Fun Club You're Yuji Horii / Enix and it's the year 1995. What's your plan for making Dragon Quest / Dragon Warrior popular in the west?

[Yzz]

There's a saying that goes "talent always wins", which has become a golden rule for many artists and businessmen alike. The concept is simple: if you make a good product, people will eventually recognize the quality of your product and you will be rewarded. In the gaming industry, this unwritten rule has proved to be true in many occasions. Take a look at the Monster Hunter franchise, which took its sweet time from becoming a Japan-only sensation, to one of the biggest video game brands in the world with MHW and Rise. However, among these many stories of japanese franchises becoming big overseas, there is one tortoise who still hasn't crossed the finish line and this just happens to be one of the most influential video game franchises: the Dragon Quest series.

There have been countless debates about why DQ failed to take off in the west, with many arguing that the franchise is inherently unappealing to non-japanese players due to cultural reasons. Despite all of this, it's hard to deny that the history of western DQ releases is filled with missteps, both coming from bad luck and incompetence. Let me summarize DQ's western misadventures as briefly as I can:

• Dragon Warrior I and Dragon Warrior II were very simplistic JRPGs released in the late NES lifespan. Not a lot to say here...
• Dragon Warrior III and IV released in the NES in 1992 when the MD/Genesis and SNES were already on shelves. Dragon Quest III felt revolutionary to many japanese players in... 1988, but in 1992 the game felt outdated compared to 16-bit JRPGs like Final Fantasy II (IV) which just released a year prior.
• Dragon Quest V and VI weren't localized until the NDS ports, which allowed Squaresoft to become the household name for JRPGs in the west. I personally think that DQV not being localized for the SNES was a wasted opportunity because it would have totally become a seminal 16-bit JRPG like Earthbound and Chrono Trigger, which would have been a huge boost for the franchise in subsequent years.
• After a 9 year hiatus, Dragon Warrior VII came in hot just for the JRPG mania of the late 90s / early 00s. There was one little problem though: the game looked outdated, which was a very bad thing considering the games that popularized JRPGs in the first place were praised for its cutting edge 3D graphics. The game came out in 2001, when the PSX was showing its age and the newest installment of the FF franchise was coming to the PS2 that same year.
• Aside from the name change and maybe the fact that it released in a time where JRPGs started losing popularity, Dragon Quest VIII was arguably the first good step in the series' history on the western market. The game sold well and got good reviews, which painted a bright future for the franchise.
• With Dragon Quest IX the series shifted back to the Nintendo ecosystem, which resulted in many DQ VIII players not coming back for the next installment. DQ IX was one of the very few cases where a game had a sequel on a less powerful system (PS2 to NDS), resulting in a worse looking game, which made it even harder to retain those DQ VIII newcomers (it also didn't helped that DQ VIII's graphics were a big part of its advertising campaign). Despite all of this, DQ IX sold even better than VIII and I believe it's still the best-selling game in the series on an international level.
• Neither the online nor the offline versions of Dragon Quest X haven't been localized to this day.
• Dragon Quest XI's first international release in 2018 shifted the series' platform again, this time back to PlayStation. DQXI had to pray for those DQVIII fans to come back after having no DQ content on PS consoles for 12-13 years. The first release of DQXI also lacked the orchestral soundtrack that was present in the japanese 2017 release, leaving western players only with a synth rendition of VERY questionable quality.
• Dragon Quest XI S Definitive Edition launched on Switch in 2019 after a big, six-month long advertising campaign from Nintendo, which included the addition of Hero to SSBU. Despite getting really good reviews and then getting ported to everything, DQXIS failed to turn the fortunes of the DQ franchise, which has led some to fear that the next installment might not get localized or have its artistic vision compromised in order to appeal to 'western tastes'.

As you can see the DQ series has lacked the opportunity to build a fanbase and brand on western territories, either because important titles get skipped or because the franchise migrates from ecosystem to ecosystem without taking its existing fans with it, among other reasons. So in this thread I ask the armchair businessmen and game developers in all of you: how would you have corrected the course of the franchise in order to make it as popular overseas as it is in Japan? Do you engage in a localization race with Squaresoft, or play it slow? Would you keep or change the name? How will you take advantage of Dragon Ball's popularity? Do you develop a gritty reboot or just let the slime say 'fuck'?

(I chose 1995 as the starting date of this 'scenario' as that was the year when DQ VI was released in Japan, which was when the series started to get longer periods between releases.)

 

[Leo]

I don't think there's anything DQ could do differently to appeal more to western audiences without losing its identity. Some products just speak more to specific audiences and DQ is like that, its humor and charm are still misunderstood and in 2022 we still have people on the internet saying that every character looks like Goku and Trunks, you can't change those things without alienating its fans. Sometimes a single magical moment can get that smash hit like Monster Hunter World did, but I don't think DQ will have anything on that scale, it already proved it can be popular on the west with VIII, IX and XI, so I think its just has to keep building on that with quality games and marketing efforts. One Piece is an example of a franchise that was an extremely slow burn because it was allegedly "too japanese" but it kept building an audience simply because it's good, and today it's a big hit on the west as well. I think DQ's path looks more like One Piece's.

Personally, I'm already quite content with how the franchise is doing right now. It's popular enough to get all spin offs localized (I'm not mentioning DQ offline because I think it's a special case and I firmly believe there is a localization planned) and it gets enough of marketing efforts that how well it fares depends solely on how appealing the games actually are. Spin offs like DQ Builders were a great success for a game of that budget and were really popular among a varied audience, and DQXI was very successful as well, it reached beyond the DQ fans niche and was played by RPG fans and gamers in general, which shows the series can continue to grow and gather more fans as it goes. It wasn't a smash hit like MH or FF, but not every game has to be like that. If you ignore its juggernaut status in Japan and stop comparing it to similar sized franchises there, DQ is pretty darn popular these days, much more so than a bunch of other franchises that are healthy and getting regular releases.

 

[Soul Skater]

I don't think there is any marketing gimmick or smart way to present SNES/PSone Dragon Quest games to get them to move the needle in the west at all. I think that is basically an unsalvageable situation. The releases are far too conservative in regards to their tech, gameplay, etc that make it hard to get to for anyone who hasn't already decided they like JRPGs for any of them to be some sort of gateway game in the way Final Fantasy was.

Really, the solution is pretty simple. Do to DQ what FFVII did with final fantasy. Or just do DQVIII a decade earlier on the PS1

I do think there could have been more done on the NES though to atleast make the series start out on a better foot than it did. If we go back to more like 1986. Release the games not to long after they came out in japan rather than the 3 or 4 year old gap that there was here. Have it really lean into its very japanese themes and aesthetics with the Akira Toriyama box art rather than run away and weirdly rebrand them as some Ye Olde Renaisannse fair Dungeons and Dragons-like that just made it blend in with really every other game. On the SNES and PS1, there was so much competition in regards to JRPGs but on the NES there really wasn't. Those games were about as good as it got on the NES so I think marketing them as these epic adventures would have been much simpler

(And yes I know NOA did somewhat try to get Dragon Warrior 1 to be a thing but they pushed a very very simplistic 1986 game in late 1989. I could actually see Dragon Warrior 1 being a moderate success here had it actually released in 1986 when there was like a total of 20 something NES games and its competition for random 'I beat Super Mario Bros and don't know what else to do with my life" impulse buying would have been Trojan, Solomon's Key, and Ikari Warriors, and not stacked up against Phantasy Star II on the Sega flippin Genesis)

 

[Apopheniac]

1995 is tough because you're on the verge of the 3D era and DQ up to that point has been 2D. Porting the SFC games to the PSX and getting them localized seems like the safest play, though considering the environment at the time, they'd need a minor miracle's worth of word-of-mouth to take off in any significant way.

Going gritty or back to the Dragon Warrior rebrand with redone art is a detriment. People are coming around on anime, let DQ be DQ instead of an off-brand FF or D&D.

Despite getting really good reviews and then getting ported to everything, DQXIS failed to turn the fortunes of the DQ franchise, which has led some to fear that the next installment might not get localized or have its artistic vision compromised in order to appeal to 'western tastes'.

Not sure where this is coming from, DQXI is the closest thing to a breakout success for the series in the west, it's by far the best-selling DQ outside of Japan

 

[TreIII]

Like others said, I don't think there's much you could do in 1995. Barring FF4, FF6 (2 and 3 back in the day) and Chrono Trigger being moderate hits, it would still be a while before FF7 would come and really change the game when it came to JRPGs finally hitting it big with US audiences.

At best, I would've perhaps considered that with Squaresoft pursuing the Playstation, the possibility was there for DQ to stick with Nintendo and further endear themselves to a Western Nintendo owner demographic that would certainly be looking for similar experiences on their platform of choice by the time FF7 got big and could've been claimed as "their own". Yamauchi's remarks about JRPGs be damned.

Granted, this would've meant that the original plans for DQVII would've had to be quite condensed to fit on one N64 cart, but considering one of the complaints about DQVII is that it can be a bit on the bloated side, perhaps working with the confines of the limitations might not have been a bad thing. Especially if you were going to stick with gorgeous 2D sprites (with 3D backdrops) and maybe try to "continue where Chrono Trigger left off".

Bottom line, I think FF and Squaresoft becoming synonymous with Playstation was the right move to make during that day and era. But on the same note, I do think Enix and Horii missed an opportunity to not court Nintendo loyalists earlier on than they did. You could've had a larger audience, armed with brand name recognition, that would've been in place by the time Dragon Quest Monsters hit the Gameboy Color soon after Poke-mania hit. You could've had DQ5 and DQ6 hitting the GBA and localized in the US at last, soon after DQ1-4 hit the GBC. And it just goes on, whether the merger still happens in this timeline or not.

 

[Rooster]

It's 1995, you gotta make it at least like 35% more radical

 

[freedomseekr]

My answer, as always when it comes to JRPG in the 1990s, is, "have you tried Europe".

While I think us Euros are generally more aligned culturally with the US (largely due to the lower language barrier and the ensuing ease of localization), something as arch-Japanese as Dragon Quest (though it's funny since DQ has always adhered more to ideas from 1980s cRPG) might still have done well in Europe, even at the time. DQ not releasing here until VIII was probably the biggest misstep the series could've taken, though it wasn't unusual... we just weren't on the radar for many JPN loc teams until the 2000s.

 

[Dardan Sandiego]

Easy:

• Go hard on the Toriyama art to make everyone look like a Dragon Ball character
• Release the games in Europe and South America
• Get Bruce Faulconer to compose a new soundtrack for the US

 

[PixelKnight]

I mean, actually releasing the Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest games outside of NA would have been the major move if you want western popularity for your series/genre but are ignoring a ton of the western countries with big markets for games. ‘The west’ isn’t just NA.

 

[Yavga]

They should have made an accompanying anime to sell the franchise on.
More marketing, more toys.

 

[Yzz]

Not sure where this is coming from, DQXI is the closest thing to a breakout success for the series in the west, it's by far the best-selling DQ outside of Japan

The sales for XIS were a bit slow in 2019, which was weird considering that this was a critically acclaimed title with high production values on the best console for JRPGs. But you're right: the game eventually crawled to 2 million-ish, making it the best-selling DQ game in the west.

Also the fact that we don't know whether DQX offline is going to be localized or not has some people worried that SE is not having a lot of faith in the IP. Compare that to how they are pushing the Nier series right now.

 

[AtomicZach]

Ironically, I think the main problem is Akira Toriyama, or rather people's perception of his work. The only Toriyama work that made any headway in the West is Dragon Ball Z and that anime got big. So big that it kind of colors anything that has his name on it. When I was in high school, I knew many people who refused to play the games because they thought it either was a part of the Dragon Ball Z universe and got disappointed that it wasn't or people who thought it would emulate DBZ. It's hard to convince them otherwise even when the plots of Dragon Quest are wide and varied. (and better than DBZ...)

As such, I'm not sure there is an easy solution for DQ to break free in the west other than "you need to pierce through Western's 'judge a book by its cover' mentality"

 

[GamerJM]

Somehow scrounge up a bigger budget for DQ7 and make it look more like FF7, probably at the cost of making it as ambitious as it otherwise was. It can still play the same and be similar in a lot of respects, I just mean like visually, that shit needs to be in 3D instead of using sprites and have some big expensive CG cutscenes. And try to get it out and localized before the launch of the PS2 this time.

 

[Krvavi Abadas]

collaborate with Nintendo Power to include free copies of the original game with every subscription to their magazine.

...wait a minute.

 

[Phosphorescent Skeleton]

I would just use my massive Dragon Quest fortune to buy some legal in japan at the time magic mushrooms and not worry about it.

 

[Dolce]

all you have to do is look through the history of businesses, artists, musicians, etc to see uh talent doesn't always win. you also can't really force something to be relevant, people like what they like.

Dragon Quest doesn't really need to be big in the West anymore, it's big enough. There's just not much to change in terms of the past and present. Something being good doesn't mean it's appealing to everyone. I mean they even released Dragon Quest Monsters on the GB during the middle of the Pokemon fad.

The reverse question is just... Why SHOULD it do better? Maybe it's not time. Monster Hunter World was at the right time, when people were ready for that kind of game. You had a new generation of people ready for that kind of experience.

It's just the way it is. I'm not sitting here wondering how to make, say, Pretty Cure more popular in the West. lol

 

[GamerJM]

all you have to do is look through the history of businesses, artists, musicians, etc to see uh talent doesn't always win. you also can't really force something to be relevant, people like what they like.

Dragon Quest doesn't really need to be big in the West anymore, it's big enough. There's just not much to change in terms of the past and present. Something being good doesn't mean it's appealing to everyone. I mean they even released Dragon Quest Monsters on the GB during the middle of the Pokemon fad.

The reverse question is just... Why SHOULD it do better? Maybe it's not time. Monster Hunter World was at the right time, when people were ready for that kind of game. You had a new generation of people ready for that kind of experience.

It's just the way it is. I'm not sitting here wondering how to make, say, Pretty Cure more popular in the West. lol

Precure probably could have been better marketed, localized, and positioned as a magical girl show in the west to help fill the void left by Sailor Moon finishing, tbh.

 

[Dolce]

Precure probably could have been better marketed, localized, and positioned as a magical girl show in the west to help fill the void left by Sailor Moon finishing, tbh.

Amusingly I think that is an example of something that could have done better if studios cared more about the girl demographic.

Edit: Also should say my points before come from my own experience. As long as a game sells enough to justify getting more like it, and enough to localize it, I'm happy. Trying to question how much a series should potentially should be doing is a lost cause because in the end, people like what they like, and what is popular is popular.