It’s been a rollercoaster of a ride since E3 2011. We’ve gone from seeing “No plans at this time” to Nintendo of America announcing that two of the most critically acclaimed RPGs of this generation would indeed be coming to America. And we’ve still got a long way to go. What does this mean? Well, with Pandora’s Tower launching in Europe on April 13, we will be ramping up our efforts to promote the game both in Europe and here in America. We also have every intention of making sure Xenoblade Chronicles and The Last Story get the warm welcome they deserve when the titles launch in the Americas.
But many of you have been asking what the future of this campaign will be. Will we be adding another game to our campaign? Will we sit back, content that Nintendo has listened to the fans? Will we begin to branch out and discuss games from other publishers or titles that appear on other consoles? While we can’t directly answer all of those questions right here and right now, I can definitely tell you that the future of Operation Rainfall is right here, in our own community.
If Operation Rainfall proved anything, whether or not it was us or some other factor that prompted Nintendo to announce Xenoblade Chronicles and The Last Story, we showed the world that there is a passionate vocal audience in the West for games with the distinctive design flair from Japan, even on a console dominated by an ocean of casual consumers. This community was built from the ground up by passionate fans. We went from a rag-tag grass roots effort on the Wii boards of IGN to creating our own successful social media network. We’ve had the chance to speak one-on-one with people very close to the games, and even the developers themselves have spoken up in our behalf. Games media personalities, whether they love us or hate us, have written countless articles featuring Operation Rainfall. The impact of Operation Rainfall can’t be ignored. And we have you to thank. This brings us to the reason for setting up our new website.
Over the past nine months (yeah, it’s been that long), we’ve built up a presence across the internet, with a blog, forums, YouTube, store, and a page on nearly every social network you can think of. To date, all of these sites have been run as a disjointed group; with our various teams have splintered access to each site, and everything having its own unique look. With this new website, we intend to have everything all in a single place, a sort of one-stop-shop for all news and articles related to our games. Also, in the past, to save on our group members’ out-of-pocket expenses, we held back from using our own server and applications, and instead made use of third-party free solutions such as Blogger, CafePress, and FreeForums.org. While these solutions have worked to a large degree, in the long run they don’t offer the robust functionality we need to keep things running long term, so after much deliberation, the leaders of Operation Rainfall have decided to take things to the next level by acquiring hosting space and running our own software. We are very fortunate to have a team of staff that is both talented and passionate that enables us to take this leap.
You will see a lot of changes as we migrate to the new format, and the site may have a totally new look tomorrow, as we figure out what works best. Do you have feedback? Please let us know by sending an email to [email protected]. We are working hard to keep this community together, and by future-proofing all of our internet resources, we hope we’ll all be here for a long time to come.
If you haven’t already done so, take a moment to look around the site. Some parts are still under heavy construction, some may need a lot of graphic design, other parts may be just plain broken, please bear with us or “pardon our dust” as we continue to work on and polish up the site. With Facebook forcing all pages to the extremely inconvenient “Timeline” layout, we hope you will all join us in our forums or chat instead. The staff here loves to hang out and talk about games, your favorite type of soda, and all kinds of various off-topics. We have a lot of fun doing this, and hope you will stay and hang out with us.
Again, we are constantly looking for ways to improve the community, so let us know if you have any suggestions! It has been a rollercoaster since E3 2011 but no matter which direction we decide to take in the next few months, we hope you’ll stay for the ride.
Thank you to every single individual that has been a part of this community.
Sincerely,
Operation Rainfall Staff
