There is nothing mentally deficient or wrong with a fan. They are normal people (well, in the case of us at the BSN, I'll just say we aren't complete freaks of nature)
. Gamers who aren't fans are not inherently totally dissimilar to fans. More than likely, gamers who haven't played your game are actually a lot like your fans, as I'd say the average CoD fan has more in common with a DA fan than they do, say, a fan of stamp collecting. I consider myself a hardcore fan. I've been gaming most of my life. My first and truest love is RPGs, but I enjoy many different genres. I have played the majority of Bioware games released to date. I have also played Call of Duty as well as many other shooters.
I used to get other people excited about Bioware games when I talked about them. Other gamers I just met who had also played, gamers who had never played the game, even non-gamers were impressed with some of the things I talked about. The things that hooked people in? Choices that carry over different games, multiple ways to playthroughs and lots of different endings.
What have we seen in the past two games from Bioware? Poor choice import impact, streamlined gameplay and carbon-copy endings.
Do you know what I never said anything about? And do you know what no one I talked to in Real Life mentioned? Cinematics. Or action sequences. Or marketing campaigns. No one gives a rip about these things. You can't get excited about it. This isn't 2006, where a quick-time mini-game of button mashing in God of War was cutting edge. Or 2001, where a make out scene in a pool in FFX was unheard of. And it's not 2008, where seeing a commercial for a video game was uncommon.
Instead, Bioware introduced games that blew people away in their reach and ambition. A game like DA:O, which offered tons of replay with its various epilogue endings, it's promise of huge choices that could shape the world come future games, the idea that these great companions and characters would be living on in the future... that was all not lived up to.
I've been playing Bioware games a long time, but it wasn't until DA:O that I joined the forums and got involved with conversations about game lore or mechanics, about choice impact and franchise continuity.
In short, DA:O turned me from a gamer into a hardcore fan. If Bioware were to keep making ambitious and ground-breaking titles like that, not copy-and-paste attempts from other games and genres to duplicate their success, then I'm convinced they'd find more and more gamers would be converted like I was.
Don't plan a game with limitations or profits in mind. Build a game that is the most ambitious and amazing you can dream up... trust me, the reality will show up with budgets and technical constraints soon enough. But the vision is what carries a great game through, and allows you to say 'this it it!' when you are ready to release it. Making compromises before even dreaming up the game is the road to disillusionment, both on the sides of the developers AND the gamers.
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