302 réponses à ce sujet

[Hazegurl]

the best way to "break beyond" your core audience is to make good games, BioWare hasn't delivered a stand out amazing title in quite some time and I'll be surprised if this one upends that trend

Truer words have never been spoken. I've witnessed more and more gamers, who have never played the Uncharted series,  now interested in playing it because they were watching a streamer play Uncharted 4.  It was usually after the game's best moments that these posters began asking how much the collection was or what console they needed to play them.  Witcher 3 also got gamers outside of their usual audience interested in playing the game.

 

Yet some companies still act like it's rocket science to attract new players.

[azarhal]

What the hell is the "core gamer audience?"

 

It's what executives consider core buyers: gamers with a high chance to buy the game they are making. In the case of Mass Effect Andromeda, they are probably looking at people who buy BioWare, Mass Effect and storytelling RPG games as their core gamers.

 

In the case of Andromeda, we know they went more open world so they seems to be trying to expend into the open world action game crowd.

[Beerfish]

I don;t know how this affects other parts of the game but in of itself it's a good thing.  An area that is supposed to have crowds actually having crowds?  god forbid!

[Giantdeathrobot]

Truer words have never been spoken. I've witnessed more and more gamers, who have never played the Uncharted series,  now interested in playing it because they were watching a streamer play Uncharted 4.  It was usually after the game's best moments that these posters began asking how much the collection was or what console they needed to play them.  Witcher 3 also got gamers outside of their usual audience interested in playing the game.

 

Yet some companies still act like it's rocket science to attract new players.

 

I'm pretty sure that's oversimplification. Uncharted was already a very popular franchise, and Naughty Dog was already one of the most high-profile studios on PS4. Uncharted 4 stuck to the formula like a glue, of course it was going to be successful.

 

The Witcher had several things going for it; it was a good game, yes, but also had a very well-run add campaign, the established GoG platform to promote it, a fairly generous price for a AAA especially if you pre-ordered, an already... enthusiastic fanbase who talked about nothing else, the whole '16 free DLCs!'' things that amounted to not much in the end, and an action combat system.

 

For the last point, I'm pretty sure it is no coincidence that the best-selling RPGs of the last decade (sans Pokémon) were pretty much all action-RPGs that didn't have the traditional turn-based and/or party-based combat. It's how the companies (gasp!) attract customers that don't usually play RPGs. 

 

I mean, you can make a great traditional CRPG like Pillars of Eternity or Divinity Original Sin. But as good as you make it, it will not sell as much as a AAA action-RPGs if you don't market it on every rooftop and if more casual gamers learn that it's boring old turn-by-turn/RTwP. ''Just make a good game'' is a gross oversimplification to me.

[Sylvius the Mad]

You;d think so, but that reasoning doesn't stand up to much scrutiny, to use the new technological advances you need people who are trained in using it, and I imagine they would be more expensive to hire and keep on than people who can work outdated technology.

The outdated technology wasn't outdated when you were using it. You were paying good wages to those people, too.

The new technology should be able to do more. Otherwise, why does it exist? How is it better?

Also for the big AAA titles like ME:A you can't get away with such a small team unless you want a development phase lasting a decade or more. They need animators, artists, writers, and what not.

I'd straight up cut the cinematics and voice acting.

[10K]

Truer words have never been spoken. I've witnessed more and more gamers, who have never played the Uncharted series,  now interested in playing it because they were watching a streamer play Uncharted 4.  It was usually after the game's best moments that these posters began asking how much the collection was or what console they needed to play them.  Witcher 3 also got gamers outside of their usual audience interested in playing the game.

 

Yet some companies still act like it's rocket science to attract new players.

Yes!! I'm going to pick it up today. I played about 30min of it at my friend's house and I fell in love with it. Geralt isn't really appealing to me as a character, but the overall experience was pretty fun.

[sjsharp2011]

Wtf does that even mean? Do they mean like how certain games, like Halo, have moved beyond the "gamer shooter fan" audience into a more casual gamer audience? I'm not sure if that would be a good thing for an RPG. Especially for mass effect. It might water it down too much.

I've been playing games since I had a goddamn Atari as a kid. I remember seeing the N64 graphics for the first time and thinking "these graphics are so ****** realistic". I've spent uncountable hours of my life playing video games, literally amounting to months probably.

Now, with a demanding job, I barely have time anymore. The time I do have to play games, I am VERY selective about which games I buy and choose to spend that time on. Before I wasn't.

As gamers get older, more and more of us are in my position. Surely they realize it, and need to cater to a wider audience. Especially with the more "mature" games. And this worries me greatly. I hate to say it, but I am watching this coming news of Andromeda very carefully and cautiously, and if they don't deliver, I won't buy the game.

But as I've said before, I'm cautiously optimistic. I hope it will be awesome. I think it *probably* will be.

Agreed I think if I hada full time job I'd have a more selective mind as well. But what with my disability making it difficult to find a job I can do I don't have one. So that basically means I have plenty of time to kill. This is basically why I like Bioware's games because they do kill a lot of time. Eswpecially given the games aqer not only pretty large but replayable as well because you can play the stories as various different types of characters.

[Silvery]

Incidentally, EA Studios Executive Vice President Patrick Söderlund also shared a little detail about the game towards the end of his own presentation, mentioning that a crowd technology developed for Rory McIlroy PGA Tour has been adopted by the Mass Effect team to have big crowds that you can walk through. The same tech was also used in Mirror’s Edge: Catalyst to have a large crowd layer on the street layer. It’s also being adopted by other game teams within EA.

 

 

So this would have to apply to city hub areas obviously? In Rory Mcllroy the crowd is in the distance/background, yelling and clapping. Based on the Mirror's Edge description it sound like the same thing. The crowd will be in the distance to make the game feel bigger and more alive. Seems like they would do this in hub areas in ME:A since in ME 1-3 the hub could have used more people/aliens to seem populated. I doubt it would be like crowds in a AC game where you interact with them, though I could be wrong. 

[prosthetic soul]

EA, just...stop talking.  Please. 

[Cyonan]

Truer words have never been spoken. I've witnessed more and more gamers, who have never played the Uncharted series,  now interested in playing it because they were watching a streamer play Uncharted 4.  It was usually after the game's best moments that these posters began asking how much the collection was or what console they needed to play them.  Witcher 3 also got gamers outside of their usual audience interested in playing the game.

 

Yet some companies still act like it's rocket science to attract new players.

 

It's more complicated than simply "make good games".

 

The Witcher 3 got a lot more players involved because of a huge marketing campaign for the game. The Witcher 2 actually struggled a bit after launch despite also being a very good game.

 

Plus as I noted earlier in the thread, there was a time when traditional RPGs were struggling as AAA games. A big reason for this is that they're very anti new player on account of mechanics and tooltips that aren't very clear to people who haven't played a pen and paper game.

 

You've got games like Arcanum which is the single best example of freedom in a video game RPG ever created, and it didn't sell terribly well. Psychonauts is a now well known example of a very good game that sold extremely poorly.

 

Making a good game is an important aspect to selling good, but it's not the only thing to it. Often, the over hyped game utilizing a well known IP will outsell another game that's better.

 

Which we can blame EA for exploiting, but gamers are the ones making that a true statement by buying into things like Battlefront which has nothing going for it except graphics and the Star Wars logo.

[UpUpAway]

EA, just...stop talking.  Please. 

 

Yep... so everyone around here can just get back to whining about there being no information.  Honestly, this forum is like a group of circling piranha waiting for anything they can use to chew Bioware apart.

[prosthetic soul]

Yep... so everyone around here can just get back to whining about there being no information.  Honestly, this forum is like a group of circling piranha waiting for anything they can use to chew Bioware apart.

Are you implying what they put out was information and not just corporate BS?

 

Edit: I have never whined about lack of information anyway.  Ever.  Bioware forum is not one person.  Give me a thread about the ME 3 ending, THEN you'll have your whining. 

[Kabooooom]

Agreed I think if I hada full time job I'd have a more selective mind as well. But what with my disability making it difficult to find a job I can do I don't have one. So that basically means I have plenty of time to kill. This is basically why I like Bioware's games because they do kill a lot of time. Eswpecially given the games aqer not only pretty large but replayable as well because you can play the stories as various different types of characters.

I've often wondered how the gaming industry is going to address this market which is probably in the process of changing (I would guess). That said, I don't really pay much attention to such things.

But, I have noticed a trend over the last decade or so towards more mature games, or at least a greater balance between titles that appeal to certain age demographics.

For gamers born in the mid-80s (and beyond), we grew up with video games. They were a large part of our childhood, and the industry has done a great job with keeping us invested. Because if all they ever did was make Pokemon games, the majority of us would have lost interest long ago.

So, I'm pretty sure most of us will be playing video games well into old age. Or whatever post-2050 crazy equivalent to a video game will be, provided that the realism doesn't give us a heart attack. And for a gamer, honestly - that probably wouldn't be a bad way to die anyways.

And I'm only marginally joking there.

But the thing about Mass Effect is, it appeals to a very specific niche: nerdy sci-fi and RPG fans. It isn't like Halo, or GoW, or CoD. I really don't see how Mass Effect would truly appeal to a wider audience or casual gamers without massively watering down the RPG elements of it.

That said, RPGs have been gaining more widespread acceptance, and with recent successes like Fallout 4, maybe Andromeda can be a massive hit while also remaining true to the ME formula.

But, it does worry me a little when they say things like this. But maybe I'm just old, and the time's are a changing. I looked at the news of the Mass Effect: New Earth ride and I thought "that's cool. But who would really give a **** about this besides hardcore Mass Effect fans?". But the fact that it exists means I'm probably wrong.

EDIT: After typing that, I just had the horrifying realization that as pre-millennial gamers become progressively older, some gaming company is probably going to market to them by creating some virtual reality shuffleboard game or something. What a depressing thought.

[rashie]

It's just corporate speech for that they'll be conducting a wide spread marketing campaign, beyond the core audience who'll buy the game regardless.

[Giantdeathrobot]

It's more complicated than simply "make good games".

 

The Witcher 3 got a lot more players involved because of a huge marketing campaign for the game. The Witcher 2 actually struggled a bit after launch despite also being a very good game.

 

Plus as I noted earlier in the thread, there was a time when traditional RPGs were struggling as AAA games. A big reason for this is that they're very anti new player on account of mechanics and tooltips that aren't very clear to people who haven't played a pen and paper game.

 

You've got games like Arcanum which is the single best example of freedom in a video game RPG ever created, and it didn't sell terribly well. Psychonauts is a now well known example of a very good game that sold extremely poorly.

 

Making a good game is an important aspect to selling good, but it's not the only thing to it. Often, the over hyped game utilizing a well known IP will outsell another game that's better.

 

Which we can blame EA for exploiting, but gamers are the ones making that a true statement by buying into things like Battlefront which has nothing going for it except graphics and the Star Wars logo.

 

Very true, Many good games do not get the attention (and sales) they might deserve, because of poor/insufficient marketing, a premise that turns off consumers, not being in popular genres so on and so forth. Gamers have many tastes, but some tastes are more common than others.

 

Still, the very concept that ''gamers'' are a monolithic group with interests and preferences set in stone seems silly to me.

 

Sure, there are many ''core gamers'' that want long, deep, well-designed games. But there are more (far, far more) that just want a fun game to play from time to time. The majority (sometimes vast majority) of people who buy single-player games don't even finish them. And the majority of gamers also much prefer action-based combat to stats-based combat, with the odd exception of people in Japan. These are the people who buy Call of Duty, play maybe half of the single-player campaign, and then maybe boot it up for a multiplayer match from time to time.

 

EA wants to make games for those people too. So that's where the EA sports of this world come in. And why the heck not? People want them, EA wants money. That's also why they would like Mass Effect to attract someone else than the franchise's original fanbase. Do people seriously think CDPR didn't have the exact same sort of discussions when making TW3? Or hell, when they ditched their clunky Simon Says combat system in TW1 to transition into Batman Arkham lite in TW2? Of course companies want to expand their consumer bases. It's how they make money. If they don't, well, you risk ending up with the Might&Magic situation, where the developpers are way too afraid of their grognard fanbase to change anything and the licence goes nowhere.

[Hazegurl]

I'm pretty sure that's oversimplification. Uncharted was already a very popular franchise, and Naughty Dog was already one of the most high-profile studios on PS4. Uncharted 4 stuck to the formula like a glue, of course it was going to be successful.

 

I'm not excluding marketing here, I'm talking about this idea that BW/EA has that they need to do something extraordinary and different to appeal to this potential fanbase that is just out there somewhere waiting to get into their games.  When really all they have to do is make a great game.  Because the foundation is already there for ME just as it's already there for Witcher and Uncharted.  Heck I would say the foundation was stronger for Bioware as most people wasn't as hooked on the first Uncharted and Witcher game but loved Dragon Age Origins and Mass Effect 1. However, CDPR and Naughty Dog went on to please their fanbases by building on their foundation with much better squeals (whether they were popular or not) while Bioware was too focused on reinventing the wheel and ended up not pleasing anyone or very many, the opposite of what they set out to do.  (ie DA2, and ME3). But they still got lots of sales from them...at least with ME 3.

 

BW already did the hard work with DAO and ME1, they created a new game and developed a fan base for it. All they had to do was keep making the next game good or better than the last one by improving on what they already do well (Like ME2). Yet they always try to do the whole "appeal to those outside our core fanbase" spiel.   And end up with a DA 2 or a "you don't have to play the first two games." ME 3.  And I say this as a person who liked DA 2 and loved ME3 (except the ending), but I can acknowledge that neither game was well received or outstanding.  Not even Inquisition was an outstanding title for BW (despite all the hype and marketing) and it won GOTY.

 

Bioware is like an American grocery store that suddenly wants to be a Japanese grocery store in hopes of finding people who may want some Japanese groceries.  When really all they have to do is put quality American products on their shelves and offer up one Isle for Japanese products or something.

 

The Witcher 3 got a lot more players involved because of a huge marketing campaign for the game.

 

TW3's marketing campaign generated good word of mouth, which is by far the best marketing tool in existence.  It didn't hurt that it already had a core fanbase that was happy and willing to direct newcomers to the franchise. Another thing CDPR did was hold twitch streamings of the game before release so gamers could see how the game actually played.   But overall, TW3 was a great game when you actually sat down and played it.  If the game was utter garbage, it doesn't matter how strong CDPR's marketing game is, the title would just be another poorly received title that sold a lot of copies.

 

Yes!! I'm going to pick it up today. I played about 30min of it at my friend's house and I fell in love with it. Geralt isn't really appealing to me as a character, but the overall experience was pretty fun.

I didn't like Geralt at all in TW 1, he started growing on me in TW 2, and I fell in love with him in TW 3. lol! I say give him a chance, he may grow on you like a fungus..

[UpUpAway]

Are you implying what they put out was information and not just corporate BS?

 

Edit: I have never whined about lack of information anyway.  Ever.  Bioware forum is not one person.  Give me a thread about the ME 3 ending, THEN you'll have your whining. 

 

I'm not implying anything about the sort of "information" on the table here nor am I talking about "one person" here.  I'm implying it doesn't matter what Bioware or EA says or doesn't say, there is a thread here on the forums "whining" about it and ripping Bioware apart for "doing that" or "not doing this" etc.  When there is no info (or statements, if you prefer) to criticize here, the criticism doesn't stop, it's just then limited to criticizing them for not giving out anything that BSNers can criticize them for.

 

Also, coincidentally, I find that 90% of the threads devolve into arguments about the ME3 endings anyways (or comparisons to Bioware "sins" in DA).

 

As has been pointed out by others above, this particular statement was just "corporate reassurances" given to investors... nothing more, nothing less.  People "can pick every little word apart if they want to" but it doesn't change the likelihood that virtually every corporation about to release a new product would say something similar about trying to attract a larger market share.

[DeLaatsteGeitenneuker]

Funnily enough, when a company that needs to spend millions to make a single game is run by somebody who doesn't understand business it doesn't tend to end very well =P

 

but it'd probably be better for us if EA didn't have to answer to shareholders like they do. That's the real problem in this scenario: the company answers to a room full of suits that not only don't know gaming, they're happy actively doing bad things for gaming as long as they make money off it.

I love you.

[Furisco]

Can we romance the entire crowd tho?

Gotta **** em all.

[Sylvius the Mad]

I have the solution to all your requests Sylvius

That would just get me the same games over again.

What I need is some sort of global mind control device.

[Sylvius the Mad]

As has been pointed out by others above, this particular statement was just "corporate reassurances" given to investors... nothing more, nothing less. People "can pick every little word apart if they want to" but it doesn't change the likelihood that virtually every corporation about to release a new product would say something similar about trying to attract a larger market share.

This is wholly consistent with my initial suggestion that we be skeptical of these claims.

[10K]

Gotta **** em all.

Oooh, it'd be just like Pokemon

[Cyonan]

TW3's marketing campaign generated good word of mouth, which is by far the best marketing tool in existence.  It didn't hurt that it already had a core fanbase that was happy and willing to direct newcomers to the franchise. Another thing CDPR did was hold twitch streamings of the game before release so gamers could see how the game actually played.   But overall, TW3 was a great game when you actually sat down and played it.  If the game was utter garbage, it doesn't matter how strong CDPR's marketing game is, the title would just be another poorly received title that sold a lot of copies.

 

 

but the original claim was that the best way to "break beyond your core audience" is to simply make good games. The fact that CDPR spent so much on marketing their game suggests that there is another aspect to it.

 

Plus if the original claim were 100% true on its own, there wouldn't be good games that sell very poorly.

 

Publishers have it in their head that hyping up a game is more important than making a good game because the gaming community as a whole frequently rewards them for massively hyping up games by pre-ordering and spending their money before they even know if it's a good game.

 

That's why Battlefront absolutely crushed it in terms of sales but is only a mediocre game. People got hyped for Star Wars and shiny visuals.

 

That would just get me the same games over again.

What I need is some sort of global mind control device.

 

We just need to convert you to the dark side.

 

Embrace the glory of action combat.

[UpUpAway]

This is wholly consistent with my initial suggestion that we be skeptical of these claims.

 

I would be more skeptical of a company that couldn't find any way to say they want to gain market share... e.g. if they had said something like:  "We are making ME:A to specifically appeal ONLY to hard core RPG enthusiasts in such a way that no casual gamer would possibly like this game."  It would be akin to flushing the entire company down the toilet in the eyes of its investors.  When talking to their investors, every company pretty much HAS to say they want to grow market share and appeal to more people... it's just the way the galaxy works.

[Sartoz]

I don;t know how this affects other parts of the game but in of itself it's a good thing.  An area that is supposed to have crowds actually having crowds?  god forbid!

                                                                                       <<<<<<<<<<(0)>>>>>>>>>>

 

Many complaints were made in the DA:I forums regarding cities and towns with practically no population. Val Royeaux is a perfect example of a capitol city where the main market district had maybe 20 NPCs, all standing, unmoving and repeating their dialogue lines.  W3 showed us how to bring life to a town with NPCs, dogs, chickens and children  that actually move around.

 

It appears that Bio listened somewhat and incorporated the idea of a "living" environment into Andromeda. Bringing crowds of people into a Market / Shopping Mall district is a good thing.  The extreme is doing a Soylent Green (by Harry Harrison) crowd effect.