Leaderboard

UPDATE: SP will ask AKB2 about possibility of 4:3 support): http://steamcommunity.com/app/377670/discussions/0/490124466479176329/ ~~ I wanted to inform everyone that in order to achieve "HD widescreen assets" Sekai Project severely cropped all existing CGs in the laziest manner I've seen. Check this out: You can't even see his arm, the plate, a chunk of his head, the sake bottle and glass. The dead guy's arm which used to be in full view is now barely visible. When I posted these examples on steam they permanently banned me and claimed I was promoting piracy. My post was completely deleted without a trace. Not only that but someone else decided to take up the task to post a more neutral thread on steam and the thread was instantly locked. http://steamcommunity.com/app/377670/discussions/0/490124466477714445/ [Edit: as of this moment the thread that used to be locked is now also entirely deleted.] Deleting and locking anything that might criticize their shortcomings is rather petty even for Sekai Project. They're splitting releases into voiced and un-voiced versions now which is just ridiculous, what's next microtransactions? Split each route into paid dlc? They've made it clear that they treat adult content as if it were cancerous, yet they continue to pick up titles with +18 content. Personally speaking, I've been supporting visual novels for a long time now and I've bought just about every release because I used to believe in western localization and that things would improve if we showed our support. But things are just getting worse at this rate and that was more or less my wake up call to stop investing money in companies like Sekai Project. It's really tiring having to ask every time a title is announced "Will we even get the full +18 release?", "what's getting censored?", "How will it be handled?", "Do we have to buy the goddamn game twice if we also want it on steam?". Like you can't even be excited because there's so many questions left unanswered we can only expect the worst and they completely ignore us hoping we'll buy the steam version, and then announce the +18 at the last minute expecting us to double dip, rather than just offering steam keys like MangaGamer does. Not to mention they suck funds out of us through kickstarter for practically every release. They're just abusing it now, taking already translated games that fans did on their own free time, and charging us money for it while making us pay for the licensing fees. That's just fucked up. Welcome to the new EA games of Visual Novels everyone. [Edit: Looks like reddit caught wind and has been following the whole thing as well. Glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. https://www.reddit.com/r/visualnovels/comments/3rds22/gsenjou_no_maou_steam_version_169_cgs_are_cropped/ ]

Not sure if western VN's are that popular here, but thought I'd share some news! Can be downloaded from http://newwestgames.itch.io/a-wild-catgirl-appears All sales will be given a steam key once greenlit. iOS will release as soon as Apple approve the damn thing. Let me know if you have any questions, as I am the dev Also, there is some upcoming free DLC for this title. Take a look at the new character route, Eiko.

W-what, you're telling me Sekai Project isn't an evil orgnization that hates visual novels? I-I don't believe you! Blasphemy! *throws salt* The hate on the G-senjou CG thing has been so blown out of proportion it's not even funny anymore. Seriously, a huge hate mob over cropped CGs? Grow up. In fact, the hate on SP in general is a bit ridiculous to say the least and, as someone who doesn't really like SP that much, even I feel the need to defend them when stupidity like this is brought up. I'm not a die hard fan of SP and i've criticized the way they handle their games before, mostly on their lack of communication, but I find it stupid to assume that because something happens to one of their games that some users don't like they are automatically the hitler of VNs. Seriously the amount of assumptions people have built around SP is insane. And while you can argue it's because they don't talk with their fanbase a lot, I can also imagine that with such a whiny fanbase most people wouldn't want to communicate with them. Not only that, but as soon as a tiny portion of a game is not handled as the fanbase expected, people just assume SP hates VNs and wants to ruin everything for everyone. What basis do most accusations towards SP have? The way I see it, a lot of them are just baseless anger because... entitlement. From my point of view, a lot of people seem upset that fan translations are now being made non-free and they feel like SP is just taking advantage of stuff that, according to a lot of fans, should be righteously free as it was made by fans for fans. (i.e "muh free pornz") This logic is absurd and shows the absolute sense of entitlement a chunk of the fanbase has. As someone who wants to be a translator, I would be honored if a big company came to me because of my fan translations and wanted to make them official, and I'm sure a lot of other fan translators feel the same way, that's why people like koestl and astro even work with SP. And before you come in with the "they just threatened them with legal action!"; well, for 1) there's no proof of this and 2) they are, for all intents and purposes, doing something illegal, however, I never once saw SP condemning fan translations, so...?? As for the usage of Kickstarters, there's always a long debate on this, but the fact of the matter still stands: we can't make assumptions regarding SP's financial situation with no proof. Yeah we see big numbers in a couple of their KS, but so what? That proves literally jack shit, we don't know what's in their contract with the original game makers. And yes, even I think a company should strive to be independent and I think if SP's entire business model relies on KS, this could potentially bite them in the ass in the future. But hell, I don't go out of my way to say "don't fund this! SP is ruining the VN! this already has a fan translation!". Just don't fund their games if you don't want to, it's so simple. I know I haven't. Going back to this original "issue" in the OP. Why do you automatically assume SP just went "yeah you know what the fans will like? If we crop the CGs!". Think rationally about this, question them on their decisions instead of throwing salt at them and going on a tantrum, that solves nobody's problems. I do agree that the censorship of critique wasn't the best move, but it's not with pure anger that you'll get an actual answer out of them. Maybe if we just think calmly about it we can see that a lot of the decisions aren't in SP's hands, that Japanese devs can actually be douchebags about some things, and that SP is in a position of "we're screwed either way", yet they push things out as best as they can, and for that I wholeheartedly praise them. In general, a lot of the hatred towards SP just seems to stem from the fact that SP is handling things in ways that weren't done before in the industry. It's unusual, scary even to some, but they are showing growth and have delivered on a few of their bigger projects and don't seem to slow down. Isn't that what people wanted to begin with? (I know some don't, but for those I have nothing else to say). Imho, I really believe they need some time to actually build trust with their costumers and push out their releases in a more timely fashion, as well as improve their communication and the way they handled uncensored releases, but these are all ultimately things they can improve in the future, so why not just wait it out and see how the big releases like G-senjou go. Grisaia eventually came out after all the turmoil, so there's no reason to believe G-senjou won't follow similar patterns, so I'd really suggest people calm themselves and stop lashing out at SP for unfounded reasons, it's not doing anybody any favors.

Koestl was definitely paid for his Grisaia translations, he has said as much. And we don't have any proof that Dovac isn't taking a bigger cut, but we do have good reason to believe him. If he was pocketing as big of a percentage of that money as you think he is, SP would not have been able to expand at nearly the rate it has been able to. Like, I don't know how you don't realize this, but their expansion was insanely rapid, taking on way more projects, way sooner in its life than practically any publisher in all of video games. You don't do this if the CEO is siphoning away most of the revenue for personal gain. I don't think he's doing it for the public good or anything as he stands to make a large amount of money from this business in the future, I'm just being realistic here. You can't have these kinds of unrealistic kneejerk reactions and should focus criticism in the areas where they're actually applicable and needed, such as their troubled interactions with the fanbase or lack of transparency with 18+ content. Also, yet again, people are forgetting that the Japanese companies partnered with SP/MG/JAST exist. And you better believe that they are the ones actually making the lion's share of the money here.

Those kind of decisions are taken by AkabeiSoft, not Sekai Project, for the simple reason that they are the one making the Steam version of the game. It's a poor decision, you'd think they'd at least let you choose between the cropped 16:9 and the smaller but full 4:3 (since that's about all the options you have anyway), but it's a one AkabeiSoft made. And they do expect SP to fully take the rage from players for that kind of stuff. Of course deleting threads and banning people is the worse way to approach this from a PR point of view, so SP still kinda failed.

So it came to my attention recently upon reading the G-Senjou no Maou CG thread that there are some members of the community who believe the Japanese developers are the ones responsible for setting restrictions on their games when they are delivered overseas. I want to clarify that point a little bit so people understand who is making all the decisions. A long time ago, Mephisto (an old member of Fuwanovel) and I did a live stream translation of Cocoro@Function! by Pulltop. After uploading some of the previous recordings we did to YouTube, I noticed that after a few months I got 4-5 copyright strikes and my videos were taken down. Pulltop yakuza jokes aside, I initially thought the company itself was the group who claimed my videos and had them taken down. It turns out that was not the case. In Japan, there is a group called the Ethics Organization of Computer Software (EOCS). Functioning much like the ESRB, it aims to promote a sense of ethical responsibility with respect to the production, distribution, and use of computer software. In this case, adult PC games and mobile games. To give you a better idea of what it actually does, here are some of its responsibilities: Support bishoujo gamesCombat software piracyProvide scholarships for students interested in becoming software designersRecognize good retailers (segregating games of different ratings, etc.)Essentially, this is the group responsible for setting the rules of distributing eroge. It functions much like a committee, meaning that every developer who is interested in selling their products in Japan must be a part of this group. They are also the group responsible for creating the "Japan Sales Only" label and are allowed to remove developers from their committee should they break protocol. In other words, the EOCS determines how games are localized overseas. If a company doesn't follow their strict set of rules, they are removed from the group and are no longer able to sell their games at retailers in Japan (i.e. = Sofmap). If you are interested in reading more about it, check out their official Japanese site that Mephisto and I browsed a long time ago: http://www.sofurin.org/index.htm http://www.sofurin.org/htm/topics/34.htm

But you have a sister to keep you company. Truly, the only ones you can't ever get rid of are the annoying ones. I laughed so hard, ty for making my day, Tiaj You should leave a like, then. I feed on internet points.

No, not being able to complain about not seeing Gonzou's plate isn't even close to comparable to the plight of the Jews in Nazi Germany. And you don't have the freedom of speech on message boards, not even on Fuwanovel. That's how it works, deal with it.

Mmm... having finished the final path, my conclusion is pretty clear... This is a game that had a lot of potential that was primarily screwed up by how poorly executed certain game mechanics were and the way they did the two protagonists. In my previous posts, I already went over my feelings on the two initial paths and their protagonists, so I'll leave that where it is and move on to the third path. The third path - the true path - basically shifts gears completely, drastically altering the series of events immediately after Kai and Shizuma clash mech to mech for the first time. This is partially because of certain revelations that occur immediately before, and things progress rapidly to a revelation of the people hidden backstage... and the traditional 'lets go kill the bastards who have been manipulating us!' last ride down the mouth of hell. To be honest, after the mess they made of the other two paths, it was really hard to get up any enthusiasm whatsoever. Kai's path felt staid and forced, whereas Shizuma's path was... unusual but horribly painful to play through, primarily because of Shizuma himself. Shizuma actually becoming a human being is probably the best thing about the third path. He drops the paranoia and most of the angst, and he actually become something approaching psychologically stable. If he'd managed to drop into that mode in his own path at some point, I probably would have been more forgiving, lol. Other than that... Kai never does really grow that much. He remains a two-dimensional prop with a fondness for airheads (all three of the heroines are airheads or exceedingly naive in some way). He spouts formulaic phrase after formulaic phrase, right through to the conclusion. It doesn't help that the manipulators behind the scenes are also less than inspiring, once the initial emotional release is achieved. My final conclusion on the series canon issue is that one or the other is canonical but they can't coexist with the inconsistencies obviously present. Chronologically, Kenseiki would have had to have happened after Yumina but before Corona. Unfortunately, certain events in Corona make that impossible, so I had to just give up, in the end, on figuring out whether Eternal intended any of the series to have a true chronological consistency. Also, the difficulty spike near the end of the game is a bit ridiculous, though I was still able to get through it by picking off enemies at the edges until I'd isolated the more annoying ones... that and strategically making certain my people with support skill-blocking skills were available to all the other characters at all times to deal with the really nasty support skills the bosses tended to have. This is also true of Corona, in a way... There is a huge difficulty spike near the end of that one that makes it virtually impossible to achieve victory without abusing the protagonist/redhead/Corona combo to blast away the bosses' barriers. My final conclusion about the game as a whole? It would have been much, much better if they had made it consistent with the series' other games and had fixed the leveling so that all the characters would level together (I loathe the grinding that is inevitably required in srpgs where you have lots of characters who level individually). I also think it would have been better if they had really, truly made using Stigma and Alpharia a 'good thing', as they are both as weak as kittens, except for their support skills... and as mechs combined with their respective protagonists, they actually make Shizuma and Kai a little weaker, in some ways. The sword-people proved useful throughout the game, though the fact that some of the best party-attack skills are on them, so having them constantly equipped frequently felt wasteful. Story-wise... Kai's path was tolerable, Shizuma's path was painful, and the third path was good... but that just means they made the first three fourths of the game into a slogfest, which is a huge downer. Giving the sub-heroines their own unique paths was a good choice, as it gave them a chance to be distinct from one another. Unfortunately, the fact that the third path makes it all irrelevant kind of kills the fun, doesn't it?

Interested in a few fun facts about Comiket? Check out some of these charts: While these numbers are from 2008 and earlier, everything has been slowly increasing since then. It goes without saying that the number of attendees and circles has gone up immensely. A few facts about the event: Gender fluctuates greatly at the market, however more women frequently attend the event and have circles set up, with a general 70% female to 30% male statistic. With the more recent releases of female oriented manga and anime (i.e. = Free!), women otaku seem to have been the winners in terms of gender attendance and circles in the past few years. This also includes foreign attendeesWhen I attended Comiket 88 in August on the 3rd and final day of the event (Sunday), I was part of the 210,000 people there. The total number of attendees reached a peak of around 550,000 people that weekendAround 11,500 doujinshi circles were present at Comiket 88Claustrophobic? Imagine walking a floor of 200,000+ people and being shoved around in sweat. Fun times!

Mainly 4chan. Probably because 4chan represent the traditional, Eroge fanbase, and Dovac realising this fanbase consists mainly of pirates said 'fuck those people' and went looking for greener pastures. Not a popular decision, but a fairly logical business one. Zeno pretty much states the 3 reasons Sekai are hated, but personally I'm not fussed with good PR (because PR is meaningless, really) their kickstarter use (because if you don't like it, don't participate - simple), their lack of communication (because I'm too busy to care overly and things will happen when they happen) or Dovac (because I live in Australia, which is a country full of abrasive arseholes) and thus I'm fine with Sekai. Other people won't be. ~~~ On topic: I’ll only care about cropped images if they end up cutting out something unimportant. Let me give you an example of what I’m talking about. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was recently remastered into widescreen and released on some new-fangled format. Most likely Blu-ray. Unfortunately Whedon specifically shot the show for 4:3. To widen it, they got the originals and included more footage in the shot than what was intended. The result was footage of camera crew, actors off-screen acting out of character, actors off-screen who were meant to have mysteriously dropped off-camera, footage of camera and lighting equipment and so on. They also removed filters used for story and atmosphere purposes, like the scene where Angel was in Buffy’s bedroom at night has now miraculously transformed into the middle of the day.This is IN ADDITION to your standard cropping. This is what’s known as a severe cock-up, good job Fox. Can you see the crew member? In comparison, I suppose we have some cropping in G-Senjou’s visual novel. If this just reduces detail in the scene, I can live with that. EDIT: Double post to give the mods something to do.

I finally read through the thread and it looks like this is what happened: People complain on the Steam forums that G-senjou's "HD" CG are cropped.Sekai Project deletes the threads.Users on Reddit and elsewhere go ballistic because *coverup*.Sekai Project makes a vague statement that they're not allowed to speak on the subject at this time, and that they'll delete all Steam discussions about it.Sekai Project (likely after consulting with Akabei Soft) makes a statement that the cropping was Akabei Soft's decision. They sticky this in the Steam forums.Criticism mostly dies down.Sanahtlig sees this topic and reacts to 1-3 before reading up on later developments.In any case, Sekai Project handled this poorly. They shouldn't have started deleting threads until they had a complete announcement available. As usual, their PR leaves much to be desired. Moral of the story: For Christ's sake update the OP with a link to Sekai Project's official Steam sticky so these misunderstandings won't continue to be propagated.

What is the problem with the statement about KS which resulted dovac being filthy rich? By me all is exactly true. Anyway, whole point is that KS getting millions without any real work would result in companies like MG and Jast going into think "what the hell?? we do all work on our own money, spend years in translations and in the end get 500000$ max in 2 years, while SP does nothing, except KS and get billions even without doing anything, and more - based on fan translations!". Not fair, so I suppose soon MG would start making KS campaigns as well and after would be Jast. This is why this whole idea is worst possible one, as Sekai is not motivated to deliver quality product at all - of course, I would not be motivated as well, if I got million dollars without doing anything Didn't you read anything of what I said? You simply have no proof of anything you are saying. All of Sekai's kickstarters so far have been either them translating an existing Japanese product or them acting as publishers to help out create a new one. I:E all of their kickstarters have involved another entity other than Sekai. We have no idea how they split up the money between them. Also none of their kickstarters have reached 1 million and only 2 of them have reached even 100.000 so uh... billions? Also none of Sekai's kickstarters have been based on fan translations. The Grisaia and World End Economica kickstarters both included untranslated content and the Clannad translation is entirely new. Also the thought that someone who wanted to scam people and make tons of money would choose visual novels of all things is simply ridiculous, there simply isn't a lot of money to be made here. I don't even like that Sekai is using kickstarter so much and I really respect Mangagamer for saying that they're not going to. So I don't even like Sekai project all that much yet I still end up defending them all the time since people keep making unfounded accusations. There are tons of legitimate critiques to be made about both Sekai and their use of kickstarter, do that instead of making stuff up.

*Clephas looks up briefly from where he is implanting a loli's brain with a lolicon-seeking device and a pocket nuke* ... you didn't see anything.

Well, freedom of speech or not, censoring anything speaking against you is kind of a bad idea, and they more than likely shouldn't have started deleting threads without saying anything first. That's probably what caused people to be so angry in the first place.

i do get worked up when someone tells me that buiseness btw potential boost of sales comes before reading experience, because if thats the case then piss off and sell cars, or whatever and not a medium that atually lives from its reading experience, furthermore calling me a purist, elitist or whatever overly-sentimental dude that hasnt understood the world he´s living in...

Same here man. I'm about ready to abandon western localization as a whole and start importing. It's good motivation to learn Japanese and ultimately far more rewarding. There's so much we are missing out on here in the west, and I really wanted to share the emotions and experiences Visual Novels bring with as many people as possible. I didn't support official releases to see them butchered like this.

This has officially turned into the most entertaining thread of the week.

Making moeblogs in IPB4 is suffering now, I used to be able to copy and paste an entire post and now I need to manually embed each image and make sure they don't get messed up while I'm at it. There's a good way to fix those frustrations, looking at adorable MOE will make it all better, no matter what's troubling you!

Really?! How interesting. Do it, Tiag! Eat that mouldy, and likely disease-ridden sandwich, you found behind the couch. It may be black, and it may smell funky, but this was how penicillin was made and that's undoubtedly good for you. Logic therefore dictates your sandwich will be likewise, so you should scoff it down if you want to be healthy.

The proof is the size of SP's catalog of available of future available titles. That's public. Of course their finances are not public, no company is going to get out the details of their finances for a couple of nerds to see. It's your right to think this is not proof enough but without any hint of counter-evidence at all it's irrational to claim what you claim. For god's sake, stop with this argument. Nobody sane in his mind will ever think that the next big place to make money is the translation of niche porn games from Japan and quit an actually profitable job to go for it. It's even worth than thinking you'll get rich by making Youtube videos. If you think dovac isn't a fan of VNs and just an opportunist, please consider the fact that he's also been hosting out of his own pocket some VN community websites for years, before he even started Sekai Project. Or that he helped a japanese company out of the red by lending them money with no ties to it. You have all the rights to dislike the man and probably many reasons to (he doesn't seem very likable after all) but to think he's in that game for money is ridiculous.

I believe the term you are looking for is Chinese PowerPoint games.

Another reason I wanted to make this post is to help clarify why I believe a lot of Japanese companies don't want to have their games licensed. It isn't about being xenophobic like I have seen a lot of people argue. Rather, I think it comes down to the fact that these companies are afraid of breaking the rules of the EOCS and don't want to lose their retail rights in Japan.

the guys on the other side sure are dumb, amirite guys

Nice artstyle! I'm gonna buy this asap. Dem catgirls, too.

There's probably akabei behind this. I highly doubt Akabei Soft is monitoring the Steam forums. Monitoring and communicating with the English fanbase is one of Sekai Project's core responsibilities as the English publisher.

In response to the OP: To be fair, your post on Steam WAS promoting piracy. And furthermore, your insistence that Sekai Project's official releases somehow have to "beat" free unauthorized fan translations really tarnishes your argument. There's no such thing as a "free" version of a paid game. That's piracy. It was a little rude to ban you rather than just edit or delete the thread, but they were perfectly in their rights to censor you. As for the second thread, that's genuine suppression of dissent, and that shouldn't be tolerated. That's reason enough to boycott a company. I suggest Sekai Project explain themselves quick, or I might just throw them in the "never buy from this company" category. As for the issue of cropped CG itself, that was known since they first released screenshots. I thought it was dumb then and I think it's dumb now. Cropping CGs is a demerit not a feature. Normally people can choose to set their monitor/video card to deal with the aspect ratio issue in one of three ways: fullscreen mode with sidebars, full screen mode zoomed (crops the image), full screen mode stretched, or stick with windowed mode. Cropping the images manually removes user options and is generally inferior to fullscreen mode with sidebars anyway. I'm not sure why a company would even do this except to tick a feature checkbox.

Sorry, I couldn't resist

Yeah, impoverished Raymond working only for fans, eating instant ramen and all going for games... Do you believe this yourself? Imagine, how you got more than $1,400,000 (that's only for KS projects, and how much he got outside that?) and "live impoverished life"?... Unbelieveable, by me.

Hooray!

As the #1 cat girl connoisseur on Fuwanovel, I approve of this.

Ah, I remember the Elliot case. A disgusting person and a victim of the standard for masculinity.

so you made it. congrats!

Call it as you want, I will keep supporting companies like Mikandi, (I supported WAS back then because it was a doujin game like i did with many others like world end, tokyo dark, vision of aurora, millia, no one but you etc etc) Why should I support something I don't believe in? That every single time they need to answer something important their response is "Due to legal issues..." i'm not just talking about g-senjou no mou or was, this is the first time I see a company hiding behind legal stuff so much. Who the hell are they working for the NSA? Isn't sekai suppose to deal with this kind of issues? and if the companies they are dealing with are so bad why do they work for them in the first place? shouldn't they warn the people who are going to support them about it? "hey this is a risky thing to support, the company X put many restrictions on us and we wont be able to share anything with you till the product is released"

nah just with one video I had enough

I will clarify this about the DRM stuff which i saw someone asking on the profundia page. If it is drm-free then you can copy the content that you have on your steam folder and paste it for example in your pendrive burn it into a dvd and the game will run without any issue or the need to run steam or any other thing just like narcissu does or any of the GOG games. Steam is just a client to download games it it not however a drm system on itself, it can be used as a DRM system if the developer wants to or some kind of restrictions. Steam lets you play games off-line if it is your account (the family thing doesnt work anymore offline like it did on the past) but that doesn't mean it is drm-free, you can have a game with some copy protection, lets say TAGES or securom and you will be still be able to play them offline, you can have a game that ask you to enter a serial code one time (with online activation or offline) that's it drm too and you still will be able to play them off-line, this is if you lunch the game through the steam client. The only games that you wont be able to do this are games that requires your internet connection to be online all the time, I can't come up with any example now on steam, diablo 3 used this method on pc I'm not sure if still does... and I'm less sure if there is any game that uses this DRM system on steam, games that uses this type of protection are so criticized that developers sooner or later take them off (assasin's creed for example) because in the end it only hurts the real customers and not the pirates so the companies drop the system, they still try to use it because lets be honest most of the publishers who works in the gaming industry don't know a shit about gaming they just know about business and want to make money even if it hurts them in the end, I'm looking at you EA.

I had a pretty interesting morning, so I'm going to be taking it easy.

I dunno, I can't get myself worked up over cropped CGs. I'd prefer uncropped but... meh. I don't know why or how so many people are getting so upset.

I'd say this comment really hits the mark. https://www.reddit.com/r/visualnovels/comments/3rds22/gsenjou_no_maou_steam_version_169_cgs_are_cropped/cwndsse

You left out 'but that's because (traditionally) the standard for prose in VN translations has been suckitudinous.'

Wow, I could overlook all the stuff they stuff they have done so far, but this might be the last straw. Well, glad im learning JP so I dont need sleazy localization companies anymore soon.

Seriously. Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain would both be on Twitter 24/7.

I haven't read Don Watson's book, so I'll give this a conditional "meh" with a future option to post the "Old Man Yells at Cloud" image. English is fine. Every generation thinks the new guard is taking a great big ol' dump on the Queen's English and ruining everything that makes it wonderful. Every generation is wrong. English ebbs and flows, just as it was meant to. The jargon of the Industrial Revolution gave rise to the Romantics. The standardization of post-WW2 American discourse gave rise to the Beats. Each time, the language was enriched. And guess what? The English of today still lets you be as precise as you choose to be. The words are all still there. You get to use them, free of charge. Watson's point seems to be more about public discourse, which is a much different beast. That's a cultural issue. Right now, we're going through this phase where we're getting used to the idea of instant accountability, the thought that anything we say might end up disseminated and dissected in a matter of minutes. (THANK YOU, INTERWEBS!) We hedge our bets publicly because it's in our best interest to. We eschew precision for a certain bland flexibility because that gives us the best chance to manage our own meaning. As for private speech, I think that's probably as colorful as ever, if not more so. (THANK YOU, INTERWEBS!)

It will be a mixed between lighthearted and heavy (not to the point I would say "dark"): A kind-of-plot-focused but still have the onomatope-ish's element: comedy/harem and stuff. At least that's impression I got from the trial version.

Welcome! What's your favorite color?

I don't know if 170K is a lot of money or not(i really dont know how expensive is to translate the novel and pay for everything else) but what i do know is that it will be hard for a really not well known company on the west and a new vn to success on a ks with that amount, like sanah said you dont have a solid fanbase here and that's what you need when funding a project of that magnitude. Also you need to state that the novel has voices because i dont see that anywhere on the profundia page and that's really important, right now it seems that the novels doesnt have any, also the timeline is a little hidden down there, the 60 hours gameplay should be in a more visible place preferably on the top. "Help us bring "Libra of the Vampire Princess" to the West, a brand new 60+hours bishoujo, fully voiced visual novel game by Japanese studio XERO." that is if it has voice acting on the english ver

I've never seen a company/developer new to the Western market so engaged with its customers and fans. Wish some of these companies I really like werent so arrogant and would follow your example MiKandi Japan.

As a survivor of the Aaeru days, I've learned to value practicality over idealism. I'd rather get some of the pie than no pie at all. In the future, when the market has grown to the point where these companies can be choosers instead of beggars (and when Steam actually allows 18+ games) I expect we'll absolutely see 18+ editions far more often. Kindred Spirits will hopefully go a long way to easing Steam up a little bit. Images might have to be censored to avoid genitalia, but the scene could stay reasonably in tact that way.