Voyager on Spike TV

[evay]

Originally Posted by Chancellor Valium

Or a closer example: How many people have seen Fritz Lang's Metropolis?

::raises hand:: I won't say I liked it, but I watched it. Very strange. And the original book by Thea von Haribou was even harder to get through.

Classic Trek's structure may have been "cowboy space opera," but the writing raised it far, far above that.


The difference between appealing to a niche audience and appealing to the masses is that mass appeal fades faster, because you simply can't be all things to all people all the time for very long. Pick one or two things and do them really well, and your audience may not be big, but it will be devoted and long-term. The LOTR movies were able to straddle both mass appeal and geek chic because they were three, finite movies. Done. ENT succeeded in quality when Manny Coto took over and started telling stories for the core audience. The great unwashed of the TV audience doesn't want the same thing the core audience wants, so making a series in a niche franchise and then pitching all the stories to the mass audience is like a guaranteed recipe for failure. The mass audience won't be interested in the premise and the core fans feel bored and betrayed.

Now, once Nintendo gets folks to buy the Wii, then what? What's the strategy to make them repeat buyers of the next platform, or the more advanced platform? Because the mass audience of video-game players will not have their interests permanently captured with Wii; they're going to go on to the next fad -- iPod phones or dogs with GPS built in or whatever. Nintendo has to turn them into core fans, into more interested gamers, or they will only have a sales blip (however large).

[Nate the Great]

That's a good point. I agree that Wii Sports and the like is fun and mass-marketable, but where's the holding power? There's no evolution of gameplay. Everyone has their level of competance (or incompetance as it may be), and once the ceiling is reached, it's reached. OOT has holding power, almost ten years later. Goldeneye has holding power. Tetris has holding power. And so on.

[Hejira]

Okay, is anyone here not a Nintendo fankid? Because the ability to derail a thread into something Nintendo-related these days is astonishing.

[Nate the Great]

The Astonishing Nintendo Fankid! There's a comic book for you.

Oh, and you can blame ijdgaf for bringing the Big N into this thread.

[Derek]

It's not just here. I'm noticing that conversations with my coworkers devolve into conversations about the Wii. Sometimes the DS.

Just to completely derail the conversation, I found the Wii vs PS3 spoof of Mac vs PC hilarious.

EDIT: This could conceivably not be totally worksafe, depending on just how strict they are or how paranoid you are.

[mudshark]

Originally Posted by Hejira

Okay, is anyone here not a Nintendo fankid?

*raises hand*

I'm not even a gamer.

Sorta difficult to visit sites like this one and remain completely unaware, though.

[Chancellor Valium]

Originally Posted by evay

::raises hand:: I won't say I liked it, but I watched it. Very strange. And the original book by Thea von Haribou was even harder to get through.

My point exactly...TBH, I doubt that many people have. Sure, everyone has *heard* of it, but how many know that much about it?

Originally Posted by evay

Classic Trek's structure may have been "cowboy space opera," but the writing raised it far, far above that.

Really? I can't remember that many times when it broke the mould, y'know. Most of the perception-challenging etc came toward the end TNG/DS9, IIRC.

Originally Posted by evay

The difference between appealing to a niche audience and appealing to the masses is that mass appeal fades faster, because you simply can't be all things to all people all the time for very long. Pick one or two things and do them really well, and your audience may not be big, but it will be devoted and long-term. The LOTR movies were able to straddle both mass appeal and geek chic because they were three, finite movies. Done. ENT succeeded in quality when Manny Coto took over and started telling stories for the core audience. The great unwashed of the TV audience doesn't want the same thing the core audience wants, so making a series in a niche franchise and then pitching all the stories to the mass audience is like a guaranteed recipe for failure. The mass audience won't be interested in the premise and the core fans feel bored and betrayed.

True, but the masses are what make the profit, hence why we get $h!t like 'Torchwood'.

Originally Posted by evay

Now, once Nintendo gets folks to buy the Wii, then what? What's the strategy to make them repeat buyers of the next platform, or the more advanced platform? Because the mass audience of video-game players will not have their interests permanently captured with Wii; they're going to go on to the next fad -- iPod phones or dogs with GPS built in or whatever. Nintendo has to turn them into core fans, into more interested gamers, or they will only have a sales blip (however large).

Um, can I just say I hate Nintendo?
*ducks being pelted with rotten tomatoes*

[evay]

Originally Posted by Chancellor Valium

Really? I can't remember that many times when it broke the mould, y'know. Most of the perception-challenging etc came toward the end TNG/DS9, IIRC.

it's kind of like Citizen Kane or the LOTR books -- what was astonishing and groundbreaking then is so commonplace and part of the landscape now that we can hardly imagine what it was like when it first debuted. "Science fiction on TV" was cheeseball stuff like Flash Gordon. You wouldn't expect Flash and Dale to handle interracial kissing (let alone inter-species bootknocking and procreation) or arms escalation. Yes, sure, there were plenty of clunkers (The Gamesters of Triskellion, Spock's Brain) and plotless tripe (That Which Survives), but there was also real heartbreak (City of the Edge of Forever) and contentious issues (Let That Be Your Last Battlefield, A Private Little War, the aforementioned interracial kiss). Science fiction was just not the genre used to tackle powerful questions back then. Hell, did TV in general even go there, in any genre?

the masses are what make the profit, hence why we get $h!t like 'Torchwood'.

No argument. Unfortunately.

[Chancellor Valium]

Originally Posted by evay

it's kind of like Citizen Kane or the LOTR books -- what was astonishing and groundbreaking then is so commonplace and part of the landscape now that we can hardly imagine what it was like when it first debuted. "Science fiction on TV" was cheeseball stuff like Flash Gordon. You wouldn't expect Flash and Dale to handle interracial kissing (let alone inter-species bootknocking and procreation) or arms escalation.

What about real conflict between characters, some random psychosis, and actual development of the character?

Originally Posted by evay

Yes, sure, there were plenty of clunkers (The Gamesters of Triskellion, Spock's Brain) and plotless tripe (That Which Survives), but there was also real heartbreak (City of the Edge of Forever) and contentious issues (Let That Be Your Last Battlefield, A Private Little War, the aforementioned interracial kiss). Science fiction was just not the genre used to tackle powerful questions back then. Hell, did TV in general even go there, in any genre?

I take your point on the heartbreak and some contentious issues, but they tend to be handled in about as heavy a manner as possible, and you do tend to be fed a single viewpoint as 'right'. Obviously in some, 'Battlefield' being an example, there are clear distinctions. However, in the case of 'A Private Little War', we do get a muddy issue handed to us with a clear 'this is good, this is bad, now believe it' outcome.

Also, these are offset by some real tripe...

[Nate the Great]

Worksafe? Can we actually have people in the room who use the Web for personal use on COMPANY TIME?!?!?!? How shameful!

Has anyone here actually eaten tripe? It looks awful.

[Chancellor Valium]

No. IMO, it's called 'tripe' for a reason

[Nate the Great]

Uh, yeah. Another case of truth in advertising in action. Tripe doesn't pretend to be anything other than tripe. So many people's lives are enriched by the elimination of accidental tripe use.