Mangagamer: Da Capo, Suika seemingly licensed

[rg4619]

W-what... I asked them about the possibility of releasing Otome games the other day and they just said they'd think about it. Wonder what made they change their response on that so fast. Either way, good to hear.

I'm being cynical here, but at this stage, I think they're acting extra responsive to feedback/suggestions in order to generate positive feeling among potential customers. This is particularly important given the wave of negativity they've faced, such as complaints about the activation scheme, the high game prices, and the shoddy translations.

Business decisions don't happen overnight, so while I'm sure they take suggestions seriously (and they've responded by increasing the number of allowable activations), they're probably making a few empty promises to encourage people to buy.

Our ultimate goal is to bring all downloadable
contents from Japan. Please keep supporting us to make it happen!!! - MangaGamer

That statement says it all. Make them successful, and they'll look into what you've asked for (games for females, non-adult titles, better translations, merchandise, whatever else people have asked about this past week). However, the future of the service is still vague, so I doubt they have firm plans for anything beyond the currently planned lineup.

[Vatina]

Originally Posted by GatoNegro

Thank you for your interest in MangaGamer.com!

We appreciate your comment! We need a lot of supporters like you for us
at MangaGamer.com.

We promise you that we will introduce Otome(Young girl in Japanese)
games(No sex scene). Our ultimate goal is to bring all downloadable
contents from Japan. Please keep supporting us to make it happen!!!

Thank you again for your interest in MangaGamer.com!

MangaGamer.com

Maybe they are going to release that new female Da Capo game? :P

[MugiMugi]

This DRM really makes me not want to buy this, just got a tiny question as I modify my hardware almost monthly and only be able to play a game for a few of weeks would be devastating if you payed for it.

So pretty much, if you uninstall the game normaly, do you get the install back? Even if your hardware changed under the time the game was not installed?

Or is this game bound to just TWO installs that thats it forever?

[GatoNegro]

OMG, this was posted in the news:

12 Jul 2008
We have read a lot of complaints about the quality of the translation. We are listening to the comments and trying to work hard to improve it. But some comments were made for the Beta version of the products. Somebody sneaked into our site during the testing period and bought the BETA version games at the testing price.
We will update the text files of the games for sale every month and make them downloadable.

maybe they want to go hard in the project by making public they really poor translation, what do you think?

[Matt Soulblade]

What I think they are doing is what every company does: patch releases.

...However patches should fix small bugs, not entire scripts/major release mistakes (ala Summer Days). I suppose they might as well delay the whole thing instead of doing that.

...Anyways, were still far away from the release day for D.C. and Suika. If they screw that, IMO there is no turning back (I mean its not like anybody reads Liquid games, if you know what I mean, so at least bad writing wont ruin that).

[GreatSaintLouis]

Commercial game: "What, this translation is terrible! Even though they offer to update it regularly, this is totally no good! DO NOT WANT!"

Fan-made translation: "Hey, it's a little rough in places, but it's better than no translation at all! I finally get to play the game in English, so I don't care if it's not perfect!"

Just saying, is all.

[Asceai]

Originally Posted by GreatSaintLouis

Commercial game: "What, this translation is terrible! Even though they offer to update it regularly, this is totally no good! DO NOT WANT!"

Fan-made translation: "Hey, it's a little rough in places, but it's better than no translation at all! I finally get to play the game in English, so I don't care if it's not perfect!"

Just saying, is all.

Well, yeah, people tend to assume a higher standard of quality for things people are getting paid to produce. It's the same with everything, really.

Whether or not there _should_ be a double standard is another thing entirely, but yes, people, on the whole _do_ expect commercial localisations to be pretty good.

And, from what I've seen (haven't bought any of them myself), these translations are worse than practically any fan translations I've ever seen, even pre-editing. I hope they are drastically improved in the future, but still, buying titles based on that promise.. probably not for me.

Just saying, is all.

[DarkSoul]

Originally Posted by OLF, i.e. Olf Le Fol

Final note: on a related matter, Anima, the company that is released the Higurashi anime in France told me they bought the rights for the game (all the episodes) and it was planned for released for soon!

I don't want to thwart anyone's expectations, but if the Anima people really told you that (in an event or anything), then they have been lying to you, or they don't have a freaking clue as to what they are talking about.

They don't have yet the rights to the Higurashi original game material (and are most likely not to have them if they keep on making announcements like these without asking for permission to the Japanese companies), no contract or agreement whatsoever have been signed with the right holders in Japan (07th Expansion & Digicraft (who have, or will soon have, exclusive distribution rights)).

[PyTom]

Originally Posted by GreatSaintLouis

Commercial game: "What, this translation is terrible! Even though they offer to update it regularly, this is totally no good! DO NOT WANT!"

Well, until recently they didn't even make this offer. Frankly, if they came out with, "we understand that there have been issues with the translation quality of our recent games, and we'll be releasing a patch in a few weeks", that would be more satisfactory.

Right now, there's the red herring of someone having snuck into their site and purchased a beta version of a game. That's uninteresting, as I bought the release version of the game, and got a product that didn't pass even basic quality control standards.

In general, it's considered unseemly to criticize the free ice cream, especially when the people making it have tried hard for quality. But once you've paid for it, you have a right to at least a reasonable baseline of correctness...

[GreatSaintLouis]

The grand irony in all of this though is a bit of a circular path. While the grammatical errors present in beta screenshots and posted text are indeed quite visible, I'd hardly call them much worse than some of the errors or just outright clunky writing I've found in fan translations--yes, even ones by major circles.

Here's what gets me though: the common excuse weilded by the fan translators is "Hey, we're doing this as a hobby, so bugger off if you expect this to be well written and impeccably proofed. We're doing it free, you know." The implication here is that they're exempt from higher standards of quality on account of being paid for it. This, receiving money is an incentive for them to create a decent product. Now, you have a commercial venture in which people are presumably receiving money for their efforts, which by all (beta) accounts are not what's expected of a commercial release. Yet, few people in this thread seem willing to pay for what's arguably "the only way I'll play it in English" on account of these errors, thus being unwilling to provide the money that by all means should be inspiring the higher standard of quality in the professional translators. Now the inequality with which we focus our lens of inspection with regards to translation fidelity and quality control is an issue that the community at large seems to have settled in favor of free mediocrity, and it's usually a losing battle. I'm just wondering to what extent people need these titles handed to them on a silver platter before they'll actually put money towards supporting the venture. The company at this time seems rather willing to listen to feedback from potential customers; "I'm not quite satisfied with the translation quality but I appreciate what you guys are doing and bought the game" sends a much more positive and inspiring message for the team to get it right than "Yeah, the translation looks bad, I'm not going to buy it." I mean, people have been fawning over the idea of Da Capo for years, and now that an English version's on the horizon all I'm seeing are excuses not to buy it. Christ.

Now, for those of you holding out on the DRM issue, that's a bit more understandable--I for one also like the idea of having a physical product at hand, with no limit as to the number of times I can reinstall it on my computer should the hardware, OS, or even computer itself chance. However, let's not forget the Kinetic Novel series, which all started on DRM'ed download and for the most part have all moved to unrestricted CD releases. For a startup company, the selling of downloads incurs much less of a financial overhead than the printing of a physical product; it may be that the availability of the CD release will be dependent on its popularity as a download. Five installations really shouldn't be a problem for some time--if you're making such a major change to your computer that it necessitates a reinstall, I'd imagine you'd have even more pressing issues at hand, such as somehow validating the frequent reactivation of Windows XP/Vista that would come with such major changes. I've never been able to think of a legitimate reason why anyone would need to change hardware or OSes with such frequency as is claimed, but I really wonder if such an inconstant machine is really the sort of thing to be running games on. It's not my call to make, but regardless, 5 reinstalls should be more than enough for normal usage.

That aside, any word of trial editions being made for these titles? I want to support the company, at least with their big-name, non-pornofest titles, but as I know little about either I'd like the chance to check out what the offerings will be like before I commit my ~$80.

Originally Posted by GreatSaintLouis

That aside, any word of trial editions being made for these titles? I want to support the company, at least with their big-name, non-pornofest titles, but as I know little about either I'd like the chance to check out what the offerings will be like before I commit my ~$80.

Hahaha so your telling everyone else that we should overlook all matters of concern (that effect us personally whether it be DMR or how we personally handle our own hardware on our machines) yet you've still not outlaid any personal cash yourself, how ironic of you!

I also have not outlaid any cash on my part and desperately want MangaGamer to succeed were others have failed (just as you do), but surely I have better judgment than try to persuade others before taking a leap myself.

[Asceai]

Trial versions were available at AX2008, so they definitely exist. It'd be good if mangagamer would upload them.

Anyway, in response to part of that message:

Yet, few people in this thread seem willing to pay for what's arguably "the only way I'll play it in English" on account of these errors

Indeed. Now, ignoring the fact that the game in question is Da Capo (which I personally didn't even like that much), if the only way I can play the game in English is through playing an overpriced, poorly translated DRM-laden download-only English version of the game, I _won't play it in English_. I'll play it in Japanese.

(this is, of course, on the assumption that the game in question is something that I didn't already have)

Now, I'm not saying that because I can read a bit of the language, and am thus able to play the original. If there's a localised release of something available, obviously I'll go for that, because:
1) It's important to support the localised visual novels industry. I mean, obviously it's also important to support the Japanese visual novels industry (which typically has to survive on selling an outrageously small (compared to, say, the console games industry) number of titles), but while that industry is operated on a shoe string, the localised visual novels industry is operated on a bit of fraying thread.
2) Reading VNs in English is much nicer. However, this is NOT the case if they are laden with spelling errors, translation mistakes and other technical issues.

The main point is that the writing is, on a raw technical level, FAR WORSE than any fan translation I've ever seen of a visual novel. Not that I've seen that many, but even so... while I'm as happy as anyone else that the stuff is going to be translated, well.. this so far isn't making me reach for my wallet.

[PyTom]

Originally Posted by GreatSaintLouis

Yet, few people in this thread seem willing to pay for what's arguably "the only way I'll play it in English" on account of these errors, thus being unwilling to provide the money that by all means should be inspiring the higher standard of quality in the professional translators.

The thing is, if you're willing to pay money regardless of the quality of the game, you also fail to inspire the creation of reasonable quality translations.

I'm not looking to get a perfect translation that captures every last nuance of the Japanese original, and renders it into perfectly flowing English prose. I don't speak the language myself, so I can only judge the readability of the translation, and how entertaining the game was in English. Even there, I don't have particularly high standards, but the translation of Edelweiss (which I bought as a production release, _not_ as any sort of beta) failed to meet even minimal quality control standards.

The game was not spell-checked. We can debate grammar and usage all day, but when the producer fails to apply a spell-checker to their script, that's a problem.

I see my continued business as a reward to companies that supply me with high-quality products I desire. When the quality falls below a certain level, it becomes hard for me to give them my money, at least until they improve.

And I hope they do improve, as I would like to see a reasonable-quality translation of Da Capo. I worry that their overly-aggressive schedule isn't all that conducive to translation quality, as they plan to release more games in three months than the J-list zaibatsu does in a year. The best result would be for this to serve as a wakeup call, letting them know that a minimal level of quality is more important than an overly fast release rate.

Originally Posted by PyTom

The game was not spell-checked. We can debate grammar and usage all day, but when the producer fails to apply a spell-checker to their script, that's a problem.

It's not always as simple as Microsoft Word's spell check though. I'm not arguing that they don'tneed to go through and check their spelling, heck they probably do, but it's not always as simple as you'd think from microsoft word. They could be restrained by the method in which they're working with the script to edit it in a manner that makes it unwieldy to pop the text into word for a quick spell check. This would end up creating a need to go through the script slowly making careful edits. Of course it looks like they do need to do that anyways.

[GreatSaintLouis]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Hahaha so your telling everyone else that we should overlook all matters of concern (that effect us personally whether it be DMR or how we personally handle our own hardware on our machines) yet you've still not outlaid any personal cash yourself, how ironic of you!

I think I know what you're trolling at, so to lay to rest any misconceptions you might have somehow formulated, I do indeed intend to purchase at least one of their big-name titles (this being Da Capo or Suika), but I don't yet know which one would be most interesting. They're not out yet, or I'd have made my decision and purchase by now. Also, look up the definition of ironic. I think you were probably going for 'hypocritical', which would have been used correctly given the context, but still inapplicable for the situation.

PyTom, Kouryuu et al: I do agree that glaring spelling errors that could have been solved through some sort of spell check or liberal application of dictionary are indeed a problem. As an aside to this, do we know anything about the translation team for the company? Grammar can be rendered horribly even by native speakers, but those kinds of uninhibited spelling errors make me think that English is not the team's first language. Did anyone who talked with representatives at the convention get a sense for who the translators are?