Darklord Rooke

I'd like to echo Nohman's sentiments. I also pray for a speedy and favourable resolution to your RL crisis

The policy was to 'let the better ideas rule' regarding the METHODS used to carry out the site's aims. These aims were dictated by Aaeru, and now Tay. It was NEVER the policy to let the better ideas of 'what the site should be' rule. That's Tay's domain. Period. You can stop encouraging mass support for an alternative vision for starters.

I'm saying as a worker for the organisation your job is not to HINDER the operation in any way. Tay has a plan for what the site should be, he's already said it's not a democracy, why are you canvassing support for alternative ideas for the site. This irritates me. And until recently you guys weren't even doing moderating properly, which is why people were pissed. And it's part of the reason why discontent was flowing onto the forums. You are right, you were moderators who were sitting back watching spam and abuse flow. You don't have to believe in everything Tay says, you do have to get out of the way and don't hinder the process. And I wasn't directing my comments at Nosebleed. EDIT: The part about giving Tay support.

Hyperbole. Visual novels are a medium and has nothing to do with the Otaku culture. If you’re thinking it’s your job to make ‘Japanese visual novels’ popular, then you’ve got it wrong, that’s only part of the goal. Visual novels are a specific type of story based game, similar to others which have taken off in the West. Interactive fiction, for example, has exploded in recent years with the Walking Dead cited as the end product of this resurgence. Gamebook Adventures was so successful some media outlets termed IF the ‘future of novels’. And a small, indie VN by Christine Love recently netted 32,000 sales, which is significant. There are 70,000 people on VNDB, that’s more than the number of people who raised 4 million dollars for the next Planescape Torment game. It is a decent industry with the potential of far more growth than you expect. Fuwa’s goal is to recognise this and to strive to make Visual Novels popular. It isn’t Fuwa’s goal to say ‘Fuck it, too hard’ before the fight’s even begun. Your vision is one I reject, btw. The "everyone must be committed 100%" part of your argument is a strawman. It's a named logical fallacy. Nobody's arguing this. Furthermore people realise things take time, that's not the issue. The issue is you guys thinking doing nothing but providing a piracy site and a place to chat is all Fuwa should be doing. I am VERY happy Tay realises this is not the case, and I am VERY happy that the site is in HIS hands regarding where it goes, and not the other members of the staff. Speaking of which, what was everybody doing when Steve was practically in charge? I'd love to hear what you were all planning at this point in time. I'm sure SB would love to chip in here regarding the grand vision you were all headed towards. Tay's very limited in time. Extremely so. And yet he's doing more for the site than anybody else here. A strawman argument. Another one. However if you feel it’s easier for you to argue an IMAGINED argument, knock yourself out. And if you feel your IMAGINED argument is disrespectful... what are we supposed to do about that? I said the STAFF should be for the above goal and I stand by it. Nobody said anything about everybody working towards said goal. That’s not where Tay is taking things and it’s now his site to direct, but let’s discuss the old Fuwa. The Fuwa which was hated by the entire VN community, the Fuwa which couldn’t get any members and the Fuwa which had an underlying anti-copyright agenda. Is this the Fuwa you hold so highly? Tay’s got a plan to move Fuwa forward. I am HOPING he has the support of the staff in this. Staff are, by definition, working for an organisation. Tay is leading this organisation with a vision, I am hoping the staff are on board and not hindering the process in any way. Accessible does not equal popular, as I keep saying you're only doing half the job. Furthermore piracy is but ONE way to make VNs more popular, maybe the process will be sped up a little if you stop thinking piracy is the be all and end all. Strawman and logical fallacy. TL;DR: Your argument is full of logical fallacies. Tay's the one dictating where this site is now headed, and it's no longer headed towards a future where piracy and friendliness is the be all and end all. If you have a problem with that, tough. It's Tay's site to lead. While the staff is volunteer you knew this when you signed up for it. If you have a problem with the workload, then nobody is forcing you to do anything. Furthermore, the word 'staff' means a person working for a particular organisation, if there's anyone among you who is not fully on board where Tay is taking things, and are hindering the process, then you're harming the site. I'd consider that.

No, don't wait. Investigate the alcohol behind the counter.

Oh definitely not, I love a good argument. Unfortunately I've had the same one plenty of times with people on here, and nobody's come up with a logical argument to back their position. That was my exasperation. If you have, then hit me with it. Do keep in mind that to make VNs popular you need a product to begin with, so if your goal is to spread VNs you need to ensure the health of the industry WHILE spreading the fanbase. And I'm saying this as a hard-core supporter of a game genre which was dead for 10 years or more. Trust me when I say that being a supporter of a dead industry sucked balls. We did keep spreading games though, they were just very old ones. Mostly. It only revived when tens of thousands of fans chucked fistfuls of money at developers, which is the sort of thing you need to encourage to keep an industry alive. So in short, popularity means big fanbase + industry, and while piracy increases the fanbase I can't see any evidence that there's much more money going into the industry than 10 years ago. Maybe with Steam things are changing, but that's hardly Fuwa's doing. I can cover OELVNs, but I can't do Japanese news. I don't speak Japanese and most news comes from Japanese news sites. Also, Tay has a plan to revamp the blog. And he's scouting people from lemma, and from other places. I may have thrown a certain person's name at him over and over and over... I should apologise for nagging btw. But don't worry, Tay's got some plans for it.

I am hoping the staff are offering Tay their full support. I've heard some of Tay's plans and let me just say I am incredibly hyped for Tay's vision of this site moving forward (long term) EDIT: Which brings me to my next point. Why are you guys asking for opinions regarding what the site should be when Tay already has a 6 month plan moving forward?

Suggestions. Not a question you really should be asking, you should know what needs doing tbh. Friendliness? Not a bad goal for how a community BEHAVES towards each other, but building a community which is "all about friendliness?" Please. A community which has no purpose won't survive long. "A cool place to talk about our hobbies?" While Aaeru wanted to create a non-toxic atmosphere for the community, I believe the purpose of the community is emblazoned on the logo at the top of the page. This doesn't mean the forum will lose the friendly atmosphere you guys value so much, it does mean that some work should be going on behind the scenes instead of relaxing on laurels and thinking "Wow, we are doing great." Because you're not, and I'm plenty eager to discuss that point with you in detail. What should you be doing? Information about Visual Novels... and visual novel type games are scattered across the web. If you want to hear news about visual novels, a person may have to frequent many different places on the internet. The first goal you guys should be working on is to deliver a quality INFORMATION SERVICE, a servive which would be of interest to the members of the community. That means news and information regarding Japanese visual novels development, and english visual novel development. Maybe even hosted reviews. This will in no way impact the friendly nature of the site you guys seem to value so highly, but it will deliver a much valued service to your community and will begin to cement Fuwa's place on the internet. I believe you guys had begun to do this a while ago, but the blog has died and so has the FB site. Because visual novel communities exists in small pockets here and there, Fuwa should be working on becoming the main hub for visual novel type games. When you are the main hub, it will be easier to progress towards the goal which is emblazoned on the banner.

There's a reason Fuwanovel struggled to get any traction in those days. Not sure you really want to go into it, though.

A person's gender and a person's sex are two different things.

Fuwa – doing little to achieve its goal and don’t even try to argue otherwise. You don’t seem to have a credible plan outside of ‘expand the fanbase through piracy’. I hear Tay has some good plans, I hope the staff are giving him much help... Relatively clean forums but regular abuse still a part of the community. Aaeru intended this to be a toxic free community, people interpreted that to mean a toxic free forum but this includes endorsed IRC channels, PMs and other communication services promoted in the community. Like TS. Still quite small but everyone throws around the word ‘massive’ and ‘big.’ Lemma, a community of OELVN creators, has over 4 times the members.

If anyone is interested there's a full playthrough on youtube... somewhere

The writing is definitely not great to be honest. Par for the course really. Also it's short. That being said I like the new direction this VN goes in, and thought it would be worth bringing to people's attention in case they want something fresh.

I believe I've found an exciting new VN on Steam, just let me check if it "qualifies." VNDB requires 3 things to be present before a game is classified a "Visual Novel." Firstly, the game needs to use the novel narrative. Secondly, the story needs to continue uninterrupted for a significant length, and lastly it needs to conform to either the ADV or NVL style. Well HAPPY DAYS because "Vlad the Impaler" qualifies on all fronts. Isn't that just awesome! So without further ado, let me introduce everybody to this new visual novel on Steam.

Unless you keep doing it. If a family keeps inbreeding within itself, each subsequent generation will suffer more damage than the one before until the effects are no longer trivial. Marriage. Created to help men keep track of their belongings, during a time when the average life-expectancy was less than half of what it was today, in an era when it was perfectly feasible for a spouse to stay at home and raise the kids full time. These days, with countries wanting to maximise it's work force for obvious reasons and also to help stave off the effects of aging populations, with people getting married in their teens and finding out (at age 40) they're both completely different people, with the nuclear family deemed no longer adequate to serve our purposes moving to the future, marriage is quickly becoming an outdated concept.

More likely yes, this doesn't mean there's a great many of them. I don't speak Japanese so I don't have first hand knowledge regarding translation accuracy. That being said, the link I attached showed most anime fansubbers struggle to acheive anything higher than a 'C' grade when graded primarily on accuracy and errors. The guy takes writing style into consideration as well but he is far too lenient in this area. It seems to matche what I've heard other translators say. That being said because more than one fansub group will translate each anime, odds are there is a decent fan-translation out there somewhere, this helps hide the number of poor fansub groups going around. Good fan-sub groups may compete with professional studios on this level, this doesn't mean 'many' do, however. In regards to how the translations read in english, the overwhelming majority tend to have juvenile prose. Limited vocabulary, redundant words, confusing sentences, basically little knowledge of how to write in english. Very few, if any, fansub studios compete with professional studios in this category for a couple basic reasons. Firstly, being able to translate from Japanese to English is one thing, being able to translate from Japanese to fluent-and-well-written english is completely different. Anybody who is able to do so would be in high demand in the translation market, so there would be very few individuals such as these hovering around the fansub scene. So this means having an editor. The vast majority of people who volunteer as an 'editor' for fansub projects are merely able to speak the language, they don't know what it means to 'write' in publishable prose. And not many people who could would be hanging around the translation scene. So when you consider accuracy alone, some fansubs may compete with professional studios. Not many do, though, but because multiple fansub groups can translate each title it looks like there's far more decent fansubbers than there actually are. However, the vast majority of fansub groups are behind par when it comes to making their translations read well in english. And because there's more to 'translating' than flinging accurately translated sentences on to the page (or screen,) I don't agree with your statement that 'many' fansubbers produce a better product.

A great, whopping exaggeration. I regularly read fansubbed manga and I count myself lucky if it's actually readable. Very few of the groups know how to write well in english, and regarding translation accuracy ... http://8ths.in/fall-2013-fansub-comparison-reviews/

Skip. I read quickly, and waiting for the voices to catch up is just irritating.

"We mention this because the game does, in fact, read as if it has been translated — by folks who don’t have a profound grasp on the English language. We found this to be an off-putting part of the experience, especially because the entire game is made up of reading. When the core, and really the only, aspect of your game isn’t delivered coherently, there’s a big issue. Now, as we were about to type up our initial review we did receive an e-mail from the devs mentioning that a patch has been released to address this issue. So, in good conscience, we went back to the story to see what had changed. Fortunately, some of the grammatical snafus were addressed in the update, which definitely makes the whole thing a bit more fluid. It still doesn’t negate the errors and poor wording outright, but at least the effort counts for something." http://www.hardcoregamer.com/2014/07/24/review-sakura-spirit/95183/ Sounds about right.

Because games are aimed at a younger audience in Japan than in the West. Average age of gamers in Japan is 15 or so, visual novels usually aim their games a little higher - say late teens early twenties maybe. Average age of gamers in the West was 37 - it dropped to 30 once they started including all those social media platform games. EDIT: Nevermind, I'm getting conflicting statistics regarding the average age of a gamer in Japan. I'm going to have to defer to someone who lives there. Fairly certain the average age of a gamer in the West is higher than in Japan though.

At least they care about the quality of their product, so good work fellas. That being said I doubt many of the problem sentences were fixed. Probably just the obvious mistakes.

Fuwanovel's lucky to have you, Ren.

Going by the comments on Steam and here... yes The writers who wrote this game alienated most of the fanbase by making it so very weaboo. The plot is light and isn't very involved, which alienates anyone who's searching for plot-based stories. And lastly, the writer doesn't write very well, the 'style' is not mature and is still incredibly juvenile, which puts off people who likes an elegant prose (aka me.) If you can get past ALL of that then you may find some enjoyment in this light, entertaining story. It's obvious most people can't though.

Always good to see you around, Mayumi.

Because I don't like it But what I did was take things back to first principles. What is the purpose of the contest? I see only two goals, finding 'the best banner' or finding 'the most liked banner.' These are the two systems which (imo) best support those two goals. I think trying to find 'the most liked banner' is messy though, I prefer the simplicity of a one vote system. For all those people out there who can't decide between two, I would like to suggest using a coin. A dartboard. You could blindfold yourself and point at one ...