Narcosis

Why does this blog entry remind me of Monty Python  
 

The problem with mindless praise is that it is ineffective at making creators' works better as it does not point out what made the work good in the first place. I imagine Narcosis, an aspiring salty vn writer, is also thinking about the "hugbox" effect that exists in certain places to shield creators from any criticism - considering there is or at least was at some point a specific badge to put in your profile if you want honest criticism of your work at Lemmasoft, it's not like his fears are entirely unwarranted.
It's a p. decent mirror with the problem of mindless bashing not helping you make your work better by pointing out what was bad.
It's not like either has no information content; one tells you to stop making things in your current fashion, another tells you to continue in similar fashion. However, they would appear suboptimal from a creator's perspective.
Outside of a creator's perspective, mindlessness on either side does not promote thoughtful discussion or trying to understand people that think different to you, and instead encourages forming groups around liking or not liking something. This is certainly one way of enjoying fiction, but not everyone appreciates it very much - not to mention polarization is where nuance, oh sweet nuance, goes right out the picture. We could use less of it, wherever we are.

I also agree on SoL being an important element in writing. The problem shows up, when writers can't really balance the contents of their story well enough. As @@RedK said, it's fine for SoL to make majority of the game's content, at least in terms of modern standards (although, I'd still digress - even moege or charage can be written differently - they don't particulary require SoL as sole supporting element), but things get different with story-centric prose. Whereas an average charage or moege can survive solely on influx of SoL elements, more active genres require action and catalysts for these to actually happen. Good prose tends to minimize SoL elements to brief periods between chapters or events, where the action unfolds and remain used solely as subtle character-building devices. It's said, that "real characters" gain soul only through "real ordeals" - obviously, SoL itself isn't enough to actually construct an interesting character with deep personality, unless you're planning to create the next generation of Mary Sue's.

One of the problems with that mode of thinking is that VNs are very much like books, in that you can't tell what the content is like by the cover in a lot of cases.  I remember when I played Erect, I'd anticipated 'just' a nukige and was planning to drop it if my supposition was right... but it actually turned out to be something a lot better.  In the same way, I've encountered a number of games that looked generic on the surface but had hidden depths.  Just looking at the covers of most Clochette games, for instance, you would never imagine the quality of the narrative and settings in those games...  That was my main reason for my search. 
This is born of my belief, nurtured when I began expanding my anime horizons about the turn of the century, that genres I am not really suited to can still have stories I can enjoy.  This was confirmed repeatedly in my experiences... but at the cost of experiencing some truly horrid anime and VNs, lol.  I'm a story addict... whether it is a personal story or a grand one, I love a good story.  I read, I read, and I read... I live to read.  
Edit: Also, there is nothing more pointless than telling a junkie he has a bad habit...  he knows but he doesn't care if it destroys him, lol.  I'm the guy who rearranged his entire lifestyle around playing VNs, after all.

It's not a slump. You're simply changing like we all do. Despite my wilingness to learn japanese and general fondness for vn's, I found myself incapable to play them on a regular basis and I can't really force myself to do so either. I'm kind of still slowly plowing through my backlog (currently on 魔物娘の館　彗星館異形録 ～人魚の章～ ), but it's not really enjoyable when you force yourself to do things, that used to bring joy in the past. Just... I don't know - it's not like my interest in vn's vained or anything, I'd say the opposite, but I simply don't feel like playing all the games I wanted to. Maybe it's because I'm more focused on creating something of my own nowadays. Maybe because I have a decent job that finally allowed me to afford things I could only dream of a couple years ago; that aside, there's life and various obligations to consider as well. Sadly, reading and playing vn's remains time consuming. I'm not the kind of person to waste a couple days worth of time on a silly moege, I might not even enjoy that much.
At times... we just need a longer break.

It's not a slump. You're simply changing like we all do. Despite my wilingness to learn japanese and general fondness for vn's, I found myself incapable to play them on a regular basis and I can't really force myself to do so either. I'm kind of still slowly plowing through my backlog (currently on 魔物娘の館　彗星館異形録 ～人魚の章～ ), but it's not really enjoyable when you force yourself to do things, that used to bring joy in the past. Just... I don't know - it's not like my interest in vn's vained or anything, I'd say the opposite, but I simply don't feel like playing all the games I wanted to. Maybe it's because I'm more focused on creating something of my own nowadays. Maybe because I have a decent job that finally allowed me to afford things I could only dream of a couple years ago; that aside, there's life and various obligations to consider as well. Sadly, reading and playing vn's remains time consuming. I'm not the kind of person to waste a couple days worth of time on a silly moege, I might not even enjoy that much.
At times... we just need a longer break.

It's not a slump. You're simply changing like we all do. Despite my wilingness to learn japanese and general fondness for vn's, I found myself incapable to play them on a regular basis and I can't really force myself to do so either. I'm kind of still slowly plowing through my backlog (currently on 魔物娘の館　彗星館異形録 ～人魚の章～ ), but it's not really enjoyable when you force yourself to do things, that used to bring joy in the past. Just... I don't know - it's not like my interest in vn's vained or anything, I'd say the opposite, but I simply don't feel like playing all the games I wanted to. Maybe it's because I'm more focused on creating something of my own nowadays. Maybe because I have a decent job that finally allowed me to afford things I could only dream of a couple years ago; that aside, there's life and various obligations to consider as well. Sadly, reading and playing vn's remains time consuming. I'm not the kind of person to waste a couple days worth of time on a silly moege, I might not even enjoy that much.
At times... we just need a longer break.

A lot of the problem is that a lot of slice-of-life writers don't seem to understand that experiencing the daily life of a boring incompetent is... boring.

True words. Although I wouldn't call myself a particular fan of slice if life VN's, I do consider slice of life 'scenes' as very important for almost every VN. They are the calm breaks inbetween the action or more serious story parts of a VN, and essential to develop characters and relationships. Ideally, they happen in 'sine waves', iterating between story and slice of life parts. Though there's certainly still a lot to say about how to write actual good slice of life scenes... 

The sole point of someone becoming offended over a word is wrong enough to start with.
Blessed are those, who don't give a damn.

The sole point of someone becoming offended over a word is wrong enough to start with.
Blessed are those, who don't give a damn.

That's something difficult to achieve, in all honesty. The only thing when it happens, is when a team is based either on a circle of friends - each of them skilled in one or more particular aspects of game development, or when people you hire take the project seriously and wholeheartedly and aren't just doing it to "get the job done" and receive the payment (as in, treating it purely as work), but want to get involved in it as much as possible, because they fucking like it.
Part of the trick is finding people who share your dreams an passions, assesing who's readily able to put actual effort into the development and leave something behind, instead of only doing their part. It's eaier said, than done, unfortunately. A lot of people contributing to various projects are - in fact - not skilled, nor mature enough, nor have the required patience to tackle whatever they are tasked with. A lot of people think only about money. A lot of people only want to get the job done and move on; they aren't really interested, they don't share the lead developer's vision, they are in only to gain the experience or start their own careers, treat projects as personal milestones. This is why a lot of the games on the market actually lack that something special, which makes them unique. The kind of a game you take and say "Wow, the team that worked on it really put everything into it, it's so incredibly distinct and you can litally sense the devteam's passion burning throughout it". Such games rarely feel just like a bunch of different elements and assests hastily cobbled together, but a consistent production, where every single of it's part complements the rest.

That's something difficult to achieve, in all honesty. The only thing when it happens, is when a team is based either on a circle of friends - each of them skilled in one or more particular aspects of game development, or when people you hire take the project seriously and wholeheartedly and aren't just doing it to "get the job done" and receive the payment (as in, treating it purely as work), but want to get involved in it as much as possible, because they fucking like it.
Part of the trick is finding people who share your dreams an passions, assesing who's readily able to put actual effort into the development and leave something behind, instead of only doing their part. It's eaier said, than done, unfortunately. A lot of people contributing to various projects are - in fact - not skilled, nor mature enough, nor have the required patience to tackle whatever they are tasked with. A lot of people think only about money. A lot of people only want to get the job done and move on; they aren't really interested, they don't share the lead developer's vision, they are in only to gain the experience or start their own careers, treat projects as personal milestones. This is why a lot of the games on the market actually lack that something special, which makes them unique. The kind of a game you take and say "Wow, the team that worked on it really put everything into it, it's so incredibly distinct and you can litally sense the devteam's passion burning throughout it". Such games rarely feel just like a bunch of different elements and assests hastily cobbled together, but a consistent production, where every single of it's part complements the rest.

Those rare exceptions are more or less stories written well, or at least well enough to fit into ladder-style storytelling. Majority of games are simply horribly thought out and written; all thanks to those pathetic writers, who literally have no idea how to adopt their excuse of a story into visual novel medium.

Speaking from the heart, I agree with most of what Aizen-sama said.  I also approve of his use of my quote up there. 
Now, to be clear here... it hurts horribly the first time someone criticizes your translation.  I experienced this repeatedly as a fansubber for anime and it only gets worse for VN fantranslators because it is text and not audio.  Do you know the reason so many translators experience 'burn-out'?  It's a combination of the sheer amount of work they put into what was, to them, a labor of love, only to have some smartmouth jackass publicly insult them for typos, nitpick about word choices, and generally make an ass of themselves...  As he quoted me saying above, when you put that much time into something, only to have someone snipe at you over the details, it slowly corrodes your motivation, leaving you apathetic toward translation in general.  Moreover, when you are a translator looking for just a few words of encouragement and you get some ****head wailing about how the translation is behind schedule, it pretty much shatters you. 
Human beings aren't designed to work without some sort of compensation, whether it is a full belly, cash, emotional satisfaction, or social encouragement.  With something as time-consuming as VN translation, the pathetically small amounts of money offered by those who want to 'pay' a translator and the emotional satisfaction from a job well done just aren't enough to motivate one to finish one of these projects.  If you worked the same amount of hours some people put into fantls in a retail job in the US, you would actually make more money than you could from a 'professional' translation job in many cases.
So... for those who think translation is 'easy' or 'pays well', get a clue.  Even I never seriously thought companies would willingly pay what that kind of work deserves when I was a newbie, and that was over a decade in the past.

Honestly, my guess is that Akatsuki Works and Applique intend to go for the non-ero market on tablets and smartphones, which is why they released this on PC, IOS, and Android all at the same time.  Unlike charage companies, their games can stand on their own without erotic content, for the most part, so it wouldn't surprise me at all if this doubled as a test-case as well as an informal advert. 

re: ...and I know that some readers don't want realism in VNs to begin with, so this is something they will never understand or even want in the first place ...

- characters behaving in a realistic, non illogical and consequent manner does not neccessarily contradict a plotline that still gives off a fictional vibe, as both are pretty much able to co-exist, btw. enhance eachother, whereas most titles lacking the former often end up nothing but works of great retardism, making you cringe until there is no more. basically saying well written works of selfinsertion are long since dead, be it either because of authors seemingly giving some fucks, or to non scare off the more sensitive part of their readership who tend to favor maximized escapism over its pendant, prone to getting depressive and such. honestly speaking, to me every kind of art (unless it contains personal information) is and should always stand above ethics and morals, means, why should an author even care about some readers possibly hanging themselves, forwhy it´s simply neither his nor his works fault (obvious exaggeration(?) here). nothing worse than crippling your own works out of false consideration/playing amateur-therapist, seriously.

Geuss I'll have to plow through all the crap in my backlog to be able to give this a try. RIP me

Preety popular and at the same time, a failure from a financial standpoint. Ironic, isn't it?

After all those years of gaming, I can only state one thing - when games became pure business, both for creators and players themselves, everything ended.You definitely know something's wrong, when a computer game becomes like a second job; at least, you should by then.
If it's not fun anymore - don't play it. If you're getting stressed out, instead enjoying it - stop playing it. If you feel like other people are taking away from your own enjoyment - leave them behind and find something else (propably better) to do. I had my share of bad experiences, caused by feeling "forced" to do things because X/Y/Z required it, rather than playing for my own personal enjoyment. It's also a direct indicator, developers have failed at designing the game and put other, less important aspects over fun and engaging player experience; worst of all, they're mostly unable to see such mistakes being done and repeated.
I quit mmorpg's and I'm not planning on going back. I'd advise you all to do the same - there's literally nothing those games have to offer nowadays, except for a massive timesink; time, you could use doing more constructive things, like reading books or visual novels . Trust me - once you stop giving a damn and let it go, life becomes so much better.

I 100% agree with you on almost everything, and that's the reason we get so well along in this scene in the first place.
Anyways, yeah, the scene and groups is getting isolated, and it's pretty damn visible too; I doubt all the lunatic entitlement, putting TL-groups and the members within on a pedestal, and the clear lack of straightforward ways of communicating with the groups helps. Also, don't use IRC as a communication-hub for god's sakes, IRC is terrible.
The easiest way to leviate this "chasm" growing between TL-groups and people waiting for patches is just making that easy way of communication. So, if there's any groups and/or group members reading this post, just set up a Discord server, for fucks sake. Takes literally 30 minutes.
Joining hands with other groups as a group of your own really is a good way of helping other groups helping themselves and vice versa. Unity's also a really good thing, and the groups get things done more efficiently this way, which s why Aizen and I started that whole Discord server in the first place.
As for the entitlement, that's not goin' anywhere anytime soon. People will be salty shitheads until the end of time. All we can really do aside from communicating with them is to wait for quote-on-quote "selling out" to become more common and to more fan translation projects to start cooperating with the official localization companies.
As for Fuwa as the hub of translation projects, frankly, it's too outdated to work properly. Sure it gives publicity nicely, but that's basically it looking at what else it does well. Maybe at some point there'll be a better option for a hub, but only time will tell.

>fuckboy
You're one of these, too? Now that's news
Also, kudos for the Discord server. Now I'll be finally able to pay you a visit.

Also,  something I forgot to mention: have you ever read Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou? You might want to check it out. It also deals with apocalypse (in a very different way, tho) and the art is absolutely stunning. Not only it is beautiful, it communicates the essence of the manga in a way is, as Digibro said, hard to describe by words. From glances to smiles and backgrounds, it holds a special place in my heart. The story and characters, although good, would never be able to carry this masterpiece by themselves imo.