As recently reported, MangaGamer will be translating and publishing The House in Fata Morgana, a gothic visual novel developed by a studio named Novetacle. Fata Morgana was originally going to be localized and published by Playism, but financial restrictions kept the project from being greenlit.
In a blog post, written by Novetacle and translated by MangaGamer, the Novetacle explain how the transition took place and even what the loose terms of their contract with MangaGamer are.
“First, we would like to make it clear that we did not have a dispute with Playism,” Novetacle write. “They will still be distributing the Japanese edition of Fata Morgana, and we would like to maintain a healthy relationship with them.”
“The change took place after much consideration as to the best way to make the localization project happen. For a game with as much text as Fata Morgana, the costs of localization are quite high, and based on the sales we were making on Playism, it didn’t seem like it was going to be feasible. The cost of localization alone would be enough to make roughly one-and-a-half Fata Morganas, so we were at a loss as to whether to continue the project or put that money toward making new games.”
Novetacle go on to say that they did consider crowdfunding via Kickstarter as one of the possible options, but opted not to go that route after deciding that trying to maintain a crowdfunding campaign would require a significant amount of effort, which would keep the studio from working on a new project. And so, after the company was introduced to MangaGamer, a deal that would be both time-efficient and financially viable was struck.
“Instead of having to pay localization costs up front, the agreement was that we would split profits made after the game went on sale, which took care of our financial concerns,” Novetacle share. “Second, as we mentioned above, MangaGamer specializes in the localization of visual novels, so they have the technical skills to work on games themselves. All we had to do was give them the data, and they would be able to make it run on English systems. Furthermore, they said they could get it on Steam without having to go through Greenlight.”
The House in Fata Morgana doesn’t have an estimated release date yet.
