Decay

$300k was around what I was guesstimating in my head. Minori spending over a million on a short title like Supipara doesn't surprise me. It's part of the reason why they almost went bankrupt. Their production values are literally the best in the entire industry, to the company's detriment.

Of course. If they release one game a year, then you can consider the yearly upkeep of the company as the cost to produce one game, regardless of how they shift staff around projects. Management staggers projects and shifts staff around them so they can keep employees working all year round, regardless of what their role is. But I also understand that Japanese employees in Otaku industries tend to do a lot of moonlighting, so I'm not sure how many "full time" employees you can say your average eroge studio has. Either way, $120,000 sounds way too cheap for your average charage.

Most companies have yearly development cycles. They release a game every .75-1 years. Some take longer, some push out plenty of low budget crap at a faster pace. But when I consider that they (presumably) have to pay living wages to their core team, plus freelancers, plus overhead, I imagine these yearly VNs cost much more than $120,000. I would need salary figures and that kind of thing to figure this out, but $120,000 just sounds too cheap to me.

How many untranslated AliceSoft games are people pining for at this point? 10? 20? And we'll probably get two a year, max? I imagine Escalayer isn't on the top of MG's AliceSoft priorities, so it may be a while, if it ever gets picked up.

No, that's JAST. Outside of WEE3 and WAS problems, I don't think SP has been all that slow, really.

There's a whooole lot of SP salt being thrown around today. Some thoughts on the matter: It's weird that SP is "announcing" Sakura Dungeon, since MangaGamer already announced it. MG not only announced it, but said they are publishing and helping fund its development, and it will be 18+. So what the heck is SP's role? On the matter of Hoshimemo, keep in mind that AkebeiSoft2 wanted SP to release G-Senjou no Maou and Sharin no Kuni before they would allow them to license anything else. According to Moogy, who was involved in the process, SP wanted a shot at something more recent and untranslated, but instead are forced to jump through hoops. What I'm saying is that who knows what Favourite wants out of this deal. Or maybe SP wants "easy money," but it's not like they aren't translating plenty of stuff themselves currently, and I actually question how much more profitable it is to release a fan translation officially, when it's competing with the free release that's been out for years. As for the translation, it was translated from a Chinese translation. Translations of translations are always messy, and Hoshimemo was no exception. Especially since Insem apparently booted people off the team who made too many corrections based off of the Japanese script. On the matter of Dovac's tweet about piracy (posted in the other thread, don't feel like responding in both), it's a pretty baffling tweet, since as far as I know the game in question hasn't actually been pirated. At all. So wtf is he complaining about? With KARAKARA, that's using IndieGoGo's Flexible Funding, which means that 1) The game is going to be released no matter what, 2) SP is going to receive any amount of the funds pledged to the project, even if it doesn't reach the goal. IndieGoGo is a viable pre-order platform that is actually built to support that mentality, and SP probably figures that it's easier to sell pre-orders of an 18+ game at IGG than it is over at Denpasoft. Especially since IGG specifically allows 18+ content. I'm fairly confident this isn't happening. If it was, we would have heard something from an angry translator. Instead, multiple translators have mentioned that they have been paid for their patch being picked up. I thought that SP was spreading themselves thin at one point, too. But they're still trucking along, ever expanding.

Impossible to say since no one has ever released any numbers on that.

Nekopara was sold for $20 initially then $10 when it got on steam just a short time later. I guess this model worked, as it's what they went with again for Nekopara 2, and will do for this new game as well. edit: Charging more for the adult version is something MG and JAST does as well, FYI.

A lot of people here really like Koichoco, and this is the same people. Also, the timing is mostly right for them to cash in on the anime adaptation.

At this point, I hope that this is actually nothing, because that would be pretty bullshit indeed. I don't want to say or speculate too much since it's less than 12 hours away. It's better to just wait and see what happens than to let your imagination go wild.

https://aokanatranslation.wordpress.com/2016/02/13/update-02132016/ You're trying to pull the wool over our eyes, aren't you? You can't fool me, Ren!!

Their panel is titled "Love is in the air" and they're having Aokana's scenario writer sit in as a guest. By the way, know what Aokana's premise is? The girls freaking FLY THROUGH THE AIR! You do the math. The panel is at Noon PST tomorrow. I don't know what kind of livestream/liveblog situation we will have. In a little over 12 hours, @OriginalRen will either have unveiled his master plan to us all, or have his soul utterly crushed, depending on whether or not he has a hand in this.

As much as it would help, you can't use data that doesn't exist. I don't know what you want out of this site, but whatever it is I'm pretty sure it's not possible.

This VN is out, theoretically. But MangaGamer's payment processor is down so nobody can buy it, oops! It will be live on Steam in 13 hours, which seems kind of late in the day for a release but hey, whatever.

Noslyl from Reddit made VNStats, a cool site that hooks into VNDB's api to analyze its data. It gives some broad data on VNDB's overall voting habits and then it allows you to dig deeper and see data on individual VNs, tags, character traits, and users of VNDB. My favorite feature of the site is the way it gives you an analysis on the VNs you've voted on and your own reading habits. Here's my profile. I have Homicide, Murder, Accident, Death, Cruel, Shotgun, and Blade all in the top ten traits . Meaning I rate games containing characters with those traits highly. How about that? It also delivers some recommendations based on this data. I suppose I should finish Muv-Luv Alternative one of these days, and get into the Infinity series. Also, supposedly @douggle is the third most similar user to me on all of VNDB, hey there fellow murder-loving buddy! Actually, it seems that Douggle has a military uniform fetish. I can empathize. In order to get someone's profile, just stick their VNDB user id number into the end of this url: https://vnstat.net/user/ What does the rest of your profiles look like, everyone?

There's a bug in the poll code. Some votes are not being counted for mysterious reasons. For an example, go here: Ikinari Anata ni Koishiteiru, Majikoi, and Comyu have 3 votes counted each in the graph, but 4 people have voted for Majikoi and 5 people have voted for Ikinari. If you click on the vote count for each one, you can see the real amount of votes and who the voters are. Also everyone who voted for ikikoi will not be receiving presents from me next christmas!

Who here had to play the original Doom in a tiny-ass window because their PC wasn't good enough to display it full screen? Those were the days. You had to squint to see all the action. I'm not really all that hyped for Doom 4. It doesn't look like what I want out of a new doom game, IMO. The executions seem like they could get repetitive and I'm just not sure if I want this kind of scripted experience and linearly designed levels. I also certainly wouldn't want Doom again but with good graphics, so I'm actually not sure what exactly I want. Whatever it is, it's not what I'm seeing out of Doom 4.

lol if you don't understand why someone might be bothered by depictions of rape. I mean, it's fine if you aren't, but don't shit on everyone who is.

To be fair, I wasn't really ruling out Untouchable, that perk is really good and I probably should have mentioned it. I don't consider it a sword perk, though. I dunno, the swords just don't really do it for me. I much prefer the flank and shoot approach. You can gun down huge enemies in short order with rapid fire, providing the best single-target damage in the game.

A few xcom tips: Initiating combat correctly is one of the most important skills to nail down. Even though the game suggests you do this, do not break concealment by overwatching everyone but one guy and shooting with the last one. This often allows the enemy to get flank shots on you that you can't do anything about. You also have little control over who you eliminate first. If you have time, set up an overwatch trap so the enemy paths into your soldiers and you overwatch shoot them on THEIR turn, not yours. And if you don't have time, just open fire with someone without much utility like a sharpshooter, and then plan out the rest of your turn based on how they react. After you get into contact, use and abuse grenades. ALWAYS bring a grenadier, maybe even bring two if you can. Lean on the frag grenade's cover destruction capabilities heavily to leave enemies exposed. If you're ending missions with spare grenades, then you aren't using them enough, they're truly a godsend. Also build Flashbangs ASAP. If you ever get yourself into a tight spot, toss a flashbang out. If a sectoid or Codex ever does any annoying psychic shit, flashbang them and it will cancel it out. Once you get mimic beacons, start using those to get you out of awkward situations. Activated two enemy groups at once and are at danger of getting flanked? Toss a mimic beacon and the enemy will shoot it instead of you. It's so good. Rangers with phantom are clutch. Try not to reveal your phantom ranger on first contact if at all possible, but obviously don't lose anyone over keeping them hidden. Then use your phantom to scout ahead from the rest of your group so you can initiate combat correctly. I don't like the sword skills too much, I don't think swords do anything that shotguns don't do better, aside from basically being able to "run'n'gun" every turn with the sword. That said, Run'n'gun plus Implacable is a clutch combo. Run right into the heart of the enemy, gun down their key soldier and run right back into cover. Rapid Fire later makes this ridiculous. Sharpshooters are really only good using the gunslinger traits, but they are incredibly good. You can shoot a billion times a turn just by going all the way down the right tree. For sure give your sharpshooters special damage-adding ammo, as this gives them a huge boost in damage potential since they shoot several times a turn. Adding an ammo type adds at least two damage to each shot (despite only showing one, the DoT is guaranteed to deal at least one damage as well), and you can apply that to multiple targets! So good. They're weak to armor, though, so always bring a good shredding plan. For Grenadiers, as I said grenades are the linchpin of any sound tactical plan. This makes their grenade perks great, obviously. But having a gunner build isn't a bad idea either, because Suppression, Holo Targeting, and Chain Shot are so good, and Rupture is godlike. Actually, you probably want Shredder Ammo on everyone, blast padding isn't very good. And you also probably want Salvo on everyone over Hail of Bullets. More actions, more destruction, more good. Specialists are just kind of shit. They're good in longer, protracted missions where you'll want to heal multiple times, but aside from those they don't really have much of a place, especially in the late game. In the early game, Combat Protocol, Haywire, and Scanning are helpful, and once you get into the mid game you may want to respec them into an overwatch-support build with the medical and overwatch perks. I generally give my specialists flashbangs and save their moves for last. Their combat protocol can finish off enemies who are close to death, or they can flashbang to buy yourself a turn. The game really strongly wants you to play fast, and you should do so. It's really punishing if you just sit back and trade shots with the aliens, that's a bad way to go. Blow up cover, find good run'n'gun opportunities (don't leave your precious rangers exposed, though) set up flanks, and generally try to end every single engagement in one, or two turns tops.

The big upset you're hoping for will be Baldr Force beating Baldr Sky.

Snow Sakura is pretty decent. I found it more entertaining than I expected, but I sort of got bored of it after the first route. Princess Waltz is really bad. The fights take way too long to resolve and the protagonist is just an idiot. I dropped it before finishing it once. Steins;Gate is my favorite VN released in English. Easily worth $30 on its own. The rest is just filler garbage. edit: Also, I'm pretty sure Princess Waltz is incompatible with Windows 8 and 10, so fair warning on that one.

Noble Works My Girlfriend is the President. Majikoi

Fujisaki gets away with being ridiculously verbose in the Grisaia series using the ADV format. The english translation manages to fit entire freaking paragraphs of text in one "line." But yeah, obviously NVL has its benefits. I don't really get the hate for it some people have.