Megasites Screwing Over Dr Lava

Dr Lava, June 23, 2019 – In the year since I entered the Pokemon community, I’ve never instigated drama or had a bad word to say about anybody. But this week things have gotten completely out of control, and the situation is only getting worse. It threatens my own survival, and countless small content creators just like me.

This article’s purpose is to explain how unethical behavior — including blatant plagiarism — in the Pokemon community all around the world has done damage not only to myself, but the many contributors who helped make the recent 2011 Ken Sugimori interview translations possible. Large and influential websites’ actions this week harms not only small content creators and their contributors, but the gaming fan-base as a whole. In this article I’ll be discussing my own experience, but I’m not the only content creator in this position. Below I’ll explain what’s happening, and why it matters to all of us.

As many of the folks reading this are already aware, in May and June of this year I published translations of three lengthy Ken Sugimori interviews that originally appeared in Japanese magazine Nintendo Dream in late 2010 and early 2011 (linked here, here, and here). I took the initiative on this project, but many others contributed — Bulbapedia moderators like SnorlaxMonster and ForceFire helped find links to archived Japanese language transcriptions of these interviews, artists like Nick Kron and Ray Itsa provided original artwork to accompany Sugimori’s beta Pokemon descriptions, and my Patreon supporters helped fund the project. And of course, much of the credit also goes to Shellspider and RPGLand, whose Japanese-language transcriptions and magazine scans back in 2011 made these translations possible. Each and every one of these individuals are thanked by name on every translation page of this website.

This translation project is still in progress, and thus far I’ve personally spent hundreds of dollars and many, many hours putting all these translations together. The many other contributors have given their time and money as well. Together we unearthed, translated, and made public these interviews which have been enjoyed by Pokemon fans around the world — these three pages on my website have received over 100,000 views since the first translation’s publication in late May, 2019. But there’s still a lot of work to be done. The rest of the issues of Nintendo Dream will have to be located and purchased from Japan, scanned, translated, and have original art and commentary curated.

The purpose of this translation project is two-fold — to bring all these interesting stories of Pokemon origins and scrapped designs to the Pokemon fan-base, and to provide research material for my YouTube channel. My channel is relatively small — it currently stands at 25k subscribers — and it is operated at a financial loss as YouTube has refused to monetize it. It’s a labor of love, one which I hope can grow to a size that I’ll be able to make a living someday.

Although these translations were undertaken in order to provide content for my YouTube channel, I understand that fan sites and other YouTubers will want to share this information with their own followers. And I think that’s great — that’s why in each translation’s preface, I included a statement aimed at content creators, that I’m A-OK with them using this information, I only ask that they recommend my YouTube channel as thanks for the information.

To be clear, I’m very happy when I see websites and YouTubers share the information uncovered by this translation project. PokeJungle.net and Spanish-language Pokexperto.net shared some highlights with their own fan-bases (which are considerably larger than my own), and I thanked them for doing so. They credited and linked to their sources in an ethical manner, and I couldn’t be more grateful for their support. If any other content creators are reading this, I absolutely encourage you to do the same — some of the revelations in these interview translations are truly historic from the perspective of the Pokemon community, and I’m happy to see those revelations spread far and wide. I only ask to be credited and linked to — not only for myself, but for all the people who worked together on this project. Contributing artists like Nick Kron, and Patreon supporters who helped finance this project like Brad Benson and Santiago Fernandez deserve to have their names attached to these translations. But several very large organizations in the fan community (and many small ones) have re-published the information in these interviews while deliberately failing to cite their sources, and that’s resulted in hundreds of thousands of Pokemon fans learning of these revelations, but without hearing the names of any of the individuals who worked so hard to bring these revelations to light.

Over the past several weeks, several big fish in the gaming community have ignored basic journalistic standards and integrity. Many of them re-published these translations and even copy and pasted images that I photoshopped personally, as well as original artwork by Nick Kron, Ray Itsa, and TipsyRa1d3n — all without citing or crediting any of us.

Besides the more obvious slight to the project’s contributors, it also harms the gaming community as a whole. If small-time content creators routinely have their work stolen by gaming megasites, those small creators won’t be in the business of creating original content for very long. For one, it’s demoralizing to see the big fish reap all the benefits of your own hard work. What’s more, us small fish often depend on donations to finance our work, and if the majority of these translations’ readers never even hear about the team responsible for the translations/commentary/artwork/etc, how can that team be expected to continue their work in the long-term? Unchecked unethical behavior by gaming megasites virtually guarantees that the little guys doing so much of the legwork will be driven out of business. If current trends continue, most likely I won’t be in the content creation business by this time next year. My site and channel just simply aren’t growing fast enough to justify the 50-70 hours each week that are spent working on them. I accept that the responsibility to garner a large enough fan-base is my own, but I can’t help but feel unjustly handicapped in this regard when megasites behave the way they’ve behaved over the past month.

While in this article I’m directly addressing the situation surrounding this website’s translation project, this issue isn’t limited to just my own survival, or even just small-timers in the Pokemon community. This is an issue that affects the entire community. Most megasites are happy to publish articles about the little guys’ hard work, but they rarely undertake these sorts of original projects themselves. When independent creators are pushed out, only megasites remain — existing primarily to publish video game reviews and parrot developer press releases. As a result, the fans who enjoy reading Japanese interview translations and other niche content will have less content to enjoy. All that us small-timers ask from the megasites who publish our work, is to be credited — just a sentence or two with a link.

I’m talking specifically about the big fish listed below, and other large entities that have been playing by the same rules. The organizations and individuals listed below are all substantially larger than myself (Nintendo Cut Content with Dr Lava on YouTube, 25k subscribers / @DrLavaYT on Twitter, 900 followers):

• Pokemonnext.it (90k Facebook fans) – Italian-language website and social media presence Pokemon Next plagiarized all three Sugimori translations in their entirety, even copy and pasting most of the images from my website. This includes many that I photoshopped myself, as well as original artwork by Nick Kron, Ray Itsa, and TipsyRa1d3n. Their website makes no reference to Dr Lava in any capacity, or anyone else involved. Their articles use language such as “we present [this information].” I’ll update this article if that changes. Here’s a link to their first plagiarized article.

Update: Pokemon Next responded to my messages shortly before the article you’re currently reading was published, saying sorry and that they will update their articles with a source link. They said it was unintentional, but frankly I find it difficult to believe that they could copy the entirety of three articles — totaling about 12000 words — and simply “forget” to source any of the parties involved. But even if their apology is sincere, it’s kind of a day late and a dollar short — they’d already received thousands of views, and the damage has already been done. They issued an apology via their Twitter account, which has 424 followers. Unfortunately, very few of their readers will ever see the correction, or the apology. But to some extent, I do appreciate the gesture, as the following megasite didn’t even bother responding to my messages.

• CPokemon.com (@centropokemon on Twitter, 96,000 followers) – From what I can tell, CentroPokemon is the largest Spanish-language website and social media presence on the web. On June 19, @centropokemon followed me on Twitter, then sent out exactly 20 tweets containing all the most interesting information from these interviews translations. They also copy and pasted many images directly from my website. It was only in the 20th and final tweet that they linked to a single page on my website, although they used information from three articles, and each one of them specifically requested a mention of the YouTube channel. As this occurred on Twitter, I would have expected at least one of their 20 tweets would have tagged my Twitter account, especially since they had followed my account just hours before. They did not.

These 20 tweets received thousands of likes and retweets, and were most likely viewed by tens of thousands, if not over a hundred thousand Pokemon fans. The citation tweet received only 119 likes and retweets — netting me about 15 followers. In all likelihood, by sending out all the interview highlights in these 20 tweets in this manner, @centropokemon gained many more fans and followers than all the people who were actually responsible for the source material combined. CentroPokemon extracted all the most interesting revelations, then cited our work in the least effective way they could possibly think of, in a completely deliberate manner. When I politely DM’ed @centropokemon the same day asking why they handled these 20 tweets in this manner, they ignored my message and I never received a response.

Examples of less flagrant unethical behavior:

• YouTuber HDvee (217,000 subscribers) – HDvee made a video in which he spent 15 minutes reading my website’s first translation word-for-word. The one and only sentence he skips over is the one in which I mention my YouTube channel. He even hides my video embed at the end of the article. At no point in his video does he mention my channel, or the name of the website that he’s spending 15 minutes reading from. Although he includes a link to the article in the video’s description, there’s absolutely no reason for anyone to click it, as HDvee has just read them the article in its entirety. To be fair — although this behavior is infuriating — this video was uploaded before my article specifically requested that content creators mention the source. It was because of HDvee’s video that I added that request to the translations’ prefaces. Comments were left on his video by other YT users about the way he produced his video, but HDvee didn’t respond to any of them. While HDvee isn’t a megasite, with 217k subscribers, he dwarfs small content creators such as myself, and the repeated obfuscation of his source material was visibly intentional. Here’s a link to that video.

• Crunchyroll.com (@crunchyroll on Twitter, 914k followers) – Crunchy Roll, which I’ve personally been a fan of in the past, published a French-language article using information and photos from my website. Their article made no mention of Dr Lava in any capacity. They cite Anime News Network* as their source, but they used images found on my site that were not included in the ANN article. The above image of the Serperior family is one that I photoshopped myself, so I can only assume they visited my website but deliberately chose not to cite me. Here’s a link to that article.

• Comicbook.com (@ComicBook on Twitter, 162k followers) – Comicbook.com ran an article based on my translations without making any mention of me or any other contributor. To be fair, this omission by Comic Book may have been due to laziness rather than maliciousness, as just like Crunchy Roll, they also cite AnimeNewsNetwork* as their source. But unlike Crunchy Roll, Comic Book did not use images that were on my website. Regardless of the intent, the result is the same — traffic for the megasites, nothing for the little guys. Here’s a link to that article.

*AnimeNewsNetwork.com (@anime on Twitter, 603k followers) – ANN published an article, and tweeted it, using information from my translations. Although they didn’t link to my YouTube channel, they did mention “YouTuber Dr Lava” (my channel’s name is Nintendo Cut Content with Dr Lava). And they also linked to the relevant translation page of my website below their article. So while it is frustrating they didn’t link to my channel and they omitted the part of the channel’s name that identifies it as a channel about Nintendo (thus making it very unlikely that readers will search out the channel on their own), I appreciate that they at least linked to the article and mentioned “Dr Lava.” The way they cited me does minimize the chances of any readers discovering my channel, but at least the words “Dr Lava” were included. So ANN doesn’t necessarily belong on this list of offenders, as many other websites did the exact same thing. But ANN’s article needed to be addressed due to the connection with Crunchy Roll and Comic Book. To be clear, it’s not ANN’s fault that many websites both large and small have been crediting and linking to ANN as the source of this content. But countless smaller websites — the ones who at least bothered to cite me at all — have followed ANN’s lead and mentioned only “Dr Lava,” unlinked, which minimizes the chances of their readers ever having direct contact with any of my content. Here’s a link to that article.

There are many more smaller YouTubers and websites that copied information and images from my website without citing their source material, but in this article I only want to draw attention to the big fish who were the most flagrant in drinking my milkshake. Again, to be clear, Anime News Network is not on this list. Some of these cases were certainly worse than others, but all of them — with the exception of maybe Comic Book — seem to have deliberately hidden their source in an effort to hoard as much credit and internet traffic for themselves as possible. I reached out to some of the parties involved, but frankly it shouldn’t be my responsibility to get in contact with the dozens of websites and YouTubers all around the world who are mixed up in this. The list of offenders is growing longer each day — gaming sites in Spanish, French, Portuguese, Chinese, and English — so I thought it would be best to write this article and simply tweet it, tagging the Twitter accounts of the parties mentioned.

Despite all this mess, I do want to make a special point of thanking Pokexperto.net (@pokexperto on Twitter, 40k followers) who called out @centropokemon’s unethical behavior, and also tweeted out some of the material from my website’s translations, properly sourced. To show my gratitude, from now on I’ll be providing Pokexperto.net with early access to my translations that are normally only shown to my Patreon supporters. I truly appreciate the way Pokexperto handled this, especially since he appears to be the only foreign-language website that cited his sources in an ethical manner.

In closing, I really don’t know what can be done to fix this situation. In the week following the first translation’s publication, I received about $40 in monthly Patreon pledges. But after that first week, not a single Patron has signed up to support the translation project. I can only assume this is largely the result of so many websites re-publishing the information without citing their sources. The problem with these fast-moving megasites that publish 50 articles a week, is that even if they wanted to do the right thing and edit their articles and issue a correction, the damage has already been done. All the traffic has already been absorbed, and their readers have already moved on. Maybe those readers would have become subscribers or fans of my work if they’d known I’d played a part in the publication of these translations, but no one’s going to subscribe to my channel because their favorite website apologized to me in a tweet. I can only hope the offending megasites read this article, and correct their behavior in regards to the translations that will be published in coming months, as well as towards other small creators who are in my exact same position.

If you’re a fan of Pokemon beta and cut content, it’s always appreciated if you can follow me on YouTube or Twitter, or support my work via my Patreon page. The artists linked above like Nick Kron, and ethical fan sites like PokeJungle and Pokexperto deserve your traffic as well. I’ll be doing my best to support them in any way I can in coming months as this translation project continues. With any luck, we’ll be able to complete it and move on to the next project. If you’re not a Pokemon fan, but for some reason you’ve read this article anyway and you agree with its message, please just spread the article around — tweet it or whatever, you know what to do.

But before I bring this article to a close, I would be remiss if I didn’t address my own shortcomings. For the record, I’ve been guilty of a similar failure to properly source myself. In my first YouTube video about Pokemon — last year when I had about 3k subscribers — for about 30 seconds I used information that I’d gathered from helixchamber.com‘s blog. I linked to them in the video description, but I didn’t mention them in-video. No one called me out or said boo, but after the video was posted, I realized what I’d done was unethical and unprofessional. I’ve since apologized to @helixchamber privately, as well as publicly both on Twitter and in my YouTube channel’s Community tab. In past months, I’ve published articles on my website praising their excellent work covering beta Pokemon content, and I’ve recommended and linked to them many times on both Twitter and my YT channel’s Community tab. This has been my attempt to make amends. But I don’t just recommend them because of my guilty conscience — they do really great work, and you should follow them if you’re interested in Pokemon Gen 1 beta content.

Oh, and I also ask that this article’s readers don’t harass any parties that were mentioned. If you feel inclined to contact them over this matter, please be civil. Don’t do anything crazy — this is just Pokemon after all.

Cheers guys.

Related Articles:

• Pokemon Historia: Gen 5 (Part 1 of 7)

• Pokemon Historia: Gen 5 (Part 2 of 7)

• Controversy Explained: Scrapped Gen 1 Pokemon Revealed in Feb 2019