I do agree with you with all the statements. And Final Fight
Streetwise was... well, as you put it, a travesty. But I think
companies have gotten a lot better... Sega's released Yakuza 3 in the
USA only because some many fans sent them letters.
And of course they'll capitalize on anything they can get a profit
off. But as another person who's played games for 10 years, I've
realized that game access is just not on anyone's agenda. They see no
need for it, and not even all blind gamers play mainstream games...
that's the main deciding factor. Large scale opinion is what they
want... and we definitely aren't large scale. lol.
At 04:12 PM 29/11/2010, you wrote:
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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