How hyper-niche details turn casual customers into superfans
Most brands start by asking what audience they’re trying to reach, but the best brand worlds ask a different question. In this clip from You’re Not the Audience, Parliament Creative Director Calvin Ross Carl explains why Warhammer and Wingspan succeed by asking what kind of place their audience wants to exist within, and why the more specific a world becomes, the more valuable it is to a focused group of fanatics. He also digs into the absurd, hyper-specific details of Super Mario Bros. and why Nintendo was smart to return to its goofy world after Super Mario Bros. 2. It’s from the You’re Not the Audience episode on worldbuilding, Stop Brand Building, Start Worldbuilding.
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Outline
Summary
Calvin Ross Carl draws a lesson from Warhammer and Wingspan: neither starts with the basic question of which audience or demographic to target. Instead, they ask what kind of place their audience wants to exist within. For Warhammer, it’s a grimdark space opera of endless war. For Wingspan, it’s an Arcadian world where learning about birds is exciting.
Demographics might reveal a little about behavior, but deep levels of detail are what create belonging and community. True to the show’s name, Calvin notes that the best games, worlds, and brands aren’t for everyone. Warhammer isn’t for everyone, and neither is Harley. The more specific a world becomes, the stronger and more valuable it is to its fans.
He then turns to Super Mario Bros., where Italian plumbers stomping turtles and running through pipes make almost no sense, yet those details build something much larger. Super Mario Bros. 2 broke from that world because it was a reskin of a different game, and Nintendo wisely refocused on the original lore afterward.
Highlights
Ask what place your audience wants to exist within, not just who they are.
Warhammer coined the term grimdark for its world.
Deep detail creates belonging and community.
The more specific a world becomes, the stronger it gets.
Mario’s absurd details are part of its lore.
Key insights
Place beats demographics
Demographic targeting says little about what people want to belong to. Defining the place reveals far more.
Specificity builds fanatics
A stronger, more particular world becomes more valuable to a focused group of fans, who then discover all of its tiny details.
Absurdity can be an asset
Mario’s world doesn’t make logical sense, but its consistent oddities are exactly what make it memorable.
Protect the world you built
After Super Mario Bros. 2 strayed, returning to the familiar world kept the franchise coherent.
Detailed analysis
The clip links worldbuilding directly to audience strategy. Calvin’s reframe, from who to target to what place people want to inhabit, moves brands from description to invitation. It also explains why narrow, specific worlds outperform broad ones: they give fans something to dig into and own.
The Mario example adds a lesson about consistency. Even a beloved sequel can feel off when it abandons the established world, which is a useful caution for brands considering a dramatic departure from their own lore.
Conclusion
Make the world stronger, get more specific, and fans will find the details. Hyper-niche worlds are what turn casual customers into superfans.
Transcript
So yeah, what to learn from those? I think the thing that’s interesting about those, especially things like Warhammer, Wingspan, and what good brands do, is none of those are really asking the most basic question that we start with, especially with brands. These games, these brands, aren’t asking what audience we’re trying to reach. It’s not about targeting just this specific audience, this specific demographic. They’re asking, “What kind of place does our audience want to exist within?” For Warhammer, it’s this giant space opera of just war and grimdark. I mean, they invented the term grimdark, this grimdark fantasy. It’s people who want to be in that world. For Wingspan, it’s people who want to be in this much more Arcadian, beautiful world where they’re learning things about birds, because learning is exciting.
And the thing that separates those: one is just about demographics. It’s not going to tell you much, maybe a little bit of behavior, when you’re trying to figure out what kind of audience you’re reaching. But the other one is, when you start going into those deep levels of detail, that’s when your brand starts creating belonging and community for people who can then become really deep fans of what you do.
I guess this is the title of this show, You’re Not the Audience, so this is going to be pretty obvious, but the best games, the best worlds, the best brands aren’t for everyone. Warhammer isn’t for everyone. Harley isn’t for everyone. The more specific your world becomes, the stronger it becomes. And the stronger it becomes, the more valuable it becomes to a focused group of fanatics. So make the world stronger, get more specific, and then your fans will discover all of those tiny little details.
So, all right, chat. Any other games that people have been into that you think have interesting worlds? It’s funny, because we’ve got Aaron and Nick in here from Parliament. Aaron makes fun of me for my deep love of games. Somehow I just typed in chat. What did I just do there? Uno. Don’t know what just happened there. We’re doing great today, folks.
No. Even with a lot of those old games, you don’t realize there’s deep story behind them, but that’s what makes them absurd. Think all the way back to Super Mario, or just Mario Bros. These games make almost no sense, but somehow that’s what creates all the interesting little details. What are these Italian plumber brothers doing? Stomping on giant mushroom creatures, running through pipes, doing all this platforming. All those little details create something that’s much larger than just this idea of you run to the right and jump on stuff.
Yes. Oh, [unclear]. I have a feeling that must be Chris. Stomping turts. Yeah, you’re stomping turds. That’s what happens in that game. You’re like, why are you stomping on turtles? But all of those very hyper-specific details of even Mario Bros. are all part of the lore.
That’s why, if anybody remembers, Super Mario 2 came out, and it is a completely different game with none of the stuff that shows up in any of the other Mario games—which, let’s be honest, Super Mario 2 is maybe one of the best Super Mario games. But the reason it’s like that is not because they were just like, “Well, these games can be anything.” It’s because they were trying to make a second Mario game, they couldn’t get it to work right, and they weren’t liking it. So Mario 2 is literally just them reskinning a different Japanese game and adding the Mario characters into it, because they couldn’t get an actual sequel to the first Mario Bros. to work. That’s why there’s a completely different world. And then you go to every Mario after that, and it’s back to stomping turts and crushing Goombas. Mario 2 is great, but they were so smart for actually refocusing back on this goofy world of Italian plumbers jumping through tubes and stomping turtles and Goombas.