By Nelson Schneider - 07/02/16 at 02:08 PM CT
With the impending release of the latest ‘Nu Trek’ movie, “Star Trek: Beyond,” and as the inexorable doom that is “Final Fantasy 15” closes in upon us, I have found myself reminiscing about these two much-beloved franchises. Specifically, I couldn’t help but notice how their best days both seem to be very far in the past. Further consideration reveals a number of bleak similarities regarding the ways that Square Enix and CBS Paramount have mishandled their biggest individual IPs.
Each Kept Getting Better and Better… Until 20 Years Ago
It’s fairly easy to draw this analogy. While “Star Trek: The Original Series” and “Final Fantasy” were both fairly rough around the edges, largely due to being products of their times, it was clear that both IPs clearly had ‘something’ and brought a unique flavor of nerd bait to the table. “Star Trek: The Next Generation” and “Final Fantasy 4” sanded off all the rough edges and put on a new coat of paint, creating immensely enjoyable follow-up experiences, while “Star Trek: Deep Space 9” and “Final Fantasy 6” brought stronger narrative structure and more drama to the template punched-out by their predecessors.
Then everything went wrong. “Star Trek: Voyager” and “Final Fantasy 8” messed with the formula too much, while simultaneously introducing dumb scenarios and annoying characters. “Star Trek: Enterprise” and “Final Fantasy 9” (and “Final Fantasy 12” for that matter) tried to put things back on track, but never really had the quality of writing needed to feel any better than derivative.
The Two-Fisted Attack: Nostalgia in the Right, Mainstream Appeal in the Left
Both IPs are sitting fairly idle, with mobile games microtransaction engines – “Star Trek: Timelines” and “Final Fantasy: Record Keeper” – that lean heavily on nostalgia for the older material. Likewise, both IPs are finding more success with banking on nostalgia than with anything new. ‘Nu Trek’ has lazily rebooted the first two ‘Star Trek’ movies, while ‘Final Fantasy’ is content to release all of its old classics on new platforms, like mobile and Steam. On the other hand, “Star Trek: Beyond,” like the two preceding ‘Nu Trek’ movies, looks to capitalize on the metrosexual good looks of its cast (and the neo-canon romance between Spock and Uhura), while “Final Fantasy 15” will follow the adventures of a J-Pop boy band (and bikini-clad jail-bait) out to save the world.
Playing Hard-to-Get
Perhaps the worst offense by both franchises is in the cynical way they’ve gone about creating and distributing new content in the old style. Square Enix released the classically-styled-yet-mediocre “Final Fantasy Dimensions” exclusively on mobile (quite possibly the worst platform for playing long-form games), while CBS Paramount has a new ‘Star Trek’ TV series in the works… that will not actually air on network TV after the pilot episode, but will be exclusive to the CBS All Access app… with paid subscription. The best way to shed fans is to do awkward, non-traditional things regarding distribution. Transforming two main-line ‘Final Fantasy’ games into subscription MMOs was dumb, as was deciding to air “Star Trek: Enterprise” on the now defunct UPN cable television ‘network.’ When IP holders make insane decisions like these, neither they nor the fans of their IPs benefit.
