Dragon Quest 9: Crossing to Casual?

I fell in love with Dragon Quest 4 years ago when my friend Adam told me that this cute blue Hershey's Kiss thing was actually a monster that you fight in the game! Now I can make a whole slime outfit for my warrior (named after my husband Dave)

However, I had a hard time finishing Dragon Quest 8, on the PS2. Random battles made the experience way too slow, and not rewarding enough. Too much grinding, it was not possible to get even the first success in the first dungeon without grinding back and forth on the low-level monsters.

Also I wished it was on the DS so I could play where I play most other long RPGs, on my commute to work! I did buy and finish DQ4 on the DS.

But I have been looking forward to a new DS DQ for a while. Enter DQ9: Sentinels of the Starry Skies, which I bought on launch day, July 11.

The developers (Yuji Horii, creator of the series; Level 5/Square Enix, the developers; and publisher, Nintendo) seem to be trying quite hard to make this game more palatable for at least 3 "new" audiences, and I think they have succeeded:

1. Americans (Dragon Quest/Warrior just not very popular here in US but is HUGE in Japan. My friend Andrew who is a Pokefan, had never heard of DQ).
   
2. Women (see link to Iwata Asks interviews on my earlier blog post - addition of char customization, they think has helped this. Game is more popular with Japanese women than the previous titles too). They've also focused on several other "casual" features that we focus on to improve conversion for our games at PlayFirst (list below)
   
3. Kids - The series is 25 years old so many of the original fans are now parents and teaching their kids about Dragon Quest. Horii-san said in the Iwata Asks interview, that they wanted the local multiplayer feature so that parents could play directly with their kids and teach them about the game together.

Here are some of the specific "casual" features that I think contribute to DQ9's improvements over at least DQ8, if not the entire series. Also, I know that overall the marketing of the game is focused on the new multiplayer features, but here in the US I think that people will fall in love the most with single player first and then use that fandom to suck others into the multiplayer.

Customization, Metastructure (with clear goals) and Rewards.

Laura Shigihara's "Girls in the Video Game Industry" series

http://shigi.wordpress.com/2010/07/06/girls-in-the-video-game-industry-1-tammy-tsuyuki/

for reference.

Dragon Quest 9

Iwata Asks about Dragon Quest 9
Currently listening to these 10 interviews with Yuji Horii (designer of the Dragon Quest series) Satoru Iwata (Pres, Nintendo), and Ryutaro Ichimura (Producer, Square Enix).

Focus seems to be to explain and promote Dragon Quest in general and especially this latest game, for the American/Western audience.

They point out that in Japan, they are seeing a lot more women playing DQ9 for the first time, they attribute this to the character customization feature.

A "Patty's Pub" spontaneously opened in Akhihabra.

"It has become a social phenomenon." - Treasure Maps are randomly generated and people share them. One person found an amazingly good map and then they started sharing it in public - for example, at the Akhihabra pub. Kids asking their dads to take their DS with them when they go on business trips in other cities, for the Tag Mode sharing.

Have played the first hour or so of the game and it is so far much better than DQ8 for me. Progression in the early town is faster, it's more rewarding to have the multiple goals of helping people, and I really appreciate being able to choose from my random battles.

I can run back from an early dungeon/boss area to the town, and completely bypass all the slimes and other small fry that will only give me 1 exp point each. In DQ8, I had to bump into all of them.

In one segment, they said that they wanted parents to be able to play with their kids, go in and fight monsters that might be scary, etc. They also call out girlfriends playing the game only to play with their boyfriends. What about girlfriends pushing boyfriends to play?

Iwata points out that for turn-based games like this, the skill and reflexes are not as big of an issue. Horii adds, "Anyone can play through it if they give it a chance".

Siliconera article.