[Kim Imbrian]

Problem is, a lot of professional dubwork sounds like crap. Doing this with random volunteers would probably... not turn out so well.
______________________________
not to mention the fact that even SE staff can't decide how things are pronounced.

Well, that's why you hold auditions. Right now, I'm doing voice casting for episode 2 of my comic book project, and have gotten 12 different people auditioning for the "small" parts (i.e., one line). My previous issue, which introduced the main characters I had close to 40 people auditioning. There are a lot of voice acting groups out there that "love" to do this sort of thing pro bono (for free) as it helps build up their resume. If you can get someone willing to be in charge of all this, once the first few eps are out, trust me, the folks will come flooding in wanting to participate. All it takes is for someone with the initiative to start. And before you turn it around and say that if I think it's such a good idea, I should do it--my plate is pretty full animating my own show and casting parts for it. But I'd be more than willing to offer any suggestions or help to whoever does attempt to start things up.

[DELETED BY ORIGINAL POSTER]
EDIT: Er, right! Big fan of the forums, long-time lurker, first time poster, never thought I'd have to register but here it is. Anyway, back to business! Cheers, all, have fun, great work so far, Taz~!
__________________________________________________ ___________________


I figured I'd give this another shot so as to not sound so... idiotic and hastily full of typoes. I basically got a mobile call in the middle of the night with a friend shouting, "Damage control!" and it took a while to sort things out. Apparently he stumbled across this thread and figured that someone already had a FFXI dub in progress or was going to start one.

(And as an aside, Endril, the Transformers work you did was excellent, so I suppose it wouldn’t be the end of the world if you were busy with something along these lines.)

The short version of my post should be this: Due to copyright issues, I would like to urge you all to not do any work on any fully voiced version of FFXI.

The long version is quite long.

SQNX reserves all copyright protection of the material such a work would be based on, and has not released the rights to any individual or group to produce derivative works, including “fanworks.” “Fanworks” that are not parodies (see: Red vs. Blue) are not protected under fair-use. (Note also that Microsoft is perhaps a bad example, as they have released some rights to machinima producers that SQNX has not.)

This, combined with the impact of the 1997 U.S. No Electronic Theft (NET) Act, which provides for criminal prosecution of individuals for copyright infringement, even when they have not profited monetarily or commercially from that infringement, means that SQNX could successfully pursue monetary recompense for these “fanworks” which release large amounts of their intellectual property onto the net for free.

I was surprised to find that, to date, SQNX does not appear to have filed any lawsuits or cease-and-desist orders against people like Taz or Gwynplaine (Order of the Blue Gartr • View topic - Complete Mission Cutscenes) who have released FFXI recordings online. It is my personal belief that SQNX is aware but not concerned with these productions, because (1) they may act as an advertisement for FFXI, which contains more content than these plot videos do; (2) the released videos have so far been at low resolution, compared to the actual playing resolution of the game on most systems; (3) the videos contain obvious markers from FFXI, preventing Taz or Gwynplaine from claiming ownership; (4) both Taz and Gwynplaine offered no warning to SQNX about their projects until substantial parts of the videos were finished and released.

Those four things do not necessarily hold for a fully voice-acted release of the game. Auditions mean notifying the FFXI community, and recording a version of the game without the chat bar requires alteration to the game engine. Note also that these videos are being made with the use of third party programs, which are under an umbrella ban by SQNX, including, ironically, in the production of the movie contest entries each fall for the Fan Festivals. A project that substantially threatens SQNX's profit margin - not in terms of its creators making money, but in terms of causing potential FFXI players to not purchase the game or existing players to stop playing the game - will certainly draw legal action.

Now anyone with a working shuttle program is going to think: this person is quite clearly not saying something. If you would like to speak to me further about that in particular, please do so via private messages. I'd be glad to discuss what I posted in the thread in this public sphere.

Cheers,
Kim