Square Enix Fans: The Silent Killers

[chionos]

You know what. I haven't made a serious wall-o-text at almost four in the morning in a hell of a long time. Let's fix that, shall we?

Marketing to teenagers is solid business sense. It's not about the fact that SE's "fans" from the early games have grown up. It's not about them not realizing that they have fans who don't fit that niche. It's about continuing to evolve their business.

The one big problem with it is that they start out as young guys making games aimed toward gamers not all that much younger than they are, but then those young developers become middle aged developers who are more disconnected with their young audience. And let's face it, it's not only agist to disregard teenagers' influence on business, on culture, on this industry in particular, it's also stupid. Whether you like it or not, it's teenagers more than any other group that determine the ebb and flow of popular culture, especially in the 21st century.

As far as the business aspect of it...
It's also true (EoFF bears this out) that while they will lose some of the previous generation with each new iteration, they will retain some, if not most, of that previous generation.

Older generations will stay with the company out of loyalty, out of nostalgia, out of hope.

Let's make up some random numbers to illustrate:

WARNING: FAKE NUMBERS ALERT
Numbers are rounded for the sake of simplicity

Let's say SE starts with Final Fantasy Alpha which they market toward a potential audience of one million teenagers. Out of those one million they establish an audience base of one hundred thousand.

100,000 / 1,000,000

Now when the time comes to make Final Fantasy Beta, the Alpha players have grown up and there's a new generation of potential new audience members of 1,100,000. SE now has two options, basically:

a. They can market toward that previous established base of 100,000 and ignore the new generation. They may gain a few or lose a few thousand, but that doesn't matter overall.

100,000+-10,000 / 1,000,000

They remain where they were and make no progress. Uh-oh the shareholders are bitching, why is there no growth! If a business isn't moving forward, it's stagnating. I don't particularly like this aspect of the business world, but it is what it is.

b. They can make a game for the new generation of 1,100,000, and if they achieve the same % penetration, they've now got an audience of one hundred and ten thousand.

110,000 / 1,100,000

PLUS, they're going to retain some percentage of the previous generation. Let's say that number is 10% of the previous, so ten thousand.

They've now got an audience of 120,000, anywhere from ten to thirty thousand more than they would with option a. And it's highly likely that they're actually going to retain more of that previous audience than we estimated even if the game isn't directly made for or marketed at them.

Not to mention that each new generation is MORE into video games than the previous generation and there are MORE of them in the first place. i.e. my kids started playing games way earlier than I did, play more sophisticated games at five than I did at fifteen, will hopefully grow up without the stigma that games are only for nerds/boys/introverts/social outcasts/whatever.

Also, which is more likely: parents wanting to play a game because their kids are playing it, or kids wanting to play a game because their parents are playing it? As a father, I can promise you that I'm more often pulled into my kids' games than they are into mine. Parents aren't cool. Parents are lame. Kids want to do the opposite of what their parents do. (I want to make it clear real quick, that a lot of this is exaggeration to make a point). While there's also the stigma that kids are young and dumb so older people don't want anything to do with their silly games/fashions/etc., it's not as strong as the former, and in fact in a lot of cases it doesn't exist at all (but shhhhh, it's a secret).

Furthersmurfingmore, it's easier to build a game around the--even if only perceived--desires of a teenaged audience because teenagers typically have a stronger sense of group identity, herd mentality, than that of an older audience. The whole "finding oneself" thing hasn't happened yet. They don't know who they are yet (for the most part, EoFF teenagers please don't be insulted) so they follow trends. Not to say that 20-somethings or 30-somethings or 40-somethings don't do this too, but it's to a lesser degree, and it's not quite ubiquitous or unanimous or some other u-ous.

It's not because teenagers are "stupid." Easier to pigeonhole perhaps. More naive, more gullible perhaps. But that's not "stupid," it's ignorant, and I'm not just playing semantics here, it's a significant difference. In any case and in other words, it's not a lowest common denominator kind of deal.

I really don't think of SE as a company that takes the easy way out or makes decisions based on how easy or hard it would be. It may not seem like it, but they've taken enormous risks in the past. smurfing enormous, gargantuan SPIRITS WITHIN sized risks. Final Fantasy XI/PlayOnline sized risks. Enix sized risks. A Realm Reborn sized risks. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say no other company has ever attempted (nor less yet pulled off) the kind of reboot that SE did with FFXIV 2.0.

I sound like I'm fanboying, but I'm not. This is just the truth. I'm as critical of SE as anyone. (FFXIII is an abomination, and it's not the only thing SE has smurfed up).

So yeah, what was I saying? SE something something.
Oh, right, SE makes decisions in order to be profitable, as they should. If they didn't, they'd soon have to close down and then we'd get no games at all, whether good, bad, or otherwise. As an audience, the potential for bad games should not outweigh the potential for good games. i.e. Since the audience has the option of whether or not to get a particular game, past performances should not have any affect on the audience's desire for the company to keep making games, because what does it really hurt the audience either way? If they make a bad game, then I don't buy it and my life is exactly the same as it would be if they'd never made the game at all, other than a little letdown from anticipation, and if I can't handle that, then I should fully expect to get my ass kicked by the big bad real world.

It's certainly not a lose-lose proposition. It's not even one that's win/lose. It's win/nothing. If they fail, I lose nothing that I don't voluntarily give when I allow myself to get hyped.

I don't have a damn clue what I'm talking about, but I'm going to stop there. smurf your lazy ass tl;dr bulltrout, but I'll summarize: Growing old sucks, but I can't blame SE for that. Chocobos rule, Moombas drool. Scoffing is for hopeless, bitter people, and I don't want to be a whiner. spoiler: realists aren't whiners. Take the good with the bad and vice versa. Final Fantasy Firefly: who's a better Cid, Wash or Kaylee??????? Teenagers get a bad rap, My name is Cloud Strife and I cannot lie...some trout like that. Never bet against a wiener.

EDIT EDIT EDIT: Why are all pictures of Weiner on the internet so smurfing huge??