The Business: Elden Ring's Preview Drops & Why This Genre Works

This just dropped today. It's a preview for Elden Ring, a Dark Souls style of game that's been in Development Hell for a few years now.

I'm not good at these sorts of games, but I do like them, and what I see here is iterative improvement from Dark Souls III and Bloodborne and as that is a solid formula for success to date then I think Elden Ring may yet succeed and fulfill internal expectations within Bandai Namco.

So why is this style of game so popular and influential?

Because this is the essence of fantasy role-playing. You, a lone adventurer, against a perilous world filled with monsters, treasures, and wonders and your fate is your own to make as best you can. There are people still playing the original Demon Souls, nevermind the PS5 remake, after all these years because it is still that compelling. You'll still see people streaming playthroughs of DS3 and BB on a regular basis. Even lesser titles in this style find an audience--Mortal Shell, Sekiro, Jedi: Fallen Order, Nioh/Nioh 2, Lords of the Fallen, etc.--and you'll find plenty more out there, some in 2D and some mixing other elements (Roguelike and Metroidvania seem common).

And, for the publishers and makers, it's a reliable commercial niche. People that like this style of play like to buy and play more titles that provide it when a current favorite wears out its welcome.

There's one other thing I want to point out to observers. A while back I described MMORPGs as an Apex Product, the thing you publish to cap off the building of an Intellectual Property and its associated brand. That necessitates taking your playable characters and making separate games for them as testbeds. This genre of game is ideal fodder for those foundational stand-alone games. Especially so if your game uses a pre-Modern or Early Modern setting, where melee combat is routine, and you want to avoid a lot of the issues that established MMORPG design paradigms deal with.

Imagine a Souls-style of game for your Fighter character first. The mechanics are already solid; just don't fuck that up and you're good. That leaves you plenty of room to work on presentation and narrative. Build out this game to allow for every future Fighter-type character in your MMORPG, and let into the wild to see how well it works. Monitor feedback, implement it, and when you walk your aim dead-center on target that's where you stop mechanical development and focus on playable scenarios for the rest of the game's lifespan.

The next game should shift the focus to another major character type--magic users, typically--and so on until you're ready to meld them into an online multiplayer setting.

And if I can come up with this plan, someone in AAA already has and is hustling to make it work- expect it sooner than later.

Well, I hope someone has. I'll be disappointed if I'm wrong. That's just leaving money on the table.