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You guys kind of underestimate the effort and resources necessary to make a decent VN. Art is really expensive, and voice acting even more expensive if it's meant to not sound like shit. VNs are a really good, cheap tool for people that want to create basic interactive stories for fun or are artists and want to apply their own skills in such a way... But when we get to levels of quality that could be attractive to a mainstream audience the difference between VNs and simple 3D game or other types of 2D games isn't that massive. And I'm not sure I have to remind anyone how huge 2D/retro gaming is right now, so we shouldn't really have to use AAA games as the point of reference... Anyway, I think most arguments people already listed are valid (massive amounts on text in aggressively pushed "kamige", questionable porn, anime aesthetic)... But an important point people forget about is how many, often high-quality VNs don't have mainstream appeal because they defy expectation/do not provide the kind of interactivity Western audience wants. Every time I see Steam users complaining about a VN they played not being a game or having too few choices, it reminds my how either bizarre or dull the idea of interactive literature is for an average gamer... And at the same time, people who are not into games in the first place have few incentives to get into this particular niche of otaku media. And the way the industry handle stuff hardly helps. One genuine perk of VNs over other otaku media is conclusive romance, but for example, we in the West never get the anime tie-in titles that let you pursue a non-canon romance from popular shows. We never see VNs coming to the West with a proper marketing budget either. The result is that you have things like Steins;Gate and Clannad, with legendary-status anime adaptations, being the only VNs with proper reach, alongside gameplay-heavy adventure games such as Danganronpa or Ace Attorney and occasional lowest-common-denominator moe crap like Nekopara... I don't know if I'm right about it, but the longer I look at it, the more botched the whole "bringing VNs into the Western market" feels. Mostly because it relies on the existing fan community nearly in 100% and its ideas of outreach stopped at MoeNovel's delusions of 12-years-old French girls playing Pulltop's waifu games. Either VNs truly have no appeal in the West outside of porn and the small crowd of people looking for romantic stories, or they are selected and marketed in an atrocious way. I would hope it's at least partially the latter, because that still can be remedied to some extent... Like not letting this category on VNDB to forever stay massively neglected.

Yes, writing is actually super important for moege. Charage is actually just moege with good writing, but people just call them charage because their ego does not allow them to like moege.

Good writing in pure waifu games makes the difference between a satisfying experience and absolute trash. I don't think even art or sex scenes can redeem a moege that doesn't do a good job of making the heroines endearing and/or interesting. Because if it can't suck you in and create this kind of emotional connection, it has no advantage over a random anime drawing or a hentai short you might find online with little to no context. Of course, there's also the issue of taste, as some people will find even good renditions of moe archetypes unbearable after seeing them too many times... And then there's a subset of VN audience that can consume utter s*** unironically and somehow find in enjoyable. But generally, I think cleverly written slice-of-life never truly gets old and moe tropes are fun tools for that kind of content. In hands of someone with genuine talent, they can make for a great, light experience. You can overdose on moe though and in the hands of a talentless hack it will quickly devolve into something disgustingly stale and uninspired. Which is, I think, why the formula has such a bad rep nowadays. Even on our market there's now more of it than anyone can reasonably process, and when done poorly it's really hard to justify its existence, as the only thing it will do that nukige wouldn't is waste a few days' worth of your free time...

Good evening everyone. It's a pleasure to meet you all. My team and I are developing an OELVN, Where The Stars Brought Us, which will be going into Beta Testing(October 15 - October 22). We'd love to have the community give their feedback on the demo. The demo is staged for the iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms. We'd also love to get your opinion on the Kickstarter rewards. We look forward to hearing everyone's feedback and hope that you enjoy what we've created thus far.

I saw this on reddit today and i thought it was worth showing. Translate the page to English if you want to read it. https://visual-novel.info/akatsuki-no-goei-fanuebersetzungsgruppe-daybreak-translations-loest-ihr-schweigen-ueber-projektstatus-auf/

I edited that part in the meantime. ^^ I meant that they nearly never reach the West (and neither do other tien-in VNs, we get some of the licensed JRPGs at best), outside of fan translation. And they would be great tools for making more anime fans interested in the VN formula.

Ekhm... Toradora would like to have a word with you But yeah, those are rare.

Why are you linking a literal german news site when you could be linking the original blog post?

just replace all shadow raid legends ads with nekopara ads

It is done. The translation is officially 100% done Progress will now move on to post-translation, where there's TLC and QC to be done. I'm hoping to finish everything else and release the patch by end 2020 (unlikely, but hey, you never know). If not, then at least get the TLC done by end 2020. So do refer to the TLC tab of the sheet for progress on the TLC. I will save my translation remarks for after the patch is fully released. For now though, rejoice that the translation is done! Yay!