It’s Success and Failure and What Online Communities, Poker, and MMORPG Have to Do With It
DmC: Devil May Cry, the fifth instalment of Capcom’s Devil May Cry gaming franchise, received critical acclaim but had a disappointing sales performance. Capcom has cited various causes but one seemingly obvious reason crops up: the online communities.
In this generation, we are seeing a shift of power towards end-users dictating what should or should not succeed. The gaming world had this experience many times, from MMORPG revamps to sudden online poker booms. Was DmC’s fate influenced by the opinions of online communities?
Online communities of various interests have strengthened themselves with the help of social media. News, opinions, comments, and even violent reactions are almost instantaneously spread via Facebook, Twitter, and other social sharing platforms.
Let’s take a look at specific gaming genres. The casual game of poker had a reincarnation thanks to online communities. The online poker boom in the mid-2000s occurred mostly because of the development of social networking. It seemed highly unlikely that a normal pastime and casino staple like poker could turn into a favourite online game, but it did. Online players were receptive to the no-hassle setup and instant gameplay. These positive points immediately spread through forums, blogs, and of course on Facebook, with games like Facebook’s Texas Hold’em Poker earning a great deal of success.
On the flip side, long running Japanese game developer Square Enix faced the wrath of angry fans. Their choice of having a massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG) format for its “legendary” Final Fantasy series was met by protests and utter disappointment. This led to a decision by the company to revamp its MMORPG release from Final Fantasy XIV to Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. And with that overhaul, Square Enix made sure that they involved the online community in almost every step of the way as it was developed from its beta version up until its official release.
We’ve seen the success of reformatting a casual poker game, making it available online. We’ve also witnessed an MMORPG’s fall and and how it redeemed itself. So how was it for such a decade-old favourite hack and slash fantasy game played on consoles?
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Prior to DmC’s release in 2012, which was announced by GamerGeddon, protests were already forwarded concerning the character design and the reasons why Capcom decided to overhaul the game instead of just continuing the series. DmC was a reboot game that faced multiple criticisms even before its market debut. And as a blog post in ArmouredPhoenix.wordpress.com points out, the reboot seemed way too obvious that the Japanese video game giant wanted to just expand their market. With that, they disregarded the loyal fans they had collected during their first four Devil games. Fast forward to present time, Siliconera.com brought up that Capcom’s “supposed” goal of targeting new casual gamers was actually a failure, if not non-existent.
So is there concrete proof that online opinions of end-users influenced how DmC would perform sales-wise? Maybe not. However, given the public attitude that was established before DmC was even released, it is logical to think that many were already persuaded not to buy because of the negative feedback. Even with great reviews from gaming sites and other gamer blogs, perhaps corporations like Capcom should consider assessing the online voices in order for them to determine what future decisions to make.
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