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Japanese game devs face font dilemma as license increases from $380 to $20k

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Re: Japanese game devs face font dilemma as license increases from $380 to $20k

#11

Post by conradev »

Aachen wrote: post #6

Are there no fonts that are open for anyone to use, like what does a Linux distribution ship? Surely those can render Japanese characters? Maybe it's because it's a dumb question but the article doesn't really set the stage for me why it's an issue that 1 font licensing company raised its prices. I guess they must have a monopoly or else this change isn't commercially viable (the article just says "one of the country…

Yep: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monotype_Imaging#Consolidation...

  Fontworks’ team, type inventory, IP, technology, and services will join global type specialist Monotype–Monotype’s first acquisition in Japan.
https://www.monotype.com/company/press-release/fontworks-pla...

Re: Japanese game devs face font dilemma as license increases from $380 to $20k

#12

Post by oefrha »

rpearl wrote: post #5
deadbabe wrote: post #2

What do I feel like custom font generation is one thing AI could be really good at but so far I haven’t seen anything of that sort? Seems like you could easily prompt whatever vibe you’re looking for in a font, why even bother buying commercial fonts at that point. Am I just not looking in the right places?

perhaps when the clocks at https://clocks.brianmoore.com/ consistently make sense, AI could make a font. Even then, I wouldn't want it making a kanji font. Consider 感 and 惑, both of which would be taught before high school.

Sounds like you don't know the CJK font market. AI assisted font design is nothing new and especially useful for CJK since there are so many glyphs. There are plenty of foundries openly advertising AI-assisted fonts, e.g. https://izihun.com/fontxiazai/ziti-2673.html

Also, generating images and programs are basically orthogonal. AI could generate impeccable photorealistic images of clocks years ago, and they're much more complex than font glyphs (specifically talking about transferring a style to other glyphs; you still need to do the initial design to get something appealing, obviously*).

*Edit: Maybe AI can even handle the initial design now, not sure. What I’m saying is AI-assisted style transfer in CJK fonts is definitely old news and commercially available.

Re: Japanese game devs face font dilemma as license increases from $380 to $20k

#13

Post by Shank »

The lack of competence from companies that acquire Japanese companies, and then fail to even price things in yen or offer support packages that cater to Japanese customers is really something. It's one thing to raise the price on a license, but it's another thing to not even support local pricing (you can even do this dynamically) or try to meet users halfway. The thing that companies like this do not understand is that simply changing the price structure on Japanese customers overnight with no acknowledgement of this comes off as entirely the wrong way. It ruins business relationships. Sure, Fontworks might have had a compelling product, but part of the product was their domestic presence.

Now the choice is realistically between Monotype (doesn't really understand the Japanese market) and DynaComware (Taiwan-based, but has previously interacted with Japanese companies). I wonder where their customers will go on short notice? As is mentioned, at least one company switched to DynaComware. SEGA's rhythm games contain both DynaFont (DynaComware) and Fontworks fonts, for example.

Basically, if you're going to raise prices, at least do something about the fact that your core market is heavily relationship dependent and won't take kindly to a sudden rug pull.

Re: Japanese game devs face font dilemma as license increases from $380 to $20k

#14

Post by vunderba »

deadbabe wrote: post #2

What do I feel like custom font generation is one thing AI could be really good at but so far I haven’t seen anything of that sort? Seems like you could easily prompt whatever vibe you’re looking for in a font, why even bother buying commercial fonts at that point. Am I just not looking in the right places?

Perhaps an old-school bitmap font would be within the realm of possibility, but I wouldn't be confident of GenAI's ability to go from sprite sheet to proper TTF with glyphs described as curve/points without a LOT of manual work - and especially not when we're talking about a language with complicated logographs.

Re: Japanese game devs face font dilemma as license increases from $380 to $20k

#15

Post by crooked-v »

The bigger issue here isn't the pricing, it's the 25,000 max users added to the licenses, which means that anyone who can genuinely afford these fonts isn't actually allowed to use them.

Edit: This paragraph was incorrect:

    The fonts affected apparently include ones like the main Japanese language
    font used by the game Genshin Impact, which has 2.8 million daily users
    worldwide (no idea of the Japanese user count specifically, but I'm sure
    it's over 25,000).
I was wrong about Genshin Impact there. That said, I'm sure you can see the effect with, well, literally any video game or app that uses one of those fonts (including internationally with localization options). Either you're too small to afford it, or you can afford it but you have too many users.

Re: Japanese game devs face font dilemma as license increases from $380 to $20k

#16

Post by omoikane »

Aachen wrote: post #6

Are there no fonts that are open for anyone to use, like what does a Linux distribution ship? Surely those can render Japanese characters? Maybe it's because it's a dumb question but the article doesn't really set the stage for me why it's an issue that 1 font licensing company raised its prices. I guess they must have a monopoly or else this change isn't commercially viable (the article just says "one of the country…

I know Noto Sans can render just about everything, and has a permissive license:

https://fonts.google.com/noto

I am not sure if it's possible to parameterize it to have the look that game developers wanted.

Re: Japanese game devs face font dilemma as license increases from $380 to $20k

#17

Post by jjmarr »

teraflop wrote: post #9
Aachen wrote: post #6

Are there no fonts that are open for anyone to use, like what does a Linux distribution ship? Surely those can render Japanese characters? Maybe it's because it's a dumb question but the article doesn't really set the stage for me why it's an issue that 1 font licensing company raised its prices. I guess they must have a monopoly or else this change isn't commercially viable (the article just says "one of the country…

When you're making a work of art (such as a game) you don't just want any old font, you want one that serves a particular aesthetic purpose. If you've picked a typeface, and designed other UI elements that look good in conjunction with it, but suddenly that typeface becomes unaffordable, then you have to do some work to find an alternative that's still acceptable. In particular, game UI tends to be designed around th…

Part of the reason Arial is so dominant is because it's proportioned the same as Helvetica, meaning it can be swapped in to avoid licensing fees without affecting document layout.

Re: Japanese game devs face font dilemma as license increases from $380 to $20k

#18

Post by raincole »

deadbabe wrote: post #2

What do I feel like custom font generation is one thing AI could be really good at but so far I haven’t seen anything of that sort? Seems like you could easily prompt whatever vibe you’re looking for in a font, why even bother buying commercial fonts at that point. Am I just not looking in the right places?

AI fonts are nothing new. But you still need someone to manually check them and it's never one-shot. It makes no economical sense to do that instead of buying commercial fonts, which are ready-to-use immediately, when they only cost a few hundred dollars.

The price rising and licensing issue will only do one thing: pushing people to AI. Perhaps they see it as inevitable so they're trying to milk the last batch of customers though.

Re: Japanese game devs face font dilemma as license increases from $380 to $20k

#19

Post by rpearl »

oefrha wrote: post #12
rpearl wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

perhaps when the clocks at https://clocks.brianmoore.com/ consistently make sense, AI could make a font. Even then, I wouldn't want it making a kanji font. Consider 感 and 惑, both of which would be taught before high school.

Sounds like you don't know the CJK font market. AI assisted font design is nothing new and especially useful for CJK since there are so many glyphs. There are plenty of foundries openly advertising AI-assisted fonts, e.g. https://izihun.com/fontxiazai/ziti-2673.html Also, generating images and programs are basically orthogonal. AI could generate impeccable photorealistic images of clocks years ago, and they're much m…

I do not know the market well; very interesting, thank you.

Re: Japanese game devs face font dilemma as license increases from $380 to $20k

#20

Post by halapro »

internetter wrote: post #4
deadbabe wrote: post #2

What do I feel like custom font generation is one thing AI could be really good at but so far I haven’t seen anything of that sort? Seems like you could easily prompt whatever vibe you’re looking for in a font, why even bother buying commercial fonts at that point. Am I just not looking in the right places?

> What do I feel like custom font generation is one thing AI could be really good at Probably because you're wrong. Anybody can make a font, making a good font is a highly under appreciated art form.

Have you seen the output of LLMs lately? It's not perfect, but I bet that with enough refinements they can create "art" just as well.
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