Gaijinworks?

[GhaleonOne]

Not a clue, but Vic's still selling goodies on Ebay, so he's still around.

[Megalodon]

Not a clue, but Vic's still selling goodies on Ebay, so he's still around.

What is his seller ID?

[Boris Moskovitz]

What is his seller ID?

It's gamegenie. I got Popful Mail from the guy. His shipping is a bit slow, but everything else is good.

[GhaleonOne]

Sometimes it is. He actually shipped what I bought from him last May pretty quick. (I think 5 days from buy date maybe?)

[Benevolent_Ghaleon]

kizyr, how have the japanese managed to do away with sarcasm? i find it odd that you can't be smartass due to the language.

[Kizyr]

kizyr, how have the japanese managed to do away with sarcasm? i find it odd that you can't be smartass due to the language.

I never said that Japanese doesn't have sarcasm. Only that verbal irony doesn't translate over well.

Folks who never really spent time learning another language tend to get the idea that all it is is translating words over. There are a lot of other elements of communication that also need to be translated--voice inflection, pitch and intonation, tone of voice, etc. The way that verbal irony works in English is very different from how it works in Japanese.

You can still joke around and be sarcastic, it's just not done the same way as in English. KF

[Benevolent_Ghaleon]

would you elaborate on how it functions there?

[Kizyr]

would you elaborate on how it functions there?

It's usually more situational-based in Japanese, but there are different situations where verbal irony does and doesn't make sense. You can sort of be deadpan when you're joking, but things like facial expressions, tone-of-voice, and context will indicate if you're being ironic or not.

That's about the best that I can explain it. It's not something that's easily described in text. If you want to understand more, well, you'd really have to start studying the language itself and how it's used in context.

Regardless, naming one's software company is not one situation where verbal irony works. KF

[Dragonmaster Lou]

Folks who never really spent time learning another language tend to get the idea that all it is is translating words over. There are a lot of other elements of communication that also need to be translated--voice inflection, pitch and intonation, tone of voice, etc. The way that verbal irony works in English is very different from how it works in Japanese.

I agree completely. Idioms are always difficult to translate, and sometimes there are compound words that a straight literal translation just doesn't work for ("fireworks" is a noteworthy example in my case).

In my own translation history, I took it upon myself to translate the Portuguese songs in Grandia 2 into English (I only translated "Canção do Povo" before I just slacked off about it) and got first hand experience in how nasty translation can be -- especially if you're trying to make it "flow" right in the new language (in my case, I wanted my translation to be singable with the original tune).

[Nobiyuki77]

ZOMG Gaijinworks isn't dead?? o.O

http://www.1up.com/do/feature?pager.off ... Id=3163291

[phyco126]

Wait, WD went bankrupt not because they couldn't get business, but because Vic sued Sony to for the rights to distribute a PS2 game that Sony didn't want released in the US?

If so, Sony can go to hell.

[Alunissage]

Um, yes, wrangling with Sony ("sued" isn't really the word; as far as I know there was no actual lawsuit) was pretty much THE reason WD disintegrated. I thought this was common knowledge.

Indirectly, of course, it's because WD didn't have sufficient sales revenue. But the reason they didn't is because their releases got farther and farther apart. It went something like this:

1. Tim Trzepacz, programmer, leaves just after they start work on Arc Collection (early 2000). Ken Innes, programmer who was working on Arc, has to take over EBC instead, essentially putting Arc entirely on hold until EBC's release in December 2000. As I understand it, that initial stage of programming is really a bottleneck, preventing a lot of other work getting done. (One thing that took a long time to be fixed in EBC was the music slowdown that plagued the Japanese version -- this version difference I *have* verified personally, heh -- which would never be considered acceptable to SCEA, although SCEJ was OK with it. Of course, it would never be considered acceptable to WD or their fans, either.)

(1a. Vic had tried having another writer, neither him nor Zach, work on Arc, but ended up writing the whole thing himself, scrapping that initial draft of Arc I -- which was the right choice, believe me. So in addition to having only one programmer, WD also only had one writer, as Zach was no longer at WD.)

(1b. WD was forced to stop selling Lunar games and merchandise sometime in 2001, for reasons I am not at liberty to discuss. But you all know how hard it became to find the guides. More lost revenue, which went to eBay sellers instead.)

2. WD spends all of 2001 working on Arc Collection, which had several painful events including a major hard drive crash, and has it nearly done in time for the holiday season, only to be bogged down by a bug in Arc Arena which caused crashes on one model of PlayStation which made up < 5% (maybe even closer to 1%, I forget) of the total units sold. Despite the comparatively low number of units affected for this entirely optional game, Sony insisted on it being fixed, which added weeks or months to the development.

2a. Retailers, who were losing interest in the PS in favor of the PS2, didn't want to take up their increasingly limted PlayStation shelf space with a giant box and would typically order 3-4 copies of Arc per store. These would sell fairly quickly, so they'd order another 3 copies, which would take two weeks to get there and onto the shelves. (I asked managers and employees at four or five stores about this one, as it was never available. Had I not ordered my copy directly from WD I would have had a very difficult time getting it.)

2b. The Arc I+II guide gets delayed (natch) and a very large bookstore chain decides to not carry it. (And every one of those customers whose book preorders were cancelled contacted WD about it, some very wrathfully.) Even worse, that bookstore chain owned one or more major game store chains, which I think also did not carry the guides. And, of course, the same reasons for not stocking many copies of a big, expensive game applied equally to the big expensive guide for that game.

2c. The Arc III guide gets cancelled, since work on it stopped about a third of the way through. (The writer and Victor have different accounts of why this happened.) Of course, by the time people calling the company daily are actually informed of this it's close to 8 months after the game was released, so it was probably a lost cause anyway.

3. Goemon, though already announced and in fact intended to be released before the Growlansers, gets the cold shoulder from Sony because its 3D isn't up to their current standard of 3D. I'm a little hazy on the details and chronology here, but my recollection is that while they did eventually get a grudging green light from Sony to some extent, they were then hampered by delays in getting source code from Japan.

4. Sony's concern for the image of their cutting-edge new console results in disdain for Growlanser's 2D graphics. They require WD to make some large-scale change to their intended release. Their "suggestions" for improvements, all of which would vastly delay the release, include:

a) Downgrading the games to PS1 games. Since this would require reprogramming nearly the entire game(s), this was an obviously nonviable solution. (Sony appeared to be under the same misconception as many less-informed WD fans were at that time that there was a magic box into which you drop games for console A and turn a crank to produce games for console B.) Even if the conversion had been simple, Arc Collection had already shown what a poor chance a PS1 release would have of getting any real shelf space at retailers.

b) Improve the 2D sprites to be higher-res, more detailed, etc. They gave this a try. However, there were simply far too many to do, even with outsourcing. I think it was something like 400 sprites * 16 frames, or something like that, all of which had to be individually edited.

c) The one you all know... combining the two games into a collection. This really sealed it. At the time this decision was handed down, around mid-2003, Grow II was at least 95% done. It was another year and a half before Generations was released. Because of Arc Collection, they had gotten out of their overlapping cycle of development (reprogramming one game while writing another and finalizing a third, etc) since the completed games in the collection just sit there without being released and therefore without making money waiting for the rest of the colleciton. Oh, and if anyone wondered, Sony also prohibited packaging PS1 and PS2 games in a single collection, so adding the original Growlanser, the best in the series, was not an option.

And that's pretty much it. They were slowed down first by lack of personnel and then by a first collection getting their development cycle off, and doomed by Sony's various demands, each of which added months without new releases bringing in any revenue. There were other factors, of course, but those were the main ones. Growlanser Generations was too late and too niche to pull them out. And now, of course, as with Arc IV and the later Lunars, what series recognition they established will be reaped by another company localizing a later installment.

[phyco126]

Ubisoft can go to hell too

wihing 0n a deam tat sems f@r offf, hopping 1t w1ll c0m3 tod@aaaaaiy!!!

Man, that sucks, I never knew the story, if it was discussed here I missed it. I just knew that it went under, I presumed it was because they couldn't keep up with the giants.

You know, I never realized that Sony actually set limitations on what games could be put on their PS systems. Yet, how the hell do other game companies manage to release crappy $1 games that are horrible, glitchy, idiotic, not even a child would want to play released but not anything that WD, which has a solid fan base, makes?

[Nobiyuki77]

Simple. Compaired to the Capcoms, Konamis, and Square-Enixs, WD was a small little company that wouldn't cause serious defection should they defect/go under.

Example. If Sony told SE to go f$%& themselves, and they did, they'd lose a TREMENDOUS amount of money and fans.

WD, not so much. >>