The Twitter feed of former Square Enix business director Jacob Navok is a treasure trove of arguments that I don’t entirely agree with, but I find myself nodding along to his comparison of Final Fantasy and Star Wars. In essence, he says, both series have the same problem: the established fan base is getting older, and what should be the new fan base is very small.
Navok shared a report, citing Variety, which noted that Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu has not gone down well, struggling at the box office and earning some series-low ratings. For the first proper Star Wars movie in seven years, that’s an especially big problem.
The report reasons that the movie isn’t “finding audiences ‘beyond an aging group of core fans,'” and is losing ground to fresher, more cheaply made movies like Backrooms and Obsession. Navok focuses on these points.
“If you don’t think this is Square Enix’s issue with the Final Fantasy IP and aging, I have a bridge to sell you,” he says. “The kids are growing up with AI slop games on Roblox, in the same way that 20-somethings grew up with YouTubers. If you aren’t growing up with the current generation you are dead as a franchise.”
First, some details orbiting this point. In March, it was reported that 77% of US Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth players were 30 or older, with 62% over 35, reflecting the aging JRPG audience.
This closely followed comments from Final Fantasy 14 boss Naoki “Yoshi-P” Yoshida, who suggested that younger people “haven’t really had the chance to connect” with Final Fantasy in part because new games are released so far apart nowadays, making it easy to miss or forget new installments, and making it harder to get attached long-term.
A lot of older Final Fantasy games hold up pretty well and are widely available, but they generally make their money trading in nostalgia. Meanwhile, Final Fantasy 17 is nowhere to be seen, and the mainline games have to contend with increasingly intimidating numbers attached to the end, even if they are all independent stories (barring the likes of Final Fantasy 10-2).
Which is all to say: Navok has a point. This problem is not exclusive to Final Fantasy or Star Wars, either. Games, especially legacy franchises, are really fighting to reach younger players in a very mature market. It’s sort of the MMO new-player problem on an industrial level: you need to keep bringing new people in or you’ll eventually hit a wall following an inevitable decline in audience.
Roblox and Fortnite have found a huge young crowd (and, particularly the former, attracted enormous regulation and safety concerns), and hits like REPO have hit a similar vein. Yet the biggest IP from Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are consistently selling to the same players, and they ain’t getting any younger. I should know; I’m one of ’em.
As a counterpoint, I have heard some optimism in this space from devs – at GDC, for instance – who hope to see kids aging out of Roblox develop an interest in other games, including some that hit similar multiplayer and sandbox elements. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a rise in games like that in the coming decade, similar to the post-Minecraft era – some of them made by former Roblox kids who now want to play something that isn’t hot garbage.
Crying over Final Fantasy 10 was one of the moments that inspired the creator of a PS3 classic to make games: “It’s so beautiful and it’s so melancholy.”
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