Demographic problems require SYSTEMIC solutions, not INDIVIDUAL solutions. TL DR: Fighting games being unpopular is a DEMOGRAPHIC problem. The DBZ IP attracted a ton of buyers, but when they play the game, they don’t want to stick with it, probably because they don’t really understand the game on an intuitive level (and also the horrible User Experience with the lobbies). However even with DBFZ, we saw concurrent players on steam fall off rapidly after the release of the game (more than you might expect), suggesting that even with the ease of play changes, such as autocombos, only quarter circle motions, and so on, the game still wasn’t sticking with people. The popularity of each of these games seems to have no correlation to the ease of play, and a much stronger correlation to the quality of service for the game, and in dragon ball’s case, the strength of the IP. Tekken 7 did not include any ease of play additions compared to its forebears, yet is performing comparably to DBFZ (which has more sales momentum) and outperforming SFV. However the ease of play didn’t appear to make these games any more or less popular than any of their competitors. DBFZ and BBTag both did a good job of scaling complexity so the games were really simple to play at a lower level, but still had difficulty advanced techniques for higher level players. These have had mixed success, with only Dragon Ball really prospering and SFV holding a middle ground. We’ve seen a lot of recent attempts to dumb fighting games down or constrain their complexity in order to make them more appealing to the average consumer, such as Street Fighter V, Marvel Infinite, Dragon Ball FighterZ, and Blazblue Crosstag Battle. The majority of fans will never ever participate, but they’re the ones who are the backbone of your sales.Ĭhanges of this type, making games more appealing to the average consumer, is usually associated with dumbing a game down. Wizards of the Coast called the non-competitive players, “ the invisibles” because they can’t be observed because they don’t participate in the broader community, yet they make up the majority of the consumers, and this is the case for every game or media product. They ended up revitalizing themselves by building their product, the cards, into a stronger IP, and decreasing their investment into the pro scene, which was not the product they were actually selling. Magic the Gathering went through a similar transition when they catered to pro players, and the game was slowly dying. The success of a competitive scene is tangential to the success of the game overall. This means for a game to be successful, pushing a competitive scene isn’t very effective advertising. The majority of people who will buy any game are people who will never attend a single tournament for that game, never post about it online, and never interact with the community in any way. Fighting Games don’t attract a lot of new blood.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |