Letter to Aksys

This is something I would not usually write here, but is something I am choosing to share for reasons. You are welcome to comment as always, despite this not being one of my regular kind of posts.

Dear people at Aksys and anyone else associated with the translation of the otome games you have released,

I first want to say I think it’s very brave and worthy respect to dare bringing otome games to the international audience. It’s a very nice genre and it makes sales, rather obviously, less likely to succeed. And not only have you released one (1) localized game, but you just recently released your fourth (4^th) localized otome game. Indeed, you are worthy of respect for your courage. You opened a door for others to dare localize the games we love.

And you have done a job well done in your localizations as far as I know! There was a bit too much barking in the beginning of Hakuoki – it earned it’s nickname Barkuoki for a reason – but you fixed that along the way and the translation was in general well-made. I haven’t played Sweet Fuse much and can’t say much about that work, but I didn’t see anything negative from my friends. Code: Realize was well-done and I think at least a good deal of us have forgiven you for the name change we had a hard time to accept and at times understand.

However, I’m not entirely certain you’ve known your main audience well enough. In the light of the release of Norn9 you have seen a side of us you might not have been prepared for. We otome gamers are a very passionate kind of people, which means that we get very upset and very disappointed, to extremes at times. We care, and we care a lot. On top of that, we are closely knit despite being spread all over the world and we care for each other, just as much as we – with we, I mean what I’d like to call us the core of the international community of otome gamers, but I’m only active on Twitter, so it might just be that core – promote to buy games one is interested in, especially localizations of otome games.

I do understand you have seen sides of us we wouldn’t usually present and you might not be entirely sure as to why we are so upset about the translation of Norn9, but I would say that perhaps we feel it’s offending both us and the game we love so much. It’s a game we know is well-written and good. It’s a game many of my otome gamer friends have played in Japanese, and which I myself could play just as well in Japanese. It’s a game we want to support the localization of. But we’re upset instead. We feel let down. We expected something good, something worthy of the game we love.

That was not what we got.

I have not played any of your new releases myself, I’ve only seen news and screenshots. And I’m disappointed in you. Just like many other of us. That’s why we are upset. We care because we are so passionate and we get upset for the same reason. We don’t demand you to give us our games, really – we’ve never really expected otome games and some time has passed between Sweet Fuse and Code: Realize together with Norn9 – and we’re happy if you want to bring these games that we’re so passionate about to us. Our only request, a humble one really, is that you take our passion seriously, and make these translations with the small but extremely passionate group in mind as well. Just as we can get very upset, we also get very loyal to those earning our trust.

And, just as we are vocal when we are upset about how a translation is not to our liking, we are just as vocal about how much we love something, in fact sometimes even more so. The line between the two is fine, because we’re not just any group of gamers and I’m afraid that you stepped way over to the wrong side line here.

We are forgiving, and we have forgiven you for things we have been upset about in the past, but we can only take so much. After all, we love these games so much that some of us even learned Japanese just to play them.

With respect for your courage and sad to say you lost me as a customer,

Anny
Otome gamer since sometime between 2007 and 2009

PS to all my readers: I still plan on play and write about Norn9, Code: Realize and Sweet Fuse. I got Sweet Fuse, but am hunting for Norn9 and Code: Realize. DM me on Twitter, Comment here or mail me if you want to sell! I was planning on a replay of Barkuoki (PS3 version though) but I think I’ll skip that, since I don’t want to buy that game (again).