What reviewers/developers/enthusiasts like is not what sells games.

[LordTheNightKnight]

This thread is where I attempt to answer this huge mythin in gaming, that is assumed by many (but not all) of the people mentioned in the title (which for simplicity's sake I will refer to as "Core Gaming Community", or CGC). They think what they like about games is what sells games.

This has been going on for years, practically unchallenged... but also unsubstantiated. What I mean is that a game has elements they like, the game sells, and they assume it's because of those elements. It's an assumption because the CGC didn't actually ask those people who bought that game the reasons they bought that game (I mean representative samples, not all the millions of customers). They just fell for the correlation=causation fallacy.

Okay, they think they asked people, but those are mainly among the CGC themselves, not outside. This has become more or less an insular group that has lost touch with the mainstream, by assuming they know the mainstream already.*

But the problem with the assumption is that an actual look at gaming history shows that those elements they like have been just hit and miss in selling games. And I don't mean just with the Wii, DS, and online flash games. Those have just made the fallacy of this assumption harder to ignore. The key is to look at game sales in general.

And in case you're wondering what I mean by those elements, they actually vary for some games, and they aren't absolute for every game. They include things like (in no particular order) production values (including the most detailed graphics), lots of story, immersion defined by not reminding you it's a game, atmosphere, good design, fully-featured online even for console games, userbase (without ever actually looking at game sales compared to userbase size), and appearing deep and meaningful. Again, these are not absolute for every game, so this group will be referred to as A/B/C (which I often like, BTW; I just will not assume my tastes are mainstream).

The elements that actually sell games are things like (also in no particular order) directness in the control and gameplay (which is not the same as simple or dumbed down, it's closer to how games play in arcades), good design (hey, I didn't claim these never overlap), exciting places to visit (Mushroom Kingdom and San Andreas are all awesome to wander around), local multiplayer for many console games, fast and easy online for many games, immersion defined by imagining you are in this world, and a sense of accomplishment with beating a game or level. But again, these are not absolute with every game, so this group will be referred to as X/Y/Z.

In a nutshell, X/Y/Z sells games, but the CGC thinks A/B/C does, since they like those things. This statement isn't quite as simple as it seems (and I will remind you the CGC does not cover all reviewer, developers, and enthusiast gamers, yet nor does developers exclude any particular company to be in this), but it does explain a lot of the questions that the CGC has been asking, and even some they should be asking. The latter includes asking why development costs and time has increased, but sales have not increased in a corresponding fashion. A/B/C are elemtents that often cost more time and money, but if they sold games, then logically the increase in those should increase sales. They don't want to look at this, but the problem is there.

This also answers the supposed anomoly with the Wii and DS. Since the CGC thinks A/B/C are so important, and they also feel that those systems are not sufficient to handle those, many developers double their efforts with A/B/C, and drop X/Y/Z. What they don't realize is that many HD games have both A/B/C and X/Y/Z. Heck, even some Wii and DS games do, and I don't just mean Zelda. I also mean Resident Evil 4 (a game that's defied the "ports sell far less" notion on two systems), Monster Hunter, Call of Duty.

Madworld, Dead Space Extraction, and Chinatown Wars just have A/B/C mainly. All of those didn't fail because of the customers having a problem with M-rated games (Call of Duty, Resident Evil, and House of the Dead would have all sold poorly if that was the case). The real reasons should be obvious, but among the CGC, they need to see past their pre-conceptions. These are the reasons these games didn't tear up the charts:

• Madworld: When was the last time a brawler tore up the charts on any system? Especially one with an atypical art style and no replay value? The biggest reason I've seen to blame the Wii audience is to point to the sales of Bayonetta. That assumes that a) they are the same genre, and b) the mainstream actually cares about Platinum games, as that's the only connection between them (actually, those were two different studios within Platinum, so that reason doesn't even fit the research). Well since flashy action games have been doing well (like Bayonetta's creator's own Devil May Cry), that's a big reason that game did well. But also since that's Platinum's first bonified hit, even counting Clover, that means that this is the first time the studio can establish itself as a brand name, which Madworld obviously came before that happened.
• Dead Space Extraction: This one is simple. Are most rail shooters slow-paced to show you all the graphics and details, or fast-paced since many are in arcades? Since the answer is obviously the latter, it shows just how much the CGC can be out of touch. The latter is X/Y/Z, while the former is A/B/C. They did the former, and are baffled when it sold so poorly. It's not the Wii customers' fault for not buying that game. It's the CGC's fault for thinking a key feature of rail shooter games wasn't actually a key feature.
• Chinatown Wars: It seems the marketing department at Take Two got why the GTA games sold more than the CGC did. Look at the ads for GTA III (after those that took advantage of the controversy), VC, SA, LCS, VCS, and IV. What do you see in all of them? The protagonist is running around a city making mayhem, with one of the radio songs playing while we see all the gameplay. What do you see in the ads for CW? No radio music, comic book still, and gameplay that goes by so fast, it's nearly impossible to see what's going on. How could a GTA game run ads where the gameplay was given so little focus? Maybe, just maybe, that wasn't the kind of game that made the series a hit, not even in its top-down days. And it wasn't because those games had "Grand Theft Auto" in the name, nor because they got good reviews (Kingdom Hearts 358/2 got worse reviews, but sold better, because guess what, it played like a KH game).

GTA IV is also a sign of the problem with this assumption. It had a longer development time than the PS2/PSP GTA games (really, what was with all these series HD successors coming out four years after the last 6th gen game in their series?), and reportedly the largest development budget of any game ever. It sold well, but it was supposed to be a killer app for HD, bring down the Wii when that system had nothing to compete, and vindicate all the time and money spent on HD games. Instead the game merely sold on par with the other GTA games, was a killer app for neither system, and MK Wii has outsold both versions of IV combined. All that time and money, and they merely kept pace with last generation, not topped it.

Heck, of the series to post significant sales increases over their last generation installments, only Call of Duty has done so on the HD systems (some others include Mario Kart and Monster Hunter). And that started with Modern Warfare. Now the thing is that the series had plenty of A/B/C elements, with 2 having some of the best improvements in AI. Yet that was not the breakout game in the series. It was the "Modern" part, which means a new setting. I already mentioned "exciting places to visit" as part of the X/Y/Z, and that's what MW did, and MW2 expanded upon. We had already played WWII enough. WaW got away with it due to both following MW and exploring venues in WWII other games rarely visited (plus zombie nazis sure as hell was not something seen in those games).

So since it's clear now that A/B/C don't sell games, is it so bad that developers focus on those elements? If you mean focusing to the exclusion of X/Y/Z, and raising development costs and development times, hell yes it is. With the increased costs, profit margins are cut into when the sales don't increase over the games that cost less. Increased times mean that companies don't have as many hit games, so they don't have steady revenues from those games (and you wonder why there is the focus on DLC, they need those to keep the money from those games coming in). BTW, I'm not excluding Nintendo, the Wii, or even the DS here. Larger costs and times will have those effects on any system, even if the degree isn't as great.

Yet if A/B/C are given no more attention than X/Y/Z, it can work. Developers need to see that. They also need to stop thinking of restrictions as bad. Modern Warfare changed the setting, but still followed the standards of successful FPS. It was still restricted by that genre, and still worked. Or look at Brain Age. Three months for a game that's sold as much as San Andreas. That cannot have been done if they just dicked around in that time. They used that restriction to make the best game they could in that time.

No, I am not suggesting developers try to make all their games in three months. But limiting times and budgets, and seeing what you can do with the resources you have instead of just getting more resources, will make all of you far more creative and imaginative than you thought you would be.

* This is not restricted to gaming of course. Comic Book had its own CGC that fell into this. I don't just mean the speculator crash of the mid 1990s. Comic book companies could have risen past that, but we get decisions like "Why don't people read as much X-Men and Spider-Man anymore? Is it because the stories are too convoluted and have lost their magic of the past? No, it's because Cyclops and Peter Parker are married. Let's fix that." or "Instead of ignoring or addressing the most vocal fans, let's make Superboy into a caricature of them."