Operation Rainfall began as a small group of fans that were incredibly passionate about the localization of three unique games and grew into the massive movement that you see today. In the process, we learned a lot, but we also made a lot of mistakes. There is a “right way” to campaign for a game, and to get attention from publishers, the internet, and the general public. We definitely will never say for sure that Operation Rainfall is the definitive reason why Xenoblade and The Last Story were released, but we do know for a fact that since those games were released, they got far more attention than they would have received had a group like this not existed.
One of the biggest mistakes we made early in our campaign was thinking that publishers and developers “don’t want” to localize games. In reality, it couldn’t be further from the truth. Every developer wants their game to be played by as many people as possible, and every publisher wants to have a full, diverse portfolio of games while pleasing their fans. Unfortunately, these businesses also need to be profitable to stay afloat. If a certain franchise or genre is no longer profitable for a publisher, odds are high that future titles in the genre or franchise will be refused localization or get pushed aside in favor of titles and genres that will generate revenue. When Nintendo announced that they would release Xenoblade Chronicles and XSEED Games would be publishing The Last Story, we realized first and foremost that since these titles represented a major risk for the publishers, and on the reputation of this group, we would need to basically “market” these games ourselves.
Armed with this knowledge, in March of this year, the admins of the Operation Rainfall Campaign decided to focus their efforts on a new type of “campaign”. We decided to build our own website focused mainly on niche games to help give a “marketing push” to the games that ARE being localized. These are the games that ARE being given a chance, and they deserve it. And if they do well, it means we will see more and more of the titles and genres you want localized. Occasionally we will throw in a bit of mainstream news or reviews to catch more visitors or address concerns that may be important to our readers (such as Nintendo in general, which seems to be a big focus on our readers). In the end, though, our goal has never really changed. At our heart, we are promoting niche titles. We strive to find the news you want and share it as soon as possible.
The goal of our website was never to compete with sites like Andriasang, Siliconera, GoNintendo, or Crunchyroll. We have our own diverse readership, and while some of our readers may also get their news from other sites, our readers almost unanimously have the common interest in making sure games and anime that are localized end up successful, and they look forward with eager anticipation to the latest localization announcements.
With that said, sometime within the next few weeks, we will be launching a brand new section of our website – the Campaign Hub. We will be training a new group of volunteers how to use social media and other techniques of the modern information age to spread awareness of games that are worth localizing, but haven’t yet been announced. We do have a few requirements before allowing new campaigns to join us, some of those requirements involve a minimum amount of interest gauged by either petition numbers, followers via social media, or interest by mainstream media, and the campaign in question must be for a realistic title that is either already developed or currently in development, among other requirements.
This partnership with other campaigns will use our somewhat larger following to see news and get the latest word about niche titles that need attention, but will also bring those followers into our community, helping to grow the niche community as a whole. The original staff of Operation Rainfall will be dedicating the majority of their time to promoting games that are being localized.
As we bring a close to our final campaign for Pandora’s Tower, we want to remind you all that none of this would have been possible without the massive amount of support we’ve received from all of our readers and followers. But in the end, the ultimate responsibility to locate a publisher for a given title rests with the rights owner. No matter how loud a group of fans gets or how many people join a Facebook group, if a company makes a business decision to not localize a game, that is their decision to make, not ours. But no matter the results, we remain dedicated to our cause of helping games that deserve it see the light of day overseas as much as we can.
Check out the Campaign Hub here: https://operationrainfall.com/campaignhub/
We want to thank everyone who is a part of this community and look forward to doing this for a long time to come.
Thank you,
Operation Rainfall Staff