yumedesuka:

You’re probably sitting there thinking oh my gawd, there she goes again, we already know that pirating otome games is bad and we shouldn’t do it (at least, I hope you know that it’s bad to pirate them).

After receiving two asks and yet another comment on my wordpress blog asking for videos of otome game playthroughs, I wondered why people can’t seem to understand the message I’ve been trying so hard to get across. It isn’t just me either; plenty of people have written against the piracy of otome games. But people continue to ask for pirated access to them. Quite honestly, it’s frustrating.

I’ve realized that there’s focus on the “it’s bad” part and there’s not enough explanation on the “why”. So here I am, writing this post when I could be out there romancing butlers and princes and hot salarymen and CEOs instead.

I’ll be focusing on two companies in this post: Voltage Inc. and Otomate/Idea Factory. Why? Because I categorize otome games into three categories: mobile, handheld/console, and PC. The overseas PC market for otome games is mostly overtaken by indie developers and none of them have a clear dominance in the market. Voltage is a leader (not the only one) in the mobile market and Otomate is the only company with measurable success in the console/handhelds market.

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1. Companies have to make profit.

Let’s start with the basics. Who develops these games? Companies. If you want to use the correct term, it’d be corporations. Voltage and Otomate/IF are both incorporated entities, which means they were founded with the goal of business purposes. What do businesses do? (psst, the answer is make money)

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2. Localizing/Translating a visual novel costs a lot of money.

Developing a game costs a lot of money. I won’t say a number since it varies depending on the game, but there are a lot of people who go into the production of a game developed by a big company (director, scenario writers, scripterwriters, line-art artists, CG colorists, background artists, CG supervisor, sound director, composers, seiyuu/voice actors, animators, programmers, debuggers, production manager, etc). Keep in mind this is only the developing team. I haven’t included the PR team, marketing, customer service, HR, and many others.

Also keep in mind that certain directors, scenario writers, artists, and seiyuu can come with a huge price tag if they’re successful and in demand. Consumers will buy games if the story is written by a writer they like, the art is done by an artist they like, or a character is voiced by a seiyuu they like. This allows these people to charge a “premium” price for their services because they can affect how well a game sells by a considerable amount.

A game won’t get translated unless it’s made enough revenue to break even and earn profit in Japan. Which means that they’ve made enough money to pay all the people above and make extra money off it (aka profit). I keep mentioning profit and you’re probably wondering why it’s so important; I’ll explain its importance later.

Translating a game has different costs. They have to hire a director, translators, scriptwriters, programmers, debuggers, production manager, etc. Because the game has already been developed, less people are needed, but even then it’s not a small number.

I read a post somewhere posted by someone who used to translate for Voltage that it cost them around $10,000 just to translate the prologue and main stories alone (it might have been a season, I’m not sure. If someone could find that post for me it’d be much appreciated). This is number very likely the money paid to the translators only. It probably costs Otomate/IF a lot more to translate theirs since their games are longer and usually include side stories. Let’s say Otomate pays ~$20,000 for their translators.

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3. Selling a game is a lot more than just its development and translation.

Money is spent on legal costs for copyright. Offices aren’t free; they have to be rented (and they cost a lot). There’s the PR team, marketing team, customer service team, HR team, and a lot of other teams that are included in the development of a game and the everyday operations of a company.

A lot of money is spent on marketing. I can’t give a number since this also depends on the game (it’ll go past $1 million for some games), but its a large cost and very likely costs even more than the localization itself. A game will do well or do poorly based on how its marketed. This is especially true for otome games because…

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4. Otome games target an extremely niche market.

What does this mean? It means that there’s a small, specific group of people that these products can be sold to. It’s easy to misunderstand and think that there’s a lot of people who like otome games since they’ve been getting a larger presence here on tumblr. 

Voltage has it easier since they’re in the mobile market. Smartphones have become ubiquitous in today’s society; because of that, they already have more room to work with in terms of target audience. While the subset they target is women in their 30s (at least, in Japan), technically, anyone with a smartphone could become a possible consumer. However, not everyone is interested in reading a romance in first person from a woman’s point of view.

Otomate released Amnesia on Steam and both Amensia and Hakuoki on mobile. It’s most likely because they’re trying to find a larger target audience they can sell to. Vita sales haven’t been doing well overseas, limiting the people who have a reason to buy their products (Otomate’s games are mostly developed for the Vita). However, it’s a pretty good bet that they’re not going to release games for Steam anymore due to the piracy fiasco that ensued less than a week after Amnesia’s Steam release.

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5. The otome game market is extremely competitive

A small target audience with lots of competitors indicates market competitiveness, which in turn indicates low profitability. Why? Because you have to either differentiate your product or fight with low prices.

Otomate doesn’t have any competitors in the consoles/handheld market (so far) but they have to compete with the growing number of otome games being released for mobile. If someone just got into otome games and didn’t own a Vita, there’s no reason for them to buy a Vita when they can easily play otome games on their phone. However, its indisputable that Otomate is the leading company for consoles/handhelds; I think they’re trying to use this to their advantage. They’re choosing which games to localize extremely carefully to grow their fanbase and secure more sales in the future. The mobile phone releases of Hakuoki and Amnesia were most likely done to increase sales, but also to give consumers a taste of their products. If they liked them, they can invest in a Vita and play Code:Realize, Norn9, and future releases. In a way, they’re differentiating their products as more “serious” games by their choice of platform (by “serious” I mean better developed, whether its the game itself, the characters, or the plot).

Voltage has a plethora of competitors. NTT Solmare, D3 Publisher, Cybird, Genius, Koyonplete, Arithmetic, indie developers, and more that I may not know of. However, they can’t raise their prices because they’re very well aware that people already think their prices are too high. They set the standard at $3.99 USD and keep it there. Their main strategy seems to be focused on quality, art style, and brand name. Game quality is factored into development and not localization so I won’t be discussing it here.

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6. The math part

Time for everyone’s favorite subject!

Let’s add up the total cost it took for Voltage to localize a game. Let’s say the project lasted 4 weeks. They hired 2 translators, 2 scriptwriters, 2 programmers, a director, and a production manager. Translators worked in weeks 1 and 2, scriptwriters worked in weeks 2 and 3, and programmers worked in weeks 3 and 4. The director and production manager worked all 4 weeks.

With the exception of the translators (who are paid by word) and the director, I’ll be using average salaries for the other positions. For the director, I’ll be using the average entry-level salary since the overall average is skewed too much due to high profilers.

translation: $10,000
2 scriptwriters working ~2 weeks: $5,000
2 programmers working ~2 weeks: $6,000
director working ~4 weeks: $4,000
production manager working ~4 weeks: $5,000

Total cost of localization team: ~$30,000

If we were to go off sales of main stories only (which are ~$4)

$30,000 / $4 = 7,500 main stories

Voltage has to sell 7,500 main stories to break even on localizing a game.

Now let’s add up the costs for Otomate localizing a game. 

Because the games are longer in content, let’s say the localization project for around 8 weeks. They hired 3 translators, 3 scriptwriters, 3 programmers, a director and a production manager. Translators worked weeks 1 to 3, scriptwriters worked weeks 3 to 6, and programmers worked weeks 5 and 8 . The director and production manager worked all 8 weeks.

translation: $20,000
3 scriptwriters working for ~4 weeks: $15,000
3 programmers working for ~4 weeks: $18,000
director working ~8 weeks: $8,500
production manager working ~8 weeks: $10,000

Total cost of localization team: ~$71,500

A copy of Norn9 sold for ~$40 on Amazon or GameStop. Distributors usually get around 50% of the selling price, which means that for every copy of Norn9 that got sold, Otomate made $20. 

$71,500 / $20 = 3,575 copies

Otomate has to sell 3,575 copies of Norn9 to break even on localizing it.

Keep in mind that this isn’t taking into consideration the marketing and advertising for either situations.

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7. So what about that oh-so-important profit?

Both Voltage and Otomate have to push money into localizing these games before they can sell them. Guess where that money comes from?

Some of it comes from investors, but a lot of it comes from profit from previous projects. The profit Otomate makes from Amnesia, Code:Realize, and Norn9 are most likely going to go towards whatever games they choose to localize next year. The profit Voltage gets from Butler Until Midnight is most likely going to go towards their future releases for the game and their next game localization. Profit is important because it allows a company to continue functioning and expand.

Companies also use revenue as a means to judge whether a product has sold well or not. They’ll have a set goal they want to reach and if the goal is met or exceeded, the product is considered a success. High profit indicates high interest; low profit or not breaking even means it’s not worth investing in.

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Are these numbers accurate? Who knows. I’m basing this off my personal experience in coding and projects; I haven’t worked on as large-scale projects, but if the localization was the only thing the team was working on, it seems reasonable to me. You also have to take into consideration that all the people in the positions I mentioned could have been freelanced or have regular positions in these companies. They’re most likely working on other projects while working on this one and the company might offer different rates for those. (this is my disclaimer: these numbers are purely from research and some personal experience).

To the people who say pirating doesn’t hurt anyone: it does. Here are the facts and numbers. They may not be perfect, but if you want to show me numbers that say pirating isn’t going to hurt the otome game market, go ahead. Do your own research and work it out.

I hope this helped you gain a better understanding as to why pirating hurts.

tl;dr : Don’t be an asshat and ruin things for fans who want more localizations

claraccoon:

So a teacher in my friends’ class told them he had grounded his daughter for wearing make up at school, and turns out that the next day every single girl in class had slapped the brightest blood red lipstick they had and there was a line in the bathroom to apply knife sharp, enormous curves of winged eyeliner on everyone and they looked like a legion of warrior goddesses on their way to avenge their sister, so when the teacher came in the room his face just FELL and he kept avoiding the girls staring at him during class, so they started raising their hands and asking questions about the subject to force him to look at them, and if you don’t think girls are amazing when they get down to battle you are missing out on something glorious

Friends: “Oh I totally understand people with mental illnesses that’s okay” “I’m so understanding don’t worry” “A mental illness is the same as a physical one!” “You’re fine how you are don’t worry I don’t judge!”
Me, a person with an actual severe mental illness: *Has a psychotic break that triggers a severe panic attack and then dissociation followed by detachment that lasts the next 6 hours*
Friends: “What’s your problem today?” “What’s wrong with you?” “Why are you acting weird?” “Stop it you’re making me uncomfortable.”
THE MORAL OF THE STORY IS:
People who suffer from mental illnesses will ACT LIKE THEY ARE MENTALLY ILL SOMETIMES, EVEN IF THEIR ILLNESS IS CONTROLLED WITH MEDICATIONS. We are sick. And it affects our daily lives and sometimes, it will also affect you if you are a friend! This has been a public service announcement from an actual person suffering from mental illness, thank you for reading! Have a nice day! (: