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A comment on Into the Wormhole: An afternoon with Eve Online's least understood demographic. Parent comment

Re:Into the Wormhole: An afternoon with Eve Online's least u... by kevingadd on Wednesday July 17, 2013 @11:36PM (#6061639)
This is also an integral part of the appeal of Demon's Souls and Dark Souls. Even if those games aren't mass market, the developers were clearly surprised by just how many people enthusiastically responded to being handed a game and told 'here, figure it out. we left you lots of clues. also, you'll die a lot.'
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Re:Into the Wormhole: An afternoon with Eve Online's least u... by Argorak on Thursday July 18, 2013 @01:17AM (#6061898)
Demon Souls sold 1.7 million games, Dark Souls sold 2.4 million games, which puts it in the Top100 for its year:

http://www.vgchartz.com/yearly/2011/Global/

These games are surprisingly mass-market.

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Re:Into the Wormhole: An afternoon with Eve Online's least u... by kevingadd on Thursday July 18, 2013 @01:19AM (#6061901)
That's impressive, I didn't know they had sold so well.

What I meant by 'not mass market' was more the developers' reckoning of the game's appeal. In practice, a lot of people imported the game from Japan to play it in the US because they didn't even think it would get released here! Then, when it came out, IIRC sales dramatically outpaced the publisher's expectations and they had to rush to make and distribute more copies.

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Re:Into the Wormhole: An afternoon with Eve Online's least u... by Argorak on Thursday July 18, 2013 @03:18AM (#6062257)
Given that Demon's Souls was conceived in Japan, I would describe it's mechanics as very fitting to the huge group of core-gamers there. The western success is surprising, I give you that, especially considering the rather meager marketing of the first.
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