[Jotaku]

YES, ANIME GAMES ARE DYING (CONFIRMED BY GOOGLE TREND)

As stated in this page, anime games have long history from 1980's.
Comparing to the era long time ago, recently I felt like seeing less anime gamers in general comparing to long time ago, and there was actually a reason.


(anime games popularity since 2004-present)

Well, as this graph clearly shows, anime games perform worse than the era before 2010. It keep continually decreasing since that. There were a little increase around 2020, but I guess that is only because of Genshin Impact. I am pretty sure if Genshin Impact loses its popularity, anime games will start to decrease again.

I would safely predict that there will be only hard otaku left at the end of anime gaming, or it already happened in every anime games except Genshin Impact.

Then what about anime?


(anime popularity since 2004-present)

Oppositely animes are doing great and gain lots of popularity after 2019. Strange, if animes are doing great, anime games should gain popularity as well but it is decreasing alone. This means that either people lost their interests in gaming, OR, anime game developers make poorer anime games. In order to determine which one is correct, we need to research on how gaming is doing as well.


(gaming popularity since 2004-present)

Well, this clearly shows that gaming also gained more popularity just like anime. Then, what we can clearly assume is that only anime games are dying, probably because of that anime game developers make poorer anime games.

Importantly, what we can assume another one thing here is that, even though there is a growth of anime, most of them fall into non-anime games when it comes to video gaming. I see lots of discord servers titled like "anime & gaming server", where anime games are not really covered when it comes to their gaming but non-anime games are mostly covered. That is probably the most reasonable reason why there is growth in anime and video gaming, but only not anime games. So that means, most anime people are not interested in anime games, which is very sad.

Therefore, yeah sadly, anime games are dying. Thus, the community like us should give more effort and get united in order to help anime games.

Please feel free to leave your comments!

[RainVGC]

I believe Anime Games have become less popular because there is now a greater disparity in gameplay quality between mainstream games and anime-esque games. For games of the past, it was definitely idea>gameplay. Think of a lot of the old retro games, they were simple but original. Nowadays the technology has improved, the budgets have improved, and now the standard tends to be set at idea+gameplay. Genshin Impact has definitely temporarily bridged that disparity but it will only last for so long unless more stuff sprouts up following the recent success/popularity of Genshin.

Don't get me wrong, there are some games that aren't terrible like Sword Art Online, Code Vein ect. but I feel like they sit in that middle ground to that very few people will go out of their way to buy them unless they are already huge fans of the show or developers beforehand. So yeah I can totally understand why they may have been declining, especially when it's only a few games that have somewhat of a playerbase holding the whole genre up and even those lack an enjoyable postgame or replayability.

[Jotaku]

I believe Anime Games have become less popular because there is now a greater disparity in gameplay quality between mainstream games and anime-esque games. For games of the past, it was definitely idea>gameplay. Think of a lot of the old retro games, they were simple but original. Nowadays the technology has improved, the budgets have improved, and now the standard tends to be set at idea+gameplay. Genshin Impact has definitely temporarily bridged that disparity but it will only last for so long unless more stuff sprouts up following the recent success/popularity of Genshin.

Don't get me wrong, there are some games that aren't terrible like Sword Art Online, Code Vein ect. but I feel like they sit in that middle ground to that very few people will go out of their way to buy them unless they are already huge fans of the show or developers beforehand. So yeah I can totally understand why they may have been declining, especially when it's only a few games that have somewhat of a playerbase holding the whole genre up and even those lack an enjoyable postgame or replayability.

I think your opinion has very good details with main points on why they cannot perform comparing to old days. 

It sounds like for anime niche game companies it is hard to qualify your 2 points (idea & gameplay) due to the budget.

Usually manga came first then anime are made based on those successful mangas. Thus anime can easily grow. But anime games can't because of the reasons you said. 

I absolutely agree with you. 
Thanks for identifying current problems so clear and visible.

[Jotaku]

I believe Anime Games have become less popular because there is now a greater disparity in gameplay quality between mainstream games and anime-esque games. For games of the past, it was definitely idea>gameplay. Think of a lot of the old retro games, they were simple but original. Nowadays the technology has improved, the budgets have improved, and now the standard tends to be set at idea+gameplay. Genshin Impact has definitely temporarily bridged that disparity but it will only last for so long unless more stuff sprouts up following the recent success/popularity of Genshin.

Don't get me wrong, there are some games that aren't terrible like Sword Art Online, Code Vein ect. but I feel like they sit in that middle ground to that very few people will go out of their way to buy them unless they are already huge fans of the show or developers beforehand. So yeah I can totally understand why they may have been declining, especially when it's only a few games that have somewhat of a playerbase holding the whole genre up and even those lack an enjoyable postgame or replayability.

While this statement is very true, I think and guess about another extra reason why anime games cannot be popular is because popularity of reddit, youtube, twitter, discord things just made people scatters around many different things, topics and places. They are just mess and they don't provide microservices for specific subject only (e.g. anime games) for its fans (anime gamers). Usually their services are developed and implemented to be a general platform to fit well into any subjects but neither focus only on anime games nor provide microservice for anime games only. So people interested in a common subject (e.g. anime games) cannot just focus on only one subject (anime games) in just one place (because there are youtube, twitter, discord, etc, just so many places making people scattered). At the end, anime gamers cannot gather well each other. Thus, entire subject "anime games" cannot grow then dies off at the end. Addtionally, from what I have seen, most gaming communities focus on one game, or one subject, or one individual person so they kinds of fail to promote other people to feel a sense of willing to play other anime games, so that means circulation between anime games are very limited: they just quit the anime game they played if the game dies, and play another game they newly like regardless of it being a non-anime game or anime game. I don't say it is wrong behavior but this specifically means that anime games' naturally attracted target group which doesn't require much advertising efforts are only "weebs", otherwise the anime game must be in high quality in order to attract non-weeb regular gamers. In other words, naturally anime games are for a group of very small number of people who are very weebish naturally looking for anime games to play for their gaming life. Unfortunately, there are very very small number of such people. There are so many reasons why anime games cannot grow. But I do think lacking in circulation only between anime games (a person previously played an anime game fails to play another anime games in the future but play non-anime games), and none of anime game companies want to advertise anime games of other anime game companies. Circulation inside of anime games failed.

What if they fail to circulate anime gamers insides of anime games? Then they will compete against non-anime games such as Fortnite, LoL, Diablo, StarCraft, CSGO, etc. I believe competing with those games is much much harder lol

[Jotaku]

Article updated as of September 2022.