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Would you "Kickstart" Japanese game localization?

Pureauthor said:
Do you have any theoretical examples of how that abuse would take shape?
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I don't speak for them, but the idea of big companies like S-E relying on it for all of their niche (and not-so niche) localizations might be a concern. While this can benefit smaller publishing houses like Xseed and MonkeyPaw, bigger companies might be more restrictive with what they localize with all of their own money, and push anything that might not be a sure thing to Kickstarter.

Not saying that would happen, and in some cases there might be benefits from that (who wouldn't want to pay for the distribution of ASH since Nintendo finished the translation, or for AAI2?), but it's something to think about.
 
cj_iwakura said:
Steins;Gate is cursed, I swear. Never gonna happen.

Not officially, anyway.
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Oh well.

Maybe localizing doujin games and porting them to PS3/360 would be better.
Not really port begging since I have the game on PC but it would be awesome to if Recettear is on PSN/XBLA, the game is fun and pretty controller reliant. :P
 
I would love for this sort of movement to really take off for niche localization products. I would happily fund the Class of Heroes 2's, Wizardry PSN's, Trails in the Sky 2's, etc. and feel confident that I was paying to help get the games I want to play into not only my hands but the hands of those with like minded interests. I think it's a great idea.
 
McBacon said:
Ace-Attorney-Investigations-2-640x577.jpg


Yes.
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This
 
I would support if it's a new company that doesn't have the funding to do their first project or if it was a bunch of fans that acquired the license and wanted to bring the game over here. This is how I see Kickstarter. You give the oppurtunity to people to do a project that otherwise wouldn't have the chance. I prefer myself to fund games than a localization. I already said this before but I'm eager to see actual Kickstarter games released and how they are going to be.

So I would back one if :
-It's from a new company or a bunch of fans
-There's a clear explanation on how the funds will be used
-A schedule is presented
-It's a game I care about

I have issues if corporations try to enter the ring. It's part of the company's job to manage their ressources and funding properly and to take risks. It's part of the game. It also seems a bit wrong that they basically make profits out of the extra copies sold after shipping the copies to backer. Shouldn't the backers get a share of the pie too since they are the reason the thing can happen in the first place.
 
I'd do it if I felt that the game or series had a certain flavor or sound to it in English I like, that in Japanese is either non-existent or somewhat lacking/hard to relate to.

Besides those few examples though, no, I probably wouldn't.
 
Oooohh, after the Operation Rainfall debacle, I bet Nintendo of America was planning on localizing Fire Emblem 13 but was like, "You know what? those fans are so crazy, they would probably do a kickstarter campaign to localize the game. Let's scare them into thinking it won't come, so they actually do it and we can save some money."

I'm not entirely serious
 
RurouniZel said:
What I'd love to see in the future should something like this happen again is for Nintendo or whoever to say "Hey guys! You know, we have this incredible JRPG we want to bring to America, and you can help make it a reality! Pledge your support in advance, and in addition to the game, we'll put your name in a Special Thanks on the disc so that your support will be forever immortalized! Show your friends that YOU made the US release of (insert game here) possible!" Actually, The Right Stuf did that when they first released "The Irresponsible Captain Tylor" on DVD in America. They put a target pre-order goal, and when that goal was met, those people had their names put on the disc.
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There you go. I'm certain there's a HUGE amount of people that would pay generous amounts of money to get their name in the credits of a first party Nintendo game.

If The Last Story opened a Kickstarter, for example, they could have offered autographed merch from Sakaguchi himself. People would pay big bucks for that kind of stuff.
 
Aru said:
If I could pre-order a game and pay in advance to see it translated, I'd gladly do it. But only if they would refund me if they don't get enough money to warrant the project.
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That's the whole idea of kickstarter- your credit card is only charged when they reach goal.

Personally I'd gladly pay 50$ for VC3 if i got PSN download code for it.
 
i saw this addressed by someone at xseed (who might post here?) on another forum. apologies if i'm repeating any information already stated.

1. part of localizing a game is showing you have faith in a product. going through kickstarter would mean to the japanese company that you won't foot the risk yourself and don't really have any faith in the product.

2. even if you manage to pay off the licensing fee- which is not cheap- there could be other things that happen behind the scenes that are out of your control. let's say scea gets a look at a game and deems it not fit for ps3 retail release. you're then forced to go psn only. you'd still not be out all that money you did through kickstarter, but if you promised premium retail packages, you're kinda fucked.

also, even if those two things weren't an issue, games like valkyria chronicles 3 and miles edgeworth 2 wouldn't get localized through another company due to them being sequels to existing franchises that have already been brought over by the parent company. it's sort of an unspoken rule.

games that haven't been brought over that are sequels, like sakura wars v, are fair game. kinda. those are rare though. and unrelated to the kickstarter subject.
 
AniHawk said:
i saw this addressed by someone at xseed (who might post here?) on another forum. apologies if i'm repeating any information already stated.

1. part of localizing a game is showing you have faith in a product. going through kickstarter would mean to the japanese company that you won't foot the risk yourself and don't really have any faith in the product.
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This is insane. Why do you need "faith"? when you know, 100%, there is a public ready to pay you in advance? Is your own public, looking you straight into your eyes and telling you "we want this, please take our money", what they would need more? A Haiku to evaluate the pureness of our hearts? Come on.

About the second point. Do a premium package, with box, artbook, etc, but with a PSN card code instead of a disc. You don't need to go retail with that, just send it to people who paid for it.

In any case, it´s just speculation, but they seem pretty lame reason to be against it. Xseed has just released Ys in Steam and I'm pretty sure they are getting good results with this. Japanese niche industry need to wake up to the new possibilities.
 
This topic actually came up recently.

As other people said there are probably too many unknown variables for straight localizations(dealing with SCEA/SCEE/NOA etc.) so taking something and just localizing it wouldn't be enough.

If someone were able to convince them to not only do the localization but also port the games to PC then there might be possibilities there as there are more guaranteed avenues for release. We may do something like that....
 
Acosta said:
This is insane. Why do you need "faith"? when you know, 100%, there is a public ready to pay you in advance? Is your own public, looking you straight into your eyes and telling you "we want this, please take our money", what they would need more? A Haiku to evaluate the pureness of our hearts? Come on.
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the conversation between the two companies (the localizing team and the japanese dev) would be something like, 'oh hey! we'd love to pay for that licensing fee but we're going to wait until the fans pay for it in order to do it and then we'll actually give you the money or maybe not.' or the localization company would have to raise the money independently of the developer's knowledge, and even if they had the cash, there's no guarantee that the developer would sign on to the deal.

About the second point. Do a premium package, with box, artbook, etc, but with a PSN card code instead of a disc. You don't need to go retail with that, just send it to people who paid for it.
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i can't stress how many people get pissed off about not getting things they were promised. the only way the publisher could get around stuff like this, and this was a better-case scenario (worst-case would be scea simply cancelling the project outright), would be if they said that all prizes were not final and subject to change.
 
AniHawk said:
the conversation between the two companies (the localizing team and the japanese dev) would be something like, 'oh hey! we'd love to pay for that licensing fee but we're going to wait until the fans pay for it in order to do it and then we'll actually give you the money or maybe not.' or the localization company would have to raise the money independently of the developer's knowledge, and even if they had the cash, there's no guarantee that the developer would sign on to the deal.

i can't stress how many people get pissed off about not getting things they were promised. the only way the publisher could get around stuff like this, and this was a better-case scenario (worst-case would be scea simply cancelling the project outright), would be if they said that all prizes were not final and subject to change.
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It's interesting because Vic project has been pretty much what you say: first they get the license, then Kickstart the extras having granted the digital release.

However, I wonder if there could be other scenarios. What about if the kickstart came from the company itself in collaboration with a localization team? That way they could check for themselves if the effort is worth, first hand.
 
Acosta said:
However, I wonder if there could be other scenarios. What about if the kickstart came from the company itself in collaboration with a localization team? That way they could check for themselves if the effort is worth, first hand.
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they would probably have a very good/close working relationship to begin with, or the publisher would have a very solid track record.
 
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