Over the last several months, I've been receiving more and more requests to translate or summarise content from Beep21, the online successor to the Japanese magazine Beep that focuses primarily on console-era Sega historyβthey've been interviewing, profiling and documenting the histories of a lot of creatives from Sega's golden age and the surrounding ecosystems, and many of those people are far more willing to speak candidly than they were even 10~15 years ago, so they quite regularly publish and source a lot of invaluable testimony.
I don't mind being asked1, but it's come up enough that I feel I ought to explain why I don't really make a public note of any of their updates: put simply, I'm not interested in undercutting the work they do by translating & publishing it for free, and I think some of the people in my ear about "preservation" and "freedom of information" are mostly just annoyed by the paywall.
Beep21 is just one of many cottage-level game research outlets doing great work that global publishers or orgs ought to work with in an official, ethical capacity: not only would it give them access to a global audience and, potentially, a larger customer base that'd facilitate more frequent or higher-intensity projects, but it's simply more efficient and cost-effective to assist JP outlets in pursuing JP-centric projects, rather than wasting effort and resources doing things that a dozen different orgs can and are already doing, better than we could ever do it, with less effort.
I can assure you, nothing they are publishing is going undocumented or slipping under the radar; it's all being catalogued and disseminated in one way or another, and if you care enough to ask me about it, you probably won't have much trouble locating other people who are doing exactly what you're asking me to do.
-
unless you're asking in a way that insinuates I'm neglecting some sworn obligation to report on whatever topic you might care aboutβI aint no paperboy, and in the event that I do start asking for compensation, some of yall really better start coughing up