How Audience Plays a Role in Games in more than just Budget
This video has
really got me thinking how much of a role an audience plays a role in the
design of any game:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tc8hrXyG1xw&feature=emb_title
It's not just something to use to excuse why AAA gaming are being dummed down
but it plays a role in how your game will be designed. Kingdom Hearts 2 has an
interesting combat system but since the game is appealing to people who enjoy
Disney, Final Fantasy players who might or might not actively play real time
action games, people who like the shounen anime aesthetics and story and
finally the people who want a good combat system and play it for the challenge.
They have to design the game with all these things in mind so therefore all
it's depth might not be found by all the players who play it.
Another example is the MGS series. There's different people who play MGS for
different reasons, they like the story, the long cutscenes, the ficitional
versus battle people to see how "tough" and "cool" the
Snakes are against. With all these people Kojima has to appeal, not everyone is
going to notice the gameplay details and crazy stuff and the "depth"
the game has.
Compare to say Thief, Mark of the Ninja, and Splinter Cell, those games are
primarily aimed at people who want an indepth stealth experience and when
discussion with these games are involved, they tend to mostly mechanical, level
design, overall gameplay focused. The less people to appeal to, the more people
will notice everything a game has to offer and the devs will make design and
put work around those design decisions.
People often bash Spidey PS4 and Batman Arkham for being "too easy",
"too simplistic", and lacks the "depth of Devil May Cry",
but the thing is, those games are licensed games and they also have to appeal
to fans who like that license. People who purely read Batman and Spider-Man
comics or view media with them and don't actively play games at all. I met up
with someone recently who couldn't even beat the Arkham games on normal and had
to play on easy. This is the trap licensed games will always fall into.
Then there is the CoD series. Yes, it constantly gets made fun of for recycling
so much and barely having any innovation. But I'd argue one reason why the sps
are so stale is because CoD has to appeal to two groups of people, ones who
play it for the sp and the ones for the mp. Yes, the devs could easily overhaul
the whole series' combat system and I really fucking wished they did but at the
same time, would they really want to put in so much effort into a mode only a
fraction of the player base will play? It's the trap CoD has been in for so
long now.
Halo is an interesting one where it has multiple audiences but the series does
in a way have discourse that is consistent. People will play the sp and mp but
both seem to have consistent amount of effort put into both with the exception
of 5. People who play Halo generally also play the sp, coop, mp and are really
passionate for the story and lore too.
And yes, everyone is annoyed to death about the Sekiro "easy" mode
debacle. The thing is, From's audience and the people they appeal want super
challenging games and that's what they expect from them so From wants to make a
game that they want. The easy mode to them shits all over everything they
expect From Soft. It's just pointless adding an easy mode to a game where the
design isn't even built around and to appeal to an audience that probably won't
even play their game anyway.
"Audience" is not just something that be used to explain inflating
budgets, but it plays a huge role in any game's design.
