Well, as the guy who made that trailer, I appreciate the compliment. But I also disagree with it -- we've had some pretty spectacular trailers these last few years, including countless awesome ones from Brittany (her Last Story trailer was incredible), countless awesome ones from Kelly (I really liked her most recent Blood Drive trailer, and am really pleased with what she was able to put together for our E3 Return to PopoloCrois trailer considering the game was still 90% in Japanese), and we even had Ryan step in to deliver a seriously kick-ass trailer for Earth Defense Force 4.1 recently (the EDF games are his babies, and he really brought it all to the table with that one!).
Trailer-making is a time-consuming process, though, so we usually stick with two per game, soooooometimes going with 3 (though very rarely), and even sometimes just one (much less rarely). So Ys VI really didn't get any less trailer time than any other titles, and the trailer it did get was a pretty good one.
So I'm pretty confident that SC will do well for us -- the game's just so long, it'll take a while for word of mouth to spread. But when it does, boy howdy!
As someone who is going to be involved with an RPG trailer in the near future, have any tips?
I definitely agree! I think we'll see something similar here to Freedom Planet - media mostly ignores the game, but the word of mouth is great and the game steadily goes on to sell quite respectably,
Well, as the guy who made that trailer, I appreciate the compliment. But I also disagree with it -- we've had some pretty spectacular trailers these last few years, including countless awesome ones from Brittany (her Last Story trailer was incredible), countless awesome ones from Kelly (I really liked her most recent Blood Drive trailer, and am really pleased with what she was able to put together for our E3 Return to PopoloCrois trailer considering the game was still 90% in Japanese), and we even had Ryan step in to deliver a seriously kick-ass trailer for Earth Defense Force 4.1 recently (the EDF games are his babies, and he really brought it all to the table with that one!).
Trailer-making is a time-consuming process, though, so we usually stick with two per game, soooooometimes going with 3 (though very rarely), and even sometimes just one (much less rarely). So Ys VI really didn't get any less trailer time than any other titles, and the trailer it did get was a pretty good one.
The most effective advertising for our games is and has always been word of mouth -- if a game is good, people will talk about it, and if people talk about it, people will buy it. We've tried other methods of advertising our games in the past, but ultimately, that's what ends up scoring us the most sales. (As it should be, IMHO. No sense "tricking" people into buying a game with a good trailer if the game itself doesn't stand on its own as something totally desirable to play!)
So I'm pretty confident that SC will do well for us -- the game's just so long, it'll take a while for word of mouth to spread. But when it does, boy howdy!
-Tom
Question, Tom: how much flex do you have with the translation? Do you have any creative license with the text? Are you able to tweak things like the maturity level, the tone, etc?
I assume you don't mean me personally, nor even this project specifically, correct? Because I barely touched SC.
In a general sense, we have a LOT of flexibility, but as they say, "with great power comes great responsibility." I think it's our duty as localizers to ensure that we stay true to the intent of the original Japanese. We're not making our own games, after all, but bringing someone else's to a new part of the world, so we seek to make the experience as smooth and natural-sounding as possible while also remaining as true to the creator's vision as possible.
So we would not adjust the maturity level of a game, nor would we change the tone. We could, and I doubt anyone from the dev side would complain (at first, anyway) -- but it would be horribly inappropriate for us to do so.
-Tom
You guys/girls are all incredible. Wish XSEED and all of your own individual ventures the very best fortune.
Thanks for not giving up, even if it doesn't set the charts on fire you made a lot of gamers very happy through your perseverance and hard work. =)
I'm so grateful that we got this game, and sorry to hear about all the suffering the localization team went through to do it. It really is miraculous that it even happened, given all the issues.
I really respect the work you all did here. It's amazing and I'm having such a blast with the game that I feel a bit guilty that everyone went through so much to bring it to us.
In case you ever encounter something like that again, CHAR(10) is a carriage return in Excel, and concatenate function will add the text contents of different cells together. I imagine OpenOffice has some analogous way of doing this, but in excel =concatenate(CellwithString1&CHAR(10)&CellwithString2...) in one column, and then pasting the results in another column as values could have saved you a bit of pain.
Trails is really a standout. So many games drop you into the centre of this crisis where you have to save everyone. In trails I get the sense of being part of the fabric of that world - not just some outside contractor called in to fix things. It's all the little interactions with people, their minor political squabbles, the mundane everyday details - basically, that huge mountain of text - that make it all possible.
Thank you all for enduring it. I hope you've all moved on to projects that are more conducive to happiness and mental health.
I see. Using that makes sense initially but it has a ton of problems that can crop up by relying on it. Translation order, if someone isn't tasked with translating system text or isn't given that text, lack of tools to properly use it, among other things. Tying it to work flow is just too messy and potential headache. The separate file is a far better idea because then you can do things like hand off chunks of text to a few different translators instead of all the files for someone to work on or to avoid compiling errors, etc.
It's good you're doing it now for CS. You can hand that off TermDB to translators, not just editors, allowing you to utilize more resources in the long term.
I didn't mean to offend, sorry.
It's just that the article made it to be a bigger deal (two man-months of tedious work in a project that has been delayed and delayed) than what you say it was.
Really glad you have that work behind you, looking forward to playing the game somewhere down the line.
Seriously though, Xseed do need to learn how to market better. The release came out of nowhere all of a sudden and was released in pretty close proximity to a lot of heavy hitters.
Am grateful for all the hardwork put into this game though.
As someone who is going to be involved with an RPG trailer in the near future, have any tips?
Honestly, on some level I too want to see Gagharv re-localized despite the million hurdles standing in the way, just because the Namco versions were so poorly handled. Those games, Vermillion Tear in particular, deserved better than they got.
Hoo boy, though. You want to talk about hard sells... the only way I could see them selling at all would be as a three-pack of some sort of all the games together. Anything else would just result in head-scratching.
And while we're at it, isn't there going to be a Falcom game for the PS4? Or did I just imagine that?
Yes, the next Ys title will be on PS4/Vita. They were originally targeting late 2015 in Japan but it seems to have been pushed back, probably to properly push Tokyo Xanadu.
Has there been any news at all on this front? I haven't heard a peep since the initial reveal, which was a while ago now.Yes, the next Ys title will be on PS4/Vita. They were originally targeting late 2015 in Japan but it seems to have been pushed back, probably to properly push Tokyo Xanadu.
Has there been any news at all on this front? I haven't heard a peep since the initial reveal, which was a while ago now.
Well, as the guy who made that trailer, I appreciate the compliment. But I also disagree with it -- we've had some pretty spectacular trailers these last few years, including countless awesome ones from Brittany (her Last Story trailer was incredible), countless awesome ones from Kelly (I really liked her most recent Blood Drive trailer, and am really pleased with what she was able to put together for our E3 Return to PopoloCrois trailer considering the game was still 90% in Japanese), and we even had Ryan step in to deliver a seriously kick-ass trailer for Earth Defense Force 4.1 recently (the EDF games are his babies, and he really brought it all to the table with that one!).
Trailer-making is a time-consuming process, though, so we usually stick with two per game, soooooometimes going with 3 (though very rarely), and even sometimes just one (much less rarely). So Ys VI really didn't get any less trailer time than any other titles, and the trailer it did get was a pretty good one.
The most effective advertising for our games is and has always been word of mouth -- if a game is good, people will talk about it, and if people talk about it, people will buy it. We've tried other methods of advertising our games in the past, but ultimately, that's what ends up scoring us the most sales. (As it should be, IMHO. No sense "tricking" people into buying a game with a good trailer if the game itself doesn't stand on its own as something totally desirable to play!)
So I'm pretty confident that SC will do well for us -- the game's just so long, it'll take a while for word of mouth to spread. But when it does, boy howdy!
-Tom
Freedom Planet is in my top 10 of all-time. Best platformer ever made.As well it should, since Freedom Planet is DA BOMB. My pick for game of the year 2014, easy -- and soundtrack of the year, too. Can't wait for the Milla story mode + playable Torque update next month!
-Tom
Then you haven't been looking very hard, because we've been talking about it every chance we get! Especially on Twitter.
-Tom
Guys, remember, the PC market is more like a marathon. The game could doing better on long term.
Also, Tom, I'd like to thank your team for have brought the game to us after so many troubles. I'm really enjoying it so far.
Yeah, and to be fair, according to steamspy FC did 100k, so as people finish it SC should get more buys. However, it does sort of limit the number of possible sales. It will never sell better than FC, at minimum(to be fair, people are still buying FC though).