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Big Ignition Interview - incl Mangod - Gamasutra
- Thread starter ferricide
- Start date
Easy, but flawed.Volcynika said:
With niche games, it's all about knowing the market. With Niche JPN games, most of the market probably doesn't care about English VA. Thus, doing an English VA is a waste of money and time since few of the people who buy the game will really care, from their estimations, probably comparing it to people who buy import films (do people really watch import film dubs?)
I AM JOHN!
Banned
I get where you're coming from on one hand, but what does it matter that this insanely Japanese game that's niche and probably not going to sell all that well is only getting a subjob? It strikes me as a good way to save money considering that I'd guess that most people who pick this game up would play in Japanese anyway.Volcynika said:
Considering how hard it is to do quality voice acting in a game already (I'm playing through Persona 3 right now, and much as I love Atlus, I'm finding a lot of the voice acting to be pretty terrible), I'd rather they put those extra tens of thousands they would be spending on an English voice track into marketing this game so that it sells more than the less than 100,000 copies it'll probably sell here.
zoku88 said:
Well looks like people that just really want a full on localization will have to bend to the will of the purists. Every time I see even a chance of a game that's being localized not having JP voice, and message boards are filled with tirades of people saying they'll stop giving the company business for pulling "such an integral part of the game" from it. How are they even going to push a title to high sales and get people interested in it if it's only seemingly being aimed at a small niche fanbase? Hell, if NISA is going to end up releasing a TWO disc edition for Sakura Wars V, which surely won't light up the charts, why is it too something to be just disappointed in games not coming with both tracks, considering games of the last generation pretty much are showing these new titles up. Companies sometimes want to give off the idea of trying to please their fanbase (see Sakura Wars V), but this just seems to please just one part of the fanbase and leave the others out in the cold. Hell, even when a publisher fully localizes a game, there are undubs and people bitching and moaning about "U RUINED MAH GAMEZZZ"
Always nice to have a fanbase that responds to your work of bringing over a title with an attitude like that, eh?
I AM JOHN! said:
Really? I found the VA in P3 to be quite good, though apparently a lot of people hated Fuuka's voice. And even though this game is clearly a niche title, as mentioned above, if a publisher wants to throw out claims of huge ambition and making marks, then why would they not put a full quality localization into one of their first titles (I know they're doing KOF XII first or w/e) after the whole Lux Pain deal? Hell, I would flip out of my chair if I saw really any sort of TV advertisement of this game, considering the only thing I'm used to seeing from any smaller publisher is a magazine ad / internet advertising.
They could also put a slight marketing thing on it by relating it to Odin Sphere, which did better than most people expected, and it could help boost sales of Muramasa.
Just like I said in an earlier post, I just thought we were at the point where publishers would work to satisfy everyone, but apparently its the "well this game is very Japanese, so let's just aim at selling it to those people that complain to hell and highwater at the lack of JP VA, but won't learn the language and import it instead." I look over and see BlazBlue, a clearly Japanese niche fighting game that doesn't have anywhere close to the appeal of something like Street Fighter 4, but Aksys put in a stellar job satisfying all audiences by giving full JP and EN VA. (As a sidenote, just for curiosity, how many people do understand the JP VA when they play these games?)
But really it's just my main and only point. I just wish pubs would give both sides a fair compromise of some sort by now on this issue, rather than clearly favoring one side. I'm buying Muramasa because I still really want the title (but still a bit disappointed), but if this same issue comes up again with another one of their games they'll localize in the future, I don't think it's worth the effort to give my money to Ignition. (And yes, I realize it's a bit in line with people who won't buy the game without JP VA, but I have just as much of a right as any to base purchases off similar reasons).
Sure, I'm just one person, but if you wanna call out other publishers, do more than what they're doing, not less.
I AM JOHN!
Banned
I haven't even gotten to her. I was more referring to the fact that the chick who plays Mitsuru is the most painfully wooden person ever who has no conviction and seems to like to enunciate every single goddamn syllable. Same with Ikutsuki. The dudes who play Akihiko and Junpei are good, though, and Yukari is mostly alright. This is definitely one area in which P4 really stepped it up qualitatively, though.Volcynika said:
That's fair.
You're kind of rambling, so it's hard for me to get the point of wtv you were trying to say.Volcynika said:
1) Message boards count for so little, so I'm not sure why you bring it up. For every time you saw message boards respond to games not having JP voice and saw the tirades of ppl swear to not give anymore business, have you actually seen a significant drop of sales?
2) It's a niche game. They're not trying to push it to high sales (since that usually ends up costing a lot of money, and probably wouldn't work anyway.)
3) I'm not sure what the point was with the the two-disc example you were saying.
4) small amounts of people do that, I'm sure they're mainly ignored, so...
EDIT:
I'm not saying it's bad to only have only English/Both/Only Jpn, I'm just trying to explain where they're coming from as to why they wouldn't both with an English dub.
When given an option, I usually pick JPN, but I don't let VA be a deciding factor in what games I end up buying.
notworksafe
Member
I think VA is a very important choice in playing a game. I'm going to be sticking with the story and characters of a video game for 10-20 or more hours and I'd prefer to know what the characters.
Yes, I could read the text that is in English instead. However I bought a video game, not a book (actually I remember too much reading being a complaint that Shane had with Lost Odyssey...so he should understand what I mean).
Plenty of small studios manage to put out fully localized and complete games. Atlus, NIS America, and Aksys all being recent examples. Ignition should pay attention.
Yes, I could read the text that is in English instead. However I bought a video game, not a book (actually I remember too much reading being a complaint that Shane had with Lost Odyssey...so he should understand what I mean).
Plenty of small studios manage to put out fully localized and complete games. Atlus, NIS America, and Aksys all being recent examples. Ignition should pay attention.
Sorry for the rambling, I do that late at night, so my point might be lost here and there.
NPD has proven that even games that majority of GAF praises don't always sell like the forum hopes they would. While I can't grab direct numbers as a sort of comparison, I can at least put forth a theory that the kind of audience that appreciates these niche games do sometimes keep up with something like a messageboard or news on an upcoming publisher's game, so you can maybe at least have a sample of the audience and how they respond to certain things.
I'm more referring to the tone of the interview this thread is about, considering it seems to be like "Well, just look out, we'll be big and it'll be soon!" And considering whatever setup they had to get Marvelous to give them the rights instead of XSeed handling it seems like they'd be able to give it a bigger push.
If NISA (which I have no idea of their financials, but the Ar Tonelico 2 crazy stuff might have hurt future sales from some (maybe not a lot) people), is taking the time to print a game loaded with VA on two discs (one with English VA and the other with JP VA and subs) but a game that will not even come close to over and above their usual sales of series like Disgaea or w/e, it shows something. They could've taken this niche title that is only finally having an entry brought over to the US (I think) and only given it subs and JP VA. It's just interesting to me after whatever deals they had with Sega to get the rights to bring it here and then on top of that, give both options to their audience. I'm only slightly miffed at the AT2 bug stuff, but NISA still surprises me with good things.
Well, you always see the people around and you can generalize a bit, but yeah that's a bit off. It's just irritating sometimes to see posts like dallow_bg's post where he seems surprised someone is mad at the lack of English VA.
NPD has proven that even games that majority of GAF praises don't always sell like the forum hopes they would. While I can't grab direct numbers as a sort of comparison, I can at least put forth a theory that the kind of audience that appreciates these niche games do sometimes keep up with something like a messageboard or news on an upcoming publisher's game, so you can maybe at least have a sample of the audience and how they respond to certain things.
I'm more referring to the tone of the interview this thread is about, considering it seems to be like "Well, just look out, we'll be big and it'll be soon!" And considering whatever setup they had to get Marvelous to give them the rights instead of XSeed handling it seems like they'd be able to give it a bigger push.
If NISA (which I have no idea of their financials, but the Ar Tonelico 2 crazy stuff might have hurt future sales from some (maybe not a lot) people), is taking the time to print a game loaded with VA on two discs (one with English VA and the other with JP VA and subs) but a game that will not even come close to over and above their usual sales of series like Disgaea or w/e, it shows something. They could've taken this niche title that is only finally having an entry brought over to the US (I think) and only given it subs and JP VA. It's just interesting to me after whatever deals they had with Sega to get the rights to bring it here and then on top of that, give both options to their audience. I'm only slightly miffed at the AT2 bug stuff, but NISA still surprises me with good things.
Well, you always see the people around and you can generalize a bit, but yeah that's a bit off. It's just irritating sometimes to see posts like dallow_bg's post where he seems surprised someone is mad at the lack of English VA.
Volcynika said:
This could certainly be true. But I'm sure a lot of them are lurkers anyway.
That's fair
Well, it's not like doing 2-discs is hard (i think? the VA would probably cost them more than the discs themselves, I think) but I can see what you're trying to say. Going above the call of duty.
Are you more miffed about the bug in AT or the lack of english VA in Murasama?
zoku88 said:
Speaking in all generalities, the bug. It was easy to avoid for me, I rarely have time to go back and get all the extras, especially in an RPG, but any game I purchase, I want it to be fully tested, because the chance of me losing a save file when putting so many hours into a game is really well, a scary thing, because my free time after college ended has decreased quite a bit, and I don't like to put in a ton of work for naught.
Does this game work correctly with no bugs is always my first question about a game, and based on the bugs (which hopefully shouldnt exist) if it would interfere or get to the point of just irritating me.
Every other part of a game falls on a lower priority than that to me.
zoku88 said:You know, it's because NISA spent money on english VA which could have been better devoted to play testers
I'm joking. I'm not sure how they missed two unavoidable mistakes, though.
I joked with my friend once about something relating to that, like "They should bring over Rorona this year, not like they're losing money since they have all that extra cash from not hiring a QA team!"