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Well, I see where you're coming from, but consider that in Japan most VNs are eroge for which the main selling point is the combination of compelling stories and sexual content... And they sell well enough through those two features. VNs with significant gameplay are kind of their own, much more mainstream market and that's fine. That is, if we're talking about adventure game-style gameplay. There's a shitton of VNs that implement RPG and Strategy game mechanics – fairly few get translated to English, but Rance games, Eiyuu Senki, Evenicle and Venus Blood -Frontier- are notable examples of gameplay eroge. You also have a decent number VNs with raising sim and dating sim elements, like Littlewitch Romanesque or Gaokao.Love.100Days. Obviously, there was in the past a huge market for heavily gameplay oriented dating/raising sims in Japan – I honestly have no idea how much alive it is nowadays. To be honest, though, I went into VNs exactly to escape from gameplay, which in narrative games can often just become pointless padding distracting from the parts I actually care about. Of course, that doesn't have to be the case if the gameplay is well implemented and I'm sure it can make stuff more appealing to an average gamer, but I'd hate for gameplay elements to be shoved everywhere just for that reason. And if that means VNs are cursed to stay obscure forever? I can live with that.

Gameplay elements are a lot harder to design and test and get working. That means they cost a lot more money. These games are made on shoestring budgets. There are companies that specialize in 'gameplay titles' out there. And most of the time, those titles are not known for having a strong story. In other words, it's pouring a lot more dev resources into something that's not the core selling point of your game (which is, pretty much like you said, a novel with added production value). These guys make money by being happy to be the niche players. Or to put it another way - your point is essentially the same reasoning publishers use when they say 'Graft a multiplayer mode onto game X! Just freaking do it, we don't even care if it makes sense, gamers like it!' Sometimes that works out (Mass Effect 3) and other times, not so much (Resident Evil 3). These companies are like Atlus (well, before Sega bought them). They know how to survive in a low-volume market. If they wanted to make mass-market-appeal games, they'd be making a different kind of game entirely. Not every game has to be mass market. If you want to know 'why aren't there more releases in English', here's your problem. There are a decent number of games. Heck, there's some you haven't even listed (like Koihime Musou, or Aselia the Eternal, or - and I'm being serious here - Persona 4 Arena). I've been around since the early 2000's, and I converted into a paying customer when I found out a VN was lucky to sell a few hundred copies. The numbers I hear nowadays are they're lucky to sell two thousand. These games are absolutely popular enough already in English. Just not with people who actually pay. I'll put it this way: The raw untranslated script for SKM is about 6 megabytes. Rounded down to 5 to account for repeated text and punctuation, etc - at 5 cents per character (very low end of the going rate) and 2 bytes per character that's $250K. How many copies do you need to sell to make that back at $40? 6250. Then there's licensing fees, and we know that MangaGamer said 'if the original KM doesn't sell 2000 copies, we can't pay for the voice so we'll have to remove it'. There's more voice, so bump that up a little. You're probably looking at 8500-9000 copies just to break even. And now you know why MangaGamer hasn't done it. They can't pay the translator a decent rate. They'd have to find someone willing to be significantly underpaid. But suppose for a minute Koihime had sold - instead of the probably 2500-3500 copies it likely sold (it sold > 2K, they added the voices back) - 6 or 7 times that number. Then licensing the sequel would be a no-brainer. It would have been out years ago, probably. Furthermore, every game that was remotely worth releasing would be getting licensed and released. It's the same story with other text-heavy Japanese products. RPGs were a niche product. Every time an RPG was released in English, the company releasing it was taking a risk. And then FF7 came out, and it was one of the first videogames to do cinematic awesome cutscenes well, and it was absolutely in the right place at the right time to do gangbusters. Prior to FF7, RPGs had been building in popularity slowly, but post-FF7, an audience was there and realized 'maybe I should pay more attention, this looks nifty'. Post-FF7, most major JRPGs got translated (but not all). The same thing happened again a few years later, when the quirky-and-cutesy-Japanesey style games caught on. First was Disgaea, which was an amazing game and sold out instantly and Atlus reprinted it and then NIS (the makers) founded NIS America, which has gone on to do very well. Then Recettear sold hundreds of thousands of copies on Steam, proving to everyone 'no really, people will buy the weeb shit'. VNs don't need to be made into something they're not in order to start selling. In fact I'd wager they're already starting to sell. Look at the huge uptick in otome releases, and console releases.

i dont know if japanese game, i only play english patched. Yourou Tsumugu from Ikinari anata koishiteiru she is strange girl who talk weird stuff, friendly as maid Kouzuki IO from D.S. -Dal Segno- strange and friendly, but most like a Chuni Kusakabe Haru from Komyu she is strange and pevert but only said sex jokes Chrono clock also have dorothy but not funny girl. If i rememmber just strage, otaku and friendly girl

There are a number of companies that specialize in gameplay hybrids or have at least one series of such games. Eushully (variations on rpg, strategy, and srpg systems with alchemy sometimes thrown in) SofthouseChara (involved, unique game systems) Xuse Honjouzou (Aselia series) Eternal (the Yumina series) Ninetail/Dualtail (Venus Blood, various dungeon crawlers) Giga (Baldr series under Team Baldrhead) Alice Soft (various games and series) Astronauts (various rpgs, dungeon crawlers, and tower defense under a subsidiary) Generally speaking, it takes a great deal more money and personnel to make gameplay hybrids, so companies pretty much have no choice but to specialize in such games if they do make them at all. Programming staff capable of creating credible gameplay systems generally demand more money than the guys who use existing engines to make visual novels work (most companies use a pre-existing engine rather than a proprietary one), and so a single failure can often sink a company outright. You'll notice that you'll see almost no companies less than five years old even trying to make such VNs in Japan... well there is a good reason for that. The initial investment is just too large. Think about it... just to make a decent game that doesn't look like it came straight out of RPGmaker or a mobile app can eat up millions here. A VN using a pre-existing engine can get in under a hundred thousand (charage) if they don't ask for too much. The only reason most VN companies stay afloat at all is because they sell merchandise or do everything they can to cut costs while inflating the price of the games. Edit: Incidentally, the best old-fashioned JRPG I've played in the last fifteen years (not replayed, but actually played for the first time) was Ikusa Megami Zero, a hybrid by Eushully. So I'm not a hater, lol.

I do that all the time except when the VN is fairly short. I always download new stuff and start it before finishing what I was reading first, that's why it takes me months to finish some VNs even though I consider myself a fast reader.

Luckily I have no NDAs binding me, so I can post various VN TL rates I may or may not have been told about: First of all we have Arunaru when quitting MG who says the max rate at MG is now 1.75 cents per moji. I've heard 1 cent per moji quoted a lot as the lowest MG rate, but it's possiblE they've went up to 1.25 or something. https://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sr1tu4. I believe editing rates are generally ~1/4 of tl rates at MG while they might be 1/2 at other companies, but this might have changed. Sol Press pays 1 cent per moji as far as I know. If you ever needed another reason not to work for them... JAST is afaik at least 2 but might be 3. Could go to 4? Frontwing used to pay a whopping 6 afaik, but I'm not sure if this is still true. Sekai is 2 or 3 I believe. Again, could go to 4? —but you'd be working for sekai project. I don't think any vn tl company bar frontwing pays 5 cents or above on any kind of regular basis. Maybe Aksys? not sure. I think Aksys has unusually high editor pay to go with their "have translators translate literally (badly) and punch it up later" approach where they expect semi-heroic editor efforts. But I haven't heard a number for Aksys I don't think.

This is extremely inaccurate. If 5 cents per moji was standard in VN translations you’d hear a lot less complaints about bad pay, lol. NDAs are a thing, so I can’t mention specifics, but uh, think like... a lot less than that. If you want the low end think a LOT lower than that. Like, jesus, where did that number even come from. I want in on that shit.