Darklord Rooke

Be careful to keep in mind that the conceptual, pre-production, and post-production stage traditionally (in the gaming world) have a lot fewer staff on board. Things ramp up for full production then ramp down for post production. Core staff would then be transferred to a different project, and freelancers would have their work complete.

Hmmm, 16,000 owners (plus or minus 2,000) according to Steamspy. That isn't bad 0.0

Hasn’t there been all sorts of talk regarding what price Key used to demand for the privilege of localising their games? Wasn't it an arm and leg from every member of the localisation studio, the first born of the CEO, and a thousand souls nabbed from the recently departed (stored in a jar with a rubber seal for convenient transportation.)

You should hold off until there's more information, and be prepared to just ignore it. One of the biggest and hardest jobs in creating an RPG is the balance, it can take years to get the balance in difficulty both correct and consistent throughout the game. Nothing that Winged Cloud has done provides any evidence that they're familiar with RPG design, and so you shouldn't really go leaping in until you see more information imo

Still not slow compared to JAST. I think this is 5 years or so since they started promoting Outlaw Django, and JAST has been sitting on the completed Seinarukana for how long now? I'm also getting a good chuckle from those mocking Sekai's line up. I'm hoping these people are not supporting ANY localiser then (and are reading games in native JP,) considering the best part of the line up of all 3 big localising companies is shit.

Adventure gamers look upon Hidden Object Games as the short, casual, stupid, repetitive, worthless siblings of adventure games which for a time weren’t even clearly marked and therefore required extraction by force. Adventure had to forcibly set Hidden Object apart as its more stupid and totally unrelated cousin. If you want to introduce someone to VNs, go with adventure. HOGs should burn in the eternal hellfire of some leprous, demonic entity.

Hakuouki, available on the PSP, 3DS, and PS3, and is also a well known anime is up near the top of the list. I'm very surprised nobody's mentioned it. Amnesia, which is available on Steam and is regularly discounted, is also pretty darn good. Otomes rarely have explicit sexual content (in comparison to eroge.) So in many instances, otome Visual novels are romantic novels with anime art, and that's not so bad a starting point. Also ... ugh, Hidden Object games. Why?

Nice list, Clephas Hmmm, Angel Beats is ranked number 2 despite only having a small portion released. The OP's list is just too awesome ...

#6 is a title whose appeal lies as much in the gameplay as the story, so right off the bat I can tell the list is shit.

If you apply so little forethought to your actions, I really have no sympathy for you.

Why do people volunteer to help out a multi-billion dollar corporation? I understand why people volunteer to help out charities, because NPOs are supposed to be organisations whose primary objective is something other than profit, and charities primary goal is supposed to be helping out your fellow man. But to volunteer to help out such a large and profitable organisation, whose primary goal is to make money is just stupid. Let me just say this to anyone who volunteered to do this stuff - Valve's goal in this exercise is to make money from you, and the metaphorical equivalent of you doing it for free is bending over. I mean, seriously people ...

No.2 might be a bit high, but No Thank You definitely deserves a place on the list. There’s probably 3 maybe 4 good quality titles on that list (Gahkthun, Eden, KnS2 ... maybe Rose Gun Days,) then it’s a matter of preference. Basically when Bunny Black ranks 6th on a list of notable VNs, you know your list is pretty thin. Also the title chosen as number 1 made me laugh. Sorry.

:3 True. Also, with NVL there's more techniques a writer can apply with the prose, and therefore more effects a writer can generate. Obviously it gets in the way of the image somewhat, but Harmonia’s screenshots look real nice Just off the top of my head, a writer can play with the pacing of a sentence with judicious placement of the words 'he/she said' that cannot be done with ADV format. It can, and does, make a big difference. I realise it's not a popular format though

LOOOL Observe the picture of a ‘joystick’ located just beside the title and above the text warning people about a lack of gameplay. Nicely done JB-Hifi (is that right?) I approve :3

It's unusual, in my experience anyway.

Oops

That would be nice

In the last 11 years, only Seattle has made the Superbowl in consecutive years. Very hard to do in the modern game. It'd be a damn good achievement for Carolina just to make the Superbowl next year ...

'5 digit sales' is a vague descriptor that can mean '10,000', a figure which is a fairly poor number for a writer who's supposed to be as popular as he is, imo. A top writer should (in a perfect world) be dragging in more than that. Anyway, I've had a look at the Getchu sales charts so let's take a little look-see: According to the Getchu sales charts, Senshinkan ranked 41st for the year of 2014. It ranked 4th for the month of February before basically falling off the charts the next month (compared with Hapymaher ~Fragmentation Dream~, which topped February, stayed in the top 20 the next month, and ranking 9th for the year.) Kajiri Kamui Kagura didn’t rate in the yearly charts, it ranked 24th for the month of October 2011, then fell off the charts the month after. Paradise Lost didn’t rate in the yearly charts, (came in 20th for the month of Jan before falling off the charts,) although Dear My Friend came in about 40th for 2004. Soushuu Senshinkan Gakuen Basenjin ranked 8th or 9th in the monthly charts and wasn’t in the top 50 in the yearly. Dies Irae may very well be the only real hit Masada had, topping the Getchu charts in December 2007 and coming in 12th for the year in 2007 despite being released in December. So let’s not blow the success of Masada out of all proportion, what I'm seeing is that without Dies Irae his sales figures look okay but nothing special. TL;DR – Masada may be a writer which generates a lot of hype in certain communities, and may be considered one of the top writers in the VN industry, but that doesn’t seem to be translating into a whole lot of sales. Or even consistent sales. That's just a preliminary assessment going by Getchu, and I'm sure you have a more complete picture considering you live in Japan. It was an example to illustrate a point which IS relevant.

It’s been a while since I looked, so I quickly checked the 'top anime of all time' list on MAL - it’s comforting to know my tastes are still incompatible with the majority of those who visit MyAnimeList . What is so good about Gintama? 5 representations in the top 11? Really?

Someone's gonna do it, so it may as well be me. That being said, the term 'soccer' originated in England not America. So blame the Brits for that term

Masada tends to be rated highly due to the quality of his writing, he is said to be a superb writer, but does he write stuff a lot of people want to read? It's the age old literature vs genre fiction thing - literature is said to be of a higher quality while genre fiction is said to be entertaining. Because of this literature gets the higher rated reviews and a lot of the awards, but in sales genre fiction destroys modern literature. Similarly in VNs the ones which sell the most are not the ones which are said to be of highest quality. Sakura no Uta came in 9th in the recent Getchu sales chart, Custom Maid 3D2 came in 2nd (is that right?) And in the West, well, I think we all know what's dominating the sale chart here. Quality is about art, but popularity is about entertainment. You won't really see that in this poll due to the low number of participants and the community the poll is aimed at, but I think you're seeing it a little. Also, Parfait is supposed to be really good ... apparently (I wouldn't know )

Von Miller, Denver outside linebacker, stripped Cam Newton of the ball twice which resulted in Denver's only 2 touchdowns of the game, hence the dance. He was also Superbowl #50 MVP.

A friend raved to me about Parfait years ago, so I’ve been curious to see what the fuss is about.

Heh, it's doing okay so far