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Nov. 2nd, 2008 04:25 amFor the past several days, I've been angsting over the possibility that a fourth Makeruna! Makendou game will never be made, independently or otherwise. I read somewhere that the average game costs $4 million to make, and it's hard to get money from angel investors or venture capitalists. Even having a well-paid job wouldn't get there fast enough, as most of those yield $100,000 a year. I kept asking Mom about raising funds, and it really got on her nerves.
Last night, I came to this conclusion:
So, what I'm thinking is, I might aim for a job at a video game developer. I might be wrong, but since anyone within a game developing company can come up with ideas, royalties are split among everyone there. Either that or each employee is paid for each task completed. (I read that good graphics designers can charge $5,000 for each task they complete, each of which they can do in just hours.) They do, also, work for multi-million-dollar game publishers.
(Above paragraph taken from a question I asked on Yahoo Answers. Find the whole question at http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=ArsBOayPBxp4JtuZwCg4I3cazKIX;_ylv=3?qid=20081101180210AA7PA7Z)
Finally, I concluded that if the worst happens, I would raise just enough money to buy licenses to translate the existing three games and the OAV. I once asked on Yahoo Answers how much it would cost to buy an OAV translation license, and estimated either $35 million or $35,000. Someone answered that these things cost tens of thousands of dollars to obtain translation permission for, but most likely not over $100,000.
Even though it isn't likely, I have this feeling that even under the best of conditions possible, Datam Polystar, NEC, or OLM will say no, and I'll be fucked anyway. However, I do understand that the bottom line of any business is money. Even though for the most part, Datam Polystar has never released anything in the United States, Makeruna! Makendou was an exception, for which the American "Kendo Rage" version's publisher was specified as Seta, and obviously, NEC must have had to get permission from DP somehow in order to make their own M!M installment. Usually, if games don't make it to America, it's less likely because their publisher has a policy against foreign release than because companies here don't deem it profitable enough to translate them. Most likely, they'll be glad to do business with me. How could they see something as actively profitable if they haven't even made any games for that franchise in ages?
Anyway, even though it would be cool to see Mai and co. in 3D for the first time, such a thing will just have to be a bonus if I can gain the support of an investor (which I probably will still seek). No, Joe would not have a part in this, but at least everyone canon to the series would finally have some American voices. I will still include a trivia section, which would include a page about SMW2: Yoshi's Island rewritten. Even though it might still cost more than it would reap, it would still be way more expensive to make an entirely new game, even without translating one prior installment to be packaged with it.
Last night, I came to this conclusion:
So, what I'm thinking is, I might aim for a job at a video game developer. I might be wrong, but since anyone within a game developing company can come up with ideas, royalties are split among everyone there. Either that or each employee is paid for each task completed. (I read that good graphics designers can charge $5,000 for each task they complete, each of which they can do in just hours.) They do, also, work for multi-million-dollar game publishers.
(Above paragraph taken from a question I asked on Yahoo Answers. Find the whole question at http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=ArsBOayPBxp4JtuZwCg4I3cazKIX;_ylv=3?qid=20081101180210AA7PA7Z)
Finally, I concluded that if the worst happens, I would raise just enough money to buy licenses to translate the existing three games and the OAV. I once asked on Yahoo Answers how much it would cost to buy an OAV translation license, and estimated either $35 million or $35,000. Someone answered that these things cost tens of thousands of dollars to obtain translation permission for, but most likely not over $100,000.
Even though it isn't likely, I have this feeling that even under the best of conditions possible, Datam Polystar, NEC, or OLM will say no, and I'll be fucked anyway. However, I do understand that the bottom line of any business is money. Even though for the most part, Datam Polystar has never released anything in the United States, Makeruna! Makendou was an exception, for which the American "Kendo Rage" version's publisher was specified as Seta, and obviously, NEC must have had to get permission from DP somehow in order to make their own M!M installment. Usually, if games don't make it to America, it's less likely because their publisher has a policy against foreign release than because companies here don't deem it profitable enough to translate them. Most likely, they'll be glad to do business with me. How could they see something as actively profitable if they haven't even made any games for that franchise in ages?
Anyway, even though it would be cool to see Mai and co. in 3D for the first time, such a thing will just have to be a bonus if I can gain the support of an investor (which I probably will still seek). No, Joe would not have a part in this, but at least everyone canon to the series would finally have some American voices. I will still include a trivia section, which would include a page about SMW2: Yoshi's Island rewritten. Even though it might still cost more than it would reap, it would still be way more expensive to make an entirely new game, even without translating one prior installment to be packaged with it.