meru

Hahaha this is great XDD

Hi there & welcome to the forums! I can see everyone has some great recs for you

I'll drop by the irc channel as soon as I can ^_~

I wanna try this *eventually* cos it's Key, but it's just too huge a game for me right now. Maybe when I have some holidays.. XD

Don't read this while on the train or something, it's a real tear jerker ^^; I should buy it, even though I already read the fan translated one, just to support Key. It's really great they're starting to acknowledge & provide for their English-speaking fan base <3

Hi there & welcome to the forums I see Steve already mentioned he was trying to set up a streaming thing, so maybe you guys can collaborate on that~ Yeah, a short one would probably be best to start with, and to see how people react to it.

So this is something people wanted to see a while ago but I didn't get round to taking photos til now. Here's the inside packaging of some of the vn I own Here's a comparison of a few different shapes/sizes of packaging. On the bottom right is a BL game in a regular plastic CD/DVD case. All the others are in cardboard boxes with the discs in a jewel case inside. Kanon's case is pretty simple. This seems to be the most common way of packaging VN recently. You get a cardboard slip cover, with a hard cardboard box inside, inside of which is your disc & instruction manual. It's the same as how computer games used to be sold, before they moved on to using just the plastic case. Some vn come in prettier packaging, either for their first press or special editions, or for all editions. This one is Caucasus, it comes in a lovely solid cardboard box, with an artbook. These are my favourite kinds of packaging to get, the others sometimes seem kind of pointless as it's a big box just for one small CD. I hope this was interesting for some people

Hi, welcome to the forums! Hope to see you being active around here

Hi, and congratulations on making the move from lurker to poster! XD

Hi, welcome to the forums I neeeed to play Ever17.. too much stuff on my to-play list...

Hi & welcome to the forums

I like this!

Thanks, I was wondering about this too!

Emailed you my address!

I'm yet another of this who ended up evening Japanese so I could read untranslated manga, play games, etc. XD I love the 'secret code' feeling too, even if sometimes I get frustrated and feel like it's a code i'll never truly crack ^^; anyway, welcome to the forums!

This is a really interesting discussion. I'm currently reading a lot of Lawrence Lessig's stuff about free culture and things like that, but to be honest I haven't really formulated my own opinions yet. Aaeru, I recall you having a couple of blog posts where you outlined your views on this stuff, are they still around? For those of you who are interested, I have a few questions: do you think fan translations damage profits for the 'official companies? if Yes, do you think this is a bad thing? Who do you think should profit from visual novels? Do you think there should be no 'official' translations? I'm really interested to hear everyone's views

Awesome! Let's keep the traffic comin'

All I can say is.. BOOBS

So all we have to do is keep surrounding you with pics of moe girls, and your motivation will increase exponentially! You'll be fluent in no time

I started playing cos Ui looked so cute XD But then I lost interest really quickly.. idk the opening setup was just too standard. But I might give it another try, or try watching the anime first!

Hi, welcome to the forums! We're always happy to have new members~ As for being helpful.. I'm sure Aaeru can find something for you ;P What kind of skills do you have?

Hi & welcome to the forums! I have suuuuuch a huge backlog, it kind of distresses me rather than excites me XD

I've never actually seen this site before Thanks!!

It would be really interesting to get some concrete sales figures for both Japan & the West.. time for some googling..! I can't really answer the question of whether we are getting noticed, but there's a few things I'd like about the problems to popularizing VN in the West. Discalimer; when I say 'West' here, I'm really just talking about the UK & America as that's what I have experience of. 1. Style The vn style just isn't something people are used to right now. When people think of a 'game' they think of your typical video game that you 'play', and when people think of a 'novel' they think of text that you 'read'. Visual novels are a bit of a mix between the two. I think people are starting to accept the idea of 'visual novels' or 'interactive stories', but there's still a way to go. For reference I'm thinking of the game 'Dear Esther' - it's gained popularity, but also a lot of debate over what exactly it is, is it really a game, it's too boring to be a game, etc. I think what IceD mentioned about handheld devices is an interesting point. I think this is a great opportunity for vn devs.. game apps are still changing rapidly, there's less of a set idea about what to expect from them, and I think visual novels could definitely find a place there. 2. Sexual Content The whole way that sexual content is marketed and sold in Japan is very different to in the West, and it's also so much easier to get a hold of adult material here in Japan. And of course it's all presented very differently; most people in the West don't really see the appeal in 2D erotica, let alone stuff with girls with massive eyes and pink hair whimpering and screaming all over the place XD Add to that the fact that there's a lot of titles that could probably never be brought over because of their content, which would be deemed obscene, paedophillic, etc. A large percentage of the Japanese consumers of vn are probably buying it for the sexual content, so you've already got a huge problem in that when bringing it over to the West you will likely not find that same consumer base. 3. VN are a niche product even in Japan Yeah some are very popular and some have great sales, but that's certainly not the norm, and vn are still not familiar to the general population. It's the same with anime.. apart from the huge shonen series like Naruto, One Piece, etc, anime isn't actually as popular as some people think it is (I was surprised the first time I went to Japan, it's not like I thought EVERYONE was watching anime, but I thought at least more people would have known what I was talking about XD). Comiket can pull in some hugely impressive numbers, but these interests are still thought of as kind of strange. These are just my observations from living in Japan, and hearing from friends back in the UK who have no interest in Japan/anime/etc. I'd like to hear if anyone else agrees or thinks differently! I really enjoy these discussions~

Sounds like a pretty neat little setup you have! For myself, I try and only have a few tabs open at a time, otherwise I get distracted and never actually finish anything! ..Sorry for hijacking your thread to talk about tabs, Aaeru XD