Not long ago, the famous Japanese game company Falcom held a shareholders' meeting, at which the company's product division revenue hit a record low, which triggered strong dissatisfaction among shareholders and became a hot topic, all because of the sharp decline in sales of "Li Zhi Locus" released in 2021.
During the questioning phase of the shareholders' meeting, when asked by shareholders about the "Japanese sales volume of "Rishi No Locus" hit a new low", the company's president Kondo Yoshihiro replied: "The sales volume of Rishi No Locus in Japan is indeed lower than originally expected, of course, some of which is that the quality of the game does not satisfy consumers, but the shrinking of the PS console market (in Japan) and the decline of the paper game media that used to promote the main force are also issues that must be paid attention to."
The first week of sales of "Li Zhi's Trajectory" was only 50,000, which can be said to be far lower than the previous expectations of all parties, because according to the sales of each previous trajectory series, basically the first week can be about 100,000, but this time it has fallen to the level of only 50,000, which can be described as quite bleak, and the sales since then are also relatively weak, and the final sales are likely to be at the bottom of the trajectory series, so it can be said that it is the biggest setback encountered in the development of the trajectory series over the years.
In fact, the quality of the game itself is not bad, there are many remarkable places, Kondo Jiyang is after all the president of Falcom, the explanation of the unfavorable sales can not really be discussed, in fact, there are many factors that lead to the failure of the sales of "Li Zhi Trajectory", in addition to some of its own problems, the most important of which is still dragged down and regurgitated by previous works, in depth, there are many problems in The overall company operation strategy of Falcom.
What is the quality of "The Trail of Lai"?
As far as "Li Zhi's Trajectory" is concerned, in fact, compared with the previous works in the series, a lot of innovations have been made, such as the degree of game screen evolution is larger, and the huge main city has actually achieved a degree of seamless connection, which is much stronger than the previous series of each game in the city to switch in different areas of the city to go through the process of black screen reading experience.
In addition, this work also got rid of the campus-based characteristics of the flash track four games, but began to tell some adult social troubles and cruel reality problems, and the plot became more fluid and did not drag mud and water, but still could not completely get rid of some of the shroud characteristics of the trajectory series over the years.
This was released in time for the release of Falcom's financial statement statistics, which led to many problems in the first version of the cutscene, which was later greatly improved after continuous updates.
Of course, there are actually many problems in this work, the biggest problem is the decline in music level and insufficient publicity, which may have a certain relationship with the compression of other aspects of the game's development costs, the music of this work has a large number of cheap outsourcing forms, in fact, the decline in the musical level of the trajectory series began from "Flash Of Trajectory 3", to this work is more intense, as for the promotion of "Li Zhi Trace" is in a state of weakness for a long time, So much so that after the game was released, many players were in a situation that they did not understand at all.
Another problem is that "Li ZhiLuo", as the opening chapter of the Republic chapter in the trajectory series, mainly explains the characters and background, and does not touch on the most core elements of the series, such as the Seven Treasures and the Alliance Lord, so for those players who have paid attention to these for a long time, the attraction is really limited.
In addition, the game's combat system has undergone major changes, but the final effect is mixed, some players think that the system is too complicated, and Kondo Jiyo also mentioned in a previous interview that he collected various feedback from the game's combat system and improved it in the sequel.
Drag and regurgitation of the previous games in the series
The decline in sales of "The Trajectory of Li" is actually largely due to the drag and regurgitation of some problems in the previous works of the series, which can be said to be an explosive trauma of many problems accumulated to a certain stage, and on the whole, there are three main problems:
The first is that in recent years, the trajectory series has appeared too often and too frequently, and there is a lot of momentum of new year goods, which has caused many players to feel aesthetic fatigue.
We may wish to sort out the frequency and rhythm of the release of the trajectory series in recent years, in 2017 the release of "Flash Track 3", in 2018 was released "Flash Trail 4", in 2019 "Tron Trail" debuted, in 2021 launched "Li Trail", has been announced "Li Trail 2" will be released in 2022, such a dense release speed, may have made many players feel great aesthetic fatigue, and starting from "Flash Trail 3", Each game in the series starts at 65 hours, which makes some players feel exhausted.
The second is that the shroud feature of the Trajectory series has caused dissatisfaction among some players.
The shroud features of the Trajectory series have been a topic that has been hotly discussed in recent years, taking "Flash Trail 3" as an example, I spent 75 hours to complete the game, but the actual effective plot time is only about 5 hours, and the remaining 70 hours are doing side quests and fighting monsters in the maze, the whole process is very serious, and I did not collect all the elements in the game.
However, as far as "Flash Trail" and "Flash Trail 2" are concerned, it only takes about 45 hours to complete these two games, and "Flash Trail 3" extends the process a lot through a large amount of water injection, and in "Flash Trail 4", the time to do the main line and branch lines (excluding hidden branches) is about 90 hours.
Although "Trail of Flash 4", as the final work of the stage, completed the empire chapter of the entire trajectory series and filled in many plot holes, the long process of finding various partners in the early stage of the game also bored many players.
The reason for this situation is mainly because the burden of the series is getting heavier and heavier, with the continuous launch of the trajectory series, from the three works of the air rail to the zero track of the blue track, and the four works of the flash track, which is not counting the later track, so many works, there are too many characters, which leads to a lot of time in the game is the greeting and chat between the various characters, a bit like a variety show to find a bunch of guests to interact there to create entertainment effects, in fact, the plot is extremely limited.
This is because the Trajectory series may be the first in the world to adopt this design approach, that is, each generation has a deep connection with the previous works, and has launched more than a dozen games in this setting, rather than each game is an independent worldview and new characters like the Final Fantasy series and the Dragon Quest series, and there is no deep connection between them.
So the trajectory series of this practice developed to the "Flash Trail 4" finally reached the peak of the point, the number of characters in the game can be said to be the most in the past, so that many occasions are more than a dozen characters in that dialogue, each character's dialogue is only a few words, the whole game can not be meticulous and in-depth performance of each character's personality characteristics, making the character's personality appear more stereotyped.
And the trajectory of this kind of water injection to lengthen the process is actually not only the Falcom family doing this, SQUARE. The first chapter of ENIX's Final Fantasy 7 Remake is also a lot of water injection in the process, and even the famous and highly successful Persona 5 has the practice of dragging the process through a large number of mazes.
This involves a very thought-provoking problem, that is, many game company creators always like to do addition rather than subtraction, do not know how to choose, and Falcom's problem is more serious because of the division of commercial law.
At that time, "Empty Trajectory" as the first work of the trajectory series because of the development time is too long, was ordered by Falcom founder and president Masayuki Kato to split into two listings, which is "Empty Trajectory FC" and "Empty Trajectory SC", because this practice finally achieved good results, especially the suspense left by "Empty Trajectory FC" at the end made the expectations of the sequel "Empty Trajectory SC" unprecedentedly high, and the reputation and sales of the last two works were very good.
But this also brings a problem, "Empty Track FC" and "Empty Track SC" is originally a game's plot capacity, after the split, in order to make the "Empty Track SC" process plot not to appear too thin, so Falcom added a lot of boring side tasks in the game, such as finding cats and repairing street lights.
After tasting the sweetness, Falcom continued this practice, each game must be divided into two parts to do, for example, the part about Crossbell should have been completed in one game, and finally divided into "Zero's Trajectory" and "Bi's Trajectory", the first generation of flash tracks was also divided into "Flash's Trajectory" and "Flash's Trajectory 2", and the final work was also divided into "Flash's Trajectory 3" and "Flash's Trajectory 4", that is, according to the normal progress and process, the flash track should have been completed in two works. The result is four works, and then each generation will drag out the process time through a lot of dialogue chat and fishing to find cats, street lights, find lost children and other assembly line side quests, as well as some overly lengthy mazes.
As mentioned earlier, although "The Trajectory of Li" has also undergone many changes, it is still impossible to completely get rid of this shroud feature, and there are still some routine assembly line dragging rhythm problems.
The third is that the protagonist and human design style of the previous works are too deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.
In fact, the characteristics of this shroud before the series and the release of too frequently has caused many players to be dissatisfied, but what is intriguing is that the sales of "Trail of Flash 4" and "Trail of Tron" are not bad, especially the completion of the "Trail of Tron" actually sold 300,000 sets, but this time all sides have tried to break through and the quality of the "Trail of Lai" has encountered Waterloo, what is the problem?
The mystery is that the protagonist of the four works of Flash Trail, Lee En, is too deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, this role may be the most successful of the protagonists created by Falcom in recent years, he maintains care and respect for all the female characters in the game, has a sense of responsibility and responsibility, but because of the curse of fate, he always seems to be worried, and because of this, he does not dare to have further development with these female characters, so he is often admired by many women without knowing it. So much so that one of the female characters in the game mocked her as a "goose".
Such a character design is easy to get the love of all players, female players for such a gentle and elegant behavior and not greasy male protagonist will have more admiration, just like the hollywood classic love film those male protagonists have a perfect personality and personality, representing a beautiful imagination and psychological projection of popular women for a good partner.
For many male players, playing a perfect protagonist such as Lane and interacting with many female characters also satisfies a certain fantasy psychology, after all, most male players in reality cannot contact so many female characters and cannot achieve such a perfect personality, and even some people may not know how to communicate and interact normally with women because they are too introverted. The essence of games and movies is a dream machine, and the meaning of the existence of the perfect character is to satisfy some of the fantasies of the public.
Moreover, Lane's cursed fate and constant suffering and abuse in the Flash Track IV game also caused many players to have more empathy for this character, and therefore invested more emotion in this character.
A similar situation has also appeared in "Isu 8", the heroine of the game Dana is also a twist and turning fate, inspiring the sympathy of players, and finally making Dana the second most popular heroine in the series.
In addition, the character of Lane has a special feature, that is, Falcom may have originally designed the character to be completely blackened by the curse, and became the final boss of the Four Works of Flash, but it may be because the character was too popular to exceed everyone's imagination, and finally Falcom gave up this idea, and then briefly let Lane blacken in "Tron Trail" to partially restore this setting.
In such a case, there are such a number of players (perhaps a very large number), even if they know that the trajectory series appears too frequently, and are well aware of the shroud characteristics of this series, but because of their special love for the protagonist of Le en, they can always endure many problems in the previous series and insist on buying the flash track four games and even the creation track, just to see how Leon's fate develops.
So after "Lee's Trajectory" opened the Republic chapter and launched a number of new characters, many players who like Le'en are reluctant to buy this new work (even if the quality of this game has actually improved), and the network discussion has a term to explain this phenomenon, called "Le'en PTSD", to the effect that many players in the past trajectory series are too fond of Le'en, so it is difficult to accept the new chapter and new protagonist of the series.
The first week of sales of "Tron's Trajectory" was about 100,000 and the final sales of 300,000 is exactly this point, because the game has three character lines, one of which is Lane as the protagonist, and the overall reputation of "Tron's Trail" is higher than that of the previous flash track four works, and the same reputation is higher than the flash track four "Lee's Track" has such a significant sales decline after not having Leon as the protagonist.
This situation in the game industry is actually not uncommon, for example, "World of Warcraft" can no longer create a super popular character like Alsace after "The Wrath of the Lich King", and "Sword Spirit" in the "White Green Mountains" expansion pack qin Yijie's popular villain plot began to decline, resulting in many players abandoning the pit.
It can be seen that popular characters are a double-edged sword for game series, and once the chapter of highly popular characters is completed, the series will inevitably have a slippery slope, which is a huge problem for every game company.
In addition, "Li's Trajectory" replaced the human painter is also the reason why some players abandoned the pit, the painting style of the four people's painters of the FlashIng Trail is too deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, and the human painting style of "The Trajectory of Li" is actually not bad, but for those players who have been accustomed to the flash track painting style for many years, it will be difficult to accept the new painting style for a while and a half, and may even have resistance.
Falcom's operational strategy issues
Falcom has been 40 years since its inception, and the reason why Falcom has been able to stand for a long time is closely related to the company's insistence on small-scale operations, and until now the company has only a few dozen employees.
The number of people is so small, in the past game development costs of the era of low can do the release of three or more new works a year, in recent years with the continuous improvement of the cost and scale of console game development, Falcom can only sell one or two games a year, and in order to cope with financial statements and maintain profit margins, only to take the practice of splitting the business method and constantly injecting water into the trajectory series, the cost of compressing music production and publicity is also based on this reason, these practices are actually a bit of a drink to quench thirst, so to "Li's trajectory", The many drawbacks that have accumulated have completely exploded.
So for Falcom, it may be time to consider expanding the size of the staff and get rid of this situation of excessive dependence on trajectory, such as the "Tokyo Labyrinth" that sold a lot many years ago, there is no sequel for a long time, according to an interview with Kondo Tsui, it is not that Falcom does not want to do a sequel, but because it is busy with the trajectory and Isu, the two major Isu have been exhausted, so they do not have the energy to do other sequels.
epilogue
Although the sales of "The Trail of Dawn" are not good, because of Falcom's long-term healthy financial performance and superior cash flow in the past, the company does not have too many financial problems for the time being.
However, the decline in sales of "Li No Locus" is a signal, if the sales of "Lê No 2" debuted in 2022 appear again, then the entire Tracing series will soon face an embarrassing embarrassing situation, not to mention that Kondo Tsuiyo's premise republic chapter will end with the volume of more than three works.
For Falcom, more drastic changes may be needed to better adapt to this era.