RPG Companies know what you want... right?

by Mistress Nightshadow 

Well, have you noticed that it seems that RPG companies don't seem to listen to us as a group generally? I mean, even though RPGamers scream out aloud for games released in Japan to make the migratory trip east from Japan to the US, and for European gamers to see more than a trickle of what the US receives, they hold conventions, they gather petitions [Look at Team Xcalbur's petition to prove that RPGamers want an RPG on the Game Boy.] You hear of E-mail petitions, you hear about it on boards, chat rooms, in real life.

Of course there's other events as well, like how people want little things to go with their preorders, how they want real simultaneous releases of games, of unfair or censored translations and the like. You look around, you'll find it in one form or another.
We even hear of it in here, the RPGamer's editorials section. You'll probably find a few discussing about how much companies care or don't care because they don't do what we want them to if you look back in the archives without any difficulty.

But it seems that no one is listening. Square doesn't give much to the European market, with the non-release of Chrono Cross, you see it here with the apparent lack of result concerning Mythri, you hear of games which make hits at Japan but never make it here, you see it in the censorship and editing of games, a prime example is the intrigue concerning Enix's Dragon Warrior VII. [What's happening to the translation is anyone's guess as far as I know.] We might be having a few successes with FFIV and Chrono Trigger, but even now, it's all still in the air.

They're providing things we, as a group, don't particularly want, or are very much divided on, the most prominent one being the concept of a Final Fantasy Online RPG.

I guess RPG companies are stubborn little twits, who don't want to listen to anyone, even though if they did, they'd make a lot of money with the RPGamers' support, and make them happy as a convenient side effect...

Or are they?

Before you go jumping up and down because I cut your opportunity to mail-bomb Square and Enix, there's something I'd like to say... Shall we say a parallel? When I thought about this, I recalled a lesson I had about a few weeks back in my customer service course I was doing at a technical institution part time.

What was this about? It was an almost anecdotal point about what made bad customer service, it was a report done quite recently.

In Australia, there was a survey done on customers and banks after there was a public outcry when the banks raised their fees and charges again, cutting staff and closing branches, particularly after announcing their yearly profits, which went up to all time highs, causing the already low public image of the major banks to drop even further.

What was the survey? It was quite simple. Customers at random were asked what they wanted out of the banks as customers. Soon after, the banks were then asked what customers expected out of them as a bank.

The results were very interesting indeed. Apparently, according to the survey, what the customers wanted and what the banks thought the customers wanted were diametrically opposite each other. The customers wanted more branches, the banks thought that they wanted less branches and more ATMs to reduce waiting time for simple transactions. The customers wanted simple and face to face service, the banks thought they wanted more convenient ways of doing business which could be done anywhere, which meant telephone, internet and non face to face services. There was a lot more to it according to my teacher, but she couldn't remember the details.

Hence, the customers thought they were getting ripped off by the seemingly high fees and charges because they got almost nothing they wanted. The banks on the other hand thought that they were cutting their profits and bending over backwards by offering all these services and they were thinking they were doing all the customer wanted.

This is despite the fact there has been many years of complaint, outcry, demonstrations and publicity of how 'oppressive' the banks were, of how much they screwed up and refuse to listen.
As a final interesting point, most customers would have thought that the fees they were paying and any increases on top would be justifiable, if not worthwhile, if the banks did what they wanted, and would recommend any bank that did so to do business with.

The reason for bringing this up in my class at all? It was to demonstrate of what could happen if people didn't research their market group properly, except at a much grander scale.

Now where was I? Oh yes, about how RPG companies don't seem to listen...
Actually, that little amusing point brings up a good point, what DO RPG developers and producers think we want anyway?

I wonder if anyone out there could do a survey about what the companies think we want, and we collaborated the results with a survey into what we want from Square, Enix, Natsume and other RPG developers to justify buying their games. Although a fair bit would be the same, I'd wager that they won't quite match up.

Well, if you'd like to comment on it in any way, be it in thought, editorial, or rebuttal, please send it to nightshadow@rpgamer.com, or to my home address at nightshadow_007@angelfire.com. I'd definitely like to hear about it.

Amazing what you can learn if you go to another institution during the summer holidays for a couple of weeks, isn't it?