novurdim

I wonder if anyone even managed to back it in those three minutes after seeing the tweet first.

Nothing else matters right now, at least we'll definitely see the first game translated. That sure was something.

Boo. On another note, it got a lot closer mainly because someone suddenly snatched the 5000$ tier (maybe someone from Sol Press ). But the final spurt has happened way too late and we are looking at 11k with 3 hours to go. Still doubt they'll make it at this point but who knows, miracles sometimes happen.

Well, that's how it is, this is not a cheap business, if you want to cover a serious part of your expenses through a KS and not just raise awareness around the game a bit, then 85k is a very fair number for a VN-translation KS. Pretty sure even this number doesn't cover everything. Probably not even close. And it's a number that many predecessors have already achieved so you can't exactly call it unreal. And yes, Iroseka definitely had the potential to gather enough funds in other hands, it has a big enough buzz to be considered relatively well-known: a famous developer, an already localised Hoshimemo which is kind of popular, Astral Air also had an active fan translation that many people followed and they all definitely know about Iroseka etc. Iroseka is not that unknown of a title and we've had games with literally zero exposure in the west like Libra and NewRin gather 183k and 88k respectively, for a quick example. Or do you really think A Clockwork Ley-line or ChronoClock were more famous than Iroseka from the get-go? Maybe it's the tiers, maybe lack of advertising, maybe a bad time to launch, maybe the whole "trilogy through stretch goals" thing, maybe all of the above. But something definitely went very wrong. I was sure it would end up with 90-100k and then we'll worry about getting the sequels and stuff. Instead we got an unexpected flop. A first serious flop since, I don't know, the initial Sharin KS, and that one could be easily explained since they took every major misstep they could. Which they then fixed and gathered 188k during the second KS attempt. I'm almost shocked Iroseka fared so badly, hard to believe that only something like Kickstarter fatigue is to blame here, a lot of mistakes should have been made for something like Iroseka to gather only around 60k.

It... is? Maybe it's not showing in my "popular new releases" because I have already bought it since I don't believe the threshold for that is very high. Though now that I think about it, there was some talk about steam raising the sales number for that section, wasn't there?

It actually is.

This is honestly the first time when a VN-translation KS that I expected to fight for 100k failed to meet even the base goal. Hope it doesn't hurt the guys too bad. Ganbare, Sol Press!

Well, at least looks like Trinoline isn't in any danger. It was a bit worrying to see the weird new "awaiting release materials from developer" status. Though considering that Damekoi currently has the same project status, I believe it is probably just MG's new placeholder for when the game is ready but they don't want to release it yet because they have that "one major game in a month" philosophy.

Ah, right, I did finish Suguri's route. Short, sweet and simple romance, not much to say about it, to be honest. Low-stakes, low-tension, basically about a single predictable and rather silly minor twist (hence overaching storyline is almost non-existent), plenty of the overused cliches that mostly detract from the romantic part. If Suguri wasn't such a cute heroine, this could have turned into a real bore. But thanks to her the route in its simplicity ended up somewhat better than May's trainwreck. Though I am glad that I've read Natsume's route before it, I can easily imagine people dropping HGB if they read May and Suguri first. Hopefully I'll have another urge to read a VN sometime next week and overcome the true route. I do wonder how they intend to clean up such a messy plot.

Did we really have so many major kickstarter flops? I... don't think we did? I can't even remember any serious KS failures except ChuSinGura (which was horribly butchered to begin with and had released later anyway) and Sharin (which then had a successful second try). It's not that bad. I'd even say that if Iroseka ends up not gathering 85k, it's more like a single relatively unusual mishap.

Almost 40k may be too much for the final burst, even Sol managers almost seem apathetic and don't try much of anything to spread the word. Hopefully they'll try again if the worst comes to it...

Such a pity, darn. I at least hope that this won't hinder the release of Trinoline in the west, even if the game is not so great. And MG will finally stop with that endless pseudo fundraiser... thing.

Ah, sorry for the misunderstanding, I actually didn't mean you specifically, I have just recently had similar discussions all over the place.

I... really doubt that 20k for a game is considered that much for the market. And I'm 100% sure it's not a correct number at all, as I mentioned before companies usually crowdfund only part of the costs. But it's honestly better not to discuss the licensing fees much, we know literally nothing and most always assume them to be a lot lower than they actually are for some reason. These speculations are so baseless and harmful that even Sol Press themselves commented on this in the last update that "the past funds raised in our previous campaigns have not always been enough to cover what is needed". Some have even already accused Favorite of being cashgrabs just because the goal is higher this time. I feel like some people would be shocked if companies revealed real licensing costs they usually pay.

I highly doubt people (especially those who care about translation's quality as much) are that stupi uninformed. Different company, different translators, different everything. IroSeka is just a lot less known in West than HoshiMemo by itself + Sol Press has a lot less followers than Sekai, even their "very successful" (as it's often called) KS of Newrin has gathered only around 88k + it wasn't really marketed much but that's almost always the case with VN KS. I've also heard people complaining about the tiers/rewards and such. There are a lot of reasons why it is kind of naive to believe that IroSeka can easily gather more than 200k but if they can at least organize the shout-outs from Sekai, MG, Degica etc. during the last 5 or so days, base goal is still more than reachable. 45% in half the time isn't a fiasco for a KS yet.

That's what they often do though. Pull more money in the latter half. Especially when the base goal is in sight. So I'm still hopeful for the main goal to be reached during the final spurt but looks like it will fail horribly as a crowdfund for the trilogy either way. Not that anyone expected otherwise with those stretch goals.

Heh, it's funny but after May's route I consider the 3-rd problem a relative positive. I'd much rather have a lengthy epilogue for h-scenes like this than three obligatory fucks in a row during the end of the story that would kill any goddamn flow of the ending. I know you could just skip them but gah, those are irritating still. Also,

Decided to come back to this yesterday and even read Natsume's route. And guess what, it was a much better experience all around. It wasn't amazing or anything but with how low my expectations had been by now, I certainly enjoyed it more than I thought I would. Definitely gives me the fuel to finish the novel sometime.

VNs are and should be localised for the western world into the common "english", not "murican", for endless logical reasons. Most of NA and EU speak english at least on the most basic level, after all, english language is not an american property. There are phrases that can't be translated as is so it can't really be called a straight-up literal translation but at the same time overbearing cultural arrogance from one of the countries is among the worst things that can happen to the localisation intended for the widest audience, the whole english-speaking world. But, well, you would definitely win a title for the narrowest understanding of the words, it's so extreme and die-hard that it's almost admirable. Probably. Though his comment history suggests he might be serious. At this point I can only hope he's not. at least Kiriririri is usually trolling

Sure, and I would consider it a borderline disastrous choice of words 99% of the time. It only exists because one person who doesn't like a bokukko archetype made one bad decision and it lives on as a meme. That's not really an argument for turning onii-chans into dudes, ya know. Hopefully the world will catch on fire when localizing would mean that everyone has to speak like weird american teens like in the ideal world of the guy below. I kind of missed the moment when delusional and completely inane ineptitude became an ideal localization. You should also try to think about the amazing fact that visual novels, on the contrary to the movies and other pieces of popular media which have a version for every country, are not translated only for the glorious americans, even here at fuwa, when you finally look around for the first time, you'll see that half of the posting users are not even american. Americanizing it as heck just because you have a grandeur delusion (in the extreme version) of what localization is, is basically alienating half of the demographic. Which is really just silly and prideful even if you consider americans your main audience. Heck, not even all localization publishers are american. Honorifics are one thing and can be up to the debate depending on the title and translation team, but everything else should be decided on most sensibly and case by case basis.

It was only for the sake of counter-argument, I was offering theoretical possibilities Okay, then the only person who might have wanted to fan-translate IroSeka (at least indecently) ended up founding NekoNyan. I imagine if it wasn't done by some maniac in complete silence, Favorite would just try to shut down any attempts at this point.

This is pretty weird indeed, who disabled an edit button. Well, as I mentioned above, this is a pretty poor and unfounded speculation so I wouldn't just blame Favorite for the expensive goals, there are dozens of variables. Yes, this is why I brought it up in the first place. I know you are speaking extremely hypothetically but we should live in the present. It means that we either get VNs like this officially or don't get them at all. The only person who could, in theory, decently fan-translate IroSeka has founded NekoNyan. Nowadays you won't get fan-translations of the publishers who already dabble in the western market no matter how long you wait, unless it's some miracle release like Baldr Force, for the few exceptions readable fan-translations are basically dying out and that's actually a good thing. Saying that it "should have been fan translated for free because I think Favorite asks too much money" is just so senseless that I couldn't keep my mouth shut. I do regret the impulse already, I know this won't get me anywhere.

Well, I may have painted too grim of a picture, the sales have surely grown a lot compared to, say, 2010-2012, and we do get a lot more localizations in the latest years (and even some big shots) since West is now considered a real market. So yeah, on the positive side we have come a long way and do live in a comparatively great age. We even have a chance to gripe about some of the best eroges not selling as much as we hoped they would. My 2010 self would surely slap me for being too depressive.

Since you have not seen and not sure, I'm mentioning that we shouldn't treat those numbers as accurate or official. And, well, I'm just repeating myself but I basically said that it did well for a first week on a pretty mediocre as a whole western market. At least I believe so. Did it do well in general sense for this specific publisher? I don't know, nobody does, you should ask Visual Arts CEO, only they know what numbers can be considered good for their localizations. Answering your initial question: no, I highly doubt that Visual Novels are growing in the West at this point, they were a relatively popular gimmick for a short time but now that bubble has burst. There are some rare hits but that's it, West won't save VNs or anything, its market isn't even nearly as big as chinese. Make this five times worse for the plot-oriented VNs.