Ascended Souls

What Dark Souls does, rather than spanning niches, is laser-focus on a few niche areas - and crucially, it engages and energises the base of people with an interest in this kind of game by demonstrating a real passion for and understanding of the kinds of experiences beloved by gamers in that category. Dark Souls isn't a success because it wants to be loved by everyone; it's a success because it's absolutely untroubled by the idea that most people will hate it, which will only boost the fervour of the niche audiences who absolutely love it.

The extent to which Dark Souls' fans love it is truly wonderful and astonishing to behold. They play it obsessively. They write about it. They tweet and blog about it. They encourage their friends to engage, discuss their progress with fellow fans, and are happy evangelists for the game. They're deeply engaged and involved, and that's the most powerful asset a franchise could ever hope to have.

Most western publishers are leaving money on the table every time they launch a game that manages to build a truly passionate fanbase

Moreover, if we're to bring this back to nuts and bolts, these fans are almost certainly happy to boost their investment in the game. Dark Souls' special edition has sold reasonably well, as I understand it - extra money in the bank from the top fans of the game. Unfortunately, western companies are still very poor at servicing passionate fanbases with post-launch products. Japan's game shops teem with merchandise ranging from character statues and T-shirts through to soundtracks and artbooks - relatively recently, Square Enix even launched eau de toilette and scented candles themed after Final Fantasy 7's Cloud and Sephiroth characters.

In the West, however, special editions tend to be the beginning and end of any attempt at monetising true fans of the franchise, which is a shame, since special editions really only catch those fans who are energised by pre-launch hype, not those who really fall in love with a game while they're actually playing it. DLC goes some way to filling in the gap, but it's still the case that most western publishers are leaving money on the table every time they launch a game that manages to build a truly passionate fanbase.

Yet even without this additional revenue stream on the back-end, the fact is that Dark Souls has achieved something which other publishers who want to stay alive in the increasingly tough console publishing market need to understand thoroughly. The game has ignited passion and excitement by presenting itself as an uncompromising, auteur-style vision, by being unafraid to focus on its core fans to the exclusion of a wider audience - but, crucially, by interpreting this to mean that it must strive to please its niche, not to mean that dips in quality will be forgiven since it's being sold to "fans", a common logical flaw of companies who take a more cynical approach to publishing niche-appeal products.

Dark Souls, for all that it's a game that gives the impression at times of hating its players, clearly loves its fans. It treats them well, and tells them that they're special - that this is an experience crafted for them, and that it doesn't care if the unwashed masses don't understand, as long as the fans do. Its fans reward it with passion, with enthusiasm, with evangelism, and with sales figures - and those figures could be boosted even more if that passion could be tapped into post-launch as well.

Not every game can go down this path, but as marketing budgets expand out of control and the cost of bringing a game to market shoots upwards, squeezing mid-range publishers and even new IPs from big publishers out of contention, Dark Souls' approach suggests another way forward. You don't have to be loved by everyone to be profitable and successful - you just have to approach one area with real passion and affection, and let that shine through every aspect of the development process and your engagement with the audience. Of course, that's easy to state on a page, and a lot harder to implement in practice - but if there's a company in our industry that can't demonstrate real passion and enthusiasm for games, it's got a deeper problem to contend with than shifting business models.