Posted by Gideon Zhi (138-64.nscc.mass.edu | 134.241.138.64) on October 11, 2002 at 11:51:48:
In Reply to: My Two Cents about the Translation Scene posted by Wildbill on October 07, 2002 at 21:18:37:
> This is a comment and follow-up to the thread below, after-the-fact, but is NOT a discussion of the monetary aspects.
>
> Quite simply, my overriding observation is that the Translation Scene has produced some amazing results over the years. Regardless, I have been aware of conflicts and controversies, but usually shrug these off because I feel they detract from the basic reason we exist, and that is to create English vesions of RPGs that were never ported outside Japan.
To put it bluntly, shit happens. But yeah, I do my best and try to move on. While I may not enjoy the work a lot of the time (rote grunt formatting takes up the vast majority of my hacking time these days) the finished product is always worth the effort, and I'm constantly learning new things about the systems I grew up with and love. It's great fun when it isn't mindbendingly frustrating.
> I have always contended that infighting drains our energies unnecessarily, thus reducing the speed and quality of our work. My true reason for pursuing this hobby (beyond friendships with valued associates) is to widen the choices of the games we play. Nevertheless, I have taken a month or two off from any real work, to play several English RPGs that were indeed ported.
I do my work because I look at a game and see something cool that I'd like to play, but would not be able to enjoy fully in a language I can't understand very well. So I submit myself to hours and hours of grunt formatting. More often than not, unfortunately, I have a very hard time following through when I play a game; despite the fact that Megami Tensei is probably my favorite long-running RPG series, and that I've had Persona 2 for about a year, I still haven't beaten it. But if I hack a game and never finish playing through it, I feel kinda like I'm cheating myself. So these days, it seems to be more of a way to get myself to play through a game to its conclusion, weird as that may sound. On the flip side though, I put in a solid fifty hours during my alpha Shin Megami Tensei playthrough and enjoyed every minute of it. I felt very content when I got to the end ^_^
> But now I'm starting to feel guilty about having so
> much fun. (*Laugh* Not really!) Point is, I feel that the state of the translation scene is related to how hard we participants are working on our projects. None of us can control the actions of others, but we can always direct our own actions.
Heh, I just played through Equinox this past week, and I'm planning on starting Shadowrun SFC when I get home. I really need to take more time to myself and actually play games, instead of just sitting around working on them all the time :p
> Personally, I haven't done that much lately, but I'm starting to feel that itch to get moving again.
I'm actually starting to get tired of it, kind of. That doesn't mean I'm going to stop, I don't think, it's just that I'm finding it harder to motivate myself and get excited about spending another 30 hours formatting Text File X. Maybe it's time for me to start working on some text parser utilities or something so I spend less time on grunt work and more time actually doing the fun stuff.