What Do You Want Me To Talk About?

In my mind, once you make a certain amount of money, perhaps you should simply be satisfied. It kinda leads into my other question: should games maintain their current state for now? Like with Star Wars, which was a billion dollar franchise, trying to get even more people seemed kind of greedy. I wasn't even alive until ten years after it's original release and I love star wars. Clearly I must count as a new fan? I think the pursuit of getting even more money has to end at some point. But knowing when to do that can be very hard. I would also say mobile games have one very easy advantage in that they are played on a phone, something everyone has, and tend to be quick and easy. That applies to an entire audience of people who will never buy a console. My grandmother and her friends all had pokemon go when it came out. Lol

ReyIvory

I guess at the point where your audience is as big as it can get, the only other thing you can do to be more profitable is to try to cut costs. But that is very hard to do in the case of videogames and Movies. These are very expensive to create and if you cut back on scale you might lose part of that casual audience that was attracted to your product for the special effects or graphics. It's kind of a catch 22. Trying to grow the audience and cut costs at the same time is very difficult. Though this is something that mobile games do very well, which would explain why there are mobile games for basically everything now.

Wonderfully put! And I see where you're coming from on that. I guess my thought process was this; no matter how much you expand, you have a finite amount a people you could ever get as customers. Expanding too much will make it so that your original fanbase is leaves. Sometimes that's not a problem, especially if you aren't profitable with that fanbase. But with say pokemon, when you already have 16 million buying consistently, how much further can you reliably go? Or say with star wars, where the old fanbase made you a billion dollar franchise, then you try to dump them for a completely different audience.

ReyIvory

In case you guys need more to talk about: IGN took down a video after their reviewer plagiarized a video from a YouTuber. A Dead Cells review. <a href="https://www.destructoid.com/ign-removes-dead-cells-review-after-editor-allegedly-plagiarizes-a-youtuber-516123.phtml" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.destructoid.com/ign-removes-dead-cells-review-after-editor-allegedly-plagiarizes-a-youtuber-516123.phtml</a>

I know you are not asking me, but this is something that I have noticed and it has been on my mind as well. My theory is that the bigger the company/publisher, the more likely it is that there is pressure on the CEO and corporate business type people to make each project more and more profitable. The common way to do this these days is to change aspects of the existing big franchises in order to reach the untapped audience (For example, make Star Wars appeal to women/girls more by making the main protagonist female this time. Since the last 6 films have had a male protagonist.) But by doing so, the franchise sometimes loses the magic it had by having a limited scope geared towards what it was before. To the corporate people, this is still seen as a successful transition if the franchise becomes more profitable in the long run. But for a lot of people in the traditional fanbase this is seen as "selling out", if the franchise starts to lose the magic that it used to when it was more specialized or focused. Sometimes this can be avoided if the CEO/corporate understand what made the product special to begin with and make a strong effort to preserve those aspects. But in recent times it seems like that is not a very big priority for recent sequels to big franchises.

Second question: When should a company stop focusing on 'new audiences'? This is a question that isn't limited to gaming because i feel all western entertainment has this problem to some degree. Lately, I have seen a few games make some controversial decisions in order to appeal to new fans. One example is with pokemon; they have made the games with numerous diverse changes in let's go pikachu and eevee in order to appeal to more causal fans or the pokemon go community. These changes include things like taking away battling of wiild pokemon, simplifying the catching mechanic, gyms requiring to enter them with the pokemon strong against that gym, etc. However, pokemon is a series that routinely sells around 16 million copies (For the first games of each new generation). Other franchises are guilty of this as well though, including Final Fantasy, Star wars, The American Comic Book Industry in its entirety. When do you feel that companies need to hold back on getting this 'new' audience?

ReyIvory

Kinda late with this post but I thought I'd go ahead and leave it here. So I had two questions this week. First off, Do you think it developers and games in general should pull back on 'progressing' for a short period of time? Every year I see games trying to push the envelope with bigger worlds, more detailed textures and characters and higher quality graphics, etc. However, do you think that maybe games should stop and explore what they can actually do with the tech they have now? One of my favorite games ever made, Majora's Mask, was made relatively quickly using the same graphics engine and reusing many models from Ocarina of Time. Do you see any benefit in the gaming industry focusing less on what new thing they can make and see what they can do with what they already have? Or do you feel they should continue this path of progression without looking back? Love to hear your thoughts.

ReyIvory

I always pronounced it (Ee-Fuh) but I could see (eye-fuh) being correct knowing how Zidane is somehow supposed to be pronounced (Zi-dahn).

Resonant Arc

(eye-fuh)

With Capcom as of late in recent interviews going out of their way to please the customer by returning franchise's to their roots or put franchise's back where they were. Examples being Monster Hunter World, Mega Man 11, Devil May Cry 5, and Resident Evil 7. They have also said they care more about reception than sales numbers. It does seem like Capcom is really pushing to put themselves back in a positive light after how the last few years they were being heavily criticized. What do you think about Capcom's shift and new focus on openly expressing customer first? Do you think it is possible that they could go overboard on giving fans what they want and not explore new things? Too much of a good thing type of scenario. Here are some articles for reference. <a href="https://www.dualshockers.com/devil-may-cry-5-fans-wanted/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.dualshockers.com/devil-may-cry-5-fans-wanted/</a> <a href="https://www.dualshockers.com/resident-evil-2-reception-sales/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.dualshockers.com/resident-evil-2-reception-sales/</a>

Hey guys, just became a patreon, loving your videos! They make me look forward to my long commutes to work or university haha keep up the hard work :) from Australia! What are some of your favourite aesthetic or art styles in video games? I don't mean just the raw quality of the graphics and how "beautiful" they look, but more so about how the style fits in with the themes or setting of the game. For example, many people agree that the original FFVII's graphics have aged terribly, and I agree 100%, but personally I feel that the style of the art really fits in with the theme of the game, being that it's set in a world overrun by greed and pollution. The more dull colours and dark areas specifically. Another example is Wind Waker (the original) released way back in 2002, that still holds up to this day because of the bright, colourful cel-shaded style that corresponds perfectly with the charming adventure of the game.

I just go with Eye-fa or Eefa, personally. :p

Quite a few people I've seen have stated they would like FFXVI to be based on the Agnis Philosophy trailer that was released several years ago. Do you agree with this sentiment, or would this be a good move? Personally, I don't want Square to base an entire game around a trailer yet again, but... It was a cool trailer. #Offtopic #Jean-Luc-Picard-Is-Back

Hat

While watching one of your deep dives(I think it was FF13) i was struck by a comment you made about variety of play, and how ff13 could do with something to break up the combat, because as good as the combat is it does get repetitive. I realized that a lot of the reason I play games is for novelty, whether that is in gameplay, in story, in setting or somewhere else. What other games do you think could've done with some extra variety of play to break up any monotony that would set in?

Have you fallen out of love with actually playing games as you’ve grown older? Is there another way that you prefer to experience games now? For example, I now very rarely play games - at least those with a story - because I just don’t have the spare time to play them fully. However, I still enjoy experiencing these games, but rather in watching someone else play them (whilst I get on with other tasks in the background) and listening to reviews/the storyline of the game.

May-pull tree

How important is "groundedness" for you in video games (whether talking about grounded and relatable characters, or grounded and believable worlds)? Have there ever been games that were either too bizarre/fanciful or too mundane/ordinary for you to really get into?

I'll go low rent this week. I've started a new game of FFIX, how the heck to you pronounce the name of that giant tree? Eefa? Eifa? i-i-faa Eye-ee-fa?

ChocolateRob

What's your thought on a Bill and Ted RPG? It could be the next Chrono Trigger! What movie would you like to see be made into a game?

If you had to make a feature-length documentary on one specific RPG, which one would you choose, and why? For example, would you choose a game which had a particularly tumultuous development, or maybe a game with many unanswered questions and fan-theories?