Can you be a fan if you buy the game? Technically yes but you would still be called a casual if you did not play it.
Can you be a fan if you failed to complete it?
You can be called a fan if you play the games though. There is some games of a series I didn’t beat myself in Dark Souls but the difference is I didint watch a YouTube video of it and claim to be a fan without trying the games out. Playing the games is what matters. Views mean nothing.

They do not become attached because by the end of the day it does not translate to sells and they do not know anything about the game to begin with or the series. If you think opposite that is perfectly valid but it’s not correct to say they are fans just casuals.

We could never be so blessed. I dont know what those guys are thinking over at sega but probably the single most impactful game they ever made was sonic adventure 2 and an entire generation of children spent dozens of hours in the chao garden. Why are these people incapable of realizing this??

Someone needs to take their medicine 😂😂 is it so inconcievable that chronic youtube watchers might become attached to the games without playing them?

But they are not fans though. Fans buy the games and play them. This is not like the Anime Industry where Merchandise purchases matter and pays the bills of the Anime Studios. This is Video Games where Merchandise is not as meaningful as buying the games, and engaging with the content on social media overall. Being a fan means playing the games and engaging with the content, not being passive through merchandise and making it about yourself. Do your research before typing next time.

Fans buy the product and engage with it. They do not buy merchandise and pretend they are apart of the Fandom. Those types are Blue Ocean or what everyone calls casuals or fake fans. Those people do not support the series as those who engage with the content in a meaningful way.

I know females who do buy the games, buy the merchandise and engage with the content through social media. Inversely those who do not engage with such things and pretend they are fans do not move the needle in any meaningful way whatsoever. An Retweet, buying a product a few times, a view or a comment does not have as much power as those who buy the games, engage with content and keep the franchise going to this day. All of us do not need anymore people who parasitize Fandoms by pretending they are fans overall simply because it’s popular and built by those of us who purchase the games to begin with.

Also, these aren’t LARPers, there’s no role play going on here AFAIK, just buying and wearing branded merchandise and watching videos.

My sisters kids do this (not with Sega stuff specifically), like they have ipads and can’t play any real games on them (just Roblox) but one of them said they were doing a school report on horror games. I’m like ‘Oh have you playd Poppy Playtime?’ ‘Oh I’ve watched that.’ (they had ‘watched’ every recent horror game I could think of.) These semi-linear games with some kind of story, they watch playthroughs. And I think if they had money to spend they’d buy merch for some of them.

You know what kind of Sega game would sell really well?
A new sonic game with a chao garden.

“Like a Dragon-related merchandise has been performing extremely well for Sega, with about 60-70% of customers being women. Utsumi explains that this layer of the fanbase often becomes acquainted with Like a Dragon’s story and characters through official YouTube content or by watching streams by popular content creators, and “many of them have never actually played the games.”
The opposite of your comment. Read before you type.

He’s saying lots of people don’t play the games but buy related merchandise because they like the aesthetics of the franchise, what they’ve seen of the games from streams, etc. In Japan tons of merchandises are produced for any vaguely successful franchise, it’s a big part of the entertainment economy.

Anyway, I think Utsumi (like many business people) is actually missing the point for non-player fans. And is especially setting a lot of women up to experience exactly what is happening in these comments. Casual and non-player fans are always and have always been extremely important to fan bases. No, non-player fans are not necessarily gamers (though a lot are, they may just not have time or money for every single game they’re interested in) but they’re the ones keeping fandoms and interest alive for many of these games via fanart, fanfiction, posting about it on social media, discussing theories and analyses on blogs or through video essays, buying merch, and so forth. These sorts of fans are extremely important to the ecosystem of any IP and not explaining exactly how or why or relegating them to simply being poseurs is goofy. And yes, these sort of fans tend to heavily skew women. You WANT these sort of fans because they’re the ones who may get you a third or fourth game in a series you love because of their activities. Don’t shit on them.

A gamer is someone who plays games. That’s the minimum. If these ladies are playing other stuff, fine, they’re gamers. But if they’re like those people who buy books to decorate their shelves but never read them/only listen to podcasts about them (I’m excluding audiobooks from this because at the very least they’re absorbing a whole book) and still call themselves “readers” then I can’t take that seriously.

Dude…Rockstar, Ubisoft, Epic, and of course Sony as whole…are far worse then Sega…If people are buying merch who cares. If the games do shit there will be no merch. I just mean let them make money from merch, better then all the micros, subs, etc… besides why they need to know our genders at all? Maybe some of these consumers are Wives, girlfriends… Not all gamers sit in the basement drinking Mt Dew. Some 👉👌

If I understood correctly, he’s talking about people who didn’t play the old games but bought and play the new ones. People really ought to express themselves better. Human beings are losing the ability to communicate.