Completelu Average
Newcomer
Do you want to be hit in the head with a rock?
How do you know unless I do it to you first?
This is the basis of your argument.
UBIsoft in potential financial trouble
- Thread starter Silent_Buddha
- Start date
Do you want to be hit in the head with a rock?
How do you know unless I do it to you first?
This is the basis of your argument.
Completelu Average
Newcomer
Let me reverse this:
Any claim that the audience doesn't know what they want is being made by a person who is admitting that you don't know what you want, and I could throw any old idea at you, no matter how controversial and insulting it may be, and you're totally open and accepting of it, because you don't know what you want.
So racial prejudice, bigotry, hate against groups for their gender, sexual orientation, every "bad" thing you can think of, you may really enjoy a game that makes you do all of it, because you don't have any idea what you want. Right? You're willing to wave that hatred flag and embrace any bigotry in a game, because you have no idea what you want. And so is everyone else, because they have no idea what they want. Right?
If you disagree then you're admitting that you're wrong on your own point. People do have a really good idea of what they like and don't like. What they find acceptable and what they find insulting. And many people would reject a game like that without playing it, because they find everything about the concept insulting. THEY KNOW WHAT THEY WANT.
The problem with this who "people don't know what they want" claim is you assume that whatever you're offering, they have ZERO prior experience with. Because if I have prior experience, I know what I want.
So name me any aspect of a video game that no gamer has ever had any form of prior life experience with. Because if I have any life experience that I can use to assess what you're offering, then I DO know what I want, and I'm basing what I want off ideas and beliefs that I already have. It's your job as an entertainer to find out what that is and give me what I want. Understand?
Any claim that the audience doesn't know what they want is being made by a person who is admitting that you don't know what you want, and I could throw any old idea at you, no matter how controversial and insulting it may be, and you're totally open and accepting of it, because you don't know what you want.
So racial prejudice, bigotry, hate against groups for their gender, sexual orientation, every "bad" thing you can think of, you may really enjoy a game that makes you do all of it, because you don't have any idea what you want. Right? You're willing to wave that hatred flag and embrace any bigotry in a game, because you have no idea what you want. And so is everyone else, because they have no idea what they want. Right?
If you disagree then you're admitting that you're wrong on your own point. People do have a really good idea of what they like and don't like. What they find acceptable and what they find insulting. And many people would reject a game like that without playing it, because they find everything about the concept insulting. THEY KNOW WHAT THEY WANT.
The problem with this who "people don't know what they want" claim is you assume that whatever you're offering, they have ZERO prior experience with. Because if I have prior experience, I know what I want.
So name me any aspect of a video game that no gamer has ever had any form of prior life experience with. Because if I have any life experience that I can use to assess what you're offering, then I DO know what I want, and I'm basing what I want off ideas and beliefs that I already have. It's your job as an entertainer to find out what that is and give me what I want. Understand?
ZebMacahan
Regular
A saw a couple of videos of some female gameproducer, I dont remember her name but she has been in a the buisness a long time, having worked on the original gears of wars games among others. She also talked about knowing your audience and giving them what they want. Also, water is wet. I agree with you that this is self explanatory.
I can see the point about how people might not always know what the want. I for instance didnt get very hooked on the trailers for the god of war reboot, AC originins or horizon, but it turned out I loved those games. Maybe a better way of putting it would be:
Don´t give your audience what they dont want.
Yes. People might not know what they want, but they certainly know when they see it. Also most people know what they don't want. It's actually a simple idea.
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This is idiotic reasoning and you know it. Come on, you can do better.
No, I just used a fairly obvious generalisation and you miss completely the key point that these industries don't know what consumers want and consumers largely don't know what they want until they see it. Did anyone ask for Vampire Survivors or Balatro? No, and they wouldn't.
Your extreme example only proves that there are clear boundaries to what people will accept, making for some obvious games to avoid, but that argument didn't need expressing because no-one was saying that. You were effectively saying publishers should know what to make for their audience and what to avoid, but you don't know necessarily what your audience will or will not take to. Of particular relevance is the 'inflation' of movie ratings. Over the years, the amount of sex, drugs and graphics violence in the 12 and 15 age brackets has increased. What's tolerable now as a 15 wouldn't have been so in the 70s and even less so in the 20s. I doubt GTA3 would have been particularly welcomed in the early 80s if possible and dropped in among the Hungry Horace and Marios Bros games of the time.
Art pushes boundaries, people acclimate, and they become more accepting of views that wouldn't have been acceptable years earlier. Through these, some artists attempt to affect change by pushing those boundaries, and historically it can be seen those boundaries have shifted without needing to getting into a moral debate about whether for good or ill.
So as a publisher, you can't ever be sure which way the wind is going to blow. Do you get in front and try a trend early before it's proven? Or sit back and wait and see, and risk losing the early move advantage?
In short, you oversimplify. It's not as simple as a two-step decision tree to make profitable games. You have no idea if your 'live service' game is going to be rejected or become a cash cow, but avoiding 'ramming live service' games down your consumers throat which be the dumbest business decision you make if your rivals find success with a LS title.
That will lead to the most boring and uninteresting media ever. Great media can expand your mind and show you something you didn't know you wanted or even was interested in. I didn't know I would be interested in Attack on Titan before I actually experienced it and felt the amazingness of it. If people would have asked me what I wanted I would say "season 3 of Silver Spoon" instead, but I got something I didn't know I responded to instead. Which is much more interesting.
That's a "what don't you want" challenge, not a "what do you want". Plus everyone has experience of physical impact and be informed of the stories of people affected such that they know.
If your supposition were true, no-one would ever buy a game they ended up not liking because apparently everyone knows what they like. And no-one would ever be surprised by enjoying a game they thought they'd dislike. And no-one would ever try something and not like it at first, only for it to grow on them.
arandomguy
Veteran
They're good at verbalizing the first thought that comes to them and nowadays typically put there by influencers and their own community echo chambers. This isn't strictly just gamers but really the whole of online criticism.
When it comes to live service games in particular, the higher echelons of these communities know far more about the game than the developers do. The developers would be wise to listen to their feedback.
The problem with this statement is that developers pull out every stop to make it impossible to know what you are actually buying.
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ZebMacahan
Regular
Well, some things developers do are more like "I didnt think I would enjoy sushi very much, but now that I´ve tried it its actually is pretty good!", and other things are actually like hitting people on the head with a rock.
This is a subset of gamers - most don't share opinions, and humans tend to be more vocal with negative responses than positive so you'll naturally get a bias towards the negative just in collating feedback. And among these responses, you'll have gamers complain when a formula of their franchise is changed too much, but you'll also have gamers complain when a formula stagnates. Trying to make sense of social media feedback is probably very hard, if not impossible. Once there are established quantifiable correlations between degree of feedback and sales, then you might well be able to use it as a metric.
IIRC there was plenty of verbal outrage over TLOU, and Hogwarts Legacy was definitely taboo in some circles. Both did very well commercially.
I agree. Hence it's a nuanced challenge to balance the old with the new, the known with the unknown. You want to push boundaries, but not too much. You want to be in a position to land the Next Big Thing that nobody was expecting, while also having your bread-and-butter reliable incomes. While they're reliable, because reliable incomes can actually fade.
I've just thought of all the genres that fizzled out. Driving games used to be reliable in the PS2 era, but that market just dried up. And publishers that just sat on what they knew gamers liked would have found themselves struggling when those gamers changed interests to the new ideas being tried by other publishers.
The fact that Madden, Fifa, Call of Duty, Minecraft and Pokemon games have populated the top selling games lists of every year for nearly 20 years should be proof enough. Hell, take a look just at the top 10 games from the last 5-10 years. How many of them are new franchises not based on licensed properties? From my count, 2. Elden Ring and Ghosts of Tsushima, not counting EA Sports FC (which is just unlicensed FIFA). Elden Ring gets to be in there because From Software will make a "new" game with the same gameplay, but different lore. Tsushima is actually a new franchise.
The wiki has games sales for January 2025. Notice the to 10 includes Final Fantasy Rebirth - a remake of part of a game from a long running franchise, and Donkey Kong Country Returns - A remake of a game from a long running franchise.
How do I know gamers want the same experiences over and over again? Because that's what they keep buying, over and over again. You are suggesting gamers want new experiences, but I can't see any evidence pointing to gamers, as a group, collectively wanting that. There is certainly a vocal group that says it, but we vote with out dollars, right? And the dollars say something else.
Right, they say it, but they keep spending money on microtransactions and games that aren't particularly new experiences. As I stated above, January's top selling games include 2 remakes from long running series. And Minecraft. Speaking of Minecraft, I work in a video game store. Not a chain, a small independently owned one. This past month we ran out of Minecraft for Xbox 360, PS3, and WiiU. We had dozens of copies for PS3 and 360, maybe a couple for WiiU. People buying it are console gamers who said they "wanted to play old Minecraft". Anecdotal, I know, but I've found that people don't always want something new.
Or, they're different gamers. It's hazardous to logic to use these broad gestalts where they do not exist in reality. When a developer or publisher makes a choice that will create negative feedback, they also have to consider the other gamers who aren't providing that feedback, what their actions are. And if in generating some hate from some gamers results in better profits from others, it's a sensible business move.
Obviously Ubisoft aren't managing that well with their degree of negative feedback reflecting a decrease in revenues. That contrasts with other games though.
That might be true. I wonder if we could find a group of gamers who are pro-microtransaction.
All the ones that buy them. On the Apex sub, there are plenty of people complaining about EA's monetisation, but also those who are happy to showcase their $160 cosmetics, or talk about how much they've spent on the game. However, I expect most who are happy to spend money on a game aren't really talking about it because why would they? You might want to voice outrage at the price of a hat, but you aren't likely to publicly thank the company if you happily bought said hat for $20. All the streamers buy all the cosmetics; I expect everyone who watches their stream without writing "you so dumb" are in favour, or at least neutral, towards MT!
That's kind of the point I was making. And it goes back to the "give the people what they want" argument. People say they don't want microtransactions. People say they would rather just buy the "whole game" and never have to pay again. But microtransactions are funding the industry. And Sony tried to launch a retail hero shooter at a reasonable price that reviewed well enough, and the community balked at the price, complained that it wasn't "better" than the microtransaction filled competition, and rejected the game so emphatically that Sony un-launched the game. And Marvel Rivals came out a little after filled with microtransactions and was a resounding success.\
People aren't being vocal about their support for modern monetization. But that doesn't mean that isn't what they want. Concord proved that if you try to give people what they said they want, you get a game that feels like it's developed to pander, costs more than the competition, and offers nothing that another game offers.
Okay but let's not pretend anyone was asking for Concord. Check out the like/dislike ratio on the launch trailer lol.
If I ask for a burger and you give me a soy patty topped with pubes, you technically gave me what I asked for.