Player Empathy, The East, and Dirty, Dirty Games
The West has failed at player empathy, too busy being infatuated with its own fashionable politics, while the East has seized the opportunity. The gap is growing wider each quarter and shows no signs of slowing.
Look no further than Love and Deepspace (L&D) and Nikke: Goddess of Victory (Nikke). In one of life's great ironies, they are somehow mirror images of one another. One sells tenderness, romantic routine, and soft intimacy, while the other sells well... you know. Sensor Tower reports the inverse US demographics: 84% female for L&D and 79% male for Nikke, with the same average age of 27. They both have cemented their place in the Top 75 grossing games IN THE U.S, and monetize primarily on gacha character collection. The same principle shapes both games: understand what players actually desire, then build products that honor those desires without embarrassment or hesitation.
Nikke fuses team collection, shooting, and a signature style that the West has never attempted at scale. Love and Deepspace blends ARPG combat with romance arcs, photography, wedding systems, and a sleep companion feature (!!!). These choices are deliberate acts of empathy, acting on revealed, not stated, preferences. The contrast, with say, @Big Run Studios Inc., is stark.
Big Run is one of the few American companies that tried to build for an underserved audience, yet they framed that audience through identity categories. It's a distinctly American instinct, and the intention was genuine. But the market is a harsh mistress, and developers need to begin with a clear understanding of what resonates with players, not what developers believe should be meaningful.
No Western focus group predicted that a husbando ARPG with a sleep system or a fan-service-heavy gacha shooter would become a global top performer. Yet, these are the products Western players now reward.
The East is outperforming the West not because of cost structure, or 9/9/6, but because it listens more closely to players' revealed preferences. And when it acts, it acts with more conviction. It is willing to take tastes seriously, even when those tastes do not fit Western assumptions about what games should be. The empathy gap is real, and the East is profiting from it.