Whenever a video game or movie is aimed at (or perceived to be aimed at) an atypical audience, we always want to extrapolate the secrets of life itself from its performance. When The Marvels flopped, the takeaway seemed to be that we shouldn’t be making movies for women and girls. When Saints Row flopped, the takeaway was that woke games fail. The inverse never seems to be true.
When Barbie was the success story of the year, studios didn’t rush to greenlight projects that embraced girlhood and appealed to female audiences primarily, but instead to make other movies based on cheesy toys. When Baldur’s Gate 3 joined the pantheon of greatest games ever, it wasn’t because it was progressive and tender and queer, but because it was a classic old school RPG. We seem destined to never learn much except that, whatever we already thought, we were right all along. So how does an industry like that react to Infinity Nikki?
Fans Have Already Turned Out In Droves For Infinity Nikki
It remains to be seen whether Infinity Nikki can stay the course – as a free to play gacha game, it needs more than a strong launch weekend to be considered a success. But the signs are there. It has had ten million downloads in its first few days on the market. There was some confusion when it was revealed two years ago over what exactly an open world dress up game was, but that was matched only by public curiosity, and it seems the grand experiment has paid off.
Being free to play, we’ll have to see how many of these ten million stick around. But Infinity Nikki has reviewed well and, more importantly, I think it’s pretty good too. I’ve spent six hours in the game and according to PlayStation’s tracker, am 30 percent through the story. That would put it at around 20 hours to beat, plus all the open world activities and side quests, not to mention the endless search for clothes.
While some fans will drift away, it seems there is currently a lot in the game to keep players busy, with the promise of further updates to come. Unlike the similarly viral success of Palworld earlier in the year after its free-to-play launch, Infinity Nikki is not in early access, has a developer more used to scaling for a huge playerbase, and is unlikely to be sued for copyright infringement, so the signs are in its favour.
How Do You Repeat Infinity Nikki?
But are they in ours? The obvious takeaway here is that there is a huge audience for games like this. Cosy, but more inventive than being a cafe simulator where all the customers are cups and all the coffees are feelings. Without wanting to be too dismissive of the indie-cosy space, Infinity Nikki feels more like a ‘proper’ video game. We don’t usually see the sweet and pastel vibes of Nikki outside of the very specific confines of farming or cafe sims.
What Infinity Nikki seems to prove is that you can make games for girls, or more broadly, games that embrace the feminine experience (like Barbie) and see massive success (like Barbie). I have written several times at TheGamer, before and after the Barbie movie, about my desire for a game that felt like the ’90s and ’00s Barbie game but was functionally a video game and not just some pink software. Modern Barbie games still do not deliver on that. Infinity Nikki does.
It’s the feeling Infinity Nikki has conjured since its first trailer that has been key to its success. That feeling also has the fortunate side-effect of weeding out the angriest gamers. A lot of the complaints about wokeness in gaming is disingenuous – we see that from the 180 turn the red capital letters on YouTube crowd pulled on Space Marine 2 and Indiana Jones. But Infinity Nikki is self-selecting. There’s nothing here that could interest any of these types, and so we never see anyone even pretend to be mad about things.
If You Build It, They Will Come And Play With Your Dress Up Box
The lesson is clear. Look at the audience of Infinity Nikki – mostly casual, mostly women, seeking games with plenty of customisation options and limited violence, but still with a sense of adventure, mystery, and exploration. Not a game for girls. A game, for girls. Game first, audience second. It was the same with Barbie. It was a great movie, one that in this particular instance appealed to a female audience. Think about how you can make a great game, and tilt it to a less-represented audience, don’t think of cliches to pander to a ‘demographic’ you want to ‘tap into’ and then try to jam any square parts of a game that will fit into the round hole you’ve created.
Unfortunately, I doubt this will be the lesson. Maybe in five or so years we’ll see a game that is truly inspired by Infinity Nikki, but in the meantime a lot of games will take shortcuts to cash in. The proof Johnny Executive will take from this is that gamers want six hundred more fashion gacha games. Just pull the slot machine and win some shoes.
But Infinity Nikki isn’t about the gacha. It isn’t even really about the dress up. Yes, earning pulls will keep some players attached, and obviously the fashion is a major draw for the game, but it’s mostly that Infinity Nikki is peaceful without being boring. That’s a tone that needs to be measured and nurtured, and it can be replicated to great success. But if you think letting me pay money for a lottery ticket that might let me put on a pair of silk gloves is the way to do it, you haven’t learned anything from Infinity Nikki at all.
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OpenCritic
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Top Critic Rating:
81/100
- Released
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December 5, 2024
- Developer(s)
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Papergames
, Infold Games