Decay

There are a lot that do, but also a lot that don't, so there's no harm in seeking out those that don't. There are plenty. People have already mentioned pretty much all of Overdrive's games. They don't really have any tsunderes. The closest is Riho from Deardrops but she accepts the protagonist pretty quickly. August's games also has very few tsunderes. Take a look at Fortune Arterial, Yoake Mae yori Ruri Iro na, and Aiyoku no Eustia. Yokae's all-ages version has one but it's just one minor heroine out of many. You barely see her in most of the routes. edit: And how could we all forget Little Busters?

He said just that. If Kaijitsu sells well then it only makes sense that they'll pick up the sequels.

He's asking about cases like Steins;Gate, Grisaia, and Cartagra, and whether or not the translators get compensated. Yes they do, but the circumstances are often different. JAST for example is infamous for being rather stingy, no one gets paid until the game is actually released. So even if you work your ass off and provide a speedy translation, you won't see a dime until JAST gets around to actually releasing it. How long has Sumaga's translation been complete and "in editing" for? Not much is known publicly about MangaGamer's or Sekai Project's methods of compensation but one can only hope they're more fair than that.

Well, it's basically the same deal with MangaGamer and nukige. They continue to localize games they know would be less profitable presumably because that's what they really want to do, while using a ton of nukige to feed the machine.

My favorite type of heroines are strange/unusual ones. Ones that behave in ways you don't expect. Bonus points if they're able to act independently without the protagonist's assistance. Haru from G-Senjou and Tonya from Ayakashibito are good examples. I find unpredictability to be a strong virtue in storytelling and these kinds of personalities often (but not always) make for characters with at least a little bit of depth, in a medium full to the brim with super shallow characters. My least favorite ones are lolis and childhood friends. Lolis because, well, I find the general concept to be really unappealing and gross. The more childlike a character appears and acts, the worse. Some halfway-lolis are alright but are really stretching it. This probably puts me at odds with 90% of this forum . With childhood friends, I just think it's a tired trope and it's always one of the same two stories every time.

I know the first arc made me pretty mad during portions of it, especially with how backwards/misogynistic the protagonist acted towards Saber. People have covered most of the stuff in the 30-50 range, but I'll just second or third Steins;Gate. It's fantastic.

If actual eroge were allowed on Steam, they'd also sell way better than they currently do on Mangagamer. One of the biggest reasons why eroge are a bit difficult to sell in the US is the lack of distribution channels. You have to sell it yourself on your own site, which typically people have to seek out on their own initiative. Steam allows discoverability to happen. It's really damn hard to sell a PC game in the west unless you're 1) On steam or 2) Already really freaking big (Blizzard, EA, etc).

As far as I know, Umikaze has one active member and is focusing on Hatsusaku at the moment. If you're interested in translating Flyable Hearts, I would definitely recommend contacting Umikaze and helping them out. http://umikazetranslations.wordpress.com/ And I hope you do, because this is definitely a VN that deserves a quality translation. edit: Although if you know very little Japanese as you've claimed in another thread, it's best to spend your time reading as much as you can and polishing up your skills, rather than poorly translating things. Don't jump the gun on this.

One of the options prior to being chased by the dogs allows you to uncover that mappie spot, one of them doesn't. I don't remember the details, but that did confuse me at first.

Yes. Although I think the patch creator made claims to the contrary, it's pretty apparent that it's an edited machine translation. And it's really bad. I've tried reading it, it wasn't worth it. Just wait for Umikaze to finish it a decade from now.

This is why I think people who claim VNs can't benefit from being on Steam have no clue on what they're talking about. There's a starved niche there that will buy up any piece of garbage placed in front of them if it's a VN and/or has an anime art style. The Steam userbase is actually incredibly diverse and not everyone who finds this kind of thing appealing is actually tuned into proper VN communities. So things like this happen.

Hoo boy, this one's a winner!

The non-h version of Aselia is far and away the superior one, with an improved gameplay system and some other added content. The h-scenes in that game were quite bad, and the evil route that was removed was just awful. In Mashifony's case, I'm definitely of the mind that the added content (two entire new routes) outweighs the removed content in significance.

I've edited the post to more thoroughly address the issue. There may not be a problem if they're only worried about being able to sell it, but perception may alter to the point where they actually get less sales by having the option. They have to weigh the potential sales lost from people realizing it's a "porn game in disguise"' vs the sales gained from people who wouldn't buy a 17+ version but would buy an 18+ version. edit: I will say that I'm not exactly a moralist and my personal point of view is obviously not in line with what I'm saying here. I'd buy an 18+ version if it was the only one available, and I'd buy a 17+ version if that was the only one. I'm not sure what I'd do if there were both versions available. I'm just talking about the general gaming market. Like it or not, but part of the process of making visual novels popular in America is divorcing it from porn, at least at first. Once you get enough people okay with the idea of VNs, I think eroge will become more popular at the same time, but trying to market eroge to the masses would be a mistake.

That is a really old and outdated statement. That statement is from the pre-greenlight days, and again, things are very different now. Acceptance onto Steam is far less arbitrary. Take everything ever said prior to august 2012 about what Valve does and doesn't allow on Steam and throw it all out. There are now very few automatic denials. Pornographic content is one of them. An alternate version available elsewhere being pornographic is not one of them. I don't think such a thing has ever been tested but it's not against the steam publishing TOS and Valve is no longer able to deny a game based on their own point of view. Back in the day, they used to be really afraid to allow games with an anime art style on Steam. It was a miracle Recettear was allowed on. A game that used to be pornographic? Never in a million years. That wasn't a hard and fast rule, it was just based on Valve's own thoughts of what would and wouldn't be profitable or accepted by the PC gaming community. They were pretty narrow-minded, but that's also one of the reasons why their acceptance process was so heavily criticized. The process has changed completely since then and Valve makes no personal judgements on what is and isn't allowed. As long as a game meets its pretty loose set of publishing guidelines, and the publisher passed through Greenlight, it's allowed. Some of his points are still valid, though. The American public's perception of a company or work of fiction becomes very much tainted when pornography gets involved. This goes for gamers, as well. Going back to what I said a couple days ago, this might be why Sekai Project hasn't fully committed to releasing Grisaia on Steam despite being able to. Their version isn't pornographic, but there exists a version that is. That may be enough to taint many gamers' perception of Sekai Project. Or it may not be, nothing like this has ever been tried on Steam. It's hard to say. If they do it and it works out, expect JAST to give it a shot with Aselia at long last, I guess. That's how the American market is. Non-porn always outsells porn. Porn is just profitable because of how cheap it is to make. When it becomes exactly as expensive to release porn as non-porn, guess what a company will decide to do.

When in doubt, check VNDB. They're really comprehensive. There aren't any translations or translation projects for Noah, nor are there for Robotics;Notes, and I haven't heard of anyone planning a translation for Chaos;Child. One of the problems with R;N is that it doesn't have a PC version, and there is no announced PC version for C;C. The 360 and PS3 are not widely hacked and they can't be emulated, which would make a translation at this point a mostly meaningless effort.

Since a lot of people still seem unconvinced that they won't tone down the sexual humor, references to sex, etc, here's a screenshot of the Vita version of the game that was posted on VNDB: http://www.gamer.ne.jp/news/201307230047/image/8/ Do not click this at work. You probably should not let your kids play this game.

Your posting has jumped the shark. You post nothing but ill-informed hate with no basis in reality. Funny how much you talk about how the community is against this when most of the posters in this thread seem pretty okay with it.

Have you lost your mind? What are you basing this post on? Is this anything other than wild speculation?

No, you're pretty much right. It's just that things used to be different. Starting in mid-2012, they adopted a new system called Greenlight where basically the community approves games, and once approved a publisher can continue putting whatever they want on Steam with very little oversight. In the next couple years, Steam is going to get even more open with even community approval being unnecessary, but that's still a ways off. Prior to 2012, publishers had to go through Valve themselves and they reviewed every applicant individually and arbitrarily passed judgement not based on a set of criteria, but... gut feeling? I imagine it was almost impossible to get any VN on Steam in that period. Anyways, Sekai Project already got World End Economica approved through greenlight so they're now able to release whatever they want whenever they want with practically no additional approval. Them not 100% committing to Grisaia being on Steam may be for a different reason. Just to make a wild guess, there has never been a VN like Grisaia on Steam before and they may be afraid of how the community might react to it. They don't want to do anything that might tarnish their reputation so maybe they're holding back, for now (note: I am not saying that would definitely happen)? I don't really know what other reasons they could have.

It has only been said that a steam release of Grisaia is "possible" but they haven't fully confirmed it. Thing is, that policy might have been from the old pre-greenlight days when there were no concrete guidelines about what could be on Steam and Valve individually reviewed every single applicant and passed judgement themselves. Nowadays the process is completely different so that may no longer apply. I could easily see the Valve of old saying no on that basis but they're no longer the ones who decide what goes on Steam anymore. I imagine if JAST went through Greenlight with Aselia, they wouldn't be denied again, since it doesn't break their current set of rules. MangaGamer has talked about doing an all-ages version of Kira Kira on Steam as if that's possible.

Because we get the point, you don't like it. The last thing we need is another Okami.

Again, I'd like to repeat, now with a link, Go Go Nippon sold 10,000 freaking copies! On Steam! That shitty game. Granted, a lot of factors went into that which may not apply to Grisaia, such as its popularity amongst some mainstream youtube LPers as a weird title to mock, but still. There are niche audiences whom you don't expect to shop on Steam, and there are people there who just want something different from the norm. As for the cut thing, yes, Steam takes a cut. Every retailer takes a cut (GOG, Desura, etc), because that's how they actually make money. Steam's cut is actually less than stores like Best Buy and Gamestop. Even if Sekai Project sells it on MangaGamer, MangaGamer will take a cut. There are no "specialists" who won't. They would barely sell any copies if they limited it exclusively to their own site, so that's a terrible option.

Food for thought: Go Go Nippon of all games sold more than 10,000 copies on Steam. Because it was weird and different from most other games on there. There is a lot of money to be had on that platform, and it's not necessarily a mistake to seek out using it. Another random thought: I disagree with saying Sekai Project is taking too many liberties. They're taking exactly zero liberties, because they're translating and releasing an official release put out by Frontwing with no modification other than its platform (PC instead of Vita)