Recently I bought several DVDs of old Cryo adventure games. Although in my opinion the games themselves are not that great, these DVDs feature the possibility to play the game in 5-7 different European languages (even Swedish, but no Norwegian - sorry!). In some of the newer games you could even switch the language while playing and set different tongues for speech and subtitles. So for me as language nut these provide a great opportunity to improve some of my foreign language skills.
When I recently finished another session of 'The longest Journey' in English (which ranks as one of my favorite adventure games - Kudos!), I thought that it would be very nice to have a similar DVD for this great game with all the languages it was translated into (I think about 9-10?), and with the possibility to set different subtitles as well.
In order to save space (so as to be able to include all the languages on one DVD) the FMV-sequences could be kept in English (with subtitles), since they mostly contain chapter titles only. The low resolution videos could be skipped also, since every system equipped with a DVD-drive should be able to play the high resolution versions.
I think the topic of creating a DVD may already have been discussed many times in your company. But maybe you could use this DVD-rerelease to promote 'TLJ 2'?
I would really be nice to read your opinions about this!
Thanks in advance!I totally agree, Mathias, and it's a great idea. Unfortunately Funcom doesn't own the rights to all those different language version. Local distributors do, and I have no idea when the current contracts expire. The only version (I believe) that we own the rights to is the English speaking version. So until those rights are worked out - and we'd probably have to pay for them, seeing as each territory translated and recorded its own soundtrack - it won't be possible to release a multi-language DVD version.
But it would be nice, I agree. UbiSoft did in fact publish a limited edition dual language French/English DVD version, although I think it'll be really difficult to get a hold of it now.
Your old blurb on the right rocked. Bring back the old blurb!!!1
Or at least compromise: meld the two together.I feel the blurb needs to go through a constant evolution, until it reaches perfection. Much as the human species itself. Yes.
Dear Rangar,
Last summer I borrowed my friend's copy of TLJ so that I could finally experience what I had hear so much about for myself. Needless to say I'm now a fan and am egearly awaiting TLJ.S. While I was trying to convince other friend to try it out, I realized that I never actually paid for the game (though I am apt to pirate sometimes like everyone else I firmly beilive that it is proper to pay for good things). I recently saw a copy in a local EBgames and it made me wonder: At this point so many years later, do you guys still see profit from sales? If I went and picked up a legitimate copy (obviously pretty cheap by now) would you be getting anything or would it just go into the coffers of EB? I'll likely purchace it anyway if only for the art and manuals. I'm still curious though. Thanks.Funcom still gets a cut - albeit small - from every sale, and the more copies that are sold, the more the stores order. Which, in turn, creates retail demand for the next game. Which is good. So, yes, buy - please.
Plus: piracy is a wicked, wicked thing, and could easily spell the death of small publishers/developers like Funcom, so
don't. After all, we don't spend years of our lives and millions of dollars to make games so that people can simply steal them. Unless we make back the money we've spent, we're out of business and everyone loses their jobs.
One last thing. As far as I know the version of TLJ that's available in stores now probably does
not have a printed manual. As far as I know, it's on one of the CDs as a PDF file. This sucks, I know, but that's what publishers do when they release cheaper versions of their games - manuals are expensive things apparently. I happen to like the TLJ manual (especially since I wrote the damn thing), so I wish this wasn't so, but there you go. Not much I can do about it.
Still: buy, or don't play. It's illegal to steal. And not particularly ethical.
