Miss Wendighost
Satan's Little Princess
- 709
- Posts
- 7
- Years
- Age 24
- The Abyss
- Seen Dec 21, 2020
I don't personally think that a franchise can be held accountable for the actions of its fans. I suppose these things ARE problems, depending on your perspective, but they weren't created by the franchise, but rather the fans of it. It's an important distinction to make. At least until Game Freak publishes some official Rule 34 fanart, or we get some reps joining forums and encouraging toxic behaviour. GF has never actively engaged with its fanbase the way, say, Sonic Team has, though, so it's not really responsible for any of this.
I get the sense that there is this expectation that the franchise will "grow up" with its original fans and strive to always be relevant to its original audience, rather than its target audience. Whilst a lot of franchises do this - Digimon definitely has, as the ever-present comparison - plenty do not. At the end of the day, it's there to make money, and tastes change with time...however, there are always kids around.
It makes more business sense to remain relevant to a younger demographic, rather than to try and remain true to the same target audience, especially considering there is no way of telling what would appeal to the older generation of fans now. Different people want different things, and the only evidence they have to go off of is that more of the same sells. Not only that, but people who were around for the first generation are old enough to have kids of their own now, and I imagine many would be inclined to introduce their children to Pokemon if it was the same as they remember...which it definitely is, because it's never changed. So I wouldn't say this is necessarily a problem with the franchise, looking at it from a more detached perspective.
...that said, there is adequate room to do both, and with LGPE being so geared towards newer players in particular I think Game Freak might actually be recognising this, FINALLY. Whether or not we get games clearly designed to cater towards older fans in the future will determine this one way or another, but I don't think it an inherent problem with the franchise if we don't.
If we do though...god, do they need to actually hire a proper writer.
Agreed, Team Skull was awful for a villain team. I wish we had more Magma-like teams that have insane, apocalyptic goals.
