226 - Localization, Sketchbook, KOTOR2. (Patreon)

Welcome to another Monday post, bros! I have a lot to talk about this time. It's not really work related but I just want to vent some stuff. -_-

Depressing shit. Few days ago I found this guy on twitter, whose posts lead me to a couple of articles about localization of Japanese games and a whole lot of bullshit that is going on behind the scenes these days when it comes to localizing or even creating games these says.

Fire Emblem: Three Houses. When it was only released I had a lot of fun with this game. But after the atrocious sauna DLC I started to suspect that the game got toned down in an attempt to make it more appealing to a wider audience. Turns out I was right. It's the usual story: passionate fans make a franchise successful but greedy corporations want more money, so they make changes to attract more people completely forgetting about the people who made the franchise popular at the first place.

Localization. When given a choice I always play with Japanese audio. FE: Three Houses is fully voiced so for the most part atrociously lazy localization didn't bother me that much because I could still hear what the characters were actually saying. But the fact that Japanese players got the same sterilized version of the game as the rest of the world is very troubling to me.

I don't care. I used to think that one day I will get serious about improving my Japanese and will just play Japanese games and be happy. But I am starting to slowly realize that it won't be an option soon, since Japanese developers will make changes to their games before release now. There will be no censorship since the games will be getting sterilized during the development stage.

Rune Factory 5. When I found out that localization team has bullied the developer into retroactively making certain changes to the Japanese version of this game I knew I won't be getting buying that game. But few days ago I read an article about how much this interference from the western publishers actually messed up the game and I just got depressed.

An end of an era. Nintendo console remains to be the one with most freedom for fanservicy games, but the exclusives they release nowadays will continue to get more and more tame and safe. (I read another article about that too). There is no "Morality Department" like in square enix, but there is a lot of communication with the publishers outside of Japan during the development to make sure the games do not contain "controversial" content. As a result we get Xenoblade 3 that looks boring as hell to me. Same goes to many other games.

What to do? At this point I will probably be sticking to openly fan-service games (like Moero Chronicle for example) and retro games from PS2, PS3, PSP, DS and such. You know, from the good old days.

KOTOR2. Speaking of retro games. KOTOR2 is dropping on switch soon and they promise to include the "Restored Contend MOD" which, to be honest, sounds to good to be true :)

To other news. I bought a sketchbook and plan to fill it with doodles whenever I have free time. It's fun. I should've done this ages ago :)

DAHR. Few days ago I did something I don't normally do: I went to a coffee-shop and spent a few hours there sketching stuff. It was very relaxing ^_^ Also I dedicated a lot of time trying to copy some of DAHR's old drawings. I really like how he does his characters :)

But what about the work? Alright, I spent some time getting depressed over the current state of the game industry, I doodled in my sketch book, but what about Queen Trainer you may ask? Rest easy dear bros, this was another productive week. I am finishing up on Vivi's storyline. I will share a few more details in this week's Monday Surprise post, but all you need to know at this point is that a lot of work has been done and I am pretty happy about it.

Thank you for the support. I have been getting quite a few new and re-newed pledges lately. Really happy about that. If it goes on like this the August thing should go smoothly and I will be able to put all this foolishness behind me and just 100% concentrate of creating my games :)

That is all for today's post. See you all next week.

-Aka-

P.S. One of the patrons suggested I add a tier between $1 and $5, so I did that.

List of links just in case:
buymeacoffee.com/akabur
subscribestar.adult/akabur
itch.io/profile/akabur