Video games are winning again
The legend of “Dragon Quest Day” continues forever. I remember hearing about it as a kid and probably hearing about it sometimes. The phenomenon where Dragon Quest release days are legislated by the Japanese government or “holidays” are assigned for people to take off during a release.
It is not exactly true, however Dragon Quest the releases have had interesting impacts on Japan’s cultural fabric. It was confirmed, years later, that Enix deliberately moved the launches to Saturdays under public pressure because the children were skipping school.
But all over the world, so do people take time off from work for games. Releases com Destiny and other major shooters are full of practice. I Monster Hunter Rise (coming out this Friday) is no exception; that’s why a Japanese company does something about it.
Shared on Twitter, the Mark-on company is taking things first hand; the Go up the release is now considered a public holiday. The idea came about because there were so many employees taking the day off, that the boss (CEO Masaki Hiyama) decided to say “screw” and call it washing.
Considering success Monster Hunter World was, how good are the reviews and how many Switch consoles are there in the world (approximately 80 million), there will be a lot of people playing that first day. I suspect this company is not alone in terms of responding to layoffs.
Jack Masaki [Twitter via Gaijinhunter]
