Recently, at E3, amidst the bright lights and packed appointment schedules, I sat down to play an English language build of Disgaea 5

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“ Taking care of the fans who’ve gotten you here is often better than trying to bring in imaginary new ones.

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“ The franchise loyally serves a demographic that has been largely given up on by the mainstream gaming industry.

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Alan Costa, one of my main PR contacts at NIS America sat quietly as I explored the colorful, familiar hub world. Every now and again, I’d break our silence with a question. Alan would answer, simply and plainly, in a parlance free of any catchphrases or marketing double-speak. His answers rarely surprised me; Disgaea 5 on PS4, to my relief, feels like Disgaea always has. It’s a little bit prettier, there’s some new monsters and classes...nothing game-changing, and also nothing that’s going to stop me from tossing Prinnies for another 100 hours.It’s that last bit that really matters. Is Disgaea 5 a dramatic step forward from Disgaea D2, or even from the very first Disgaea on PS2? To be honest, not really. But unlike so many other hardcore JRPGs - and games in general - Disgaea is a franchise that refuses to change with the times. It’s not out of tone-deaf ignorance though, it’s because developer NIS knows something most triple-A developers and publishers don’t:Taking care of the fans who’ve gotten you here is often better than trying to bring in imaginary new ones.The point is that people like me, who loved Dragon Age: Origins for being the modern-day Baldur’s Gate we’d been craving, were left with little to enjoy in Dragon Age 2, and no, the fact that it helped the franchise sell more copies overall didn’t make me feel any better about that. The message being sent was clear to me: tapping into a potential market of people who typically ignore this genre was more important than keeping the people who support it happy.It can really be that simple. Identify your audience, assess their potential size, budget to that, and give them exactly what they want without watering it down for some shapeless, mythical “broader audience” that may or may not exist. Or, as Disgaea creator, and NIS America CEO Sohei Niikawa said to me during an interview a couple of years ago, “do something that only you can do.”

Vincent Ingenito is IGN's foremost fighting game nerd. F ollow him on Twitter and tell him what you want him to test out next time he plays Street Fighter 5.