The Almighty Casual Audience

 In the land of the blind

You and I, we don't matter. When it comes down to the creation of entertainment, both in gaming and in film, it's perhaps the strangest contrast of all that the actual beliefs and preferences of the fans who flocked to the content in the first place is actually a secondary consideration in the equation of what makes a worthwhile production. Of course, the evaluation of 'worthwhile' in this instance is being conducted almost exclusively by the powers that be over at the the corporate level of TV studios or production companies, by their word is hardly a passing breeze, now isn't it. The holders of the purse strings, from who's lips entire projects are born and die, don't care one iota about what the ready built fanbase feel and think when it comes to their products- doesn't that seem like the strangest oxymoron when it comes to business? And yet- it almost makes sense.

The itchy trigger fingers are always focused on a much more volatile and hard-to-please crowd, but one which is always immensely bigger by comparison. That amorphous and inherently indistinct entity known as 'The Casual Audience' will always be itself a larger cut of potentiality than the die-hard fans of any given product- because as there is one person who will dedicate themselves to a certain franchise with a zealous energy, there's ten thousand more who couldn't care less unless it makes a big song and dance to win them over. Cult-like fans are a known and conquered entity- even when they raise a fuss there's a good chance they'll stick around and spend their money anyway, just to be closer to the thing that they love. But the casual audience? They need to be cajoled and courted, seduced and sequestered- you have to win over the casual audience in order to see the levels of success that companies grow all hot and bothered for in today's world.

That's the reason why, so often, you'll see a game or TV show in it's production stages veer off in a direction that nobody is a fan of- and being passionate and vocal amateur critics that we are- that will be something we let them know about. But it's so very rare that the big productions will ever act upon the free audience feedback they've been given in any meaningful manner- take 'Suicide Squad Kills the Justice League', for example. Recently that game had itself a painfully rough reveal event where everything about the game from it's core gameplay to the very structure of the game as a mission-based live service was called into question after a slaughtering of fan opinions in every which way. Rocksteady did respond, but only by delaying it over a half a year into 2024. Not in order to change any of the issues that fans had, but to ensure the game is as polished of an entity as it's going to possibly be.

Now of course, the game is too far along at this point for a change in direction and Rocksteady can hardly afford to scrap a nearly completed game, but doubling down on the things that people hate is asinine, isn't it? Well, the fan reactions basically told Rocksteady that they absolutely cannot rely on the fandom they've built up over the years to provide free positive marketing as a shield for any shortcomings that 'Suicide Squad' might have in their pursuit to push the game onto a bigger, more casual, audience. This delay for polishing sake is basically their way of shifting tactic to making sure the product they've built, however rotten, is as far beyond basic reproach as humanely possible- for the chance of bypassing the fans altogether and securing those precious 'new playerbase' figures. That alone is why Live Services will never, and can never, die.

In fact, it's the reaction of the casual audience which has greatly shaken the recent One Piece adaptation to it's core after test screenings were so poor- woah wait one second... there's a One Piece adaptation? As in, 'live action'? And it's made by Netflix? How many times do you have to screw up live-adapting Anime before the primordial truth dawns that highly fluid and expressive animations don't translate well into live action? Dragon Ball Evolution took bunches of setbacks to try and make their own version under budget and still made a trainwreck so bad that Dragon Ball had to revive itself to wash the taste of that movie out of everyone's mouth, Cowboy Bepop was a mockery of everything that made the original a timeless, stylish classic and Death Note... Actually I never saw Death Note, because it's reputation precedes it.

But I'm getting off track- Netflix wanted to make an adaptation, and by all accounts they very much did. Never mind that the actual main character of the show has the ability to distort his body like rubber, which conceptually would look like trash in live action- but who am I to tell a spade it's a spade? Netflix were so aboard this ship that they had real giant versions of the cartoonish pirate vessels from the show built- which is unironically increadibly cool and makes me wish that kind of effort went into more current shows. But apparently that effort didn't make it to the CGI department, because by all accounts what Netflix is planning to serve up is utterly trash, at least to the palette of a test audience. They don't like the visuals and they find the story utterly nonsensical, which is the breaking point for Netflix.

Of course, any fan of the Anime (or even the Manga, I guess) would know exactly what's going on at all times, but this isn't a show with the fan's interests to heart. In fact, I doubt any adaptation of a foreign film or show is done with the original audience to mind. The upcoming, missing the point, adaptation of 'Squid Game'? The all-American 'Parasite' we've been threatened with over the past few years? Largely vapid attempts to copy the success of those shows and transport them over to a group of people too lazy to read subtitles. And I say that disparagingly, but there is a giant market of people who don't engage with foreign language content because they don't like to read subtitles and the dub is atrocious. Or they just don't feel comfortable if the people on TV aren't speaking the same language as them. That could be a factor too.

Which is why, as bizarre as it really sounds, the fan base are never really the target demographic when it comes to the release of practically anything. Always, the intention is never to satiate the hungry, but to expand their numbers by getting in new fans. That's why sequels always have to be bigger, louder, with bigger stakes and a younger cast. Making stories that start, continue and end with the pace of the narrative, died with the release of Jaws 2. If you're not telling everybody at work about the cool new show you're watching and converting them into active fans, you're a lazy fan and these studios hate you for it. And seeing as how the executive branch of games literally grew out of TV show business, that's the way it is for games as well. How delightfully myopic!