Reality Check: Operation Moonfall Proved Majora’s Mask isn’t Popular

I am sure there is going to be some hefty backlash on this today, but I can’t help but take a realistic look at what Operation Moonfall has accomplished. As one of the founders of the movement, the hope was to drum up enough support in wake of Eiji Aonuma’s own words to show Nintendo their was a viable sales market and demand for Majora’s Mask 3D. Fast forward over two years later and it’s become clear: Operation Moonfall only proved to Nintendo how little demand there really is for Majora’s Mask 3D.

Regardless of what the movement has become these days, and I admit it’s a shell of its former self and I am part of that reason, it’s not like it was exactly bursting at the seams during its heyday. As of this writing, the largest support mechanism for the movement has been the online petition, which as of today as 55,508 signatures. Outside of the fact I know there are people that signed it multiple times (they admitted as much back when the petition was heavily promoted), that’s a piss poor amount of fan support to make a game realistically viable. 55,000, even if it translated to 55,000 in sales, is rather pathetic. Ocarina of Time 3D had no such movement for its existence but still sold over 3 million units based on the game’s popularity alone, and that’s just under half of the original game’s sales. So, obviously the counter argument is that sales of Majora’s Mask would be much higher than the movement itself because the game is popular. Not so fast.

3.36 million people bought Majora’s Mask back during its heyday. Those seem like decent numbers in comparison to Skyward Sword sales, but we’re not talking about that type of comparison. A remake of Ocarina of Time almost sold that many. The fanbase for a game like Majora’s Mask is a mere small fraction of that of Ocarina of Time. But wait, this isn’t about debating game popularity right? I said in the title that Operation Moonfall itself proved how small the fan base is. Okay, so let’s dive right into that hot mess.

For those unaware, there is essentially a four headed snake that is the online Zelda community. There are certainly other fan sites and other Zelda communities across the internet, but these four are larger than the rest and have the largest contingency of the fanbase available to them. Those sites are Zelda Informer, Zelda Universe, Zelda Dungeon, and Zelda Wiki. When you type Zelda into the search engine of your choice, no matter where you are in the world, one of those four sites are surely going to be on page 1, if not all four of them, and if not they will all be present by the end of page 2.

I obviously can’t give exact stats for all four websites, but I have a rough idea. Zelda Dungeon is the biggest in terms of traffic and popularity. Last I got from them is they get between 40 to 50k a day. Think about that: in a singular day they get as many viewers as fans of Operation Moonfall got in 2 years. Zelda Informer got 50,000 unique visitors just yesterday. While that’s an abnormally large day for us, we still usually churn out close to 30,000 viewers a day. On the year we have served or 3 million different Zelda fans – or as they say, the total sales of Ocarina of Time 3D. We’ve served that many different Zelda fans just this year. Zelda Dungeon has served even more. Zelda Wiki and Zelda Universe are a tad smaller than that, but they still probably served close to 3 million themselves. Each. There is obviously some crossover in that traffic, but lets say collectively those four sites get about 4 million or so of the Zelda fanbase passing through them each year. That’s a pretty large contingency of the fan base according to game sales. Over half of it, actually.

Meanwhile, Operation Moonfall has 40,000+ followers on Facebook and 55,000+ signatures on a petition. Zelda Informer’s Facebook is at 175k. Zelda Dungeon has 255k. Zelda Universe has 231k. That’s 661k combined fans on Facebook alone. 40,000…vs 661k. I think we can start to see a disturbing trend here.

I am a proud founder of the Operation Moonfall movement. I firmly believed in what we were hoping to accomplish, and we certainly did get Eiji Aonuma’s attention, which, while that wasn’t wholly the main goal, is still an accomplishment to feel proud of. However, the actual movement itself is stupidly small, and it really begs the question on just how popular Majora’s Mask really is. It’s become popular opinion to think that rereleases on the Virtual Console would sell well, due to what many felt was a uptick in fandom for Majora’s Mask in almost Hipster-like fashion, but for that to happen it would actually need to be a popular thing to do. Rather, it appears the Majora’s Mask fans are simply an extremely vocal minority among the Zelda fandom on the whole. Unfortunately, Operation Moonfall has largely gone on to prove just that.

That doesn’t mean we won’t ever get Majora’s Mask 3D some day, but chances are it won’t be because of a relatively small fan movement that actually showed how few people really want it to begin with. I still support the cause, but I can’t change reality. Add this onto the heels of news that movements with 100,000 folks don’t have much of an impact according to Reggie, and this really puts things in perspective. Operation Moonfall isn’t even in THAT category. Operation Moonfall was mentioned by less than 1/5th of the websites that showed support for Operation Rainfall. Sometimes I hate facts.

Operation Moonfall may be a detriment to what it hopes to accomplish. I hate saying that out loud. I hate typing that. I wish I had a way to sugar coat this. Operation Moonfall showed a lot of passion in the fanbase, but it also showed just how small the demand truly is.