Japanese gamers on X discuss why classic titles like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quests are less popular among the country's young people.

It’s honestly kinda crazy how long some games spend in development. The Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy is a perfect example of something that should’ve been quick but ended up being so bloated and took forever to make.

FF7Remake was announced in 2015, got stuck in development hell for a bit, released 2020. The sequel released 2024. The third one still hasn’t been teased yet. How many people are attached to a franchise if it takes 10 years to get the full story? I loved the first remake but dropped the second one, I just didn’t care about the story as much as I did ~5 years ago.

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I think back to early 2000’s, I was playing the Jak and daxter games all throughout elementary to highschool with a decent amount of replayability. Same with metal gear solid. And these were pretty fleshed out games worth the money back then.

Kingdom hearts was the first time I got fed up with development hell.

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Ratchet & Clank had it’s first three games released in three years. Same graphics and no one cared.

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Also, and I’m just throwing this out there, maybe the circlejerk of nostalgia bait for Gen X/Millennials means fuck-all to younger people in general because it’s the nostalgia of their parents, not their own thing?

Like, aren’t we seeing this in so many different properties? As time marches on, interest wanes? Nobody cares about Marvel movies anymore. Nobody cares about Star Wars anymore. The most hardcore fanatics tend to be older and had the originals, which were literally original content, as things they grew up with. Part of the mystery and excitement of them was how much was left unexplained. Seriously, the Clone Wars was this mysterious fucking thing when it was just an offhand comment by Luke Skywalker in Star Wars: A New Hope. Now we have entire TV series dedicated to the background of the Clone Wars. Mystery gone. The first season of The Mandalorian brought back a sense of mystery to the series and then promptly dropped it to mix it in with every other piece of Star Wars memorabilia.

Young people want their own stuff that they’re growing up with, they don’t want rehashes of the shit their parents obsessed over.

Look at the continued interest in Adventure Time spinoffs, for example. Adventure Time first came out when I was just shy of 29. It would be fodder for the children of people just slightly older than me. It was also enjoyable for older folks who enjoyed silly fantasy, which gave it wider appeal. It persists more because it was an actual original thing that some people grew up with.

We live in an era where copyright that lasts 100 years after authorial death has broken corporations brains and they are scared to death of anything original in case it might not be a clear moneymaker. Letting interest in a new property grow over time is almost unheard of in the Netflix era of two seasons and then fuck you, it’s over. So even when new properties are explored, most aren’t given enough time to mature into something that becomes truly nostagliac for a younger generation.

If corporations want people to be as invested in long-lived series, they have to allow the option for new, interesting series to take the stage. Is it really a shocker that people are over games that started in the NES era? That young people want stories and ideas that reflect the world they live in, not the one their parents grew up in? Young people absolutely lose their shit over Undertale and Deltarune, both games made by a single auteur developer. Pokemon, referenced in the article, were sleeper hits that took time before they became an absolute craze.

I’m in my forties, and I constantly talk about how the world our parents brought us up to live in was dead before we were born. It’s the same but at an accelerated pace for kids these days. The world we know and are trying to prepare them for no longer exists. Our stories and nostalgia become meaningless for our kids because it doesn’t speak to their experiences.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

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Nobody cares about Marvel movies anymore. Nobody cares about Star Wars anymore.

I want to agree with a lot of what you’re saying, but this is very much not true. Regardless of whether you or I like the new stuff, those franchises are still making tons of money, and that does include younger generations.

The article mentions asking kids which is more popular, Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest, and all the kids answered Pokemon. That’s a franchise that’s slightly younger than FF and DQ, but not by much, it’s still much older than all those kids playing it. So the real question that needs to be unpacked here is: why are some franchises able to continue appealing to new audiences, while others get reduced to nostalgiabait for those that grew up on them?

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Far easier to rehash a known moneymaker than to take a risk come up with something original. Some people might point at the multiple tens of thousands of games on Steam as evidence there are people making new games that are original, but if you compare the relaitive few that take off vs the popular franchises’ success it’s pretty obvious that rehashing works. Plenty of new games languish and never really get anywhere.

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I mean, all you have to do is look at box office numbers to know you’re wrong about Marvel and Star wars.

Maybe the movies are garbage to hardcore fans, but the franchises still make a fuck ton of money.

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Yeah and they largely all fucking suck ass for about the last 5 years.

There’s a difference between slop that appeals to an imagined ‘median consumer’ that will make a boatload of money, and ideas that are actually unique and new and captivating.

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Regardless of what you or I think of quality, the median consumer is consuming them. Star Wars is still making a hell of a lot of money, it has not faded from cultural relevance in the slightest.

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And yet the Disney effect is a very real thing. If your franchise hasn’t been milked to death, it’s only a matter of time.

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It could also have something to do with the fact that, for a 20 year old person, none of the games in the series that have come out during their lifetime have been the fan favorites. Even amongst die-hard Final Fantasy fans, you don’t get people losing their minds over FF XIII the way they do for VI, VII, IX, or X. For most of the recent games, the most effusive praise I’ll hear for them is that they aren’t that bad once you get used to the systems and figure out how the game works.

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Tanis Nikana
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My parents once taught me how to use a payphone when I was a kid. I’m 40.

Your post is exactly correct.

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Wtf is a payphone

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Oh my god this is a real question and I’m getting old.

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Haha don’t worry happens to all of us. I feel old too sometimes

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There were many decades between the proliferation of home phones and cell phones. During that time many people may be away from home and need to contact someone over the phone. Payphones were installed in public places that anyone could use to meet that need. They took change in exchange for minutes using the phone.

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So just telephone cells? Okay

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Young people want their own stuff that they’re growing up with, they don’t want rehashes of the shit their parents obsessed over.

If only children had the perspective to know alternative choices exist and they should hold out for something better. This assumes young people can control the media they are fed. It’s more likely that the generation making content for them confuses nostalgia for childhood and the audience doesn’t like the iterative/derivative product.

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On the nostalgia front I just want to say I’ve never been into metroidvanias and never played any kind of metroid game before, I tried metroid zero mission an hour ago and I’m already hooked. These games are just genuinely good. Not dunking on newer games I play those a lot too, just saying not everything new is better and I’d love to see some kind of happy middle ground.

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You aren’t wrong but I also think people tend to forget just how much of what we grew up on were remakes and rehashes of stuff even from the radio era. Especially the cartoons that we watched as kids, so much of that was just recycled jokes and such with some jokes for the adults of the day thrown in too. Even Star Wars was an homage to the serials of the 30s-50s like Flash Gordon, which itself got an 80s remake (with an excellent soundtrack by Queen). The remakes aren’t new they are just more obvious.

Ephera
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Yeah, I was thinking that recently when I realized I’ve known

the crazy plot twist in Star Wars

(Luke’s daddy issues)

for as long as I can remember.

I’ve also known

so many iconic characters and scenes

(Yoda, R2D2, Chewbacca, the metalkini, C3PO, when they boop the Death Star etc.)

before I was even old enough to watch the movies, too.

I’m sure they’re cool movies, with lots of cultural relevance, but they’ve been spoiled in every possible way for me, specifically because the older generation loves them so much that they can’t shut up about them.

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I’m almost 50 but uninvested in Nintendo.

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A few years ago I was hit with the sack of bricks that is all Donkey Kong Country games being released one year apart. I have vivid memories of playing the second game for a very long time and then multiple times after while imagining what a third game would be like and you’re telling me that was only one year? There’s no way those games would mean so much to me if we had only had one per console generation.

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That’s because Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest aren’t making kids games anymore.

They’re remaking old games for nostalgia value for old gamers like me who played those games as a kid.

NGL I’m still waiting on the dragon warrior monsters remakes because I’d always been a bigger fan of those than any Pokémon game. I doubt it’s coming any time soon, but a guy can hope.

That’s the whole issue though. None of these studios are putting out games for modern kids. There just rehashing their old IPs and pretending they’re new games. Kids dont want spruce up 1990’s games. They want games for them.

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Not sure why they’d think kids are the target audience for a remake of a 29 year old game.

Surely all the kids are playing the latest mobile slop pocket money sink?

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Not only that, many gaming memories, including console ones, and even for ancient people like me, are tied to modern online experiences. Just one example, that you all share and know and i believe this, is minecraft. But how much of that is multiplayer servers over single player worlds? Some of my finest memories are chrono trigger, popolocrois monogatari, final fantasy, earthbound. And i still like them. But playing for the fun of it, i can probably tell that some simple multiplayer is still fine. But many young (and adult) people are probably playing gacha, and these are highly manipulative games. Dopamine and serotonine driven. I find my enjoyment of a game dropping down to zero when I have a mandatory gacha system in the way.

I will probably attempt to finish earthbound, I never got past the giant animated pile of puke. Sometimes later i found out that I needed to bring some fly honey for that*, or that i need to wait three real life minutes for a waterfall to open the path.

This last example is comical in lisa: the paniful, where you are required to wait 30 real life minutes in a test of patience. 30. Minutes. And it’s still the most normal thing in the game.

I need to finish lisa the painful too, come to think of it.

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Being Japan, I suspect all the kids are sinking money into Gacha Impact or Honkai Gacha Rail or whatever else

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The entire GTA series exists between 1997 and 2013.

They have the next one apparently coming out this year but who cares at this point?

Games from old series should be viewed the same way Hollywood reboots are. It’s just hoping a name will help with advertising.

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It’s much easier to build momentum around a franchise when you release 7 games in 10 years than 2 games in 7 years.

Horsey
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In the age of no-new-IP, why does it take so long for new games to come out…

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AAA expectations are astronomical, AAs take some extra time to keep up, and indies that actually make it take the time to do their own thing, otherwise they’re almost certainly part of the vas, unseen sea of failed indies.

Also, oldschool game dev was toxic. It had some serious crunch culture, just to start. But I think it also attracted talented devs into “sweet spot” dev team sizes; not too big or too small.

And now, if you do software and want to make any money or provide for a family… well, you don’t do game dev. And that phenomenon has gotten worse and worse.

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I remember reading a story from an old Sega or Capcom dev and he basically said that the boss would lock the door of their office when they had to meet a deadline. Not only toxic but the boss doing straight up illegal shit.

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I saw a meme (which could be based on a real message) that said “they” (a Japanese game company) is rewarding their devs by giving them a week to go visit their family.

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I wonder if Japanese companies are paying attention to FromSoft. I absolutely love that FromSoft reuses assets and improves their base engine. You can see the evolution from DS1 to Elden Ring (and Sekiro), releasing a game every year or two.

Growing up - Dragon Quest 1-4 were built on the same engine with minor improvements. FF 4-6 wasn’t a massive leap, but a gradual jump in graphics.

Yakuza games seem to release yearly. They have built a workflow where people work on the same mini games and “slot” it in for whatever the newest release it is.

As much as I shit on Ubisoft, they really dialed in on their engine and tools to crunch out cookie cutter checklist open world games.

Thinking about it, all my examples could also have been plagued with toxic crunch culture.

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1st party engine devs have been stuck in dev hell, mostly. There are some exceptions, like you said; I’d cite Decima as another success.

But think of EA’s Frostbite, Cyberpunk 2077, Halo Infinite, Clausewitz, BGS, many more. Especially indies that try.

It’s not just that old games crunched, but making a new engine that supports modern platforms and modern hardware is just an immensely complex task. There’s just too much to worry about.

The best success seems to either come from:

  • Hyperfocusinf one’s engine’s scope to one game niche. Larian’s divinity engine, for example, makes BG3-likes; that’s it, that all it does. It cannot make an FPS or even a different RPG.

  • Engine shop very, very carefully. For instance, KCD2 leaned into CryEngine’s strengths hard, especially that dense, well-lit European foilage.

And either case needs a lucky roll of the dice anyway. See: Cyberpunk 2077 in utter dev hell (even if they eventually pulled out) from wrangling their engine. Or the latest Borderlands being a technical wreck even though they basically invented Unreal Engine alongside Epic.

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Yeah, that makes sense. Do they need to be forming attachments to the same series that we did though? Certainly stories told by contemporary writers are more likely to resonate with someone growing up in today’s world, rehashing and up the stuff that resonated with us isn’t necessarily the best move for getting the youths on board. Let the ones with interest in the history of gaming play dragon quest and final fantasy.

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I didn’t play the second of the remake games because it was a PS5 exclusive. I usually buy into one platform (it was Xbox this gen) and hop on late in a console cycle for the other side to get cheap consoles and games, but for the first time consoles are getting more expensive over time, so I still don’t have a PS5. It’s on PC now, but building a PC costs as much as a modest house right now.

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I won’t argue your point that PCs cost too much nowadays but gotta say you got some really amazing house prices.

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How many people are attached to a franchise if it takes 10 years to get the full story?

You can just play the original, though.

Same with any of these franchises. The newer titles are hit or miss, but the old games have aged like wine.

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They may have aged like wine but most youths don’t like drinking wine. It is an “acquired taste”. They don’t have the nostalgia you have for them.

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most youths don’t like drinking wine

Then they can wait six years between sips of AAA piss, I suppose.

My friends with kids don’t seem to have any problem picking up Sonic, Pokemon, or Guantlet. One’s even picked up Eldin Ring.

They don’t have the nostalgia

You don’t need nostalgia to enjoy nice things.

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Elden Ring is hardly “aged”. L DLC in the last 12 months. There are modern Sonic and Pokemon games and they hit a short cycle time.

The “can wait 6 years” is the whole point. They aren’t waiting. They aren’t getting attached enough to bother waiting. That’s literally the whole point of the article. Did you read it?

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The “can wait 6 years” is the whole point. They aren’t waiting.

You don’t need to wait to play games that came out thirty years ago.

Plenty of young people are into retro gaming.

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We can but it generally looks and controls like crap on modern screens. It has aged worse than many tank control games like Resident Evil.

Lots of people just wanted a nice graphical update with some quality of life improvements. I’m sure that shouldn’t take a decade and hundreds of millions of dollars to complete.

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It has aged worse than many tank control games like Resident Evil

RE has been remastered at least twice by now.

Lots of people just wanted a nice graphical update with some quality of life improvements.

Square loves nothing more than to dust off an old game, tweak it for modern hardware, and then re-release it for $60.

Fortunately, you can pirate these updates for free.

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I’d be fine with Square Enix going away. In my opinion, they got greedy and way too full of themselves. Nintendo as well, for that matter.

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I actually wanted to play one of their games but you had to create a wholeass account with authentication (I think a phone number). Yeah, too much effort to entertain so this decline is a positive for me.

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Which one required an account?

Only one I know are mobile garbage or the literal MMO

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The online Final Fantasy. 14 I think? The one where people hype up the story. XD

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Are the FF7 remakes really considered that bad?

I thought they were pretty good.

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Are the FF7 remakes really considered that bad?

They’re really not, but different people have different tastes. And the fact that’s it’s broken up and is taking about 15 years to finish pissed off a bunch of the general public.

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They seem like pretty good games to me, but so much of them seems so, SO far removed from my nostalgia of the original. There’s some comparison videos out there in how they deliver certain scenes, force some cameos too early, mismanage the music, tweak plot that didn’t need tweaking, and so on.

I personally was not interested in them at all. I was much more a fan of 6 than 7. As such, no idea on the quality.

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Because you can suplex a train?

The real reason is probably more that I was not a fan of early 3d stuff in general. The camera was kinda crap, the controls didn’t feel great when walking around, etc. Not just an FF thing, either; this was for games as a whole except for racing games. I hated Starfox as well (coming from the Amiga world, some stuff felt like going backwards).

Being able to suplex a train, though, was a nice bonus.

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Yep but somehow you’ve people arguing that kids should just play those ITT. They’ve aged like fine wine. Like resident evil fixed camera was so fantastic.

I mean I grew up with these moon logic puzzles and I still get very frustrated as an adult.

There’s no way I would be doing this to myself if I had alternatives, and no nostalgia.

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Seemingly good, just massively padded. We’re talking about what was a ~30 hour PS1 RPG being milked for three entire games. One of which, still isn’t released nearly 6 years later. Squeenix basically got away with selling parts of a game.

I actually own Remake and Rebirth, but I just can’t get into them because… why bother? Not like I can finish it.

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FFXIV funds everything else and now everything sucks. They don’t make fun games anymore. Remake took so long I don’t even care to play anymore. First one had me hyped. Second one I haven’t even touched.

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Remake took so long I don’t even care to play anymore.

I was going to buy the remake until I found out it was only partly done. Now that it has been six years and it still isn’t out, I’m pretty sure I’m just not going to bother.

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Modern dev cycles are as long as their childhood, and as mine adulthood.

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Also DQ remake characters creep me out.

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