there, the format was popular with other forum users and many Let's Plays were created the forum established a process to create these and the development of a large archive of Let's Plays. Sawyer is also credited for creating the first video playthrough for the game The Immortal which he made alongside his screenshot playthrough. Sawyer's adaption would become the format that future Something Awful users would subsequently use. Sawyer stated that the format he adopted came from an earlier playthrough by forum user 'Vlaphor' for I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream.

The format of Let's Plays is credited to Something Awful forum user Michael Sawyer under his username alias 'slowbeef'.

The exact origins of the term are unclear, but believed to be about a screenshot playthrough of The Oregon Trail via the Something Awful forums sometime in 2005 the playthrough can no longer be found on the site, but has been referenced by other forum threads. Though others had used the same approach at the time, the forums at the website Something Awful are credited with coming up with the term 'Let's Play' in 2007 to describe such playthroughs. The presenter would also often poll readers or viewers with the in-game decisions as to provide an element of interactivity for the audience. One such form these took was the addition of running commentary, typically humorous in nature, along with the screenshots or videos video-based playthroughs would typically be presented without significant editing to maintain the raw response the players had to the game. For example, the Japanese television program GameCenter CX had the host challenged to complete retro games within a single day, and others like Skip Rodgers had provided VHS tapes describing to players how to complete difficult games. From the onset of computer video entertainment, video game players with access to screenshot capture software, video capture devices, and screen recording software have recorded themselves playing through games, often as part of walkthroughs, longplays, speedruns, or other digital entertainment formats.

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