As Japan’s online game market grows saturated and publishers struggle to sustain their games, many gacha and live-service games are facing inevitable shutdowns. Such fate also struck Tribe Nine, an action RPG co-developed by Akatsuki Games and Too Kyo Games, which announced its end of services only a few months following launch. However, the original creator of the franchise, Kazutaka Kodaka still hasn’t given up on the Tribe Nine IP – which is why he recently announced the launch of Neoneon Tribe, an unofficial and completely non-profit doujin circle, as a way to finish the story that will be prematurely cut-off due to the game ending services in November this year. Talking to AUTOMATON, Kodaka says that one of the main reasons behind this decision is that Tribe Nine’s playerbase deserves closure.
What Neoneon Tribe is doing is quite unprecedented, and Kodaka isn’t sure whether he wants to encourage other creators to follow in his footsteps and whether they’d even be able to pull it off. However, he emphasizes that “When an IP you created inevitably fails as a business, nothing much can be done there, however, I believe that [as developers] we have to find a way to offer our players a sincere conclusion.”
Online games require continuous management, frequent new updates and a budget that will be able to cover all of that while also turning a profit for the developers. As soon as that loop falls out of balance, games are forced to end services – no matter how popular a game is, such an outcome is inevitable in the long run. Live-service games are usually written without a clear ending in sight, as the format offers high potential for long-term continuation. However, that also means that developers are caught off guard when confronted with their project actually having to come to an end.
“Of course, creators can’t really go about making a game under the assumption that it is going to end services, it’s somewhat inevitable,” Kodaka says. “But I do believe that, as a way of taking responsibility for creating the game, one of the things creators should be thinking about when they start working on their project is how to wrap it up regardless of what happens to it.”
Despite not being directly involved in the development of Akatsuki Games’ Tribe Nine, Kodaka strongly felt this responsibility as the original creator of the franchise. Alongside Tribe Nine’s former producer Shuhei Yamaguchi and scenario writer Katsunori Suginaka, he will be delivering the rest of the game’s story through the web, with a game-like system currently in development by ChronoGate.
