Fuwanovel... the worst thing for the industry?

[Blane Doyle]

Since this is about a site, I wasn't entirely sure of what I needed to put this. If this is in the wrong area, please feel free to move it?

I follow many blogs that produce VN news and reviews, and one of them... well, announced Fuwanovel. A website for people to, I believe, attain games and fantranslations... for free.



I dunno... this seems to me like this would just make the official scene worse, especially for licensing games not on the PC (Corpse Party for the PSP and 999 for the DS as examples). It encourages fantranslators to not sell translations to the companies that license games, which... personally I think doesn't make sense.

If a company licenses a game you translated, and offer to pay for your translation to be used... yes, that seems a tad lazy of the company at first. But I see it as them showing the Japanese market that yes, we DO want these games and are willing to pay for them, and it allows translators the chance to make a profit for doing what they like to do anyway.

I... well, I am not sure where I stand here. I don't think it will be good for the market, no, but otherwise I don't know where I stand.

... I also worry they could take OELVN and put them on the site too...

Original blog post: http://visualnovelaer.wordpress.com/201 ... novel-com/

The site itself, not opened yet: http://fuwanovel.com/

EDIT: I think the consensus is that this is going to be VERY BAD, and I personally am highly against the idea of the site, and don't particularly see why the creator is saying such things.

[Samu-kun]

What they are doing is 200% illegal. Please do not do this. Very, very bad idea. Under US law, this is more illegal than making fan work. This is more illegal than ripping out the sprites of commercial visual novels and using them in your own work without crediting the source. Translations are statutorily defined to be derivative works and so any lawsuit for copyright infringement would be over for the defendant very quickly, possibly even before evidence has to be submitted. That also makes a lawsuit all the more likely, because it'd be cheap to get a very quick judgment.

[Blane Doyle]

http://forums.fuwanovel.com/index.php?/ ... s-is-this/

I just looked through their forum and found this... ouch... It seems they don't really like people who don't agree with them...

[DaFool]

I kinda foresaw this a mile away, I believe it was influenced in part by the Steins Gate fiasco.

Might as well point to the discussion I started in the other forum so I don't repeat myself:

http://www.errantheart.net/PHPBB3/viewt ... f=12&t=363

[LateWhiteRabbit]

The person that made that blog post is an idiot. He doesn't understand how business works and what he is doing is indeed illegal - very much so. And what is he proposing to do it for? Because VNs are expensive? Because they don't have a way for new audiences to be cheaply and easily introduced to them?

VNs are expensive because they have to be to recoup costs because people like this moron keep pirating them. Japanese companies are reluctant to license games in the West because pirates have already stolen them and released them with fan translations, severely cutting down any potential market. And if licensing became easier by, I don't know, this guy and others like him not pirating and translating stuff for free, then the West could get more and cheaper VNs, thus allowing new audiences to discover the genre more easily.

If a company licenses a game you translated, and offer to pay for your translation to be used... yes, that seems a tad lazy of the company at first. But I see it as them showing the Japanese market that yes, we DO want these games and are willing to pay for them, and it allows translators the chance to make a profit for doing what they like to do anyway.

Exactly. This guy is just scrambling to come up with excuses for his behavior.

Fact is, more often than not the fan translation scene hurts licensing and sells of a series. No one would pirate a game from Japan if they couldn't read or understand it, would they? If they want these games to be released in the West, the best way to spend their efforts is in courting Western companies and the Japanese companies in question to try and get licensing deals worked out, then promote Western versions of games when they are released.

Instead this moron is obviously corresponding with an employee of JAST USA and ignoring everything he is told, acting like there is some huge conspiracy at work against the fan translation community. They are upset because so many licensing deals are trumping their fan translations when they are almost finished. Isn't that a good thing? Isn't that what they claim to want? They just can't stomach that the need for them is completely dying away.

You want to translate games and release them to the public? Make your own company, buy and sign a licensing deal for a Japanese game, then translate and sell it. You just want to translate Japanese? Get a job doing that, they're out there, probably at those same companies you're having rude correspondence with.

That site is pure poison with a side of ego. I'd stay far away from it.

[Blane Doyle]

Personally, I have come to a standing on the fantranslations selling to larger companies bit. I think it is perfectly alright, since it would be a legal transaction and would not only allow the companies to sell the game, but translators to possibly get a profit on their work.

And your post, DaFool, made sense to me. I remember when MG tried to license Kara no Shoujo they could not get the company in charge of the voice recordings to come down to a price they could afford... so they had to publish the game without it. Now later, someone released a patch to get the voice files, but at the time of announcement so many people were confused and angry, accusing MG of being lazy and cheap.

But licensing a VN is EXPENSIVE. You not only have to translate it, you have to go through more than one company and pay for the right, and you later are going to be selling to a very small market. (Anime is cheaper, but the same has happened with MUSIC rights. Funimation had to make original opening songs for some releases in the past, so it is a general licensing problem)

Having a fantranslation out and about, while convenient and very admirable on the translator's part for undergoing such an endeavor... it makes the companies not want to let their games be licensed. And this, in turn, could spell bad news for CONSOLE VNs.

Imagine the company's line of thought. If no one wants to BUY a VN on the PC, why would they buy one for the DS or PSP or PS3 or X-Box 360? Why would they want to talk about licensing deals to bring them over when sales are so low and people will just translate them themselves on the PC anyway?

... these are just my thoughts, but I have come to a stance. I don't think this site is a good idea, at all. It seems like someone is just annoyed that a couple translators were happy that a company wanted to buy their translations. I dunno about you guys... but if I made something for free and a company offered to buy it and not change it aside from proofreading? I would be ok with selling it.

(and besides, this makes no sense by a piracy standpoint. Some games need to be installed and fiddled with and you need to set your system to another locale to RUN the games at all. Why put up with that when the JAST or MG games only need to be installed or have self contained executable files? Doesn't that seem much easier? I do not support pirating the games, but when I think about it, this just makes things difficult for EVERYONE, not just companies.)

[applegirl]

Haha, that was a funny post by the Fuwanovel. I never read a more deluded post in terms of "helping artists and the industry" while promoting a site that would provide their work for free. To villify Jast because they pay the expensive licensing fees to sell visual novels at a far, far cheaper price than the VN is being sold at Japan...sheesh.

No, JAST isn't the bad guy. No, the fan translators aren't the bad guys. The bad guys are the pirates who claim free advertisement means the right to steal someone else's intellectual property. I love writing, but I love eating and being able to afford to eat. If I lived off of my writing, I wouldn't like any site that gave it away for free.

It's like saying the commercial VN makers here are the bad guys because they want payment for their work. Lol...I'm sorry, but there shouldn't be any doubt in this matter. It's an illegal site encouraging piracy and it won't help the industry, only harm it.

EDIT: Also, a pretty famous fan translator spoke best in each post with his translations to "please, do not distribute this patch with an illegal copy of the game."(Takajun). Clearly, Fuwanovel is ignoring the fan translators as well.

Also, another fan translator (Ixrec) posted this to really sum up Fuwanovel best "There’s a lot of oversimplification in this article, so despite being absolutely right on some major points, the conclusion you reached couldn’t be more wrong."

[mugenjohncel]

My god ... JAST only sold 1000 copies!?.. (plus or minus... I dunno...)

I regularly sold at least 100 to 300 1000ml printer ink that goes for US$ 18.50 per day (and that's for the 1000ml bottles only). I wonder how they managed to stay afloat!?... or am I missing something here?...

OK how about this... since it's obvious that most people who will be interested in VN's will or willing to spend only about 5 to 9 dollars... why not sell it for 5 to 9 dollars for download only copies and then ask premium for hard boxed copies. The profit margin will not be that great initially and individually but once the steam picks up, people who usually are turned off by the usual prices will be interested and you'll get more sales... the volume of the sales offset the small profit margin... you've got to look at the larger picture here...

If JAST and the other Mango Company (SCREW THEM! ) wanna save cost (since I can imagine the horrendous licensing fee) they have to outsource them to fan translators instead of hiring a regular employee to translate stuff... do it per project basis...

Now that I think about it... I shouldn't post my business ideas here since I can use the very same ideas and ask for consultancy fee under different circumstances... from now on I'm shutting my mouth on threads like this... no more business ideas from Uncle Mugen... I know a few people here are pissed whenever I revert to my "Businessman" side...

"POOF" (Disappears)

[Blane Doyle]

I just noticed something...

They have banners for JAST and MangaGamer at the bottom of the preview pages... as "Industry Heros"... reading that article, that doesn't add up much to me... I am a tad confused now.

Also, here is the preview for the FAQ page. Which, in theory, could make sense if you don't know much about how industries like this work. I am not the person to pick this apart, so can someone with a bit more business sense tell everyone what doesn't add up? Because a lot of it rubs me the wrong way, but I don't think I am 100% on it.

http://forums.fuwanovel.com/uploads/ima ... lators.jpg

And mugen, the pricing idea you mentioned actually made sense to me. (and MangaGamer isn't that bad anymore actually, they've gotten MUCH better and are looking to bring over games JAST has apparently never considered (like the entire Higurashi series, which has the first two completed and more on the way))

I like the idea of them finding fantranslations and using them to cut costs, as in theory it COULD allow them to sell the games at a lower price as well, and the translators would get paid for their work, and it would make it faster as they would only need to proof read and beta test. AND it could allow more sales because of the lower price. (which makes me wonder why some people find a problem with it... maybe I am missing something big, I dunno)

[Strum]

... I also worry they could take OELVN and put them on the site too...

You need not worry, Aaeru has no interest in OELVNs. Even before the introduction of that controversial site, Aaeru has always been vocal about spreading the joys of Japanese VNs to a wider audience. However, all this propaganda talk is making Aaeru look like some extremist or religious nutcase. It seems to have gotten to the point where Aaeru will go through any means to get the job done, even if it means creating a piracy site.

I myself don't like how Jast is just exploiting fan translators love of VNs and see this as a cost cutting tactic. If a title has been licenced, any fan translator working on it should stop all work and let Jast start from scratch. An official professional translation in theory is better than a fan translation anyway. Too bad the idea of a few dollars and their name being printed on the box is too tempting to pass up.

A user called Yirba has a more practical approach, that is to sell the games prepatched as a direct download. All the proceeds go back to the original Japanese developer. Using free games and demos as a lure to get people hooked, and hopefully willing to part with some cash for another VN fix (lol I'm making VNs sound like some kind of drug) The only thing I would like to amend is the part about Japanese companies getting all the money. Aaeru should be allowed to at the very least, claw back the online hosting fees to run that website.

That would however put Jast and MangaGamer out of business since the Japanese companies would now have a middleman that works for free without eating into their profits.

[DaFool]

My god ... JAST only sold 1000 copies!?.. (plus or minus... I dunno...)

My source was Koihime Musou unvoiced hitting 1/2 the target (2000). Of course, it could have inched up slightly since then.

[LateWhiteRabbit]

I still think fan translations hurt the VN community more than they help it. If you look at the lists of torrents for Japanese VNs it is almost entirely ones that have fan translations available. Fuwanovel even admitted that most people aren't paying for the games they are applying the fan translation patches to. Fan translated copies of their games and software kept companies like Enterbrain out of the Western market for years.

If people are truly dedicated to playing Japanese games that don't see release in West, they learn Japanese. Most of the people that will need or want a fan translation patch are not going to be dedicated enough to use a Japanese site, through a proxy or otherwise (since a lot of them still block foreign IPs), and pay extra for international shipping. If they are big enough into the Japanese manga and VN scene to be aware of new titles over there they are already going to know some Japanese.

Fan translators act as enablers for pirates, whether they have good intentions or not. Asking for your translation patch not to be included in pirated copies of the game is just naive. The pirates didn't ask permission to steal the game a team spent years making, why will they care if they have some internet translator's permission?

Visual novels are NOVELS - they are almost entirely worthless to pirates if they can't read them. Japanese games that are porn clickers or don't require reading are heavily pirated, but Japanese VNs with no translation are hardly ever pirated. It isn't hard to see the connection.

My god ... JAST only sold 1000 copies!?.. (plus or minus... I dunno...)
I wonder how they managed to stay afloat!?... or am I missing something here?...
)

JAST is run by Peter Payne, who runs J-List. He has an entire business selling many many things other than VNs from Japan. JAST probably loses money or barely breaks even, but is supported by sales from the other part of Peter's business. I wouldn't be surprised if he uses the VNs as a way to direct attention to J-List and make incidental sales on other merchandise.

[Anna]

I got pissed off when I heard from people their critique was being deleted... is that still happening? Since I wasn't exactly nice either yet mine remained so far >.>...

What pisses me off even more than that she wants to create a pirate website for commercial VNs, is that she's trying to do it while saying 'this is good for the industry and creators!'. Please, please inform me how. I don't see it.

Let's say this happens and then 10 000 people download pirated VNs to play. How will those numbers influence the market effectively, when they say nothing about how many people would actually buy a VN (which is important for new English releases) nor how it changes the number of people who buy them positively (which means supporting creators/market). It just shows that people read VNs when they cost nothing... well... hurray? I don't think that will convince VN companies.

[Mink]

Well this is rather audacious. I realize this is a pirate site, but come on.

If people are truly dedicated to playing Japanese games that don't see release in West, they learn Japanese. Most of the people that will need or want a fan translation patch are not going to be dedicated enough to use a Japanese site, through a proxy or otherwise (since a lot of them still block foreign IPs), and pay extra for international shipping. If they are big enough into the Japanese manga and VN scene to be aware of new titles over there they are already going to know some Japanese.

I wonder how many people who learn Japanese have a real interest in the country and its culture, and not just to play games/read manga/whatever.

[J. Datie]

My favourite part is when they justify fan translators not getting the company's permission because, you know, they might say no. And translating things takes a lot of time and effort, so fan translators shouldn't have to listen to the company that made the games. After all, all they did was write, draw, compose, program, advertise, and sell it.

I wonder how many people who learn Japanese have a real interest in the country and its culture, and not just to play games/read manga/whatever.

You can tell which people are the latter, because their interest in learning starts to wane when they hit a season of anime they aren't interested in, as opposed to the former, whose interest in learning starts to wane when they hit kanji.