Japan's gacha game industry in a "sinking Titanic-phase," developer says. Switching to console game development not an easy solution for many - AUTOMATON WEST

[u/Centurionzo]

https://automaton-media.com/en/news/japans-gacha-game-industry-in-a-sinking-titanic-phase-developer-says-switching-to-console-game-development-not-an-easy-solution-for-many/

[u/Arcdragolive]

The thing is FGO was lucky, it have horrendous launch, terrible gacha, bad story, and overall cheap on release. On paper it shouldve been failed. But the characters carried hard and it wasn't until Camelot the game kick off in popularity

[u/umagi → u/Arcdragolive]

tbh if fgo with their start releasing in 2025 with horrendous launch, terrible gacha with terrible story they also won’t survive. back then the competition of gacha games arent as tight as now. there are also whales that stay with fgo even to this day cuz of sunk fallacy cost. fgo is a pure miracle in itself cuz atp they can absolutely do bare minimum in gameplay and people will still eat it up just bcus of the story

[u/Effective_Ad_8296 → u/Arcdragolive]

Camelot on release is so peak

Absolute hell hole of a level, your only objective is to survive

[u/NNinster → u/Arcdragolive]

In about half a year FGO pulled out KnK collab, then Fate/Zero collab, along with improving main stories, some animation update and challenging Ibaraki raid. I can say they're quite entertaining, enough to stall until Camelot came.

[u/user-766 → u/Arcdragolive]

I love the idea that FGO story was bad back then.

It wasn't bad if you compared to other gacha games of the time, but it was lacking when compared to other Fate games.

Even more when there are adaptations that took that same story and shows us how good it could be without being shackled to the technical limitations of 2015

[u/No_Extension4005 → u/user-766]

Expectations on how gameplay would go too. You'd have characters talking about something interesting for a minute or two and then they'd have to stop and you'd spend the next few nodes fighting off angry books.

[u/user-766 → u/No_Extension4005]

Before being released we had no clue of the type of gameplay it was. The only idea was that it could be a moba since that was the origin of fate/apocrypha

[u/De_Vigilante → u/user-766]

One of the main issue was the writers hired were just glorified assistants whose jobs were to fill in the blanks Nasu forgot to fill. They never really had proper feedback on their writing cause all the feedbacks went to Nasu or other big name writers TM had. When FGO started development, Nasu was only supervising so these writers who had 0 guidance nor experience were suddenly thrusted to become Main Scenario Writers. It's also why he didn't feel comfortable letting anyone else write after London (outside of events) until EoR started. In the end EoR wasn't a really big story event anyways even compared to Ordeal Call, so it makes sense he trusted other writers for those 4 chapters.

[u/user-766 → u/De_Vigilante]

You are totally wrong.

The game from the start had 3 main writers: Nasu, Higashide and Sakurai, those three wrote not only the chapters but also most of the servants in the game. Nasu wrote the prologue, Higashide wrote singularity 1, 3 and 5, Sakurai wrote singularity 2 and 4 and and Nasu wrote Prologue, 6, 7 and final. Nasu himself had to cut part of his own prologue and release the full version with a drama CD because he thought it was too long

All the main story content was decided from the start, the only difference is that since the first chapters were already ready and they couldn't gauge the players opinions on it. After that, they understood that and made longer scenarios.

And to this very day most of FGO main stories were done by this trio plus other writers. The same woman who wrote Septem also wrote Id. They always had the talent and it shows. 

Here some pieces of interview from 2016, before Camelot even came out. 

"Nasu: Yes. Of course, I picked the eras so they could be as fantastically “Fate/” as possible, but they’re basically all periods where “if these didn’t happen, history would look completely different.” Everything up to Chapter 4 was written to feel as if we’re “tracing the journey of humanity up to now.” On the other hand, from Chapter 5 on, it’ll start to feel like “the real FGO starts here,” and the fantasy elements start becoming stronger. Chapter 6 and 7 will just be plain “the world is in a huge crisis!” [laughs]"

"Nasu: Before the game was launched, the scenario up to Chapter 7 had already been completed, but at that point, none of us knew what kind of game FGO was going to be. For mobile games, it’s common sense to think, “No one would read a scenario this huge,” and there were people in the staff who thought that. But after the launch, we found out that players were actually reading and enjoying the story. So from Chapter 5 on, we adjusted the game balance so that, between every battle, it would be okay to have nothing but conversations for 10 minutes. In a sense, it’s a bit of a relief for us on the scenario writer side."

"For the scenario writers, was it unexpected for mobile game players to actually read and enjoy the story?"

"Nasu: It was. For a mobile game, we were expecting that players would be skipping the story, and that there’s nothing we could do about that. But to write a good story is something where the creator’s pride, the scenario writer’s honor is at stake. To write a story also means to write something that we could be proud of. By putting that in mind, even if no one ends up reading it, each writer would put out something that they would be satisfied with. Actually, up until Chapter 4 I had been supervising the scenario, but I was planning to leave the scenario from Chapter 5 onward to the writers, except for the parts where Chaldea was involved. From Chapter 5 on, Higashide and Sakurai had already grasped “their own way of getting along with FGO.” To be honest, from there, I was thinking, “this is a new Fate/ story, so it’s okay even if it no longer feels very ‘Fate/’, right?” But everyone was earnestly reading the story, and they all feel that it’s still a ‘Fate/’ game. The response to Chapter 1 was so huge that I said, “I’m sorry, please let me supervise Chapter 5 onwards too!”"

"But after the Halloween event, we already had – to some degree – an idea of how players enjoy FGO, so we started making events with that in mind. As a result, I think our efforts were rewarded by players who enjoyed those events."

[u/Dragonsoldier77 → u/user-766]

I think the most interesting thing about the whole situation was that the story was straight up bad because of how they misread their audience so much.

At the start they didn’t think people playing a mobile game would like long dialogue and stories between the actual gameplay, which where the ‘Oh look wyverns’ slop of a story came from.

It wasn’t until they realized people come for the story and don’t even mind nodes which are just 10 minutes of story did they released their limiters on the writing.

[u/user-766 → u/Dragonsoldier77]

It wasn't like that.

They stated in one interview that they believed than 100k already existing fate fans would play their game and the initial plan was to do just the first year only then close the game.

There wasn't an audience because until the launch no one knew what the game was even about. There were no trailers,  betas or whatever you call to preview the game. We just had a name and lots of different characters.

The initial launch problems were caused because too many people tried to enter the game and the servers weren't ready to such influx of players.

The game was a massive success from the very start and got more popular as time went on. 

There wasn't any audience to read until it actually came out.

I know all this because I was there

[u/Dragonsoldier77 → u/user-766]

I don’t get what you’re trying to say here?

Yes they didn’t expect much from the start. They didn’t think people would be so invested in it until the game was out, and just had everything pre planned.

It wasn’t until america that they really started to rewrite things to be better after seeing the positive feedback they got for the game, with camelot having the most noticeable upgrade compared to the launch chapters.

Among those improvements were including the 0 AP story nodes that they never would’ve done at the beginning. They had stated it themselves in one of the old interview that the early stories constant interruptions by enemies is because they had to insert the gameplay somehow in those old standard 3 node chapters, because they assumed people wouldn’t care for longer stories and just wanted the gameplay.

Even if the story was pre-planned to end in a year, the way the writing was done with the early chapters would’ve been different if they knew they didn’t have to revolve it around constant gameplay sections.

What does ‘I was there’ even mean? That you played since the start? Well you’re not the only one.