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You Are Not The Audience: Why Some Studios Succeed And Others Don't

Toasty Gaming

45,892 views

Mass Creation put out a trailer for Swords & Slippers that hit 27 million views on X, and then told a critic: "You are not the audience we're building for. Nobody here is interested in your agenda."

Everybody covered the drama. Almost nobody asked the question sitting underneath it, how does a studio of maybe fifteen people identify its audience correctly, when much larger companies cannot?

So this video is about market segmentation, which gaming alone among entertainment industries has managed to pathologise. Romance publishing, Life is Strange, and why Dragon Age: The Veilguard failing was not even a rational business decision.

CHAPTERS

00:00 - You are not the audience we're building for
02:03 - What romance publishing already understands
03:45 - The wider audience is real, and it isn't in gaming
05:50 - Life is Strange and the symmetry
09:18 - Who Veilguard was actually built for
12:36 - Replacement versus substitution
14:40 - It wasn't even a rational decision
15:50 - The actual lesson

Sources:

Swords & Slippers, the reply that everyone covered as based ("You are not the audience...")
https://x.com/SwordsSlippers/status/2...

Circana on the romance lit market
https://www.circana.com/post/another-...

The Dontnod claim that publishers wanted male leads for Life is Strange
https://kotaku.com/publishers-wanted-...

Article on how the original LiS sold 3 mil copies
https://www.gamedeveloper.com/busines...

Article covering Double Exposure being a financial flop
https://www.thegamer.com/life-is-stra...

Sinus-Milieus (again, bear in mind this is a respected but for-profit institute, and their milieus primarily serve marketing purposes. I primarily used them as they are still useful to establish a rough societal layout, and because they are honestly the first thing that came to mind.)
https://www.sinus-institut.de/en/sinu...

Article on The Pudertanz
https://ooe.orf.at/stories/3242799/

20 Comments

@gamerboy6787 1 month ago

I have no idea where this saying comes from, but it goes something like, "There is something for everyone under the sun... but not everything under the sun is for everyone."

@SaltyChickenDip 1 month ago

I think it's funny that the Rapunzel was the character that got the outrage. She is dressed like the Amish compared to snow-white

@HiddenCharacter81 1 month ago

The funny thing is that they say things like this isn't for you dont buy it. We listen and they lose money. Its the opposite when we tell them its not for them don't buy it. Because they were never going to buy it to begin with and therefore no money will be lost.

@Curlorly06 1 month ago

27 million views is actually insane, many triple A game trailers don’t even get close to that, especially in such a short amount of time. If I were a miserable person, I would also be bitter at the sheer success.

@stanettiels7367 1 month ago

This isn't really my type of game, but I love European folklore and fairytales. This looks really interesting.

@Doofyguy7971 1 month ago

This is not my type of game and I will not buy it, but I won't hate the Devs for doing it. I know it's not for me and that's okay. Not everything should be for me, I am an adult and have a functioning brain.

@taxman3749 1 month ago

This is high-level shit. Like a senior level marketing lecture. It's a shame that the people who need to hear it absolutely would not listen to it, or do what it says.

@yourname-ze5mi 1 month ago

Got recommended this channel randomly. Awesome video.

@David-de4jn 1 month ago

2:16 reminds me of the nerdy American dudes making the first Doom, Halo and Quake games. They said “we are our audience, we make what we think would be cool”. Or similar.

@Tak3034 1 month ago (edited)

1:38 Easy. Common sense. It’s like if someone made a burger restaurant that only sells burgers and then Johny Numbnuts came in and demanded a pizza. Johnny is not the target audience. If he wants a pizza, he can go somewhere else. Not really hard to find out. But, modern AAA devs shovel out slop that’s supposed to be for everyone. So ultimately they make something for no one.

@liquid47 1 month ago

They always seek to invade our hobbies then complain that it's not made for them, then they complain that we're in our own space.

@shawnharper7030 1 month ago

A game that isn’t made for everyone, the horror. A game that knows who their audience is, appalling. How dare they do this. Don’t they know that a game has to appeal to the modern audience in order to be successful. All sarcasm aside, good for them for not backing down

@jimfcarroll 1 month ago

Most underrated gaming commentary on YT. Thanks! <- more algo fodder.

@Project-Spy 1 month ago

It's strange. Like it used to be a company that made shampoo for men would make a separate product line for women. Now you can see a company that made men's shampoo try to twist the men's product line to fit some "audience". As you said it's basic market segmentation, but that was never the goal with these kinds of changes.

@brooklynballer2455 1 month ago

I mean even the biggest cynic can wrap their head around the idea that gooners at least spend a lot. So even if it’s not your thing it really shouldn’t be a surprise.

@Stormcrow_1 1 month ago

I don't think Astarion ever survived act 1 in my play throughs. I jammed a stake through his heart every time.

@wunclerlaufenbumcorneliusu7047 1 month ago

Wait…is this…logic? No way! The same people that play Killzone might not play Animal Crossing, got it…

@ketamu5946 1 month ago

Make games you like because they are FUN and not games others like at the moment because they won't be liked when you are done.

@t.k.5844 1 month ago

Insightful take as always, Toast. I've been playing D&D for 20+ and the segment about Baldur's Gate 3's 'audience replacement' really hits a nerve for me. It's kind of worse in a way than something like Dragon Age, because it's actually worked. What it means to be a Dragon Age fan hasn't really changed despite Veilguard's failure, but what constitutes a D&D fan is now radically different and something that now often excludes me, sometimes quite pointedly.

@Axterix13 1 month ago

I think it goes beyond wanting the approval of a small mindset. I think a good chunk of them don't realize they are part of that very small part of society. The negative impact of social media bubbles. And when you combine that a large team where people don't all interact, with HR and other corporate policies, there is no reality check. And this goes beyond social themes, but game play as well. Odds are, at every studio, there are people that are genuinely sick of the constant "helpful" dialogue and overuse of yellow paint... but these people aren't in regular contact with the designers. Meanwhile, the people overviewing it all aren't gamers. They're suits, trying to make marketing/sales leaning decisions, to broaden the potential audience, while not understanding (or not caring, in case of the likes of "nerds will buy it anyway") that this is also having a negative impact on their core audience.

Of course, there's also incompetence at play. Watched a video not too long ago about the Black Flag remake, wherein the creator mentions being at an event where the writer was asked why the characterization was so off between the new and old content, how easy it was to tell which was which due to that gap. And the writer genuinely seemed surprised people could tell. That's incompetence. That's lack of attention to detail.