When Nintendo announced last year that it would not be bringing cult classic Japanese RPG Xenoblade Chronicles to North America, it was no surprise that the decision drew heavy Internet protest from a subgroup of dedicated gamers. After all, groups of gamers are constantly banding together online to demand everything from LAN support in Starcraft II to a Full House game (don't lose hope, Danny Tanner super-fans!)

But Operation Rainfall, as the Xenoblade protest group came to be known, differed from other grassroots gamer protests in one important way: it worked. Not only has Nintendo given Xenoblade Chronicles a North American release date of April 2, but the company announced last week that The Last Story, another Japanese RPG the group has been pushing to see release in North America, will come across the ocean this summer through publisher XSEED games.

The success of Operation Rainfall shows that a small group of niche gamers can occasionally effect change from a big-name game publisher, as long as they're willing to keep up the pressure and do a bit of out-of-the-box promotion.

The beginning

The beginnings of Operation Rainfall were already taking shape mere hours after a Nintendo France PR rep said last June that Xenoblade Chronicles would be missing from that year's E3 trade show because the company "didn't want to show products they aren't planning to sell." An IGN forum poster by the handle themightyme was the first to suggest that Japanese RPG fans follow the example set by fandoms for TV shows like Veronica Mars and Jericho, who bombarded executives with messages and pithy, in-joke shipments to show their support. Soon, the Operation Rainfall movement was officially up and running, recruiting support through widespread coverage on game-focused media outlets.

"As soon as I saw that there was a campaign forming to do something about it, I just knew I had to be part of it," said Ryan Tyner, who joined with the group in late June and rose to be one of the Operation's leaders by November. "I wanted these games!"

The question remained, though, of how many others shared Tyner's enthusiasm. Japanese RPGs are a bit of a niche genre in the West, where the often convoluted stories and repetitive, drawn-out gameplay usually have trouble breaking through to wide audiences (with the notable exception of the modern Final Fantasy series). The North American Wii audience seems especially ill-suited for such games, with a larger-than-normal proportion of older, more casual players who likely bought the system more for Wii Fit and less for a challenging, story-heavy role-playing experience. Given all this, it's hard to blame Nintendo for its initial decision not to localize the games.

But while Tyner acknowledges this viewpoint, he says he thinks Nintendo made a mistake in assuming that the games wouldn't sell to a North American audience. "Our argument was never that these games would make Nintendo a fortune, but rather, these games could still be profitable and make Nintendo money, and that there is at least a reasonable sized audience that would buy these games," he said.

The time for action

To prove that support existed, Operation Rainfall encouraged its members to send polite, respectful letters to Nintendo of America asking for the games' release, along with optional, symbolic plastic cocktail swords enclosed. For maximum impact, the group arranged to have the letters appear at NOA's Redmond headquarters in pre-set waves, going so far as to create shipping zone maps to help coordinate the letters' arrival to the day.

While previous gamer groups often threw up an easy-to-ignore Internet petition and stopped, Operation Rainfall kept up the pressure with constant e-mail and phone call campaigns to NOA. The group also took to fronts like Twitter and Facebook with overwhelming commenting force—one message about the games on the Nintendo Facebook account got nearly 8,000 comments from supporters. The group also set up accounts on everything from Google+ to DeviantArt to keep supporters engaged and communicating.

But Operation Rainfall also used tactics that were a bit less conventional. Members filled out interactive surveys through the Wii's Nintendo Channel showing that they thought "highly" of previous RPGs and Japanese imports on the system. They copied Japanese form letters to e-mail to Nintendo of America's corporate parent. They even put down Amazon preorders for Monado: The Beginning of the World, a dummy entry in the online retailer's database that referred to the original title for Xenoblade Chronicles. That move raised the title from a 12,000+ sales rank in Amazon's Video Games category to the number four position in a matter of days—not bad for a title that didn't actually exist at the time.

With nearly 11,500 registered with the group's Facebook page, Tyner said he has been a bit shocked to see just how deep the support for the cause went. "I mean, I knew there were surely people out there that wanted these games. I knew that just by reading comments on news articles about the games as well as in message forums. But I was surprised to see how many people were joining in on flooding Nintendo of America's Facebook wall back in the end of June," he said.

Having a lot of like-minded people providing support didn't mean it was easy to keep up morale, though. After a few months of sustained pressure, with no official response from Nintendo since June, Tyner said the group was beginning to lose hope. "Many of our followers on Facebook and Twitter were becoming pessimistic, and honestly, while we tried to be optimistic publicly, privately we were all having serious doubts," he said. "Ironically, the lowest point of the campaign might have been on December 1st, when another month arrived with no news in sight. But then December 2nd came and Xenoblade was announced [for North America]. It was just what we needed."

Did it really work?

Nintendo, for its part, says that Operation Rainfall wasn't actually the sole reason behind the eventual decisions to bring Xenoblade Chronicles and The Last Story to North America. "Our fans are very passionate, and have demonstrated an interest in this game," a company representative told Ars Technica. "We certainly appreciate this passion, but it alone did not impact our decision to launch the game or the timeframe in which it would launch."

But Tyner doesn't buy it. "The fact that they revealed [Xenoblade Chronicles] on Facebook is telling, considering that is where the campaign asked for the game," he said. "There are other little 'signs' such as [NOA President Reggie Fils-Aime] stating in the The Last Story reveal that many people had been 'clamoring' for the game. Privately, we had inside sources that confirmed that Nintendo was taking notice of us and that it was indeed because of our efforts that these games were being released..."

However, Tyner also admits that the decision to release in North America was probably made easier by the existence of English-translated European versions of the two games, which had already been released on the other side of the Atlantic. "Really, it was just a matter of the circumstances being ideal for our campaign," he said. "I think we showed them that if they did bring the games over, people would buy them. But of course there is also the fact that our member participation has been great, and that the staff has worked hard to make this happen. I work harder on Operation Rainfall some days than I do on my actual job."

Next steps

Operation Rainfall isn't resting on its current successes. The group is still working to get a North American release for a third Japanese Wii RPG, Pandora's Tower. "We are still working on the details as to when we'll start our Pandora's Tower push," Tyner said. "We had originally planned a month dedicated to the game, just like we just did with The Last Story, in May. But the game is now going to be released in Europe on April 13th so we may need to start the month earlier."

Even with Xenoblade and The Last Story, though, Tyner said the effort isn't done until the games are actually flying off of store shelves. "We hope that people go out and buy these games when they are released," Tyner said. "If we show that these games will be bought, companies, and not just Nintendo, will be more likely to release similar games in the future."