Celebrating Video Game History!
West Midlands, England
Joined April 2009
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Physical games 👌 see anything good? I was tempted to get fire emblem or Yoshi but not sure if I’d enjoy them..
Is it weird that I feel review scores are almost direspectful. No company or individual goes into a project to make something intentionally bad.
I feel a review should just reflect the individual reviewers enjoyment, and should be worded something like - did the reviewer enjoy this? Yes or no.
So happy to have a new 2D Castlevania! I’m not sure it can live up to how much I love the GBA and DS ones, but I’m still excited to play it, it’s been far too long!
This is why the west doesn’t have the same feeling of gratitude towards companies like Japan does! 😢
BREAKING: Electronic Arts is cutting 400 jobs and shutting down BioWare, the legendary development studio behind Dragon Age and Mass Effect. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
My Love Live collection so far, just finished watching Yohane, excited to start Nijigasaki next, and hope to find some of the concert Blu-Rays and the Aqours documentary in Japan!
If Japan cares so much about following the law. Why are second hand game shops ok?
Really interesting discussion from both sides of the argument.
From what I’ve seen it basically boils down to differing cultural opinions on morals, ethics and legalities. From what I’ve seen, the Japanese are saying that piracy of out of print games can potentially harm the companies future sales so therefore it is illegal and should not be done.
The western side seems to think it’s ok because the company won’t be making any money from a game they don’t have on sale anyway…
I see merit in both sides of the argument and it’s quite frustrating to see the comments be so black and white.
I personally don’t pirate anything I don’t already own, (it’s 100% a moral thing on my end, I don’t have a problem with anyone else doing that. although owning in my case usually means buying from the second hand market, meaning the company will never see any of my money anyway..)
I would never pirate anything that is currently available to buy new.
I think it’s better for more people to enjoy the game (or any other media) than be forced not to ever engage in it because of a law that supposedly protects the companies’ future profits.
I also saw an argument that mods and fan translations are also illegal and should never be used. Mods I kind of get, as it’s changing the intended experience, but on PC, especially in the west, it’s usually seen as a good thing and can help prolong the games lifespan. But then there’s the thoughts that prolonging a games lifespan is actually bad because people’s attention will still be in the old game rather than whatever new the company has produced. But the counterpoint to that is people’s attention could always be on something else. If someone choose to play an old game by the same developer instead of buying the new one, there’s no difference.
Fan translations though I see no problem with at all, if a game is never going to be released outside of its own country. That shouldn’t stop others being able to engage with it. Some fan translations have even been used by companies as official translations in the future, e.g Falcom using fan translations for the Ys and Legend of Heroes games. Helping bring more awareness to a franchise is only a positive in my eyes and can only mean more potential sales in the future if the company decides to do international releases. I’ve played a lot of the Japanese games I picked up over the years by patching a fan translation. If they ever get an official English release, I’d buy them to support the company, but currently there’s no way to financially support the majority of companies. Maybe they should all have Kofi accounts for people who want to donate after enjoying a fan translation?
Ultimately, games should be more accessible and companies should put more effort into preserving their games and keeping them available on modern platforms.
Thinking more about this, and with the news of Jun Maeda, I thought back to my first time playing Clannad. There was no English release when I first played it at Uni, so I decided to pirate it and apply a work in progress English translation patch.
That game changed my life, it changed my outlook on friends and family and gave me the motivation to make something with a similar emotional impact in the future.
If I didn't pirate Clannad back then, I wouldn't have supported Key years later by buying the game on Steam, Switch, and the £100+ special edition on Kickstarter, as well as the DVD's, and every other Key work too! So, the Japanese reasoning that piracy hurts a company’s future profits is completely unfounded.
I've easily given Key over £1000 that they would have never seen otherwise, and became a big supporter of whatever they released in the future. Summer pockets was amazing! But I probably never would have considered reading it if I hadn't pirated Clannad nearly two decades earlier!
Really interesting discussion from both sides of the argument.
From what I’ve seen it basically boils down to differing cultural opinions on morals, ethics and legalities. From what I’ve seen, the Japanese are saying that piracy of out of print games can potentially harm the companies future sales so therefore it is illegal and should not be done.
The western side seems to think it’s ok because the company won’t be making any money from a game they don’t have on sale anyway…
I see merit in both sides of the argument and it’s quite frustrating to see the comments be so black and white.
I personally don’t pirate anything I don’t already own, (it’s 100% a moral thing on my end, I don’t have a problem with anyone else doing that. although owning in my case usually means buying from the second hand market, meaning the company will never see any of my money anyway..)
I would never pirate anything that is currently available to buy new.
I think it’s better for more people to enjoy the game (or any other media) than be forced not to ever engage in it because of a law that supposedly protects the companies’ future profits.
I also saw an argument that mods and fan translations are also illegal and should never be used. Mods I kind of get, as it’s changing the intended experience, but on PC, especially in the west, it’s usually seen as a good thing and can help prolong the games lifespan. But then there’s the thoughts that prolonging a games lifespan is actually bad because people’s attention will still be in the old game rather than whatever new the company has produced. But the counterpoint to that is people’s attention could always be on something else. If someone choose to play an old game by the same developer instead of buying the new one, there’s no difference.
Fan translations though I see no problem with at all, if a game is never going to be released outside of its own country. That shouldn’t stop others being able to engage with it. Some fan translations have even been used by companies as official translations in the future, e.g Falcom using fan translations for the Ys and Legend of Heroes games. Helping bring more awareness to a franchise is only a positive in my eyes and can only mean more potential sales in the future if the company decides to do international releases. I’ve played a lot of the Japanese games I picked up over the years by patching a fan translation. If they ever get an official English release, I’d buy them to support the company, but currently there’s no way to financially support the majority of companies. Maybe they should all have Kofi accounts for people who want to donate after enjoying a fan translation?
Ultimately, games should be more accessible and companies should put more effort into preserving their games and keeping them available on modern platforms.