Chapter 144: Lunaria’s New Titles
Not long after coming to LA, Insu had read Korean game magazines and such, but since he had almost no reason to pay attention to the Korean game market, his interest naturally faded.
Without realizing it, Insu looked back at the bookshelf on one side of the office. Most of them were American magazines. There were only a few Korean magazines that looked like they had been bought a very long time ago.
Afterward, he first sent a proposal to Lunaria.
“You mean our games?”
“Yes. If you send us the Gold Master, we’ll handle translation, localization, and distribution on our end.”
Fujimoto, the president of Lunaria, was slightly flustered by the unexpected proposal. Currently, Lunaria had no spare capacity.
Japan’s internet was growing very slowly, so it did not require any particularly tremendous investment, but Lunaria was such a small company that even keeping pace with that slow growth by filling it with content and carrying out sales operations was difficult.
However, WET was growing with a tremendous presence in America, and even in Japan, its market share was exploding, with a certain amount of revenue already beginning to appear.
For Lunaria, the gamble of a lifetime seemed to have succeeded, and because of that, they had no choice but to devote all their strength to it.
However, game development was also being carried out diligently. Although they had no spare capacity, they needed even more funding, and within Lunaria, the game development department was still the part that earned money most steadily. Because of that, manpower and investment were actually being concentrated there.
But since they were already squeezing themselves dry and running at full speed, they had absolutely no room to attempt anything bold like overseas distribution.
‘Still, if we can sell them, it’s definitely a profit.’
Honestly, he was not confident about whether their games would work in America. They were selling to some extent here, but they had not achieved any truly tremendous success either.
“Very well. However, we’ll need to check our contracts with the distributors, so we’ll review it internally first.”
“Ah, of course. Also, WGAME uses a standard contract rather than individual negotiations, so you can sign the contract directly through the internet. However, data transmission is still difficult, so please send the disks by parcel.”
The Parallel Soft employee spoke confidently, then ended with a slightly awkward smile at the last part.
Afterward, Lunaria held an internal meeting, but no particular objections came up. Some people had doubts about the ESD system, but they had no plans whatsoever for overseas distribution anyway.
“And I reviewed WGAME’s contract. Since its scope is limited to digital distribution, signing with WGAME doesn’t mean we won’t be able to sign with an American offline distributor later.”
“If that’s the case, I don’t think there’s any problem with proceeding with the contract.”
If this were a personal matter, they might have kept the games sitting in storage just in case. But this was business. They had to use everything they could use. On top of that, the company was currently squeezing out everything it had.
Not long afterward, Lunaria’s games arrived at Parallel Soft’s LA headquarters.
‘Oh. There’s a new title.’
Most of them were titles he had seen before, but it seemed they had continued developing diligently, because there were a few new games.
<Anis Saga>
The first one that caught his eye was this RPG.
First of all, it was basically a turn-based game using 2D graphics and SD characters, but the graphics were quite flashy.
(Translator’s Notes: SD character — Short for “super-deformed” character, a stylized design with exaggerated proportions, usually a large head and small body, often used for cute or comedic visual effect.)
It was not that the resolution was high or anything like that. Rather, the colors were clear and bright, and the characters were decorated in a charming, detailed way, so the moment he saw it, it felt like looking at a color comic book.
‘The characters are really good, though? It feels like looking at a mobile game from my previous life.’
Unlike the previous title, Anis Continent Story, its field and combat presentation were not separated. Everything took place on the same map, and the movement details were also good, making it far more immersive.
The character movements were also fairly well made. Rather than being smooth because they used many frames, the movements were distinctly exaggerated, like in Japanese manga or anime, so they immediately caught the eye. Instead of realism, it had a slightly comedic feeling mixed in.
It had a light and comfortable feeling that was easy to accept.
However, that did not mean the gameplay was lacking.
Compared to the previous series, Anis Continent Story, which had truly simple gameplay, this game had a variety of skills and allowed players to combine skill gems to use various techniques.
At the same time, there were also character-exclusive skills and powerful, flashy finishing moves.
Also, although it was 2D, the screen could be rotated, allowing players to observe the battlefield from every direction as if it were 3D. The terrain was also blockified like Minecraft, adding the concept of elevation, and each tile had its own attributes.
(Translator’s Notes: Minecraft — Sandbox game originally created by Markus Persson (“Notch”) and released publicly in 2009. It became one of the best-selling games in history due in large part to YouTube videos, livestreams, and user-generated online content that popularized it among younger audiences worldwide.)
These elements gave it considerable strategic depth.
‘But it’s not exactly original.’
In some ways, one could say it ripped off Ogre Tactics. And the skill system was similar to Final Fantasy’s Materia system.
(Translator’s Notes: Ogre Tactics — Reference to Tactics Ogre, a tactical RPG series known for grid-based strategic combat, complex systems, and political fantasy storytelling.)
(Translator’s Notes: Materia system — The skill and magic customization system from Final Fantasy VII, where characters equip magical orbs called Materia to gain abilities.)
But if asked whether it was a fake Ogre Tactics, that was not quite right either.
In truth, Ogre Tactics had high strategic depth, but because of that, its systems were also complicated and somewhat inconvenient. This game, however, cut away the heavy parts just enough to make it popular with the general public.
Meanwhile, the characters were cute and flashy, making them easy to get invested in, and the skills focused more on flashiness than realism, giving both visual appeal and satisfaction when used.
The story was also simple and linear, but it was not boring, and it was easy to understand.
It had been made in Lunaria’s usual style, taking the core of a masterpiece game and remaking it appropriately. Compared to the previous title, that method could be called even more refined now.
And after examining this game, Insu remembered a game he had enjoyed in his previous life.
‘This is Farland Tactics.’
In Korea, it belonged to the realm of legendary masterpieces, but in Japan, it had only achieved moderate success, and outside of that, it was a Japanese RPG that had barely been distributed overseas.
Insu was extremely glad to see it, but that did not mean he was certain it would be a huge hit.
Farland Tactics was definitely a well-made game. However, the reason it succeeded so much in Korea was partly because of the special nature of the Korean market.
Korea had a strong preference for Japanese games, but Japan was console-centered, while Korea was computer-centered. Because Korea focused on computers, many Western games entered the market, but those did not really match Korean sentiments very well.
But if people tried to play domestic games instead, the quality on that side was comparatively low.
So Japanese games were brought in, but because of the language barrier, people could not properly play them, and Japanese PC games had a somewhat different direction from console games.
At a time when there was such dissatisfaction and lingering regret, a game entered the market that had quality not inferior to console games, felt similar to console games, and came with perfect Korean localization. Naturally, it drew attention.
And Farland Tactics was a work with enough gameplay quality to succeed once it received that attention.
‘Ah, I want to try playing it.’
He had memories of enjoying it in the past, and since this was another world, it could not be exactly the same even if it was similar. In other words, it meant he could enjoy it like playing a new entry in the Farland Tactics series.
The problem was that this was the Japanese version.
By now, English had become almost as familiar to him as Korean, so he had no difficulty playing games in English, but his Japanese was only at the level where he could barely read it. He barely knew any kanji either.
He launched it and tried pressing various things for now, but since he could not read it properly, he could not actually play it.
Still, it was scheduled to be translated into English, so he would be able to play it after waiting a little.
The WGAME division decided to form a dedicated translation team.
Of course, having a translation team did not necessarily mean they had to directly employ translators, and they could outsource the work instead. Either way, since they planned to continuously bring in overseas games, translate them, and release them, a team was necessary.
Naturally, translation costs were not low at all.
According to the planning team’s estimates, each game would cost at least fifteen thousand dollars, and at most thirty thousand dollars.
“If we form a specialized team and continue localization work steadily, the cost will go down, but even then, we should assume around twenty thousand dollars per title.”
“Twenty thousand dollars…”
It was not a small sum.
And when considering fairness with local games that handled localization themselves or did not need translation, they could not simply provide this for free.
But charging the developers money was also unreasonable. After all, these were games from companies that had difficulty advancing overseas in the first place.
Because of that, WGAME had terms stating that if localization work was needed, an additional three-percent fee would be added. This localization was not mandatory. It was only a service provided when desired. However, there was no way someone would say they wanted to sell in America and then refuse an English translation.
‘No, for racing or action games that barely need language, they might not do it. They could just translate a very simple menu themselves or something.’
There was no reason to force it.
Receiving that extra three percent was not some enormous gain either. In fact, in most cases, that three percent would not even cover the translation and localization costs.
For three percent to amount to around twenty thousand dollars, total sales had to exceed six hundred sixty thousand dollars.
But since ESD presented itself as reducing distribution costs, game prices had to be lower than ordinary physical packages. Furthermore, for indie games or obscure overseas games, that was even more true, so the price would likely be around twenty to thirty dollars. Even at thirty dollars, they would need to sell twenty-two thousand copies.
That was absolutely not an easy number.
Since there were games that sold one million or even ten million copies, twenty-two thousand copies might look laughable, but the average sales volume of indie games was at the level of hundreds to thousands of copies. Twenty-two thousand copies meant excellent sales far above average.
Moreover, WGAME still did not have widespread cable internet availability, so for a while, they had to be prepared for poor performance.
In other words, that three percent was included with the future in mind. For now, it was effectively accepting a loss.
‘It’s the cost of filling the store and doing marketing.’
Insu was lost in thought for a while, then reached for another Lunaria game.
This one was quite recent. It had been released only a week ago.
<How to Become a Wizard>
‘I’ve heard this title somewhere before.’
Insu looked over the accompanying materials. Since the game was in Japanese anyway, even if he launched it, he would not be able to play it properly.
First, the color illustrations, which looked almost like Japanese manga or anime, caught his eye. It was a very cute art style. The colors were bright and vivid as well. However, it had a slightly antique feeling, so the atmosphere did not seem modern, but rather like an older era.
The content was exactly what the title said: a story about becoming a wizard. The player traveled around the world, gathered magical materials, and used formulas to learn magic.
It was a simulation game, but it had strong characterization and events, so it also gave off a slight RPG feeling. In other words, the story and events clearly presented a sense of direction, but since the process of wandering around and gathering materials to learn magic took up a large portion of the playtime, it also felt free.
It was almost the same content as a game he had seen in his previous life.
This game was a work where TGL had shown originality. If examined very deeply, one could say it had some similarities to systems from Princess Maker, Magical Circle Guru Guru, and The Legend of Zelda, but only to the extent of being references.
(Translator’s Notes: Princess Maker — Japanese raising simulation game series first released in 1991, centered on raising a young girl and shaping her future through choices and schedules.)
(Translator’s Notes: Magical Circle Guru Guru — Japanese fantasy comedy manga by Hiroyuki Eto, first serialized in 1992, later adapted into anime and games.)
(Translator’s Notes: The Legend of Zelda — Nintendo action-adventure game series known for exploration, puzzle-solving, item acquisition, and adventure structure.)
Because of that, How to Become a Wizard could be called an original and experimental game that was hard to say had copied any particular title.
Insu remembered enjoying it quite a bit too.
‘I don’t remember exactly whether the one I played was the first or second entry, though.’
However, as could be seen from the fact that it had not achieved a particularly great commercial success, there were slight problems with its gameplay.