Video Game Tuesday: The Importance of Timing

This week for Video Game Tuesday I’m going to talk about why doing certain things pisses off players and how to avoid them. It’s all about The Importance of Timing!

Timing? Yes, Timing. It’s pivotal in making the most money and keeping your player base happy. It’s also why people hate Bungie so much in regards to Destiny and it’s sequels content, or rather lack thereof.

Keeping to a schedule: If you commit to a schedule, and especially if you do so publically and on record, you have to keep to it to the best of your ability. Bungie for example promised frequent content updates for Destiny and it’s various sequels, but it’s frequently and often quite lacking. In particular is the dearth of meaningful content being released regularly, which is always a death sentence for an MMO. It’s why Wrath of the Lich King was the last great World of Warcraft expansion before the disaster that was Cataclysm. The content drought was incredibly long in between Wrath of the Lich King’s final patches and Cataclysm, and that was unacceptable in terms of business. The fact that Cataclysm was highly despised as well did not help matters and led to a significant decrease in subscription numbers for the game. And by regular releases, I mean in periods of no longer than two to three months, which is the acceptable amount of time most games have content updates. Final Fantasy XIV has a major patch about every 3 months, and in between those patches are smaller content patches that add additional content. Compared to a game like Destiny 2 whose first content update post launch happened 3 months and was universally despised and you can see why timing is everything in business.

So what about other games? Well other games, in particular games like Fate/Grand Order’s NA client which is two years behind the original JP client, the community has a general sense of what the hell is going on and what is coming out when. That all went to shit when Aniplex decided to move the Paid Gacha pull, where you paid ~$30 to get a guaranteed SSR servant, two months earlier and left out on two highly sought after servants in that banner, Mordred and Jack the Ripper. It’s a move that would have been acceptable if that was an NA exclusive event, but it was a replacement for the typical New Year’s Paid Gacha that occurs yearly for the JP client. So it pissed off a ton of people, including myself. Not only would it have made a ton of business sense to have both those Paid Gacha occur, in addition to the delayed Anniversary Gacha that just happened a couple weeks ago, but it alienated and upset many people.

In addition Fate/Grand Order’s localization team seems to think that announcing content updates at Anime Conventions is a smart move. That’d be acceptable if they lined up to the expected schedule that the community projected, but they didn’t. They let the NA Client fall 4 weeks behind schedule just to announce an event at an Anime convention that at most .01% of the player base went to. It was just another insult in a long line. Such things could’ve been avoided if they remembered how important Timing is.

So that’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday. I’ll close out with a quote from Wit from the Stormlight Archives that puts it best. “What is it we value? Innovation. Originality. Novelty. But most importantly…timeliness. I fear you may be too late, my confused, unfortunate, friend.” 

Video Game Tuesday: Story Censorship

Hey all I’m back with a topic that has meaning especially today for those in the US and EU. It’s all about Story Censorship!

Story Censorship?: I mean changing things in a game that affect the story, this could be removing missions or changing certain animations or models or scenes graphically to avoid getting hit with a higher rating. I hate this, it’s hypocritical and if you have to do so to ship a game with a “certain” rating you aren’t doing your customers and yourself any favors.

Give me an example: Today Tales of Berseria is launching in the US. In Japan there is a certain scene that occurs that directly impacts the story, and because of it’s graphic nature it was toned down to keep a certain rating. Bandai Namco America and EU have both said it won’t change the tone of the story. I’m here to tell you that any changes made, graphically or otherwise does affect the story. A game’s story isn’t made up of just gameplay.The story is made up of the text, the voice acting, the art, the music, and the gameplay. It all affects the story, so changing even a single part of that can and will change the intended tone that you as a consumer will experience. Normally I have great respect for Bandai Namco for bringing the Tales of series west much more often in the past decade, but the simple fact that they need to change the scene at all is a disservice to both themselves and us as consumers. I hope to be receiving a copy of Berseria to review, but regardless of whether or not I do receive it, I will be keeping this change in mind and it will affect my score, not greatly most likely but it will affect it.

There are other examples, like the Russian mission in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 which caused a very big controversy, but they are all disservices to everyone. Make it known that you ought to receive the original story intact, so you can experience it as intended. Otherwise you’ll be getting inferior games.

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday.

Video Game Tuesday: Localization

This week on Video Game Tuesday I’m talking about a topic near and dear to my heart. It’s all about Localization!

What is Localization?: Localization is the process of adapting internationalized software for a specific region or language by adding locale-specific components and translating text. In terms of Video Games that means re-dubbing the game and translating all the systems of the game.

Why am I talking about it?: Because a lot of great games never get published in western countries because it’s too much of a hassle to localize the game. With the Anime crowd growing larger each year however using subtitles and ignoring the process of dubbing makes it easier to bring great games over to the states. That being said some of my favorite games like Tales of Vesperia have Japanese only versions with an expanded game. There are fan-made patches out there, but those require you to break warranties at the very least and that’s a shame. That being said there are some obvious reasons why some things don’t get ported overseas, as the content may not sell very well and is so niche in terms of audience that it would be a waste of money.

What’s the funny part?: Well sometimes you get really bad translations, like the one above. Other times the joke gets lost in translation, with there being no equivalent joke in other languages. JRPGs are notorious for this particularly.

What can I do to bring games I want over to my country? Well let the publisher know you want it by buying any localized entries in that series that come out. Even if it’s not an amazing entry it will let them know they can bring other entries over in the future. Otherwise it’ll forever stay a non localized series.

That’s it for this week’s Video Game Tuesday!