Decay

The announcement was that Ren spent over $800 on a half-scale Super Sonico figurine. No, really. Actually I don't know if there was a real announcement, I had to tune out not too long after.

Yeah, kind of. The number of staff seems extraneous. But yeah, they are basing it off of an existing translation, so the only new material that needs translation was exclusive to the PSP all ages version.

Oh, also Neko Para Vol. 0 has no adult version at all. The 18+ version you see on VNDB is a package edition that comes with an 18+ art book, the game is the same and is only ecchi.

That Neko Para vol 2 patch is basically just an illegal pirated version of denpasoft's paid patch, dunno if you really want to include that. Or at least include an alternate link to Denpasoft's patch.

Latest update on Kickstarter introduced the translation team, while also announcing that MLE/MLU won't be released until May, with MLE beta coming next month. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/muvluv/muv-luv-a-pretty-sweet-visual-novel-series/posts/1499145?ref=backer_project_update Most interesting part about this in my opinion is that Koestl of Grisaia and Gahkthun fame will be doing the final edits and TLC. There are some concerns about the Alternative Projects members who are on the team. The project lead has admitted to basically doing machine translations in the past, but he's not actually doing any translating here, just coordinating. Koestl addressed some concerns about the project on Reddit here. He says that he won't have the most impactful role, but the fact that the scripts basically pass by him last gives me a lot more confidence in the project than I previously had.

And that distinction doesn't exist on Steam? The people who bought Sakura Spirit are likely different than the ones who bought eden*.

I don't know much about it, but it seems to be more of a companion piece starring different characters, and not an adaptation, so I think it's probably best to watch the anime first. Speaking of which, I think I stopped like four episodes from the end of the first season, I should probably finish it eventually.

He came up with the concept and was a writer for the anime. He wasn't really involved with this VN, though.

Well, no, them being that expensive in Japan doesn't suddenly make the Steam prices cheap. VN prices are still very high in the west. This conversation reminds me of wargaming in the 2000s. I'm not saying the wargaming and VN scenes are directly analogous, but it's interesting food for thought. Sites like Shrapnel Games and Matrix Games were the sole publishers of PC wargames. The audience was considered super niche, and they got by selling their humble indie projects for $60+ a piece to the thousand or so people who bought them. Then a few like the Dominions devs tried to break the trend. They thought to sell their games for a cheaper price on Steam. Turns out, their games were capable of pulling in WAY more customers than they ever imagined. By lowering their prices and opening the door to a wider audience, their sales multiplied over ten times and they started making a lot more money. The same thing happened with Spiderweb Software's RPGs. Niche "hardcore" PC RPGs with crude artwork, like the kinds Spiderweb made, were thought to have a very limited audience. Jeff Vogel, the president, always ardently supported the philosophy behind his games' high price points. But one day he decided to do an experiment, and bundle a few of his older games together at a very cheap price point, and it was a huge success. Again, this niche was much bigger than anyone imagined. He ended up being swayed completely and started preaching the opposite, that many niches are niches simply because the people behind them refuse to open the doors to outsiders. I think VNs on Steam are proving this again. It is very evident that one of the primary concerns of Steam customers is price. Practically all of the most successful VNs on the platform are inexpensive. If Sakura Spirit was twice as long and cost twice as much, offering the same value proposition, I guarantee you that it would have sold a fraction of what it did. Some companies get it. Gaokao is a chinese VN (poorly) translated to english and sold for $10, and is a VN/Dating Sim hybrid of surprising length, and has sold tens of thousands of copies. I'm not sure what all of this means. I do think VNs could actually benefit from lower price points across the board. But can I prove this? Hardly. I'm not saying that everyone should start selling their 60 hour epic stories for $10, but I think there's evidence to support that VNs may be overcosted.

I agree in part. I shouldn't have said anything because it's not even really an idea yet, just a gestation of an idea, but I'd like to start an outreach program at some point where I and perhaps other members of fuwanovel help educate the steam users on VNs, and share with them resources like walkthroughs. Treating them like unwashed masses who don't deserve the time of day is the wrong approach.

"All day today," I've made like two posts about this, what the hell? I just hate this kind of elitism, it's toxic behavior that only serves to further divide us from the rest of the community, and that doesn't help anyone.

You are literally no better than them. Conversely, I'd actually like to think of more ways for Fuwanovel to reach out to Steam and maybe get more people from there to visit the site.

I don't think they're necessarily being dishonest about it, though? Like, of course it's about the money, they're businesses who wish to make as much money off their trade as they can. I don't think they ever said anything to the contrary. But I also don't really understands how this contradicts the other claims people make. These games sell better on Steam than off Steam, and this means that there's a large market there for these Japanese VNs that was previously untapped, and they represent a way to expand the medium and to encourage more Japanese companies to consider localization. This goes hand in hand with the money thing. Also, This is a very bad attitude to have about this kind of thing. Do you really think there aren't a lot of people who could fall in love with VNs who don't already know about them? That there's no room for expansion? The fact that these Japanese VNs have done so well on Steam has kind of already proven this wrong. You're kind of claiming that the people on Steam don't love these games, or don't appreciate them on the same level that you do, and that somehow makes them less worthy customers, or something? I don't see this as being the case at all. I think your attitude only leads to stagnation.

Apples and oranges.

Do not share illegal download links. Do not even offer to share them. That's not okay to do here. @Silvz, this game does not come with a free Steam key. You can't even buy anything from MG's site right now. And once we're able to, all complimentary steam keys will be gone. You can't always get what you want in life, such is the way of things. Some day, some way, you'll eventually be able to afford it. Maybe wait until a Steam sale, when it will be discounted.

There's nothing to prove when it comes to personal taste. A perfect heroine can be pretty boring. If you don't find it boring, then that's fine, too.

Being active on both the forums and fuwazette made me realize that right now, Fuwanovel has two entirely separate sides, and they don't interact with each other or even really share a user base at all. So I decided what would help most in getting forum users to care about front-page stuff and front-page users to care about forum stuff is complete integration. This obviously won't be easy, but, the absolute ideal scenario would be no separate comment fields for fuwazette articles, creating an article also creates a thread in the forums and the comments/posts are the same. Same with reviews. And going further, comments in the front-page VN database would work similarly. You could make a comment thread that really just makes a forum thread tagged for that game. The way I envision this, is that there is just a "discussions" section in each game entry that shows a list of threads on fuwanovel about that game. And anyone who makes a thread on the forums tagged with that game has it show up there. I imagine that none of this would be easy, I'm just going with pie in the sky ideas here. The one thing our front page can do that other sites lack is easily comprehensible translation information and status. Basically, I believe people would actually use it if we could replicate most of the functionality of the now-defunct http://vntls.org/. At some point, this was in the plans. I still think it's a very good idea.

The Division seems kind of neat, but I dunno, I think I'd get bored of it after a couple days. And gosh, am I ever rusty with shooters. It's been quite a while since I've played one. Well, I played MGS5 last year, but that was with a controller and barely did any run and gunning. Going back to the good old keyboard and mouse, and it's clear that I can't quite hack it like I used to be able to.

Actually, I only played P3P until october or so, so I didn't even know that was a social link.

How much of Rewrite have you played? Because there is no shortage of world building in most of the routes.

Use Cheat Engine's Speed Hack feature to slow down Utawarerumono to a sane speed.

"Incredibly short period of time" = over a period of three months. Quit your excuses and finish Noble Works already. Also yeah, I don't like Neon very much, so we see eye to eye on that, at least.

Well, it's not "free" if you have to pay for two versions of the game.

Speaking of Umineko... @Deep Blue, how far have you gotten?

Way off in some aspects, reasonably close in others.