sanahtlig

How on earth would taking corruption scenes out of a game about sexual corruption be in any way satisfactory to the primary audience? That's literally the main selling point. It's a core gameplay mechanic and has entire story arcs devoted to it (optional, but incentivized by gameplay mechanics). The gameplay is great but you can't just excise a major theme and claim it "wasn't important".

My most popular articles are how-to guides to troubleshoot issues with official English titles. Just an FYI. If publishers were doing an adequate job, these users probably wouldn't be visiting my site.

I can understand from a community management standpoint why you'd want to implement this policy, but also relevant: tech support from official VN publishers tends to suck. Many of them don't even have message boards for users to help each other with issues. I've heard horror stories of people waiting weeks or even months for replies from JAST. On the other hand, you can get useful responses from other users typically within a day, and these responses get indexed by search engines and go on to help many others. Also, in my experience, many new users join communities like this to get technical support, then stick around and join in other discussions. Forbid technical support, and you might turn away these users.

The link is still broken for me.

Ninetail announces an upcoming Kickstarter for an English version of Venus Blood Frontier, a corruption-focused strategy RPG with Law and Chaos routes. SRPG eroge Venus Blood Frontier to get an English Kickstarter

Given the endless cycle of hope/disappointment surrounding proposed translation projects, I started playing this and I'm encountering the same frequent crash issues. Unfortunately, running in Vista compatibility mode (recommended by the Windows 10 troubleshooter) appears to interfere with text hooking. The crashes seem to coincide with screen animations, so I imagine it's some sort of issue with graphics instructions in memory. I honestly didn't expect this game to be as buggy as School Days.

Committing money to an unreleased product is always a gamble--except unlike gambling, any surprises will generally be unpleasant. The entire premise of crowdfunding is to push the risk of creative development from developers onto end-users. If risk avoidance is your main priority, then any first-time publisher will be a greater risk than Sekai Project--and really, you shouldn't be in the crowdfunding business at all. Take that money and invest it--where you'll be compensated for taking risks, rather than penalized.

Some people want the "original" Japanese cultural experience, if not the grammar. I can definitely see the argument against using American slang in English localizations, for example. If you play Japanese games to escape from the pervasive influence of American pop culture, that's the last thing you want to see in your VNs.

It causes a disruption in the Force, generating much teeth-gnashing and angst amongst those sensitive to its flow. Oh, you meant to you. The game becomes a little less enjoyable than it would've been to read in Japanese, but usually much more enjoyable than the alternative: watching a slideshow accompanied by streams of cryptic runes and arbitrary grunts.

That's genuinely interesting. Ok, now I see the resemblance.

My confession is that I pay Nutaku to pay me to play a free-to-play game, and I've spent the past year writing a pseudo PhD dissertation on this game.

You have it backwards. You only knew the scene was censored because there was voice to compare to. What is it that you care about? That the scene was hamfistedly altered (without notifying users), or that the text doesn't match the voices? The latter is just a symptom of the former.

Huh, some of my games still hook after the Windows 10 update. I have had problems with ITH lately. ITHVNR still seems to work though.

Doubtful. The English VN scene has been influenced as much by choose-your-own-adventure books and MUDs as it has been by anime games. It's not like the Japanese invented the concept of using a video game to tell a text-driven story. What the Japanese DID pioneer is using the VN medium to create a bustling market for professional story-driven porn, something Westerners haven't even come close to emulating.

The history of visual novels in Japan is sort of irrelevant if your project will be translating an original English VN. Japanese and English VNs are almost two completely different genres: the former are primarily eroge, while the latter are not. English VNs also tend to be more focused on interactive elements and choices. To contextualize your topic, I would start with the introduction of visual novels on Steam, which was relatively recent: 2012 or so? If you want to discuss Japanese VNs, you can narrow your scope to something doable by focusing on the ones that have been released on Steam. For extra credit, discuss the censorship that occurs when media crosses cultural boundaries, and how that's impacted the genre.

I've encountered multiple games that required one text-hooker or another. The very game I'm playing right now hooks correctly with AGTH, but not ITHVNR. In any case, I'm glad the text-hooking community found a solution to this. I've written a short article about it. Sanahtlig's Corner: AGTH H-code wiki resurrected

I still think about it, so it's not like I've completely abandoned it. For reference, the first chapter was written 15 years ago. I do plan to continue the story at some point, but at best it'll be a weekend project once I've settled into my current job. But thanks, interest from others makes it more likely I'll pick this back up sooner rather than later!

It sounds like MiKandi JP had no connections in the English VN scene and ended up overpaying for the sort of contract English translation services you'd find in Japan. Typical rookie error. Rates for VN translation (and Japanese pop culture media in general) are especially low because fans are willing to work for far below market rates, and sometimes devote more energy to the work as well. MiKandi Japan failed to leverage that to their advantage. This is disappointing and serves as a stark reminder that new publishers can't be trusted to meet even basic quality standards. We've seen this over and over again from just about every new company to the business.

Good job. Now time to move on to graduate school. A Master's Degree is the new Bachelor's.

There's the larger demographic trends in Japan too. Fewer young people mean the target market for eroge is slowly shrinking. There's even been news of school closings over it. Also, free-to-play browser and mobile games like the ones Nutaku peddles (largely from DMM) compete with commercial eroge as well. Such games appear to be much more profitable, as they're cheap to make and exploit players' greater willingness to pay for gameplay incentives rather than content. They can also milk players for far more per customer than traditional games, which have a fixed price.

MangaGamer will release free uncensor patches for future Steam releases of eroge, following the lead of MiKandi JP and English indie developers. MangaGamer commits to free uncensor patches for Steam releases Discussion thread From MangaGamer's official blog:

MangaGamer will release free uncensor patches for future Steam releases of eroge, following the lead of English indie developers. MangaGamer commits to free uncensor patches for Steam releases From MangaGamer's official blog:

The bigger problem is that I don't think ANY of the hooking tools are being maintained anymore. ITHVNR recognizes most of the engines you'll typically encounter, but new support isn't being added. On top of this, the AGTH code database imploded ~2 years ago, taking with it a large stash of custom H-codes, and the HongFire community--a hub of H-code generation and discussion--seems to be slowly suffocating due to crippling server issues. The outlook for text hooking over the next few years is looking a bit grim.

What do you plan to use it for?

From what I understand, Gold is actually more of an alternate universe rather than a sequel or remake. In other words, the game would've needed a completely new translation. That'd be a similar situation as the Sengoku Hime series, where the characters and story get redesigned for each new iteration, though the setting and gameplay mechanics have many shared elements.