April Fools’ Day is almost here again, a day when brands flood social media with fake announcements, when writers have to quadruple-check to make sure news is legitimate, and when people forget “what if X was a dating sim haha” stopped being funny years ago. You know what else stopped years ago? These jokes being stealth announcements for actual things. Like when Nintendo sneakily hinted at Fire Emblem Echoes, before leaving the offshoot subseries alone in a corner ever since, and Ryu Ga Gotoku cheekily revealed Yakuza 7 as a turn-based RPG as an April Fools’ “joke” (even though it started development that way long before the gag).
The downtick in silly fun — in general, not just around April Fools’ — coincides with a lot of serious events in the world and in the games industry, which has slowly been eating itself alive since Yakuza: Like A Dragon‘s release in 2020 (well, since before then too, but that’s another story). But it still sucks to see. And the impulse to not lean into the fun kinda seems like a missed opportunity for brands to stand out at a time when getting noticed is harder than ever.
Look at how Larian Studios has handled Baldur’s Gate 3. Sure, that game had the weight of Dungeons and Dragons behind it, but one of the things that helped it break through and reach beyond the D&D crowd was how the team leaned into its more ridiculous (launching gnomes from windmills) and risque (bear sex) aspects. Larian has continued to do it after launch so even something dry and analytical, like releasing player behavior stats, has an element of fun to it.
Then there’s Capcom, fully embracing how horny everyone is for Leon in Resident Evil Requiem, to the point where even Nintendo and McDonald‘s noticed and got in on the fun. When it’s done right, turning little things into big moments just works for everyone involved. Like RGG teasing Yakuza 7 as a traditional RPG. Planting that little idea of turn-based Yakuza in a “joke” got people thinking about it positively and in a lighthearted way, well before the proper announcement. Then when that announcement happened, people remembered the April Fools’ joke, and while there was still some trepidation about how such a change might work for the series, the buzz was generally positive. (Some people people thought series creator Toshihiro Nagoshi was serious when he said Sega had delayed the game to add turn-based combat mid-development).
For further proof of the power of spectacle, look no further than Blizzard’s big Overwatch relaunch. Did the Season 1 reboot add all that much new? No! Yeah, there were five new characters. But the structural changes that really made Overwatch different and better already happened last year. Quietly. Player counts weren’t that dramatically different until Blizzard turned the relaunch into a Big Deal, with in-game teases and coordinated publicity pushes. So many players logged in when Season 1 started that the servers couldn’t handle it, and player counts are still higher than they ever were.
Will we see some April Fools’ “jokes” this year? Who can say. It’s already been a tough year in the industry, and fun probably isn’t on a lot of people’s minds for that reason. But I hope publishers can eventually take the lessons from what worked for RGG, Larian, Capcom, Blizzard, Nintendo, and even McDonald’s, and start making a big deal out of the small stuff.