Reasons for Success: ‘Dragon quest Fan Passion’ and ‘Pokémon Go’

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Dragon quest walk has surpassed 5 million downloads in five days of release and 8 million downloads in 35 days, which is well ahead of the same Dracula smartphone app, Dragon Quest of the Stars.
It’s not quite the 7 million downloads in five days of Dragon Quest Rivals, but it doesn’t pale in comparison when you consider that Rivals started accepting pre-registration three weeks before release, while Dragon quest walk was a week before.
In its first 30 days on the market, the game has grossed about 9.3 billion yen, making it the second-highest-selling game of all time, behind only Pokémon Go’s 12.8 billion yen.

Why was Dragon quest walk a successful start?

The main reasons for this are, of course, Dracula’s name recognition and brand power, and the existence of Pokémon Go.
If Dracula, another national RPG, were to become a location-based game, it would attract a lot of attention.
In fact, Dracula Walk is often compared to Pokémon GO, and is also referred to as “Dracula GO” by some.

Its Pokémon GO has been the overwhelming leader in location-based games for three years now since its release.
Conversely, other location-based games have generally struggled, with some games that came out with a ringing endorsement but ended in less than a year.

There’s no single reason for their failure, but the common denominator is that they didn’t make the profits they were aiming for – users were reluctant to pay for them.
Even if the number of users itself is not that large, if the percentage of people who pay for the service is large, smartphone apps can continue to do so, even if it’s only modestly.
Almost without exception, the number of users who pay their bills is small when the service is terminated prematurely.

Then, the reason why there are so few paying users other than Pokémon GO is because they don’t have a passion for the game.

Because location-based games do not have a wide range of gameplay, they tend to become a work game, so it is difficult to keep users interested in them for a long time without attracting them with their stories and characters.
It is difficult to attract users for a long time without attracting them with the story and characters. Short term objectives are not important, but medium to long term objectives are not motivated, and they can’t develop feelings for the game. ……
Pokémon Go is based on the Pokémon series, which is popular among adults and children alike, so players are deeply attached to the game even before they play it, and they are able to stay motivated because of the short-term objective of collecting Pikachu and other famous Pokémon, as well as the medium- to long-term objective of collecting all the Pokémon.

Like Pokémon, Dracula Walk has an overwhelmingly large number of people who have an emotional attachment to the game before they play it, and there are likely to be a significant number of paying users.
Short term objectives include collecting pieces of guidance, digesting events, growing your character, collecting and strengthening the equipment you want, defeating mega-monsters …… and many more.
As is typical of Dracula, each character has an occupation, such as “Warrior” or “Wizard”, and you can learn specialties and spells for them, so learning powerful specialties and spells such as “Giga Slash” and “Begilagon”, which are familiar to Dracula fans, will be a goal.

As for the mid- to long-term objectives, there are plenty of challenging elements that only an RPG can offer, such as cancelling levels, compiling equipment and items, and encountering all the monsters.
More powerful spells such as Melazoma, Giga Dane, and Io Grande, popular weapons such as the Champion’s Sword and the Sword of the Sky, and advanced positions such as Battle Master and Sage will be implemented in the future as well.

Fans with an emotional attachment to Dracula will never be able to ignore these elements.
You shouldn’t start Dracula and end up not learning Melasma or Ionazun.

What does the future hold for you?

Even though it’s the first location-based game in the series, Dragon quest walk has a lot in common with Dragon Quest X, as it has a decent Dracula-like feel to it.
There was quite a lot of talk about this one in the beginning as it’s also the first online game in the series, but even though it’s an online game, it still has a solid Dragon quest-like feel to it, and it still has a significant number of active users more than seven years after its release.
Star Dracula is also celebrating its fourth anniversary, but it’s still going strong, and Dragon quest walk will be a game that will be around for a long time to come.

However, no matter how good the start is, there are some games that will get bored with users, no matter how well they carry the brand of a famous game.
It’s games that don’t have good end content.

The end content is the content for the players who have reached the level cap and have progressed to the point where they can continue to play the game.
If the end content is tasteless, the motivation of the hard-core gamers is completely eroded, and as a result, the number of users who pay for the game decreases rapidly.
Normally this is for heavy users, but for games with a wide range of players like Dracula 10, for example, there are calls for end content for light users.

Dracula Walk will be implementing a variety of additions in the future, and there will be more collaborations with other Dracula series and other games from Square and Coloplast, but it remains to be seen what direction the end content will take.
It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that this is the point where the game will be able to coexist with heavy users and light users in the future.

Also, location-based games have always had two major problems: “It’s hard to play in the countryside due to the lack of spots,” and “It causes people to walk around,” but Dracula Walk is relatively easy to play even in the countryside, and has a “walk mode” that automatically battles and recovers if you’re moving around on foot, so these problems are addressed to some extent.
However, there still seems to be room for improvement on the former.
If the game can be made to feel more advantageous to people living in the countryside, where entertainment is scarce, it may be able to attract a completely different user base than previous location-based games.

Summary

I’m cringing at the thought of you running an event that you can do at home during a typhoon!
I think this will be an app that will still have a lot of ideas thrown into it in the future.
We’re sure there will be end content as well, so let’s wait and see what happens!