Sekai Project fails to secure nearly finished Baldr Sky fan TL

[Deep Blue]

I find interesting that all this issues could be resolved or even avoided by just talking things out but it seems that sekai project doesnt like to talk, or have this lack of ability to communicate properly (this was already proved beyond any doubt in the past) which is really hurting them as a company, something that is really easy to fix too...

[sanahtlig]

I don't see any good business reason not to use Aroduc's work, if he made a reasonable offer.  He's worked with JAST, who are notoriously inept with their project handling, so his expectations can't be THAT high.

There's no hint of this in Aroduc's post, but suppose Aroduc had demanded an adult release and Sekai Project refused to guarantee that?  That would be the only situation I could reasonably imagine where they'd have no choice but to turn Aroduc down (and maybe stonewall him and hope he changed his mind).

[Nandemonai]

40 minutes ago, yorikbad said:

I agree with you in many terms, though I dought Giga really knows about Aroduc. And even if they do, why not include Aroduc in the new team? Let him have his moment of glory, if it means to release BS sooner. This game's not getting any younger. Or shorter.

I agree, it's not likely that Giga even knows Aroduc exists.  But if they did, it's conceivable they might take offense at him pushing ahead with a translation without their permission, and so they might refuse to work with him on general principle.  (I find that unlikely as well, but you never know, licensors have made stranger demands before.)

[Nandemonai]

20 minutes ago, sanahtlig said:

I don't see any good business reason not to use Aroduc's work, if he made a reasonable offer.  He's worked with JAST, who are notoriously inept with their project handling, so his expectations can't be THAT high.

There's no hint of this in Aroduc's post, but suppose Aroduc had demanded an adult release and Sekai Project refused to guarantee that?  That would be the only situation I could reasonably imagine where they'd have no choice but to turn Aroduc down (and maybe stonewall him and hope he changed his mind).

I still think it's more likely that Sekai Project already hired someone else, so it doesn't make sense to pay him to use his stuff AND pay this other outfit for their translation too.  I don't know Aroduc at all, other than his weird attempt to Kicikstart an unauthorized fan patch that then turned into a real release for Littlewitch.  So I can't say whether he cares about an adult release or not.

[sanahtlig]

1 minute ago, Nandemonai said:

I agree, it's not likely that Giga even knows Aroduc exists.  But if they did, it's conceivable they might take offense at him pushing ahead with a translation without their permission, and so they might refuse to work with him on general principle.  (I find that unlikely as well, but you never know, licensors have made stranger demands before.)

Well, actually--Aroduc and Seiha fan-translated Duel Savior.  It's possible that actually drew GIGA's attention and pissed them off.  But in that case, Sekai Project wouldn't have made an offer, they probably would've just DMCA'd him.

[yorikbad]

15 minutes ago, sanahtlig said:

I don't see any good business reason not to use Aroduc's work, if he made a reasonable offer.  He's worked with JAST, who are notoriously inept with their project handling, so his expectations can't be THAT high.

There's no hint of this in Aroduc's post, but suppose Aroduc had demanded an adult release and Sekai Project refused to guarantee that?  That would be the only situation I could reasonably imagine where they'd have no choice but to turn Aroduc down (and maybe stonewall him and hope he changed his mind).

Aroduc complained about the game a lot, so I don't think he'd really demanded 18+ content. From the words he chose, I believe he's a very narcissistic person and he was deeply hurt by Sekai's ''give and leave" attitude. Another fan TL groups were just happy to earn some money and drop the projects into SP's hands but not him. They're all like kids. It's not the way the buisness works.

[Chuee]

36 minutes ago, sanahtlig said:

I don't see any good business reason not to use Aroduc's work, if he made a reasonable offer.  He's worked with JAST, who are notoriously inept with their project handling, so his expectations can't be THAT high.

Hasn't he complained about that before, though? I thought the main reason he's still off doing his own thing, despite being plenty capable of being hired by a loc. company, was because he wasn't fond of how difficult dealing with official stuff was? 

[sanahtlig]

12 minutes ago, Chuee said:

Hasn't he complained about that before, though? I thought the main reason he's still off doing his own thing, despite being plenty capable of being hired by a loc. company, was because he wasn't fond of how difficult dealing with official stuff was? 

It could be that JAST stung him one too many times and now he demands full control of the project from start to finish.

As for doing his own thing, Aroduc seems to only work on gameplay titles (that I'm aware of).  He may actually refuse anything else, and there's a very limited number of gameplay title licenses available at any given time.  So maybe he just fan translates in between opportunities to translate for a gameplay VN localization project.

[Novel21]

I'm happy at Baldr Sky are not dead but still alive.

[littleshogun]

......Interesting situation I guess? Regardless I think Aroduc's post there could also serve as some sort of indirect confirmation that he didn't involved in Baldr Sky (And machosist as well for trying translating the game with the engine that he loathed so much).

What I knew for now that even if the situation was favorable for Aroduc there, there's still long way there if we talking about Baldr Sky release here (Seinarukana was took 3 years to release after Aroduc was announced that he'll translate it).

PS - Looks like Overwatch was quite addictive, now that Aroduc use it as stress reliever after Original Ren here (Not that I knew about it).

[Infernoplex]

10 hours ago, Deep Blue said:

I find interesting that all this issues could be resolved or even avoided by just talking things out but it seems that sekai project doesnt like to talk, or have this lack of ability to communicate properly (this was already proved beyond any doubt in the past) which is really hurting them as a company, something that is really easy to fix too...

Oh, yes, it's very easy to fix, I have an idea what they could do to help themselves out and VN community too. This is a relatively recent statement from one of SP's employees (or past employees right now):

Well, if that's true then why don't they just go back to their initial plan and start doing what they originally intended to do at the company, since they didn't really want to do visual novels at all? Visual Novel localization is no easy business and it isn't even that profitable from what I know about it, why did they even choose to do it if they don't even like VNs at all? Did they think it was going to be some easy cash making? And by the way, I think that most if not all of their titles were released using Kickstarter, I don't remember JAST or MangaGamer abusing Kickstarter like that for any of the titles they released.

[solidbatman]

53 minutes ago, Infernoplex said:

Oh, yes, it's very easy to fix, I have an idea what they could do to help themselves out and VN community too. This is a relatively recent statement from one of SP's employees (or past employees right now):

Well, if that's true then why don't they just go back to their initial plan and start doing what they originally intended to do at the company, since they didn't really want to do visual novels at all? Visual Novel localization is no easy business and it isn't even that profitable from what I know about it, why did they even choose to do it if they don't even like VNs at all? Did they think it was going to be some easy cash making? And by the way, I think that most if not all of their titles were released using Kickstarter, I don't remember JAST or MangaGamer abusing Kickstarter like that for any of the titles they released.

ummm... thats the CEO of Sekai Project, he's still in charge as far as we know, and he despises the community, understandably so at times. You obviously know little to nothing about Sekai Project based off your statements. Just do a bit of research on them. Yeah, they still fuck up a lot, but the community also is very toxic towards... everyone lol 

[Fred the Barber]

1 hour ago, Infernoplex said:

And by the way, I think that most if not all of their titles were released using Kickstarter

As this thread, which should properly be titled "Making Shit Up", continues, since we now have some factual inaccuracy to go along with our baseless theorizing, I'm just jumping in here to correct the former.

• As you can see from their wikipedia page if you take the trouble to count, Sekai Project has published 64 games: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sekai_Project#Published_games
• As you can see from their Kickstarter created page, Sekai Project has created 12 Kickstarters, of which 11 were for games, not all of which are included in the above tally of 64 games because one failed and some are not completed yet, and two of which (WEE and Grisaia) are counted twice in the above since they subsumed multiple releases: https://www.kickstarter.com/profile/sekaiproject/created

Carry on making shit up, but please do try to restrain yourself to wild hypotheses about companies' and people's motives and their NDA-covered contractual obligations, rather than about easily verifiable matters of fact.

[Infernoplex]

Just now, solidbatman said:

ummm... thats the CEO of Sekai Project, he's still in charge as far as we know, and he despises the community, understandably so at times. You obviously know little to nothing about Sekai Project based off your statements. Just do a bit of research on them. Yeah, they still fuck up a lot, but the community also is very toxic towards... everyone lol 

True, I don't know anything about them other than what random info I stumble upon. I think I did saw several times that he was mentioned as a CEO but didn't believe it because based on how he acts (like a drama queen) I had trouble thinking of him as a CEO (that's why it seemed to me like he is a random employee), that makes matters even worse, when a CEO acts like that, and no, the community isn't a good enough excuse in my opinion, no matter how bad the community is you can't just come out and say things he said, that shows lack of control and potentially deters new customers.

But on the other hand, it's true that the VN community is toxic towards ... everyone as you said, but SP is special in the sense that it brings up the most hate towards itself thanks to the way they speak with the community and also with the way how they handle localizations, for example I have yet to learn whether there are going to be 18+ releases of these new VNs they announced. Though with this new Nutaku partnership I do hope that we won't get some censored garbage even if the 18+ versions come out.

Don't get me wrong, I don't hate SP, in fact I know they did release and do keep releasing some really good VNs, like Grisaia trilogy, Clannad, Root Double and some other, what I don't like about them is how they always manage to bring some drama upon themselves.

[Infernoplex]

@Fred the Barber Okay, thanks for the heads up, yes, apparently I was wrong about Kickstarter though I must admit, it still stands that they use it much more then JAST or MangaGamer, I had a subjective feeling that they do it all the time but I am wrong, I am personally not against that, I know VN localization can be very expensive and that it was probably the only way to bring some of these great titles localized.

[Elkia]

14 hours ago, Nandemonai said:

I figure the most likely explanation is Sekai Project was secretly negotiating for Baldr Sky at the same time Aroduc was secretly fan translating it.  And that neither one knew what the other one was doing.  So SP might have already inked a contract with another translator to work on the project.  It's still fairly rotten for SP to not even straight up tell Aroduc 'sorry, we can't hire you' and subject him to the no-reply treatment.  That's just straight up unprofessional.

 

Moogy, Conjueror, etc all publicly congratulated Aroduc as soon as Baldr Sky's localization was announced. Doddler was part of his team, but didn't know anything about the licensing. Furthermore, Aroduc said:
 

Quote

 

I learned about the licensing from the announcement from AnimeExpo, same as everyone else.

I have no doubt whatsoever that the license was obtained primarily due to the tools Doddler and Nagato created, as well as my own significant work on it

 

So it seems obvious that they were in communication about it, and that he was working on it was an open secret within the VN industry. He likely asked around about getting it licensed at some point.

And Aginyan said yesterday:

Quote

All I can say is that there IS a project team being put together

Not that there was one or work had already begun.

It's silly to take these at anything other than face value, especially if SP isn't denying any of it.

[Deep Blue]

10 hours ago, Infernoplex said:

Oh, yes, it's very easy to fix, I have an idea what they could do to help themselves out and VN community too. This is a relatively recent statement from one of SP's employees (or past employees right now):

Well, if that's true then why don't they just go back to their initial plan and start doing what they originally intended to do at the company, since they didn't really want to do visual novels at all? Visual Novel localization is no easy business and it isn't even that profitable from what I know about it, why did they even choose to do it if they don't even like VNs at all? Did they think it was going to be some easy cash making? And by the way, I think that most if not all of their titles were released using Kickstarter, I don't remember JAST or MangaGamer abusing Kickstarter like that for any of the titles they released.

dovac is pure salt and he is also the most unprofessional guy out there, just like the VN community can get really toxic at times (not always, it's bad to make generalizations) he is the same for his own company most of the time, making comments like those that do nothing but hurt SP.

[Infernoplex]

1 hour ago, Deep Blue said:

dovac is pure salt and he is also the most unprofessional guy out there, just like the VN community can get really toxic at times (not always, it's bad to make generalizations) he is the same for his own company most of the time, making comments like those that do nothing but hurt SP.

Ignore my previous post, I don't really follow up on their stuff but it's basically all over Reddit and 4chan when something related to them happens and I can't help it but notice it, it seems to me that dovac is the primary reason of drama there so I shouldn't judge whole SP based just on him ... though as a CEO I'd have expected more self-control from him since he is on that position, besides I think it's irrelevant to this thread, I have to say sorry because it maybe looked like I was trying to start up the SP hate-bashing which wasn't really my intention, I just wanted to point out on some of the issues that bothered me about them, personally I'd like to see them succeed and not exit the VN market as Dovac in emotional state said, though they do need to up their communication skill definitively.

[Deep Blue]

17 minutes ago, Infernoplex said:

Ignore my previous post, I don't really follow up on their stuff but it's basically all over Reddit and 4chan when something related to them happens and I can't help it but notice it, it seems to me that dovac is the primary reason of drama there so I shouldn't judge whole SP based just on him ... though as a CEO I'd have expected more self-control from him since he is on that position, besides I think it's irrelevant to this thread, I have to say sorry because it maybe looked like I was trying to start up the SP hate-bashing which wasn't really my intention, I just wanted to point out on some of the issues that bothered me about them, personally I'd like to see them succeed and not exit the VN market as Dovac in emotional state said, though they do need to up their communication skill definitively.

when I said "making comments like those that do nothing but hurt SP" I meant the dova's comments that he made on twitter not you.

[Infernoplex]

9 hours ago, Deep Blue said:

when I said "making comments like those that do nothing but hurt SP" I meant the dova's comments that he made on twitter not you.

Aha, okay, sorry for misunderstanding then

[Conjueror]

On 2016/9/2 at 6:25 PM, Elkia said:

Moogy, Conjueror, etc all publicly congratulated Aroduc as soon as Baldr Sky's localization was announced.

I only knew it because someone else who knew it got worried my secret project might be Baldr Sky and contacted me.
I'm not sure if it was really such a well-known secret (no idea where Moogy learned about it).
And I was just as surprised as anyone when SP announced their partnership with Giga (I naturally assumed Aroduc had started working with them at some point).

On another note, in my practice, Japanese companies take ages to clarify even on the simplest matters (literally multiple weeks to answer a single yes or no question).
It would be pretty funny if Aroduc blew the fuse while SP was simply waiting for Giga to respond.

 

[Narcosis]

11 hours ago, Conjueror said:

On another note, in my practice, Japanese companies take ages to clarify even on the simplest matters (literally multiple weeks to answer a single yes or no question).
It would be pretty funny if Aroduc blew the fuse while SP was simply waiting for Giga to respond.

 

I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case, just as I replied earlier. People often jump to conclusions way too fast and translating things isn't really as much about effciency, but patience and perseverance.