Email: Dark/Demon Souls

It’s simply not true that if you’re a fan of a game, you should want it to change in such a way as to become a blockbuster hit. I would think you would understand this as a fan of so many niche PC games. Like I’m sure EA could make Ultima X, except make in the style of Mass Effect/Dragon Age, and it would sell millions of copies, except you would personally detest the game since it would have so little in common with the games you actually liked. Note how the only way to get a first-person shooter to the 10m sales mark is to make it about Army guys blowing things up.

 

The Souls games are the same way. There are certain things they could probably change to draw in more players, and I won’t bore you by listing them. Particularly, since you haven’t played the games, I’m not sure it would be meaningful to you. In fact, Dark Souls fixed a lot of things that irritated me about Demon’s Souls. However, the fundamental game structure is built around a certain kind of punishing difficulty that is intrinsically limiting in its appeal. I and other fans of the game like it. But not everyone likes the same things, and not everyone is going to like it. (You certainly couldn’t make it “like Elder Scrolls,” they are fundamentally different on many levels.)

 

It’s the simply fact that not every type of game is going to appeal to ten million people, and people have diverse tastes. If you look at any developed, healthy industry, there are lots of products that each appeal to limited ranges of people as production methods get more efficient, rather than every single thing being a lowest-common-denominator mass-market product.

 

You yourself have posted about this on your own blog, so I’m not sure why you’re suddenly declaring that if a game can’t move 10m units, it’s crap and must be abandoned. If that’s where you’re going to go, though, please be consistent and declare that the Ultima games, System Shock, etc are terrible games (oh and please cut it with the special pleading for your favorite PC games. PC games can and do sell over 1m units…just not games like System Shock or Ultima), and we should all celebrate that Origin, Looking Glass, and so on don’t exist any more.

 

BTW, I noticed your “great years for gaming” included lots of games that sold rather poorly. I am consistently amused at how you can declare “everyone loved” a game that sold 50K copies, and “no one liked” a game that sold 5m copies, merely because Sean Malstrom liked the former and didn’t like the latter.Uh oh. You made an Ultima reference. You shouldn’t have done that. You have just wandered into 80’s gaming (a woman shrieks). Ultima constantly re-invented itself beyond just the game engines. At one point, Ultima was a game with tactical combat. But in Ultima VII, combat was automatic and the player did nothing. Yet, Ultima 7 is praised. What the hell is going on here?

What’s going on here is show business. When the show isn’t bringing in the audience, the show is altered and tampered. When the show DOES bring in the audience, little is changed.

I’m not sure why you guys accuse me of going, “I am Seam Malstrom. I say X therefore it is X.” This is just how show business works. The audience is always, always right.

There is nothing wrong with shows that get small audiences. However, the show either need to be CHEAP or that small audience need to be made of FILTHY RICH PEOPLE. You have to get money.

If they are realizing that Dark Souls needs to change itself in order to become more profitable, so be it.

Did it ever occur to you that my boggled reactions to Nintendo and their Holy Quest for Yet Even More 3d Mario was the profit issue? Nintendo had the biggest money maker ever with Super Mario Brothers. Yet, the dropped it like a rock to make 3d Mario games that were FAR more expensive and didn’t sell half as much. Over the decades watching this, I just couldn’t believe it. I thought, “They must feel compelled to make a 3d game because they think the market demands it.” So after the success of NSMB on the DS and especially the Wii version, I thought this would turn on a light bulb within Nintendo. Maybe the demands of the market weren’t technological.

And then they put out the 3DS and Yet Even More 3d Mario. The ONLY reason is because they either hate Super Mario Brothers or they love making 3d Mario. It is some sick, sick obsession with it. There is no other explanation.

Like if you saw Nintendo put out a Metroid: Other M 2, we would ask, “Why? Why are you doing this?” The only possible explanation would be Sakamoto getting his way, over the financial and commercial heads of the company.

Dark Souls has never been that big of a seller. I am not surprised that the maker is investigating on altering it to make it sell more. The alternative to that could be no more Dark Souls games.

So I do think the Dark Souls fans complaining are moronic. The changes they intend to make to Dark Souls isn’t destroying the Dark Souls franchise, it is saving it. If they don’t make these changes, the Souls series could be unprofitable to continue in the future.

Why do people assume Dark Souls is a healthy franchise in the first place? Dark Souls is actually very sickly in its sales. Dark Souls is on the surgery table and if the doctors do not operate, Dark Souls franchise could die.

The doctor is saying, “If we don’t operate, the series will die.” And the hardcore gamers all demand that there be no operation despite all these game companies dying around them.

I’m FOR saving the Dark Souls franchise, are you?