Summary Police: Byond's community's standards are low- don't use them.
But, don't avoid them either- just ignore them.
Pretty much, Jittai. I worry slightly, when I see these posts.
It's not a game developer's job here to effect changes in the tastes of BYOND's market. Literally, a game dev here should never be talking on or considering the "BYOND-Gamer Mentality". If you're saying "I'm making a game XYZ people enjoy, but how do I get this other market that I know won't take well to my game as well?" you're splitting efforts, weakening your game, and something has gone very wrong with your design process. We see it time and time again in the professional market as it is. Believe me, if coaxing people with little treats alone worked as a way of making them change their underlying tastes and mentality, we'd have a lot better programmers here already. | |
That's where you are mistaken, because that's never been my intention. My game is actually suited to the anime crowd, which makes up most of the alienated market that byond has lost touch with.
My target audience are teenagers who watch and enjoy anime, that's who I will be targetting when I appeal to people out in the interweb beyond byond. I haven't really changed anything I've had planned for this game since day one- except relying on this community to have a bit of common sense about itself. I gave up on that months ago and I pretty much decided to move on. I really hate to keep repeating myself, but the purpose of this post was to simply kick ideas around to expose players who "might" like my game to it, but reject it simply because it isn't the "norm" by byond's standards. That's something all creators face. I agree that trying to cater to everyone is pretty much useless. Maximizing is completely different. | |
To which my answer would be "nothing". You don't have to do anything. There are ~2.4 billion people on the internet. Your target segment alone is probably easily in the millions. You really don't need to do /anything/ to tempt an extra few hundred 13 year olds from BYOND.
Which is obviously why we disagree. | |
And ultimately if it doesn't matter like you say, what was the point of this 30 minute debate?
If it's as useless, and as fruitless as you point out, and all I have to do is nothing, then doing something wouldn't really matter? I'm still not sure I follow but I really have no wish to keep going back and forth about this. This is the second time a moderator has tried to forcibly change my mind about something that is opinion. I respect yours(opinion), but I really don't see any downside to inviting a few more hundred 13 years as you say. In fact, there really isn't. I'm not going to change my mind just because you feel like it, if that's what this convo is then--its over. | |
Uhm .... wat.
I'm not particularly 'forcibly' changing your mind? I'm waxing exposition for the 500 other forum readers? | |
No. Repeating your points and expounding on them over and over again either implies that I didn't understand you the first time--(which i explained I did 3 times)or you just want me to see your point the way you see it, aka -me changing my mind/ opinion.(which you kept on after I said I get it).
I don't like to argue for arguements sake. I see your point, I just also don't see a point to changing my stance, that's all it really is. | |
Sorry, seems I misunderstood why my own motivations then, my bad?
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I don't even know what points you both stand for at the moment.
If I read correctly, Stephen is saying you should be targeting the whole internet not just byond- and shouldn't pander to anyone (especially small communities). He never says to dismiss anime and that seems to be the main point of your argument? (edit: p.s., Anime is the hobby of the nerd's nerd. In other words, you're going to get a lot of flak from even other "nerds". Stephen hasn't expressed any of this but you should get used to it.) | |
I said from the beginning of this discussion that I felt inclined to ignore byond as potential players for most of my games.
I said from the beginning of this discussion that my purpose was mainly to discover alternate means of exposing players to games that they may not otherwise play, simply due to their "byond" tastes. Believe it or not, everyone functions the same way to some degree. We have our own set of standards and usually unless something exceptional comes along we don't stray from them. For instance a person that normally only plays action beat em up games might occasionally enjoy a good RPG. In my particular case it just so happens that the type of game I'm making is very similiar to what they play, yet they still for the most part would feel inclined to ignore it because it's not solely based around a popular intellectual property. I said from the beginning of this discussion that my purpose in even asking questions like this was to help this community as a whole. So I too am puzzled why this blew up into a 30-45 minute discussion when I already said, several times that yes, targeting the internet is better than targetting a few hundred 13 year olds. My point is : why even EXCLUDE them at all? It makes 0 sense to exclude potential players. If the average player is used to poorly set up video games, then they need examples of better ones to stimulate their thought processes of "hey, maybe I should play games that aren't so like this". But to be honest I just don't feel inclined to even explain myself anymore. For some odd reason all of my posts end up in some kind of weird mud slinging superiority flexing awkwardness. Apparently I can't make posts, I forgot that-- one of the original reasons I just stopped bothering altogether a few months ago. -_- | |
And my point was developers don't actively need to do anything, that 'BYOND gamer' segment won't be excluded just by you not applying an extra effort in your design for them. They play Steam games already, play on their PS3, Xbox 360, flash games, Runescape etc. They are a lot more used to a variety of control schemes, presentation schemes, sound schemes than I think developers here acknowledge. It's just ... no, they won't roll with it if there's only 5 other people on the server.
What developers may do (and is my main concern) by actively trying to include them though, is shoot themselves in the foot. I want people's games (yours too), to be a success. I really do. My worry, and why I keep re-iterating, is that by actively going out of their way design-wise for that extra few hundred, is they make the game experience notably worse for their main market, and the game flops. If it's a good game, with a decent number of players already, on BYOND, the 'BYOND (anime, in your case) gamer' segment will play it, anyway. That's what I mean by 'nothing'. I think actively doing something here will probably wind up harmful, much more than so than a developer would gain from doing so. It's basically: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ PanderingToTheBase Now for you, maybe you won't do that. You seem to have thought this over, know your specific market etc. You've obviously got some kind of plan, and you're going to follow it. That's cool, more power to you. As a developer community as a whole however, I think it harms us more than it does us good to even consider the original question, though. Hence the exposition for the other 500 or so readers, as I said. You are not excluding anybody by not actively designing for them. | |
One cannot simply just create a game and get everyone to like it everyone has different likes/dislikes and wants/needs.
Fair enough the majority of the community here is either 13 year old anime fans who are resistant to change or exploring other genres, but its nigh-on impossible to make them do that as people don't like being told what to do. If they embrace your game they will do it in their own time, create the best game you can keep on top of development updates and listen to the community you have and i am sure that in time if your game has a high quality of game-play/replay-ability and decent graphics or even unique graphics people will come, byond won't change overnight either, its easy to pull in a community from other genres the trick is keeping them here. | |
Problem with targeting the entire internet and not BYOND is, as mentioned, BYOND has stupidly low standards on what is and what isn't a good game.
Not to insult anyone or anything, but in the 11 or so years I have been here, I've probably seen less than 10 good games that would be successful outside of the BYOND community. I suspect a large part of this is because people make games for the BYOND community, which has low standards so they can get away with making bad games. | |
@Dariuc: So you're targeting BYOND by having the theme of anime... not the actual gameplay itself, or? Because if that's the case, then you're not really "targeting" BYOND but the millions of anime / manga fans on the internet (which is a good idea!).
Unless you plan to make it similar to Naruto... along with some P-Bags thrown in... or something... which would probably just piss off most "true" anime fans if they had to play it. This is important stuff, since the series that you're referencing is going to essentially dictate your entire community's persona. | |
There are anime games outside of BYOND. They are a lot better than any anime games you will find on BYOND.
One of the best anime games I've played on BYOND was that duel monsters game. I forget the name but it's based on Yugioh. You can play an online version of this for free that is better in every single way imaginable and has a lot more players to play against. Both people who make, and people who play BYOND games get into a strange mentality where they will accept bad games just because they're made with BYOND. People making BYOND games need to stop competing with other BYOND games and start competing with other, actual good games. | |
Silly. DMO wasn't a anime game- there were no punching bags or OPEN WORLD RPG PVP OBGYN.
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I was being sarcastic and mocking the countless MMO-Anime games.
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The Magic Man wrote:
There are anime games outside of BYOND. They are a lot better than any anime games you will find on BYOND. And ultimately that's the point behind my logic. I didn't set out to "make a game that would change byond" I made a game I wanted to make, that's really all it ever came down to. @ WANO:If I'm going to target anime fans across the internet, I should target ones here, as well as anywhere else. The aspect from which you view this topic is fundamentally wrong. You seem to think I'm rearranging or changing my game based on trying to net players. That's never been the case since day one. Rather the original question was targeted at reaching players who are obviously interested in games like mine, that due to their mentality wouldn't take the time to try it out. @ Stephen: There is nothing at all wrong with that line of thinking, or the questions presented here. It all boils down to your personal opinion and disdain I think. As I've said, there's more than one way to handle it, and approaching it from both angles from my current vantage point is very possible and also logical considering my game just happens to align with a large player base that byond is currently disenfranchised with. However their current mentality stands in the way of that, that's an indisputable issue as seen by me and quite a few other people. And that was the point of this post: Not "how can I change my game to cater to them", it's always been "how can I expose my game to these people who are spoiled on some bad practices." I haven't nor have I ever had an urge to change my game to cater to these people-- you guys just got on that tangent began making assumptions,(much to my dismay- no matter what I say) so at this point it's really pointless to say anything else right? | |
It's simpler to do what someone has done rather than wander out into that field of uncertainty and do things their own way until they get it right. On that end, providing these people who are somewhat mindless in their enjoyments with something they are familiar with--yet is decidedly improved or better-- I think that is also a catalyst for change.
Also I think we are talking under the misconception that I'm going to be actively trying to capture or change any of the audience here-- I won't. The purpose of this post has always been brain storming ways to include these people in a way that they might think twice about upping the standards they have for the types of games they play/ and or / make. There's many ways to do that, that don't require a ton of effort. I've pretty much said a while back that I already have a target audience and I don't plan on even really promoting anything here.
I may invite some people to check it out (a few hundred) but my main focus is outside of these walls. I've already said that a few times. I already accounted for what you are saying, I have from the start. I personally don't see why you are so adamant that my approach is flawed. I don't perceive including the maximum number of people to the exposure of a game to be flawed, to me that's what most people would want to do.