In finally providing actual, numeric evidence in support of the ever-growing player sentiment, the results of a recent Capcom player survey have confirmed that more than ‘oh so deep narratives’ or ultra realistic graphics, what players actually want from their video games are genuinely good gameplay experiences.
Hosted between February and April 2024, the Capcom Super Election was an open survey which asked players from the around the world for their opinions on ten Capcom-related topics, including their favorite studio character, which game they would like to see receive a sequel, and what exactly they looked for from the developer’s offerings.
Receiving a final total of 254,148 global responses – most of which came, in order, from the United States (71,546), Japan (52,922), and Brazil (26,711) – the survey’s results revealed such insights as Devil May Cry 5 being the studio’s currently most popular title, Mega Man being the second most-popular franchise in both the world and Japanese markets, and that, regardless of gender or location, the fans absolutely love the character of Dante.
(Also, as an aside: you’re telling us Mega Man is that popular, and yet the Blue Bomber can’t get any new adventures? Get your act together, Capcom.)
However, perhaps most interesting among these informational reveals was the hierarchy regarding what players were looking for in the developer’s games.
According to the results, players are most concerned with whether or not a given game offered “exhilarating gameplay” (156,870 votes), “unique and attractive characters” (136,283), and “unpredictable and exciting storylines” (95,449).
From there, “memorable and moving background music” (81,107), “depth for repeat play” (77,254), “high difficulty levels to feel accomplished and superior” (69,738) and “novel worldview” (51,052) each appear to be of some importance to players, though not critically so.
And finally, as evidenced by their spot in the hierarchy’s ‘bottom three’, those elements which players considered least important to their enjoyment of a given game were “superb graphics” (34,638), the ability to “play with players worldwide” (19,316), and the offering of a unique “first-time experience” or “new genre” (11,683).
Notably, this sentiment that ‘gameplay > graphics’ was felt near equally by worldwide and Japanese audiences, with “exhilarating gameplay” ranking first and second and “superb graphics” eighth and seventh, respectively, in each region.
To this end, while these results may leave various marketing departments across the video game industry utterly confused, they are, in reality, unsurprising.
After all, no matter how impressive a video game may look, despite all the potential ray-tracing, face-scanned character models or realistic hair physics a developer could possibly cram into it, at the end of the day, no one wants to play an ‘unfun’ game.
At current, Capcom’s next major release, the Feudal Japan-inspired action strategy game Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess is set to release for the PlayStation 4 and 5 consoles on July 19th.