Why Dark Souls Is The 'Ikea' Of Games 

>Bed broke >Go to IKEA to buy new bed >Weird fog at bedroom spot >Cutscene triggers >TROMSÖ, KEEPER OF DREAMS Edit: damn that's a lot of likes. Also, spelling.

Ikea is the Dark Souls of furniture stores

Bed Of Chaos has a new meaning.

Dark Souls is a game I didn't realize I wanted till I played it.

“Passionate fans make viable brands” It’s amazing that this even needs to be said these days.

This camera work was the dark souls of presentations.

"if you wanna be like star wars, don't spend so much time making something everyone will buy" this statement did not age well at all

TL:DR Dark souls is successful because it was intentionally designed to serve a niche market within the gaming industry (hardcore/hardcorish gamers) and because of that it's considered a resounding success within that market. Devs should know who they want to target instead of trying to please every kind of gamer.

Yes but thats the problem with AAA these days isn't it, they do not want a 'target audience' they want everyone. And thus they please no one.

"the more people you are trying to target, the less specific you can get to their needs" best line about game development i have ever heard.

This is un-ironically one of the greatest talks I've ever heard, as life advice.

“Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.” -Kurt Vonnegut.

This talk reminds me of why I love Sekiro so much. When Sekiro first came out, I scoffed at it for being so much unlike Dark Souls or Bloodborne. I didn't like the platforming, the invisible walls, the contextual executions; they came across as FromSoft trying to appeal to the normies. I hate to admit it, but I just wanted an eastern-themed Dark Souls with samurais, rather than a whole different game. But something stuck with me after I watched the game on Twitch. I keep thinking about those visceral sword fights and the fast moving protagonist with no stamina bar. I eventually received the game for birthday and was blown away after finishing it, with the final boss taking me three days to beat. In hindsight, I would've hated Sekiro if it were just Dark Souls with (more) katanas. FromSoft gave me an experience I didn't even know I wanted, until I trusted them enough to play their new game. In many ways, Sekiro is my favorite game to date, because it accentuates everything I already loved about the Soulsborne series. If Dark Souls is the Ikea of games, then Sekiro is this small cafeteria in Ikea that serves perfect cherry-flavoured cheesecakes.

"Toilet paper. Very valuable, not unique." Those words have never been more true now.

Ikea Souls: Prepare to Buy Edition

wasn't expecting to learn so much about business from this talk but damn am I loving every second

Just realised that 'know thy enemy and know thyself and in one hundred battles you will never be in peril' is just old school language for 'how to win mobas'

“Be like George W. Bush… High and to the Right.” Political humor is typically bland but that up there is actually a pretty solid joke and the fact that he doesn’t even get it only makes the whole bit funnier.

It's so nice how he asks people if he has answered their question

this was a really good talk. game developers should watch this and take notes. it seems like we are seeing a lot of AAA games these days trying to reach for mass appeal and falling flat on their face because of it.

Ok it can't just be me who thought this would be about the level design of Dark Souls

This is a great video to counter the “If From made their games with easy mode they would sell more games to more people” argument.

The title of this video was probably the most refreshing use of an overused expression.

IKEA SOULS: PREPARE TO DRIVE EDITION

Good to hear a business guy from the game dev community.

This video is so true that I can’t believe I didn’t find this until now.

Came for the Dark Souls, stayed to learn about business efficacy.

I have a strategic marketing exam today and I'm watching this instead of studying. This guy still managed to talk about goddamn porter Jesus Christ

sometimes I feel im the only one who didnt play dark souls for it being "soo hardcooore", but because I liked the atmosphere and story of it

Brilliant talk, and thanks for calling Steve Jobs an asshole.

This is exactly why Anthem and many other "AAA" garbage has failed

Heavy great mace buffed with lighting blade and perseverance weapon art is my competitive advantage.

One of the best examples of maximizing value through tradeoffs and limitations is Silent Hill. The team realized they couldn't render anything in the fidelity they wanted while maintaining any long draw distance because of the hardware limitations of the Playstation. Instead of sacrificing the quality of the renders they covered everything in fog so they didn't have to render at range, it ended up being a thematically and mechanically invaluable move. If you play the re-releases without the fog it feels far less oppressive and haunting.

This is just good business advice, generally.

This guys pacing on the presentation is like the first half of Dark Souls 1. Absolutely brilliant and engaging.

Every indie game developer should see this presentation. I see so many of these points being broken in an attempt to cater to everyone, especially early access games.

Watching this after the trainwreck of "Anthem" really pulls their (lack of) strategy into perspective

Well the title did its job. Guy made interesting enough points that I watched the whole thing. Though it's pretty clear if you look up some dirt on Demons' Souls that the reason the Souls games were kept, "Difficult," is because the dev team intentionally left that part out when showcasing it to the board. A lot of its design choices ran head to head with what the marketing team wanted for it, and that's why they shifted into, "Prepare to Die." with Dark Souls. I'd argue though, that the difficulty aspect of the games is not what attracted most people to it. It was curiosity. Wanting to know if it was actually difficult. Wanting to know if there was more under the surface. Their desire to know more within the game was only fueled by the sense of accomplishment for overcoming the challenges in the way of their discoveries. Whatever those discoveries might be. Lore. PVP. Statistical data. Cut content. Boundary breaks. Everything about Souls games creates a sense of wonder. Curiosity leading to awe. All that they ask of the player is that you surmount its challenges in the way you most prefer, and then seeing that there are other options leads to even more things to be curious about.

The fact that this talk is so polarizing rather than just being uninteresting kinda proves his point in a way. Regardless of whether people agreed or disagreed with his points, it got them talking. That the whole point of these talks, so I'd consider it a success. "The opposite of love is not hate. It's indifference."

I disagree about Dark Souls' target audience. It's one of my favorite games, but I didn't play it because it's difficult ⁠- I don't _play_ difficult games. I'm not a hardcore gamer at all. I played, and loved, it simply because it's a _good_ game. It has a story it doesn't throw at your face ⁠- and would be a mediocre story if it was told the traditional way ⁠- its level design is phenomenal, and fighting even ordinary mobs is always fun. I haven't played its sequels, so maybe this video does apply to them, but to the first? For some part of the player base, for sure, but not all. Perhaps not even most.

I think... Dark Souls just wanted to make an artworhty awesome authentic game. While resident evil was just a money making move. Let's not underplay that

15:15 It's intentional, but not based on your MBA-philosophy. Japanese artisans do extreme focus all the time. They know how to focus their effort on what fills the niche and cut out other things. There are tons of super-niche games in Japan. From Soft is one of many.

Companies need to remember “The opposite of Love is not Hate, it is indifference”

I feel like Eve Online is another good example. In a world where every MMO was trying to be WoW and failing, EVE was something completely different, that only a minority of people could actually enjoy. But the people who love EVE, they basically have no where else to go. EVE is the only place that really caters to them. So it slowly and continually grew while the WoW clones died.

This has been one of the most helpful chats this channel has put up so far! Other chats have talked about marketing in similar ways, but this one really hit the nail on the head in terms of explaining the differences, advantages, and consequences of the different methods of focusing your game. Like many other developers, I too was directly inspired by Dark Souls!

This is the second time today I have heard an Ikea to game comparison- the last being a game maker's toolkit's video on hitman's race car level. (edit: my grammar pissed me off)

I am a simple man. I see Dark Souls, I click

I was in sales for years and I have seen a lot of presentations based around design, sales, marketing ect..And I was very impressed with this presentation.

Bob Dylan is the Dark Souls of garden equipment

Imagine paying 50k to go to grad school and the teacher tells you "make products people want to buy" you look around and everyone is furiously taking notes.

His quote about indifference being the opposite of love reminds me of the talk about tcg design form one of the mtg designers. He had a point that it is better for half the players to hate the card and the other half to love it rather than everyone being just ok with it.

The lesson of darksouls is everyone wanted to play demon's souls just nobody knew what that was.

This is a pretty brilliant talk, and one that makes me smile. If I ever subject myself to game design again, I'd want to make a product that has folks who are passionate about it not just because it sells, but because i could also know that my art has touched and inspired SOMEBODY out there.

"Well, what is it ?"

Amazing presentation, not just about game design, but about business and decision-making in general. Really enjoyed watching this and will definitely re-watch. Genius idea, genius execution. Thank you. :)

The first Nier game has the most loved and unspoiled ending through word of mouth in gaming history. You couldn't pay a person to explain the ending.

Dark souls literally changed my gaming life. Prior to dark souls, my most played games included things like the 900 hours I put into skyrim. Or the 5 or 600 hours I had in both borderlands 1 and 2 individually. Or god of war. Or guitar hero. Things like that. Now... among my most played games, is Bloodborn at 800 hours. dark souls 1 at 2500 hours. Overwatch at 2800 hours. And Dark Souls 3... at a meager 4700 hours. I love fromsoftware/Miyazaki. They know their demographic. They always seem to (ds2 excluded) know what experience the players are looking for. It's actually genius. Also dark souls (not demons or bloodborne) are not console exclusive. It may have taken Dark Souls 1 a year to come to PC, likewise Souls 2 took an extra month for PC which was the same as Souls 3. Very much so not console exclusive. Poor kid asking a painfully incorrect question is unfortunate

It took me 7 years, at Least 60 new games, and a lot of strategy guide reference, but dammit I beat Dark Souls. Badge of honor

Amazing presentation by Justin! Lots of very useful and immediately useful information; not only for game dev, but for analyzing games and the business of games.

Someone at ea needs to watch this presentation

that talk was very interesting, and is aplicable to many things, not just game design or product design in general. it is also a lesson on what you maybe should consider when you plan on building your future

What's so great about Dark Souls is that it HAS a difficulty slider. It's all in-game mechanics though. If you want easy, you play magic. If you want medium, you play buff based (faith) melee If you want hard, just melee and no spells If you want insane, Soul level 1 run

It’s like Ubisoft just watching this and said: “let’s do exactly the opposite of what he said with our games, specifically with Ghost Recon franchise.”

I know that this is 2 years old by now, but something about the question at 27:23 reminded me of how Doom Eternal and Animal Crossing: Horizons synergize during the buildup to their releases back in 2020. Both games operate on what seems like fundamentally opposing ideologies, but that ideological polarity actually helped with marketing the games. Doom covered gamers who wanted shooters, action, and displays of spectacle, while Animal Crossing was more on social, team based relaxing gameplay. Both niches the games were aiming for were covered, and between these otherwise very different games it felt like there was something for everyone. Regardless of how hardcore a player was, people could feel like these games were built for them.

22:57 "Nine Inch Nails" See, I had a feeling I liked this guy.

This was a fantastic talk thanks Justin. Should have way more views tbh

This is the Lords of the Fallen of GDC talks.

Me: - Definitely not a "hardcore gamer". I suck at any other game and I would not dedicate this kind of time to any other games. - Did not imagine I enjoyed discovery, and I still miss a lot in these games. - Perhaps in my work life I try to push the boulder for greater results. Not sure that translates to games. - Yes to depth. - Yes to thrilling and menacing game experiences. I think Dark Souls is just good because it's an actual video game, unlike many things released these days where you just have to follow a pointer.

Seeing this video in 2023, he really is only more and more correct as the gaming scene and market has shown in the past two-to-three years. Indie studios are essentially filling up the niches and overturning the gaming market by outcompeting AAA studios that have either gotten too cocky or forgot they're making games for an audience and not their investors as they have become too all-rounded and less specialized for any audience, thereby losing their original target audience and not being a specialized game for no-one. Most AAA games that have come out are forgettable and most people are indifferent to them or play them but forget about them immediately, whereas indie games are the ones becoming cult classics and having dedicated and passionate fanbases that interact with them and provide feedback. I would say what kickstarters and other such group-funding sites do is allow your targeted audience to directly fund a game and in turn have more involvement with something they are passionate enough to "buy" before its even made. Metroidvanias of all varieties are cropping up from these indie or otherwise single-person devs who ARE the target audience themselves and majority of the time are already involved with the communities they are developing a game FOR. One point he brought up during the Q&A about "living in your own shadow" as a game dev as being either good or bad is even more relevant given how FromSoft released another ArmoredCore game and reaching further back branched out with Sekiro, as still being the same game they always make but revitalized and just different enough to actually warrant renewed interest and not just be a clone of something they already made but with a sequel sticker slapped on.

that was a really good talk, one of the best featured at GDC, and that's saying a lot

Interesting point at 26:00 I believe that is exactly what from software did with ENB and Dark Souls 2

To be fair, all of his examples of games that "appeal to everybody" don't really. That's kind of the whole point of the idea that Dark Souls is made for people who feel they've been left behind. Wii Sports HAS a target audience : casual players who want to have fun with friends and family. It's just that these games target audience are broader, but they're not limitless. If you play games to experience deep stories, with well written characters, good leveling system, you won't find that in Super Mario Bros. The trade offs of SMB are that it's a short game, focused on challenging platforming, it's straightforward but has replayability, and today, it is primarily loved by speedrunners for whom all of these characteristics are qualities. "Arcade" games have even more trade-offs than most AAA games ; they're simple games by design, they don't offer much gameplay variety, they're tailored for quick but challenging game sessions. Most people will enjoy a game of Tetris, but they won't play Tetris all day, all week, they'll get bored at some point, they'll want something more, something Tetris can't offer, because it chose to be a game about falling bricks and nothing else, and that's fine, and that's exactly why these games are successful. You won't play Tetris all day unless you're a hardcore Tetris player, but you'll probably play MANY times in your life, while other games might keep you engaged for weeks, but then you'll never touch them again.

Late to the party, obviously, but this applies to basically any company, anywhere. Whether you're into games or not, what a great presentation! Actually sent this to my girlfriend who gives presentations all the time about her business.

this is probably the best GDC talk I've ever watched

A business take that focuses on the product and what it can offer to players. What a concept!

Beat Saber is a good example of this concept

Amazing talk, I thought I might get bored halfway through but it had me the whole time

Great talk like holy shit! get morer from this guy

"Passionate fans build strong brands" Meanwhile 343: Broader audience broader audience broader audience

I wish they'd release a remastered or rebuilt Kings Field.

This is just an absolutely phenomenal talk. Really practical too.

Based on the general reaction in these comments, I feel like the speaker could have done a better job emphasizing how to practically apply these lessons. If From made a game that they wanted to make, then their target audience was themselves, and all the lessons about where to make your cuts applies just as much. This talk is not saying that you should decide your target audience before you start designing your game. Games will always appeal to certain types of people in general, whether the designer intends them to or not. that doesn't somehow make them soulless, but being able to understand what that audience wants when you're making a game will help you make decisions about what content to prioritize. Developers only have so many dollars and so much time to make the magic happen, and this talk is not about game design but about resource allocation. He tried to make that clear with the initial quote about rpg stat investments, but then chose to use an rpg where all stats can eventually hit their cap as his primary example, where instead he could have used a game with a hard level cap in order to reinforce that message better.

The thumbnail looks like the Soul of Cinder has been stuck in Ikea looking for something that he just can't find.

Cut out all of the things your game doesn't need, and invest the effort on the most valuable parts. If your game involves traveling back and forth to a hub world, collecting loot, and modifying your loadout to tweak your character build with that loot; it's ok to cut some environmental quality to have good load times and spend some of the extra artistic effort to make that loot look interesting. *cough* not talking about any particular recent game *cough*. (Oh, and if all the environments end up looking the same anyway, maybe make them more modular so you can reuse the assets and create more varied encounters, since you spend 90% of the game grinding encounters)

The word 'hard' for games has gone from a difficulty setting to people not willing to unlearn the button mashing every game included for the last decade

That guy around the 30:00 mark talking about fast follow and that seemed like he totally missed the point of the speech but was weirdly smug about it

There are so many helpful and important points brought up in this presentation, and then the comment section is littered with people that came for a meme or a 30 minute gush on Dark Souls. This is about game design philosophy from a business perspective, finding and satisfying a target audience with a video game. It's not about Ikea or Dark Souls, they're just used as examples for the broader concepts of the talk.

I feel like this dude has learned about Dark Souls from IGN articles and has never bothered to pick it up himself (along with not knowing the death counter is from Dark Souls 2). If you actually play the game, you get over the "wow so difficult" after a couple of hours, even immediately if you've never read the articles. This game was not meant to target a hardcore audience or impress people with difficulty, it was meant to grip them with a detailed world, ingenious level design and the constant feeling that you're "missing" something. Also, it didn't have a sparse tutorial. It had actual, designed learning segments, rather than in-your-face tooltips most AAA games use. That doesn't mean Dark Souls didn't have a target audience - but it wasn't a business decision, as much as it was an artistic decision. The fact that it propagated through gaming, influencing games from many different genres and even spawning one genre of its own flies in the face of it having a rigid target audience.

I was just looking for interesting ds related content since I got an off day from being sick but I ended up coming across this video that made me think more regarding how to assess the problems we hv in my sister's f&b business that im helping out at XD This is some pretty cool stuff, props to the presenter!

In addition, Dark Souls has way less voice acting than most other rpgs. In other words, they focused on gameplay, graphics, and atmospheric sounds.

At 26:03 I would say this is where your Bloodbourne’s and Sekiro’s come into play. No need to fix a franchise that ain’t broke, but create a new one that is definitely inspired by it.

I beat the crap out of Dark Souls after it failed to provide me with swedish meatballs

Excellent talk, really interesting to see the business strategy side of things!

I’d say Hitman Absolution did even worse than RE6, in respect to trying to attract greater audience at the expense of the franchise fans

Every indie game ever made in history is the ikea of video games

I'm here just to hear Anglos pronounce IKEA as "aikīa" and laugh about it

A good talk and it's interesting to approach games from the viewpoint of marketing while comparing them to other product, but I'd argue that Dark Souls wasn't a good example. See, DS is indeed a perfectly fit tiltle for "hadcore gamers" and that's what the marketing around the game focused on, but it had success beyond that sphere. The thing is, DS wasn't successful because it targeted the right crowd. It was successful because it's one of the best designed games ever made. I'm not the first to say it, but DS isn't exactly "difficult", at least, not in the same sense as games like Touhou, Super Meat Boy or Starcraft at high level can be. Unlike most hard games, DS (the first one at least) doesn't require for you to have great reflexes and precision. It helps, but there is a strategic layer to the game that makes it possible to beat it without that. Can't beat that boss ? There is probably an easy way to cheese it, or you could find an alternate route and come back later when you've gotten a lot stronger and pulverize him. DS doesn't require you to be very good at playing DS, that's why people have managed to beat it with a Guitar Hero drumkit, with one finger, blinfolded and many other ridiculous challenges. In that sense, the target audience for DS is a lot more open than just "hardcore gamers", it is "whoever wants a challenging experience that requires a lot of time investment but feels rewarding". And sure, you might say that's the exact definition of "hardcore", but I'd say, although most, if not all of the "hardcore" guys fit into that definition, they also have the element of experience and mastery. A "hardcore" fighting game player isn't someone who is just good at this kind of game, it's someone who mostly plays them, who played a lot of them previously and who wants to be better at them. Remove these elements and you find yourself with a much larger audience. Even most "casual" players might appreciate an experience like DS since its only requirement to enjoy it that you put in alot of time. This, in my opinion is why DS was successful. I'm quite sure that it was envisioned from the start as something targeting a very niche and hardcore audience, but it was so well-designed that it ended up attracting a lot more than that. In fact, I'd say DS's marketing was its weakest point as it turned away a lot of people who might have otherwise enjoyed the game.

Great opening. I'm hooked already (by 1:50)

I'm not going to argue about the legitimacy of his comparisons; that's all semantics. The overall lesson is what matters, and that lesson is pretty indicative of the AAA industry's current failings. I'd love to hear this guy's opinion on recurrent monetization vs. consumer tolerance, mass production of specific IPs vs. consumer fatigue, and the overall sustainability/practicality of producing and maintaining live service models. I would include labeling and challenging your audience through the media, but I think most intelligent human beings view that as a bad business practice, and this guy seems pretty intelligent.

Literal lecture about dark souls Never thought I would see the day