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What portion of modern FE's sales do you think is owed to the waifu/children stuff?


Alastor15243
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64 members have voted

  1. 1. Is the waifu and family shipping demographic significant enough to cripple sales were it not pandered to?

    • Definitely
      5
    • Probably
      11
    • It's Unclear
      17
    • Probably not
      24
    • Definitely not
      7


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I disagree that it would be "financial suicide" or anything like that if they stopped appealing to otakus so heavily as such a claim blatantly ignores...

1. A more appealing art style that appeals to more people than just otakus
2. Casual mode
3. Better advertising
4. Better availability 
5. High review scores

While it's always possible such a claim could be true, the fact that the person who made the claim has yet to provide any evidence that all 5 factors are irrelevant to the sales of modern fire emblem, and that otakus are solely responsible for the game's greater sales, makes me doubt the claim's legitimacy. 5 against 1. Additionally, we KNOW that things like better advertising happened and it helps games sell. Why do you think companies spend so much on it? Because it works.

Additionally, no one has yet proven things such as zelda has "a bit of otaku pandering" or that "Pokemon sells well because of otaku pandering". I'd like some evidence please.

I'm just extremely worried that, if you're right and IS discover that the games sell mostly because of waifu-pandering, then they'll crank that stuff up to eleven and greatly reduce the amount of fun I'm able to have will future fire emblem games. I really, really REALLY don't want that to happen!! 

Edited by Dinar87
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The fact you can have a mini dating sim and families in the games probably helped, especially between girls, but there are also many other factors that made Fates and Awakening sell, like the streamlining, the personal experience, the accessibility and the well studied art direction, so I am going to choose "Probably not".

The majority seems to think children were forced in Fates, too. Even my super casual friends who love the marriage and the match making side.
So in the end, what I think might matter the most is how much of the game is accessible and how much has a wide appeal, and with that I want to add that a personal experience doesn't not necessarily need to have the Avatar or S supports (although I would like to see a future game where the avatar can make truly game changing choices).

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21 hours ago, Dinar87 said:

Additionally, no one has yet proven things such as zelda has "a bit of otaku pandering" or that "Pokemon sells well because of otaku pandering". I'd like some evidence please.
 

Why do you think so many females fall in love with Link? That's what I meant by otaku pandering, especially considering that Link is an Avatar style of character.

Pokemon obviously sells well because of otaku pandering. What do you think the Pokemon TGC and other Pokemon products are for?

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43 minutes ago, Water Mage said:

Why do you think so many females fall in love with Link? That's what I meant by otaku pandering, especially considering that Link is an Avatar style of character.

Pokemon obviously sells well because of otaku pandering. What do you think the Pokemon TGC and other Pokemon products are for?

I wouldn't describe the amount of females link attracts as "so many" especially when I can personally only recall that one lady in skyward sword who falls in love with him besides zelda. Adding on to that, they're very, very tiny details in each of the games and barely get any attention or development and you'd think if they wanted to attract otakus they'd go all out at the market seems hard to compete in. I also don't think they intentionally tried to appease otakus by having female characters fall for link so much as that doesn't strike me as a very otaku pandering thing (as in, the characters sometimes looked very ugly which, if designed for otakus, would kill otaku interest in those characters). If anything, it's to simply add more depth to the world and to make everything feel more real and alive. 

What about kids and people who play new pokemon games for nostalgic reasons? I won't deny that there's probably some otakus that buy pokemon but I still can't understand how pokemon's sales are solely due to otakus. Maybe there's some products specifically designed for otakus but I don't see how the trading card game is one of them. As a kid, I collected (and even sometimes stole!) pokemon cards but now that I'm older I couldn't care less about them. However, some people may still buy them based on nostalgia and it doesn't seem like kids these days have grown out of pokemon or the trading cards. I also, again as a kid, bought a pikachu plush toy that I treasured because as a kid the thought of having something like a real life pokemon (and one as cute as pikachu no less) seemed appealing. It certainly wasn't because I was obsessed with anime and wanted pikachu to be mah waifu lol.

Tbh I don't really know for sure whether otakus are vital to fire emblem but I kind of doubt it to be honest when there's so many other factors to account for.

Edited by Dinar87
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6 hours ago, Water Mage said:

Why do you think so many females fall in love with Link? That's what I meant by otaku pandering, especially considering that Link is an Avatar style of character.

Pokemon obviously sells well because of otaku pandering. What do you think the Pokemon TGC and other Pokemon products are for?

 

Incorrect. At least in the west, girls were falling for Link long before he got the bishie sparkle in manga depictions, yo. Yeah, back in the 80s, many girls who played Zelda dug Link a bit because he was a young hero who saved a princess. Zelda also pandered more to the western audience in those days too and let me tell ya, that wasnt otaku. 

Pokemon products like the card game and toys and things, i reckoned were for  children given that was the initial target audience, mate. :| Like, come on, all these products like plushies and things...sure collectors are gonna want em but really? You think the majority of that was for mouthbreathing otaku? Marketing to kids fuels Pokemon chiefly.

As for FE, lmao no these things are not essential to the sales and success of the franchise. What did it, was better advertising, more visibility, Casual Mode, and stuff like that. The shipping aspect helped lure in a certain demographic, but its not as significant as Casual Mode. Casual Mode really changed a lot. It meant that FE didnt need to be relentlessly or unforgivingly difficult (permadeath scared assloads of people off the games). So it was more accessible. This was so significant, wow. Shipping and kids was like CRK said, brought in more young women and girls but i think they came in because of attractive looking anime characters and accessible gameplay. They stayed for the fluff. Fluff helps, but yeah. If FE stopped having so much fluff but was marketed the same way and with accessible gameplay, im sure the series wouldnt suffer THAT much. At least not in the west.

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I say probably not because I doubt people will pay $30+ just for that.

Now to be fair, I personally like to play match maker in Fire Emblem, but that won't really be hindered since marriage has been a thing in the series since(and correct me if I'm wrong) FE4. Marriage is a part of the series, maybe not super important, but a way for you to make the lives of your army more happy! The whole "Waifu" thing came about due to the avatar. So honestly, No Avatars=No Waifus...mostly anyway. Even if it does stay in...they should tone it down a bit.

As for the children...do it the way FE4 did it or bust. Awakening had the excuse of the children coming from the future, which worked and made sense plotwise and gameplay wise. In Fates, it's just shoehorned in and doesn't make a lot of sense(and also, pretty sure the time between each battle/chapter isn't 9 months...just saying). So yeah...either have a second generation part of the game like FE4 or don't put children units at all(or have some DLC thing that separates itself from the main game).

 

One of the main things that helped these games was advertising). It got good advertising and a lot of it. It helped a greatly(Edit: that and Casual mode, almost forgot that...whoops :sweatdrop:). While I can't exactly say how much, keep this in mind......(and also again, correct me if I'm wrong)Path of Radiance and Radiant Dawn had next to no advertising, and even if it did, it wasn't much( I sure as heck didn't see it...and I watched a lot more TV as a kid). Those game sold pretty badly(I think the worst in the series in terms of the US...probably Japan too).

For an example, I got lucky and saw PoR in my Gamestop because I didn't know PoR existed(I was just getting into FE a year or so ago, so it's understandable...I guess). For RD, I didn't even know it existed for a year or two before seeing it randomly online and saying "wait...there's a new FE game...and it's a PoR sequel?!"(Really sucks that I couldn't find a copy back then either...darn it all...)

...I always found it ironic, since(to me anyway), they're possibly the best games in the series...but they sold the worst in the series(ain't that some crap :sob:)!

Edited by Busterman64
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1 hour ago, Loki Laufeyson said:

Incorrect. At least in the west, girls were falling for Link long before he got the bishie sparkle in manga depictions, yo. Yeah, back in the 80s, many girls who played Zelda dug Link a bit because he was a young hero who saved a princess. Zelda also pandered more to the western audience in those days too and let me tell ya, that wasnt otaku. 

Pokemon products like the card game and toys and things, i reckoned were for  children given that was the initial target audience, mate. :| Like, come on, all these products like plushies and things...sure collectors are gonna want em but really? You think the majority of that was for mouthbreathing otaku? Marketing to kids fuels Pokemon chiefly.

But that's the point, even before Link got a bishie look, he had girls falling for him, and according to Miyamoto himself, Link is meant to be a self-insert of sorts. 

A self-insert character, who has lots of girls falling for him does sound like a bit like otaku pandering. I'm not saying it plays a huge part or anything, but there's definitively a bit there. 

Do you know about the rumor that Ocarina of Time was going to have to have dating sims elements. Well it wasn't dating sim elements, but Miyamoto wanted to include girls besides Zelda since Link is a boy that matures into a 16 year old. That's why there was Saria, Malon, Ruto, etc. Miyamoto previously commented that Navi had feelings for Link in the game.

Iwata Asks - Ocarina of Time 3D 2011
http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/#/3ds/zelda-ocarina-of-time/4/1

Iwata: More ideas sprang up than when you had just been basing the game around Adult Link. 

Miyamoto: Yes. When we decided to handle Link growing up from a 9-year-old child to a more mature 16-year-old, I wanted lots of characters to fulfill various roles. For example, Kaepora Gaebora is a grandfather figure who gives Link all kinds of advice and looks out for him. And since Link is a boy, I wanted girls besides Princess Zelda to show up. 

Iwata: And that's why Saria and Malon are there. 

Miyamoto Right. Also, Link's archenemy is Ganon, so I thought they should meet once when he's a child.

http://www.ign.com/articles/1997/11/27/the-z-files-4

Famimaga 64 - Nov 1997
http://web.archive.org/web/200104191...december97.htm
http://web.archive.org/web/201307211...iya-oot&m=html

Q: Does Link have a girlfriend?

Miyamoto: If it was Princess Zelda, it would be great. However, this time Navie [the fairy] is jealous of Zelda. So within the story, Navie feels something for Link.

Again, doesn't that sound a bit like otaku pandering? And again, I'm not saying it plays a huge part.

And about Pokemon, it's obvious that most of the products are aimed at children, but who do you think are the ones that buy them in bulk?

Edited by Water Mage
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That sounds to me more like them experimenting with Link as a character and the scope of that game more than simple pandering. Oddly enough, any kind of feelings Navi has for Link didnt make it in the finished product. Honestly, i think yer a little confused with adding love story elements to a game with otaku pandering. Understandable considering what gets incredibly jumbled up in gamer culture these days. 

Adults may buy Pokemon stuff and figmas/nendroids and things costing quite a bit of coin are otaku merch. But the card game? My dude...

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Fanservice probably does contribute to some interest in the series and might be a "staying" factor, but I highly doubt that.

As people earlier on the thread have said, a lot of us that did buy Awakening first didn't buy it for fanservice, we bought it because of marketing. I was interested in FE since Brawl and intended on buying the first FE that would be released after, yet I didn't even know Shadow Dragon existed until well after its release simply because a.) I wasn't actively searching for any ads and b.) There were hardly any ads to begin with.

Awakening on the other hand, was impossible to ignore. Trailers for it popped up on YouTube all the time, so of course I bought it when I could because at least I knew it existed this time around. And I didn't even know about the whole avatar/shipping mechanic until I got the game, the Smash Bros. advertising and second-hand accounts was enough to draw interest.

And even then, the gameplay in FE13 and 14 is considered by newer fans to generally be high-quality and engaging enough to continue playing the series. Fanservice is no where near as powerful as some say IMO.

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7 minutes ago, Loki Laufeyson said:

That sounds to me more like them experimenting with Link as a character and the scope of that game more than simple pandering. Oddly enough, any kind of feelings Navi has for Link didnt make it in the finished product. Honestly, i think yer a little confused with adding love story elements to a game with otaku pandering. Understandable considering what gets incredibly jumbled up in gamer culture these days. 

Adults may buy Pokemon stuff and figmas/nendroids and things costing quite a bit of coin are otaku merch. But the card game? My dude...

Perhaps I am seeing things with too much malice, since these days every male hero of japanese fiction such as anime, manga and games, has a lot of girls falling in love with them, even when it's not of the harem genre.

Perhaps I am being a little too judgemental towards japanese media culture.

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Yeah i think that could be the case. A little bit of bitterness in your posts, ive noticed. Link is essentially a shonen hero, that much is true. And the manga series for Zelda has a lot of typical anime junk in it. But a lot of that really isnt present in the games themselves since those are often developed with the west in mind. 

As for Pokemon, ill concede stuff like Pokemon Go being more for grown ups and the series is aiming to include everyone. But the anime and a huge portion of products made with that name are intended for kids. These two series are really hard to really fling the pandering to otaku labels on. Fates definitely did the otaku pandering and thats really what that looks like. Skinship, suggestive themes, including anime tropes and character quirks you find in non-mainstream anime (hell, some Fates characters have quirks found in ecchi works), etc. But also notice a lot of the backlash in the west about a lot of that stuff and even the outright removal of skinship (now we just hear them talk), and the rather different advertising and showcasing going on with Echoes. No avatars (that we know of), probably no marriage and if theres kids, ill eat my helm. The art direction has a somewhat more subdued vibe to it and not having real skimpy or revealing clothes and fanservice designs going on. (so far. Lets knock on wood, shall we?) FE Warriors seems to be less about panty shots and more about Chrom and Marth wrecking huge hordes of guys. So..maybe they are catching on that that sort of pandering doesnt really gibe well with the ginormous western market. 

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Another portion of Awakening's success was the fact that it has a free downloadable demo for 3DS owners that was released before the full game came out. Thanks to the aggressive advertising Awakening got leading up to its release, it was near impossible to ignore the free demo, allowing many 3DS owners to get a sample of Awakening, or even be exposed to Fire Emblem for the very first time. For me, the demo and the ads pretty much had me sold on getting the game and I knew nothing of all of the whole Waifu Emblem shenanigans that is a huge part of Awakening.

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Hey now, let's not confuse romance aspects with "otaku pandering". Romance is part of life and part of our growth, it only makes sense if in games like Zelda, which always deals with growth, there are slight elements of it. You can't really compare Malon and Zelda to anything Fates did.
Fates goes full on force with the romance mechanics: you can pet your virtual husband, have virtual children and what not. Very far from rooting for which girl will go with Link (which, by the way, is a thing I've mostly seen GIRLS doing instead of dudes).

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I think the waifu/children stuff brought in a lot of new fans who were never all that interested/aware of Fire Emblem, but I think Fates proved that the series can still sell well without it. I mean, Fates still had it, but it was de-emphasized, and I saw more criticism towards it than praise for its return.

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Yikes, some of the language in this thread is nauseating.

From what I've seen, the art style and better advertising of Awakening were what drew newcomers in; I was drawn in by the former, and the support system in general, although I wouldn't have continued playing if the gameplay wasn't also good. 

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