ObiKKa wrote:
So this thing may actually materialize and you may just get your another wish of a newly complete SFC RPG patch within this year, SylarDean...
:O :O I certainly HOPE so
there's a few im looking forward to that Gideon is working on..
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| Would you pay for free game translations of a system? http://dynamic-designs.us/d-dforum/viewtopic.php?f=44&t=808 |
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| Author: | ObiKKa [ Wed Sep 07, 2016 1:01 am ] |
| Post subject: | Would you pay for free game translations of a system? |
Note that the subject line above is meant to be a question to catch your attention, not to scare you, of course. It's got nothing to do with the SFC platform. No, instead, it's for the PC-98 computing platform to be precise. I saw that Hardcore Gaming 101 (@HG_101) on Twitter had re-tweeted a couple tweets by a young college lady named 'Nana' online where she says that she is working on many PC-98 game translations and hopes that she can receive the 'donations' to help her achieve her mission on her Patreon page. And, yes, she is capable of inserting the translations in-game via patches, and, secondly, that she will provide them all for free in the end when each one is completed. She's already done two previous translations. Would any of you be willing to donate just a little bit of money per month to help her out such that you'll all be able to get the cool translation patches for many little-known games (even all of the confirmed projects that she's working on AREN'T even listed on Datacrystal at the moment!) for a 'fairly unloved' (by comparison to the rate of translation successes for other platforms) computing system? I know how this could certainly be a controversial idea in the breadth and depth of the romhacking & fan-translation community, which generally does things for free for reasons... BUT, on the other hand, would most of the members in said community bother to go work on games that were on a very old computer, not even a console at that, or that these games' graphics and controls may seem too old to some? Also add in the fact that nobody in the near or medium-term future may ever get access to playing these games in the English (international) language. And so you may finally concur that it'd be nice to get more of those game translations for a very old computer system that launched in the 1980's but continued onwards into the '90's. At least that could reduce the burden all around for finding and having to bother to translate yet more quality games spread across so many platforms! For me personally it's a far better sense of charity than for how those perhaps fairly foolish contributors donate to the closed-source Cemu's Wii U emulator when even there is the open-source Decaf emulator in ongoing progress, too! You just look at the remarkable successes of the Dolphin (GC/Wii), Citra (3DS) and several N64 emulators as well as various other Nintendo handheld emulators like the mGBA and you just know instinctively that you must be patient for these software to keep improving over time! The good news is that she's going to work on Star Cruiser 2 which is already a boon to the team that's working on the Genesis port of the first Star Cruiser game (In fact, they've already released the latter's patch in beta form on Romhacking just now!)! * New next-day edit: Interestingly enough, this new member of the romhacking community has recently posted details about her projects in the threads over at the Shmups, NFGgames and Tokugawa Corp forums; with enlarged picture proofs and good comments from her and other users. |
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| Author: | filler [ Wed Sep 07, 2016 5:38 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Would you pay for free game translations of a system? |
This comes up now and then, and it's been agreed upon in the past that it is wholly unethical to receive monetary compensation for fan translating works. No one would appreciate being compensated for our work in this hobby more than myself, which is why I'm firm in my conviction that it's a no good, very bad thing. For starters, our works are derivative. We could not make a translation if the original did not exist. Companies paid workers to produce the original works, and own all rights associated with it. We, as fans, have no claim to the original work, and therefore no real claim to the derivative work. Technically, it's ours, and I believe it's copyrightable, but since it's worthless without the original work (the rom), what we "own" is very little. Since we are forced to work in this grey area, we do things like make patches rather than distribute roms. There is nothing stopping someone from contacting the legal rights holders, getting the rights to translate and distribute the game, and then taking money for it. In fact, there are folks who do this like Sekai Project and Piko Interactive, or any 3rd party like Aksys, Atlus, etc... You don't get to have it both ways though. You can't make a fan project and take none of the risk, while reaping the rewards. You want to make money, you need to accept the financial risk of licensing and distributing the game. If that's not an option due to the age of the game/platform or difficulty determining the rights holder, then you can't make money from it. Unless these folks are legitimately licensing and releasing a game, this person will get my money over my dead body. They should neither be asking for money, nor receiving it. |
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| Author: | taskforce [ Wed Sep 07, 2016 12:39 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Would you pay for free game translations of a system? |
Well said, filler! |
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| Author: | ObiKKa [ Wed Sep 07, 2016 5:59 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Would you pay for free game translations of a system? |
filler wrote: ... There is nothing stopping someone from contacting the legal rights holders, getting the rights to translate and distribute the game, and then taking money for it. In fact, there are folks who do this like Sekai Project and Piko Interactive, or any 3rd party like Aksys, Atlus, etc... Erm, sorry if I've confused anyone here. But if you read the preface on her Patreon she did say that she's only going to release the translations via the form of patches for free, NOT the original source game files. On Nana's Patreon's page wrote: Every translation I release will be completely free. You can find a collection of all of my translations to date here. Disclaimer: Releases on this project are patches only that require a copy of the original game to run. I will not be uploading original game files. This project focuses on games long out of print, largely by developers and publishers who disappeared equally long ago. I have no intent on working on anything which may cause or be interpreted as causing a loss in profit to the developer or publisher. If a rights owner can be found, I do my best to contact them and make them aware of this project before releasing anything. Should I receive a takedown request for any individual project (or general request from a rights owner/developer), I will gladly forfeit all progress to the issuer to do with as they please. filler wrote: You don't get to have it both ways though. You can't make a fan project and take none of the risk, while reaping the rewards. You want to make money, you need to accept the financial risk of licensing and distributing the game. If that's not an option due to the age of the game/platform or difficulty determining the rights holder, then you can't make money from it. Unless these folks are legitimately licensing and releasing a game, this person will get my money over my dead body. They should neither be asking for money, nor receiving it. Yeah, that first part of what you said is a major dilemma for all retro game or fan-translation enthusiasts everywhere, and I agree with you. But in saying these, out of my respect for all the hard work that your people over here do especially for the platform that I especially like very much, the SNES, and other 16-bit games, and ALL of the romhackers and translators everywhere on the worldwide web do for free then, yeah, I'll stay far away from her donations page. |
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| Author: | SylarDean [ Wed Sep 07, 2016 7:44 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Would you pay for free game translations of a system? |
i'm VERY sceptical when it comes to crowd funding, early access game donating, etc. I hardly donate to any cause like that for a number of reasons.. 1. I'm NOT rich, being a student I have just enough cash to get by on myself. 2. There's nothing stopping a person asking for donations to suddenly just say "oh, the game has been shelved, sorry" especially after getting a few thousand in £££ or $$$, and NOTHING can be done about that to get your donation back. 3. I believe.. IF you enjoy translating games as a hobby then you shouldn't be asking for cash off people any hows, purely because it's YOUR hobby, you choose to do it out of fun and enjoyment in your spare time, NOT for cash. I have a hobby, my website.. would it be right for me to ask for donations off people to keep me writing reviews? adding links to patches? adding more anime links? .. blah blah blah, I think not, it's NOT okay. IF it was a hobby in arts and craft or something similar like making things.. cosplay outfits, jewellery, paintings etc.. then fair enough. What Filler has said in his 1st reply.. I totally agree with also, you probably had already guessed that by now, LOL! A problem with accepting money for translating/patching games I think is that people who are donating would expect the patches out quicker and for them to be of still high quality, rushing translations for games is NEVER a good thing in my opinion, length of time and quality OVER rushing and poor quality. |
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| Author: | filler [ Wed Sep 07, 2016 9:57 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Would you pay for free game translations of a system? |
ObiKKa wrote: filler wrote: ... There is nothing stopping someone from contacting the legal rights holders, getting the rights to translate and distribute the game, and then taking money for it. In fact, there are folks who do this like Sekai Project and Piko Interactive, or any 3rd party like Aksys, Atlus, etc... Erm, sorry if I've confused anyone here. But if you read the preface on her Patreon she did say that she's only going to release the translations via the form of patches for free, NOT the original source game files. |
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| Author: | ObiKKa [ Wed Sep 07, 2016 11:37 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Would you pay for free game translations of a system? |
Yes, SylarDean, that's what I was thinking. Surely we're all still leaning on this side of the 'no' argument or all the way to the absolute 'no' end. Even for me it's still difficult to grapple with the idea of giving out your own little money to others with the goal of getting what you'd expect to eventually get, when the others do and can do so always for free because it's a fun or challenging hobby for them. Or what filler says, 'quid pro quo', or compensation or whatever else. Yeah, mates, even some other romhackers or just people with a computing or gaming-related hobby in general can still struggle to get by without much money. Heck, even Gideon is asking for some donations (for awarding him for his PAST completed patches as explained on his site's donate page; not his incomplete patches) recently just to fix some rent problems while looking for another job! [We all know that he lives in a city apartment in Seattle or similar]. Of course that is indeed sad what with the world's monetary problems. Oh well, perhaps that's a completely different idea of rewarding him than what we were talking about above with Nana's possible PC-98 translations. Spoiler! :
Although he is promising to try to get Shin Megami Tensei: if's translation patch closer to the finish line. But we'll never know for now. Ah, it looks like he is going to live-stream a video on bug-fixing that 'SMT: if' game patch in a hour's time or almost now. But I DON'T know WHERE!?!? On Youtube, is it? How to find it?! Eh, wait, it might pop up on his Youtube channel. Wait, I checked his link in the 2nd tweet below to his Hitbox channel. Hitbox seems to be kinda similar to Twitch (popular avenue for game streaming); makes sense. His last streamed video there was 2 years ago, duh! Spoiler! :
So this thing may actually materialize and you may just get your another wish of a newly complete SFC RPG patch within this year, SylarDean... |
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| Author: | SylarDean [ Thu Sep 08, 2016 7:10 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Would you pay for free game translations of a system? |
ObiKKa wrote: So this thing may actually materialize and you may just get your another wish of a newly complete SFC RPG patch within this year, SylarDean... :O :O I certainly HOPE so there's a few im looking forward to that Gideon is working on..
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| Author: | Garrett [ Thu Sep 08, 2016 3:13 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Would you pay for free game translations of a system? |
Yeah, I wouldn't give that person any of my money and not because of ethical standards. It looks like they're just learning as they go along and have no prior experience in translating Japanese games and reprogramming them. Also no mention of a specific Japanese background, which leads me to believe they're in the early stages of self-taught. Anyhow, all this is fine, but they're asking people for money, which is a recipe for disaster. |
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| Author: | ObiKKa [ Thu Sep 08, 2016 3:29 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Would you pay for free game translations of a system? |
Yep, Garrett, that is spot-on. Although she did translate 2 previous games. But it seems to me likewise that she's learning so is in the kinda 'newbie' stage  . Yes, SylarDean, I'm excited too! But just hours after his stream he'd revealed on his Twitter feed that his main PC just couldn't boot past the POST screen.  Spoiler! :
But shortly thereafter when he'd replaced his PSU with a backup PSU the computer finally seemed to be working good again. However the problem may still linger on as a result of either the CPU, RAM or defective motherboard circuitry in his PC... Spoiler! :
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