Hah, it's really funny you said this and mentioned me... It feels like a regret on my part but Kickstarter didn't really exist when I had the most energy, motivation, and wasn't burned-out from all my experiences in doing these projects thanks to the bad people I met and worked with...
Yeah, I think it'll be great for future fan translators to have the option of trying to subsidize a project with things like Kickstarter, Patreon, and/or GoFundMe. I wish I had something like that for the Felghana project because I could've raised some dough IN ADVANCE (
and more safely/morally than say temp donationware/or outright selling afterwards!), maybe even set levels like 1st level of money is for the production of a fan patch, 2nd level is to buy an official license and make it all legit meaning I could also distribute the whole game as well (
at least, legally, if I wanted to try to do things exactly by the book)...
You are in luck already however. If you look around these forums, you'll find both of the games you're interested in (Anearth Fantasy Stories and Legend of Xanadu II) have had fan translation work done so you might get them eventually! Here go some of the links:
https://www.pcenginefx.com/forums/index.php?topic=9456.0https://www.pcenginefx.com/forums/index.php?topic=14331.0
Now, the concept of your thread does bring up something to consider if you DO try. It's fine for fan credo types who pride themselves on not wanting to take a dime for this kind of work, so they won't have any Paypal icons and everybody loves free so nobody has an issue with them. However, you will get viciousness from a % of the public no matter what you do if you attempt to monetize such projects by some way... This is a fact!
I'm still the subject of verbal abuse EVEN RIGHT NOW because of my Felghana patch and the one month in January 2007 when it wasn't free until it was leaked... I have psycho 4chan/GameFAQs trolls (and on the XSEED forums!) STILL butthurt, STILL just as angry about it even today!! And even then I had an army of 100% free software before it (Ys I, II, IV, Xak III, TurboRip, TocFixer, etc.) but that counted for nothing! So 10+ years of freeloading and all my other free software, but they're still hate-obsessed for that short 35 days when it came to that 2007 Felghana patch... So you could have 15 programs and patches all for free, but they would still zero in and obsess about the one that was not totally free, etc.! One can get my point by now.
Another point on that is Thomas Lipschultz used the drama with the Felghana patch and that I wanted to make a payware patch for Ys Origin as part of his pitch to his boss (Ken Berry) inside of XSEED Games to present me as a PR embarrassment and that is how he accomplished the decision for them to sneak around with my main translating partner, Jeff Nussbaum, and take the worst, unfixed version of the Felghana script on his computer, making sure it was all done without my inclusion and so that I was cheated out of any credit/compensation, selectively treating the situation not as a team effort, but as a "
translator who was just sitting in the corner over there by himself with fully translated text to hand over..."
Thomas is a vicious fanatical anti-capitalist and hated that I had Paypal icons even on my website... He stated once that capitalism is the root of all evil and if it could be eliminated, the primary motive for crime would be as well, i.e. mass crime reduction, etc. So he's a true believer! And as far as he was concerned, my attempts to monetize fan translation work were heresy to the fan credo/motto, I was an "infidel" in his eyes (
and to others like him who think the same) and so I was the focus of modern evil in the world! Now making one enemy on the Internet is not so bad, but when this enemy got a job at XSEED and was in a position of influence, he made sure to bring some more payback around my way by giving 100% benefit/profit to my main translation partner, etc.! One can see my point.
So yeah, these are things to consider as far as what can happen...
Anyway, my time in the spotlight is mostly over... I don't have that level of energy that I used to when I was in my late 20's/early 30's and got started on fan translation projects. While the idea of Kickstarter/Patreon/GoFundMe is quite appealing to me in principle, I'm not the guy that has the charisma, planning, and leadership to try something like that in the future. I got all the baggage and enemies from the past that would harass me as well, etc. Best I can do is spam Google Ads in my software and see some pennies come back my way because of how simple it is to do that...
Regardless, I would wish future fan translation teams luck if they can try to harness Kickstarter/Patreon/GoFundMe in some way to raise cash from generous fans that might be out there! It seems like it could be a good workaround to not selling the software after completion, raise cash in advance to produce a free patch in the end is basically the idea. I wonder if that is permissible with either of the websites... Thing is, the vicious % that I mentioned might try to go in Copyright IP protection troll mode and report the campaign to the website if it's raising money towards the cause of producing an unlicensed fan translation. Just to be spiteful, so there are still problems that could arise trying to do this... Certainly using your own website to solicit donations wouldn't be a problem, but yeah, it wouldn't be that easy, etc.
EDIT: If you look at how this site is run below, it appears they're able to do it legally for documents. It would be useful for someone that might want to try monetizing this way.
https://www.patreon.com/shmuplations?ty=h
