Forum - View topicANNCast - Stream It Again, Sam
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configspace
Posts: 3717 |
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Congratulations!!
Talk about a coincidence. (... Interestingly since we're on the topic of the industry, in a link to another post, presumably from working with Good Smile, he mentions how rights holders get 2% to 5% of the retail (not list I guess) merch royalties. He also mentions how Japanese consumers are ordering anime from US amazon) Anyways, though it sounds great, the Mazer.jp thing seems almost too ambitious at this point. And even though from the interview he mentioned eventually doing the same thing, Sam's initiative of getting known, but older titles translated and licensed seems more focused currently with achievable goals to me, not to mention all the hard work of getting existing companies on board already done, |
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agila61
Posts: 3213 Location: NE Ohio |
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It's almost as if the Danny Choo project is focused on marketing the idea of Danny Choo, and Sam's project is focused on setting up a structure where its possible to offer legit access to anime that would otherwise be unlikely to be available except as bootlegs. |
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Veers
Posts: 1197 Location: Texas |
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Surrender Artist
Posts: 3264 Location: Pennsylvania, USA |
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I really love the enterprise that Sam is pursuing, especially because it's already well along the way to really happening.
There are a few series that I would love to see given a chance and I imagine that I'll encounter some that I hadn't heard of or considered before that seem worthwhile. I'm not in any position to contribute much, but I'm able and willing to support a few real gems. I look forward to learning more of the particulars, especially as to packaging, localization and distribution. It's really one of the coolest ideas that I've heard in a while.
Mazer does seem too ambitious to succeed now, but I like the idea and I would like to see something like that become a viable business model. Both it and Sam's project could be the early signs of a significant change in the market toward more closely integrating fans with the products that they consume. Anime already depends upon such a small, tightly integrated niche that it seems almost natural for that niche to become more directly connected to the industry that feeds it. I've been speculating about anime, and perhaps other media, at least partly adopting a subscription or contribution based model wherein masses of funds partly or wholly fund productions. I don't really know the knowledge to seriously evaluate the prospect and I think getting enough money would be hard, but I think that it's a promising concept. There are also a lot of things that would need to be resolved or sorted out even if we had the money. There would doubtless be many legal questions that could make it a mess. I also see a lot of potential problems in governance. Would fans who fund a project have any influence over the production, such as delegates on the production committee? Would they be treated as people who had just placed really, really advance preorders or more like shareholders entitled to some portion of the revenue? I also wonder if closer integration of fans and producers would affect attitudes toward piracy. If fans had a stake, even if it was just an emotional one, in the distribution or even production of a series, besides probably being unlikely to pirate it themselves, they might more actively try to counteract piracy. That wouldn't necessarily even be more public hostility toward it or cooperation with authorities, but might produce more novel solutions that lower the incentives to pirate. I'm not anywhere near qualified to think about this in detail, but it's an exciting pipe dream. |
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Asterisk-CGY
Posts: 398 |
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Well by pre-funding a series, the production company does not need to worry about piracy, because as long as its mark is met through contributions, the costs are accounted and paid for, and anything that adds to that is pure profit. Who cares who watches it after its made, my money is already taken care of. |
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configspace
Posts: 3717 |
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Well I think they are mostly separate issues. Rather than result in an ideological shift, I think it simply incentivizes certain spending. Pirates still buy stuff you know If fact, since such crowd funding initiatives appeal to our own selfish interests more than anything, considering how niche something must be in order to rely on it, why would it not appeal to people who also use fansubs? Aniplex realized how Madoka became as popular as it did worldwide with cosplayers and all, in the only way possible, and still releases it despite that, or likely because of it, as suggested in the podcast (the same can be said for Nisemonogatari) Now I've bought it. I also downloaded AnoHana--something that obviously wouldn't be generating the kind of chatter and discussion here on ANN if it weren't for piracy. If that were something that required some commitment in order to be licensed, I'd contribute too. Also, in terms of piracy--as commonly thought of getting something "for free"--vs fan involvement and how those do not necessarily have an inverse relationship, think about the other franchises with permissive licensing like Touhou (with its fan produced anime) and Vocaloid, both of which relies on its fanbase. I seriously doubt many or even a significant minority of their contributors are strong anti-piracy advocates. |
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Zalis116
Moderator
Posts: 6896 Location: Kazune City |
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RE: speculation on that infamous "boring eroge show" -- it could also be this one.
Not all subtitle "borrowing" is bad or lazy. Some groups that rip streaming subs do make very real improvements in terms of editing, timing, and typesetting, without introducing mistakes. Some even add clever localizations of their own, like "Magiclad Girl" in Is this a Zombie? instead of CR's untranslated "Masou Shoujo" or Funi's clunkier "Magical Garment Girl." But don't worry Sam, I promise to take utmost care not to add any mistakes into your (older, fansub-era) scripts that I may or may not work with in the future. |
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samuelp
Industry Insider
Posts: 2242 Location: San Antonio, USA |
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Just for the record, I would totally retranslate Hataraki Man, Ginban Kaleidoscope, Yume Tsukai, and Starship Girl Yamamoto Yohko. if I were doing them today. I shudder to go back and look at those translations of mine in the early days, I have come a long way. Man, I should see if I can get Yohko (TV) for the site. I love that show |
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Polycell
Posts: 4623 |
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samuelp
Industry Insider
Posts: 2242 Location: San Antonio, USA |
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The same is true in Japanese law. You can't be an investor unless you buy in a certain percent, so having 1000s of small investors is not legal. Our system would resolve this as outlined above: The payment is for some good or service, not an investment, and then that money is bundled and it's the bundler who is the investor. Basically the only way to make it work is to have the micro-patrons "return" on investment be goods or services and no tied to the overall success of the franchise. It might seem unfair, but it's the only way such a scheme works. (Note: Personally I don't feel its unfair. The point of investment is that risk leads to return. But mico-investors don't really "risk" anything ($50-$200 isn't what I call "risk"). So if the property they help fund takes off and becomes a huge success, it's not really them who should share in the profits, but those people like the creator and major investors that risk large amounts of money. The mico-investors get what they pay for, which is some kind of goods or service and the creation of the work itself. I see no managable way (or legal way, under current law) to distribute royalties to large numbers of investor, unless you make every single anime a publicly traded stock! ) |
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ConanSan
Posts: 1818 |
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I was really interested until the region lock reared it's satanic head.
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samuelp
Industry Insider
Posts: 2242 Location: San Antonio, USA |
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One thing I'll try proposing (although honestly I doubt it would work), would be letting anyone access from anywhere as long as they've registered a credit card with a US billing address (same as itunes). I figured if it's good enough for Viz's manga app it should be good enough for us too, right? However I could see that running into lawsuits from companies who might still own rights to some of the shows in certain countries. And I'm very wary of having a site where a viewer from one country can only see a subset of the shows of a viewer from another country, since weekly rankings, news, etc need to involve all shows on the site. |
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Polycell
Posts: 4623 |
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Veers
Posts: 1197 Location: Texas |
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agila61
Posts: 3213 Location: NE Ohio |
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There is some "Kickstarter" level where the individual can be treated as an Angel investor on Broadway, and a pledge of a certain large sum buys something between gross points and net points ~ say, points of the gross less specified fixed costs. But for "micro-Angels", a return can be primarily tied to goods or services and still be tied to the overall success of the individual production run that they helped finance. That is, its possible to reward micro-Angels for investing in a success by giving them internal credit that that they can roll over into other projects. Internal credit cannot be cashed out, so legally its just a customer rewards scheme, but it would feel a lot like like investing in a project. |
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