Kirito: Sooooo what's the deal with this Alfheim game?
Tiffany: Oh, uh, it's the new title for the AmuSphere. Came out like a year ago, but it really surged in popularity the last few months. [...] So anyways, it's supposed to be this VRMMO that teaches little kids to share and... murder each other? I don't know, the box isn't super clear.
Kirito: "Choose from one of nine fairy races and learn valuable life lessons like sharing, table manners, and aerial... combat... supremacy. In the skies of Marshmallow Island™, children will make lifelong friends, or lay them to waste with the game's intricate spellcraft system. Also, coloring!" (beat) Who is this for?!
Tiffany: My guess would be the cast of Lord of the Flies, but I doubt that's a big enough market.
Tiffany: Oh, uh, it's the new title for the AmuSphere. Came out like a year ago, but it really surged in popularity the last few months. [...] So anyways, it's supposed to be this VRMMO that teaches little kids to share and... murder each other? I don't know, the box isn't super clear.
Kirito: "Choose from one of nine fairy races and learn valuable life lessons like sharing, table manners, and aerial... combat... supremacy. In the skies of Marshmallow Island™, children will make lifelong friends, or lay them to waste with the game's intricate spellcraft system. Also, coloring!" (beat) Who is this for?!
Tiffany: My guess would be the cast of Lord of the Flies, but I doubt that's a big enough market.
Who was your show's audience? Y'know, who'd you make it for? Some black guy who never met another black guy?
There are many, many reasons these critic call-out episodes are bad, even if you like the show. To enjoy one of these critic call out episodes, you need to: Number one- Enjoy watching the show in general. Number two- be aware of the critics and detractors (which is more unlikely for the target audience that they claim that they're aiming for). Number three- You need to disagree with the criticism being displayed and agree with their method of tackling it. Number four- You need to be okay with them avoiding what you like with the show to blast people you don't agree with and you don't listen to. That is a very rare combination.
As you’ve probably intuited by now, my overriding response to The Star Wars Holiday Special was rapidly escalating bafflement over who in the hell CBS, 20th Century Fox, and Lucasfilm Ltd. thought this show was for. The tremendous simultaneous popularity of Star Wars and television variety shows implies that plenty of people were fans of both in 1978, but I can’t picture any of them actually wanting to see the two things combined. Similarly, I’m unable to believe that variety show enthusiasts who came for the Jefferson Starship wanted anything to do with Bea Arthur and Harvey Korman, or vice versa. And if an audience exists anywhere in the universe for geriatric Wookies jerking off, I never want to know about it. Nowhere, however, is The Star Wars Holiday Special more profoundly mismatched with itself than during the cantina number. The premise here is that the bar is being closed down indefinitely by the Imperial authorities, in reprisal for having harbored the captain of a ship later linked to the Rebel attack on the Death Star. Fearing a riot that would surely provoke a massacre, the bartender sings her customers out the door with thinly veiled assurances that although regimes rise and fall, the camaraderie of drunkenness is eternal. It’s the only part of the holiday special that feels securely tied to the story told in the theatrical films, and yet it’s also a scene that would never have occurred in any of them. For this sequence and this sequence only, a good-faith effort was expended to recreate a part of the Star Wars universe with which the audience would already be familiar, but David Acomba’s inexperience with the characteristics and special needs of videotape leaves Mos Eisley looking like a shoddy shadow of its former self. The bar number leans harder than any other moment in the official Star Wars canon into the parallels between the Galactic Empire and Nazi Germany, but it does so by means of a musical theater allusion that few fans of the series would be equipped to catch. Conceptually, materially, and thematically, the whole bit is pitched to the tastes of a viewer who almost certainly never existed, making it a stark microcosm of The Star Wars Holiday Special as a whole.
—Scott "El Santo" Ashlin, 1000 Misspent Hours and Counting
Like, who is this game for? It's not for military buffs because the game's inaccuracies don't require any military experience to notice. It's not for tactical shooter fans because there's no tactics. It's not for children because the game's too visually muted to excite. It's not for adults because the game's too vapid to excite. So who is it for?
— Raycevick on Shadow Ops: Red Mercury
on Shadow Ops: Red MercuryWho was this movie intended for? No one above the age of reason will be able to abide it. Of those below that age, the studio may have targeted kids who are Nintendo fans. But here the problem is that the movie doesn't have much Nintendo in it, and some of that is wrong (when it's announced, for example, that the third level of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has been reached, the movie screen clearly shows the first level).
— Roger Ebert on The Wizard
This is a comic book movie for people who wouldn't be caught dead at a comic book movie.
—Roger Ebert on Hulk
So enjoy this film made for people old enough to love retro video games, but young enough to find humor like this funny:
[Ludlow: 'If She Was Real', a book written and illustrated by Ludlow Lamonsoff.
Sam: You should sell that at Barnes and Unstable.]
...i.e. nobody.
[Ludlow: 'If She Was Real', a book written and illustrated by Ludlow Lamonsoff.
Sam: You should sell that at Barnes and Unstable.]
...i.e. nobody.
Fans take a moment to whisper a question to the Lord about where the money is in resurrecting an old, beloved thing, but targeting said thing at people who do not know the thing, while actively upsetting those that do.
I'm a professional reviewer with deadlines to meet, who can't even last two hours around another person without completely alienating myself. Which tangentially brings me to one awkward overhanging question that I have: who the fuck is this game for? It's designed for couch co-op, and there's outwardly a family-friendly vibe, but I couldn't picture myself playing through it with a child of my own; tonally, it's all over the place, and it might lead to some awkward questions if your own family has seen some drama. "No, of course Mummy and Daddy didn't split up because of you; we just never quite figured out how to get past the boss fight with the vacuum cleaner!"
The “Fat Albert” movie has carved out quite a dilemma for itself. The only people who might find it funny are under the age of 10 — but anyone that young won’t be familiar with the TV cartoon it’s based on and therefore won’t get all the jokes. So really, this movie is for people who are above the age of 30 but who have the sense of humor of a 6-year-old.
—Eric D. Snider on Fat Albert
"I would ask you to "scubscribe", but this channel honestly does not have a demographic. Like, yay, media analysis- wait, what, is that K-pop? What video will be next? DMC memes? K-pop memes? The basics of relating to a character? The narrative functions of deaths in fiction? Why Barbie and the Magic of Pegasus is a good movie? I don't know!
That's a lie. I do know. It's gonna be a K-pop meme."
That's a lie. I do know. It's gonna be a K-pop meme."
—Queen Gravity, "Snapcube's Until Dawn Fandub's Poignant Social Commentary"
It's hard to tell who they're making the movie for, cause sometimes it seems like "Oh, we're making this for the fans, cause they know what happened," but then sometimes it's like "No, we're making it for the people who don't know, to educate them," and it can't make up it's mind. So it ends up not being satisfying to either of them.
— Martin "Leon" Thomas on The Last Airbender
I think it's much harder to be clean, family-friendly Will Smith on a track like ["Switch"], and I think you could tell the confusion by his TV appearances. He performed "Switch" on BET's 106 & Park that year, and he also performed it at the Kids' Choice Awards. I think you gotta pick one audience here, you can't do both.
Okay, I have to ask: who or what was Ring made for? The dialogue and themes seem way, way too heavy for kids, but there are so many certified Looney Tunes moments too! All while telling a German opera fantasy story in a science fiction skin, with large parts of the story either removed or completely changed to make the game go forward. The budget on display is so high for what this is. But even now, knowing the story of Ring, and getting the gist of what is supposed to be happening in scenes… it's still a lot of nonsense. If you DON'T know the story, it becomes impossible to follow. And don't forget, these are stories inside a story, which is even more of a fever dream that's never elaborated on. Playing this without context actually made me feel crazy in a way no other game has quite captured. There are games that are frustrating or hard or convoluted. THIS is a Necronomicon that makes sense to SOMEBODY. I would love to know what the plan was. Like, who was the target audience?
— MandaloreGaming in his Ring duology video
Stop giving these beloved IPs to people, showrunners, producers, heads of studios that clearly don't give a fuck about it. What do you hope to accomplish? You don't get the fans of the property. You immediately lose them, you make an enemy out of them. You also don't get the general audience because they don't care about the IP to begin with. It's not, like, strong enough to bring in new eyes. It doesn't have its own legs because it's relying on the safety of the IP's name, and you deliver something half-baked like this show. Who are you even targeting?
So Velma is an "adult cartoon" because it has a certain artstyle, and the characters all say hilariously edgy things. But at the same time, the humor level is, like, middle school, and the characters themselves are supposed to be 15 or so. So, is this for teenagers? Is it for adults? But you just said that adults who watch cartoons are losers, and you also changed all the Scooby Doo characters from who they normally are, so it's not for Scooby Doo fans, so who do you think is gonna watch this show?
— Alex Meyers, regarding the infamous Velma
Producer Guy: So we're gonna make fun of adults that watch animated shows so this show's not really for them.
Screenwriter Guy: Yeah.
Producer Guy: We're completely changing the original characters and not having Scooby-Doo in it and also mocking the original show itself, so it's not really for fans of Scooby-Doo.
Screenwriter Guy: Correct.
Producer Guy: So so so so so so so so so so so who's this show for?
Screenwriter Guy: Yeah.
Producer Guy: We're completely changing the original characters and not having Scooby-Doo in it and also mocking the original show itself, so it's not really for fans of Scooby-Doo.
Screenwriter Guy: Correct.
Producer Guy: So so so so so so so so so so so who's this show for?
— Screen Rant Pitch Meetings regarding Velma
Down here are games like Jenga for the Nintendo Wii, Dragon Ball Evolution on the PSP, and KISS PINBALL? Where I until just now didn't even know KISS PINBALL even existed? Who is the target audience for KISS PINBALL?!
— Shimtex (translated), Das SCHLECHTESTE Spiel aller Zeiten ist für die Wii U...
"I have never been able to decide on a target audience," admits [creator Matt] Bozon. "She's too sexy to be a kid's brand, but looks too girly to be a male gamer brand (depending on who you talk to)." Just as Atlus' RPG Rhapsody failed on the adult-oriented PlayStation for being too cutesy, Shantae was perhaps a little risqué for a handheld that had come to be seen as a kids' machine in the wake of Pokémon.
—1UP.com, Retro/Active: Shantae
Beyond the technical issues, Microsoft was woefully misguided in terms of who Bob's audience should've been and how important a product it actually was. The fact that Microsoft put so much time and money into launching this thing, including input from Melinda and Bill Gates themselves throughout development, is just mindbogglingly strange in hindsight. Not only were Windows graphical shells nothing new by 1995, putting Bob's self-imposed importance on shaky ground, but it was designed like a children's application — a children's application that mainly dealt with keeping lists, doing your taxes, sending business correspondence, and managing program executables. And the real kicker? The price. Get this, when Microsoft Bob launched, the suggested retail price was 99 dollars! Yeah! And on top of that, Bob required a 46 CPU, 32 megs of hard disk space, and 8 megabytes of RAM. Specs that put it out of reach of a good number of families who might've actually wanted a program like Bob.... If only it didn't cost a hundred bucks and fully embraced its kid-friendly nature, it might've been more fondly remembered nowadays as a safe computing environment for children.
The problem is that the show can’t fully commit to a singular tone. Just when it’s about to make a poignant observation about the cost of war, it reminds the audience that it is still based on a cartoon and introduces an insane wacko character that feels out of place in this otherwise more adult adaptation [...] Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender tries to have it both ways, yet it never finds a way to compromise its opposing views of what this show should be or who its target audience even is.
—Discussing Film, reviewing Avatar: The Last Airbender (2024)
Avatar: The Last Airbender (2024) "If this had just been a 2011 Nickelodeon tie-in TV show thing, I don't think anyone would have cared; but they were trying to hype US up. Not the children, US: the Megamind loving 20-somethings stuck in a perpetual state of arrested development."
