“I downloaded it a month after I met the person I’d marry — now we have a toddler.” vsmack, one of several Redditors I ask about Square Enix’s long-running mobile game Final Fantasy Record Keeper, tells me. The free-to-play gacha, with its impressive sprite-based artwork and series trademark Active Time Battle system, united the passions of a generation of Final Fantasy aficionados. On September 29, publisher DeNA will shut down its global servers forever. “The crazy thing is, for all the other games that I've loved over the years, I know one day my little kid might be able to play it,” vsmack continues. “Not so [for] Record Keeper.”
Mobile games like Final Fantasy Record Keeper are at a unique disadvantage in the war for video game preservation. So long as they’re profitable, their servers are active. They exist. When the time comes to close the gates, they vanish completely, only living on in the minds of those who played them.
It’s easy to cast an all-consuming doubt upon gacha-based games given their frequently predatory practices. You can start for free, and it’s hypothetically possible to get through an ever-rising mountain of content without engaging in the premium currency systems reliant upon you digging out your wallet, though frequently unrealistic.
Predictably, some gacha are far worse than others, crippling free-to-play players with insurmountable handicaps. Tack on the limited-time events sporting the chance to gamble for your favorite characters and weapons, and it’s clear that players with a strong sense of FOMO are the primary targets.
But most fans I spoke to share in the sentiment that Record Keeper hasn’t been quite as ruthless on the freemium front. It’s a common refrain among mobile gaming communities that their favorite gacha is less predatory than the competition, but perhaps there is truth to these claims that the profit-pumping leash is more relaxed here. In the cutthroat F2P mobile genre, few titles from 2014 have managed to make it to 2022. Did Record Keeper survive for so long on relative goodwill? The more fiendish dollar-grabbing mechanics found in newer fare, like Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, are nowhere to be found.
In fact, unfavorable commentary on Brave Exvius reached a fever pitch upon the announcement of Record Keeper’s shutdown. To an extent, this is inevitable. But that game’s Facebook staff made the critical error of not reading the room. An hour after announcing, DeNA's social media team decided to refer players to Brave Exvius,” explains Redditor SherlockBrolmes. “[Since] almost all of us were heartbroken and surprised by the [End of Service] announcement, recommending a different game was in poor taste.”
Poor taste or not, it dampens the theory that Record Keeper might have survived on goodwill - Brave Exvius is still going while Record Keeper is being shut down.
I spoke to Alex Donaldson, Assistant Editor at VG247 and director of RPG Site, about his thoughts on his own journey with Final Fantasy Record Keeper. Donaldson says he spent a significant amount of time and money happily glued to the game and has fond memories galore.
“It was just an extremely pure expression of the [Active Time Battle] system, and as someone who loves that aspect of the FF series, it was a really pleasurable way to pass the time.” In earlier stages, Record Keeper sticks to the autopilot ease that many of its contemporaries employ, but unlike some other mobile titles, then grows in complexity. Donaldson vividly recalls the almost MMO raid-like struggles of the more difficult content. “You'd have to pay extreme attention as delays of less than a second on your inputs could be the difference between victory and failure.”
One thing the Record Keeper community tends to share is that they’ve always been well aware that mobile games come and go, and any cash they’ve poured in grants access to assets of an intrinsically temporary nature. It’s an idea Donaldson himself is at peace with. “I know I spent a lot of money on the game over the years. I wouldn't care to look back and know how much as I imagine it'd not feel great to know. [As far as] money spent goes, I spent it knowing mobile games come and go. I had my fun with it.”
Though most players have paid a little bit of cash to keep the wheels turning, Record Keeper, like most mobile games, preyed mostly on whales. Following the shutdown announcement, Record Keeper’s social media channels were flooded with an unsettling assortment of gamers lamenting a crisis. Some fans poured tens of thousands into their gambling addiction, treating five-star Cloud Strifes like hitting the jackpot on the Las Vegas Strip.
The gentle start, the steep spike, the reliance on FOMO, the predatory ‘one more go’ tactics, the weighted odds, the pity mechanics - casinos and gacha games use the exact same playbook to keep the cash flowing. The only difference is a real doozy — the Cloud sprite is ultimately an ephemeral bit of artwork; if you win in Vegas, you win real money that lasts, at least for as long as you can keep it out of the one-armed bandits’ pockets. As fondly remembered as Record Keeper may be, this predatory backbone will continue to cast a shadow on the entire genre.
Whether it’s true or not, fans have held onto the belief that Record Keeper is a less money-grubbing gacha than most. Throughout the years, Reddit threads popped up with soothing reminders that you didn’t need to drop dollars to have a good time, and that occasional purchases to support the developers is a far cry from collapsing into a void of debt. Bonds were forged, and the game became invaluable as a hobby, not a hindrance. “It's been part of my daily life, and losing it makes me a little bit sad more than I can acknowledge,” Redditor chickenblackhole tells me.
My time with Donaldson culminated with his take on the crux of the issue surrounding Record Keeper’s shutdown. It’s mobile gaming’s biggest problem — impermanence.
“[This] is a piece of Final Fantasy history lost to time,” he says. “In the case of Record Keeper in particular, there's a lot of wonderful music and sprite art tied up in this little mobile experience that can't be found anywhere else. Fans will do their best to archive this, but it's still not the same as having a perpetually available offline build, which is what I'd encourage any company shutting down a service game to do as their final act.”
Could Donaldson’s preference for preservation one day become the mobile norm? I’m not especially confident, but I’d love to be mistaken. Plenty of gachas come and go, and not a ton of value is lost. But Final Fantasy Record Keeper is a sterling example of why the industry should take a long, hard look at the genre as more than just a cynical cash grab, but a piece of art that video game creators have touted as relevant in everything from indie gems to industry-shaking triple-A behemoths.