I'm afraid I don't agree on companies listening to fans, there have been far
too many incidents I can think of where a company has acted directly
against! fan interest.
Noteable ones include some Us vs Pal region releases, for instance releasing
both mega man collections in the Us only, or rleasing the rockman perfect
works only in Japan.
More recently there is the complete retcon of the mega man zero storyline,
which essentially almost ruined the plot of the entire series simply because
Capcom wanted to bring out more and more games and couldn't face having a
popular character actually exit a game series in the way he initially
appeared in it's sequal.
Street fighter wise, there have been innumerable debacles in the games'
history, such as out sourcing final fight to an us based developr in 2006 to
produce the travesty known as final fight streetwise, the wonderful
exclusion of most of the line up from sf 3 (capcom got in lots of trouble
over that one), and the complete absense of anything involving the final
fight 2 cast, especially Maki who people really! want to return.
Capcom have actually had to do a serious amount of back pedling in the past
few years, especially after the chalming statement from Kiaji inafune that
"all the games happen in different universes" which nearly had their main
offices stormed by rabid hoards of fans who'd been following the plot of
series' like Mega man, street fighter etc for 20 years and were ready to
commit bloody murder.
Capcom has recently been trying to get back in people's good books after all
these rather awful pr blunders.
It's not just Capcom though. There was then the famous fall out betwene rare
and nintendo which virtually ended the entire donkey kong country series
despite the fact that fans were desperate for another game.
Nintendo have also been very guilty of the "japan only" release schedule
which has earned them a lot of flack from a lot of people, especially sinse
often in their history for an english release they've merely hacked one of
their pre-existing games such as the famous Mario two business, tetris
attack (which is known to many people as tetris a hack), and several of the
games released for the nintendo scope, not to mention zelda out sourcing,
pokemon rejiggerings and the like.
We also won't talk about what happened to the N64, where Nintendo managed to
systematically annoy most of their fan base into buying the playstation.
I think all of this has resulted in companies having to make a U turn or
risk losing their fans, ----- but stil, I'm personally exceptionally
scheptical that a tick box survey on a facebook page or a release to a fan
site actually counts as interaction.
heck, when a company brings out a survey asking "would you like x, y, or Z
in the next game" they probably already have plans for all three
alternatives on the drawing board.
Ultimately, I'd say most mainstream game companies only care about large
scale public opinion which will increase their prophit, and have litle or no
interest in doing anything more personal, ----- game accessibility very much
included.
Sorry if this comes across slightly strong, it's just that even though I've
been playing games now for over 23 years, every time I've tried to make an
access suggestion to a main stream company it's gone no where at all, and
all I've seen is companies becoming larger and larger and making more and
more money as games get shorter and glitzier.
Beware the Grue!
Dark.
---
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