sanahtlig

You missed the point of that quote. That quote was in response to speculation that particular Japanese developers care about / have a say in the titles Mangagamer licenses from other developers--that the Japanese developers have some sort of fixation on their brand image in the West and don't want to be associated with inferior brands. That particular quote was not discussing how consumers view brands.

I brought up JAST because while they have a higher ratio of non-nukige, their actual output is so low that they end up releasing the same or less decent, original titles a year as Mangagamer. While Saya no Uta is a great game, and I recommend that people buy it, JAST didn't actually contribute to the pool of translated titles with that license. More attention on great games is fine and all, and I don't mind giving some more money to Nitroplus, but JAST didn't really provide a service there (unless you count removing mosaics as a substantial contribution). JAST's and Mangagamer's models are both flawed, in their own ways. Let's not even mention MoeNovel... This reads like pure prejudice. You've made an accusation based on suspicion that can't be proven (that Mangagamer doesn't care about the medium and just wants to profit off nukige), and morphs in ridiculous ways to resist being refuted (they release non-nukige, but they don't really WANT to). Why would Circus care what games MG chooses to license? I'm pretty sure they barely give the English market a second thought. And if they did care, I'd think MG's partnership with Hentai Industries would've been a no-go. Because as of now, their beloved Da capo series is being sold alongside some of the trashiest nukige the market has seen outside DLsite. That said, I agree with you that it's a dangerous situation when market dynamics provide little or no incentive for releasing quality titles anymore. Over time business practices tend to adjust to align with market incentives. While MG may continue sinking resources into releasing unprofitable or marginally profitable story titles for the time being, there's no guarantee that this will be true in the future-- 2 years, 5 years, 10 years from now. Leadership changes, employee turnover happens, market stresses force adaptation. Unless the incentives change, the long-term outlook for Mangagamer's non-nukige projects isn't looking so hot.

I don't think that's true, since they do still devote significant resources to working on non-nukige (even though such titles don't appear profitable). Keep in mind, they could have two teams working on localization, one on nukige, and the other non-nukige, and the nukige team would churn out 4-5 titles in the time it took the non-nukige team to get one out. That may seem like they're putting more resources into translating nukige, when actually they're splitting their resources evenly. The "reputation of the medium" is not a concern for many customers. For most, all they care about is the final product they get to play. 1 decent title a year is still 1 decent title a year, whether it's buried in crappy releases or not. How many decent, original titles has JAST released this year? I count one (Yumina the Ethereal).

I tailor to the preferences of the requester, but I'll also recommend titles I haven't played but have concluded from available evidence are "worth playing". A critical analysis can be more useful than simply listing your favorites in a given genre.

While I'd still like to be able to see and edit the BBS code, removing the formatting also works. Thanks.

Rightstuf (cheapest, but shipping may be expensive; slow to stock some titles; physical releases only) J-List (I'll haunt you if you buy the Lucky Bag) Mangagamer (has exclusive digital titles that can only be bought from them) That should cover every localized game currently available at retail. If you want to use the VNDB method, Mangagamer and JAST USA are the main English VN publishers.

Quote formatting is really unreliable with this new forum system. I've spent significant periods of time trying to fix quotes that become garbled due to auto-formatting gone awry. Once this happens, the only fix seems to be to delete the entire quote block and try again with plain text. When a post includes multiple quotes this becomes irritating very fast. I'd rather be able to edit the BBS code that generates the garbled quote in the first place.

I agree that Mangagamer is working on some quality titles (that I'm not necessarily interested in). At the same time, it's also true that MG has thrown quality standards out the window seeing their willingness to work with Hentai Industries. It's a matter of perspective. While in principle 1 good title is still 1 good title even though it's buried under a pile of trash releases, a deluge of trash titles harms the reputation of the medium as a whole. Localization companies are the face of the VN medium. What they choose to release, and how they promote it, creates a lasting impression on outsiders looking in. If companies like Mangagamer / JAST churn out low-budget nukige and plaster the Internet with porny banner ads, then that's how the medium will be viewed: as porn. That makes it really hard as a fan to drum up interest in the medium, because newcomers start with the misconception that VNs are just trashy cartoon porn. That's where Wahfuu's coming from. Personally, I don't mind if Mangagamer chooses to localize a wide variety of titles for different tastes. We need more variety. But they better be GOOD titles of their respective genres, or I'm going to call them on it. Most of their nukige releases are shameless cash grabs. I understand that this is necessary for their business model to work. Doesn't mean I have to like it. Nukige sell because they seem to attract people that are more willing to pay to play. If more consumers of non-nukige put in their dollar vote (and sales were proportional to the actual quality of a title), MG wouldn't need to churn out low-budget nukige just to stay profitable. As it stands, many of the same people just buy every title to support the market. While this helps keep Mangagamer in business, it also incentivizes them to flood the market with low quality titles. For some perspective, Mangagamer's story titles release in Japan for ~$100. Mangagamer sells them for $40-50. Mangagamer's Softhouse-Seal titles sell for $25; they release in Japan for $20. Mangagamer is providing a huge discount on the story titles--but they still don't sell. Meanwhile the low-budget nukige sell at full price AND THEN SOME and turn the same or greater volume. It's nice that Mangagamer still *bothers* to release story titles, given the apathy English consumers show for them and the much greater effort that goes into localizing them.

At least Mangagamer throws one or two decent titles our way each year. And unlike JAST, they're titles that wouldn't have been fan-translated 5 years ago. Also, with Mangagamer's throughput, Sturgeon's law basically guarantees a few gems every once in a while. That will in all likelihood be nukige. The current market in a nutshell: Mangagamer (a.k.a Nukigegamer): You got a fetish? We got a game. JAST USA: Bringing you hot titles you want today...in 2019. MoeNovel: Bringing erotic text games in English to 12-year-old French girls everywhere.

Real viewpoints aren't black and white political platforms that you see on TV. They're qualified and complex. I'm not a defender of Mangagamer. I do urge people to support the VNs they enjoy, which means more than just pirating whatever they can get their hands on and urging others to do the same. In my eyes, many of Mangagamer's so-called failings can be blamed on consumers like you and me. By correcting misperceptions and encouraging personal responsibility, I seek to alter the market dynamics that led Mangagamer down their current path. But to recap this discussion: sanahtlig: Mangagamer sells a lot of nukige because that's what sells (for them). Okami: No, it's merely their choice. There's no compelling reason for them to release nukige over story-driven titles. If there were, other companies (JAST, MoeNovel) would only release nukige. sanahtlig: No, Mangagamer was driven into a corner. They had no choice <insert rant against piracy>. Your analogy doesn't work for X and Y reasons. Okami: I don't believe you. Also, your 5% stat is a lie. sanahtlig: Is not. Okami: Is too. sanahtlig: Ok fine, but your stat is a lie too. Okami: Is not. sanahtlig: Is too. Okami: What were we arguing about again? sanahtlig: Good question. Wahfuu: Sanahtlig's right. Fucking Nukigegamer. sanahtlig: Word.

I threw a fit when Mangagamer announced their partnership with Hentai Industries / Morningstar, which produces some of the trashiest doujin nukige I've ever come across (think DLsite level bad). They're convinced that selling bottom-of-the-barrel nukige at single-digit prices will turn a profit with no ill long-term consequences on their brand or reputation as distributors. Unfortunately, this is what I was trying to reply to. If you want a clear and well-formed response, you're going to have to hold up your end of the bargain.

By the point being "stronger" I meant "not conservative". Not "better". Well, I didn't really mean anything concrete by that statement anyway. I've edited the statement for clarity. While Mangagamer doesn't say such things directly, what they have said is telling. http://forums.mangagamer.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=65&start=15#p4652 http://forums.mangagamer.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=83&hilit=nukige+funding&start=30#p5498 http://forums.mangagamer.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=83&hilit=nukige+funding&start=30#p5526 They weren't so cheery before the lineup became nukige-heavy, and there was even talk that Mangagamer might not be around in a few years. Those quotes I don't have, as all posts older than 6 months or so were lost in a recent forum crash. Their story titles seem to barely cover costs, as evidenced by the voice cuts from Koihime Musou when it was released, with the statement that voice licensing costs couldn't be recouped unless the game sold 2k copies (which as their bestselling title only managed to do so after several months of sales).

I would go even further: without their nukige sales it's doubtful Mangagamer could even remain sustainable. A community based around a warez site is hardly the population sample you'd want to use to gauge what people would buy. I wouldn't be surprised if likelihood of buying X title was inversely related with total titles a person has played. Or that being a consumer of fan-translated titles meant you were less likely to ever buy anything. It seems like the more the VN fanbase grows, the smaller the proportion of people that care to support the medium becomes. Sort of like the bystander effect, although in this case the diffusion of responsibility is actively propagated by the digital culture that has evolved around the medium. I also searched on the title "True Love" and didn't find it. I admittedly didn't look for every game ever localized to see the rate at which they popped up in the list. I did just count all titles released by JAST and sister brands, as well as Hirameki International, during the 2003-2007 period. I count 50. That doesn't count fan translations and illegal commercial projects. So again, that list is incomplete by a fairly large margin-- it missed more than 2/3 of translated titles in an arbitrarily picked 5-year span.

That list isn't complete. Examine the year range from 2003-2007. I guarantee you more than 5 titles were released in English during that span. It seems to be missing a large number of localized titles. I do acknowledge that the VNDB comparison is an overestimation since it includes partial patches (which I had overlooked). That's a completely unsupported statement. You're assuming equivalency. You're using an assumption to prove a point. In what ways are Mangagamer, JAST USA, and MoeNovel the same? In what ways are they different? Have you scrutinized them to the extent that you can say they're "in the same position"? They're quite different, with different business models and resources and different audiences. MoeNovel has yet to prove itself sustainable. They could very well go the way of Hirameki. JAST relies increasingly on fan-sourced projects, which it appears to use as leverage to push through negotiations and keep costs down. JAST also has the marketing resources and connections to reach outside the existing fanbase to consumers more willing to part with their money, which increases sales of titles that would otherwise be heavily played but rarely purchased. I'm quite inclined to take Mangagamer at their word: that their nukige sell just as well or better than their story titles and on top of that are much cheaper and quicker to localize. Not to mention that JAST went through a similar period where they released mostly nukige and found it to be a successful approach.

If you want exact numbers: http://vndb.org/v/all?q=;fil=tagspoil-2.lang-en.olang-ja;o=a;s=title;p=12 It works out to 568/12417 (4.6%). I used the filters "original language: Japanese" and "language: English". The denominator uses only the former tag; the numerator uses both. As for "being totally correct", I don't really see how my assertions about Mangagamer need to be supported with data from other companies, or why I should feel obligated to provide such data for the sake of credibility--the topic is about Mangagamer and I replied with statements that focused on Mangagamer and weren't necessarily meant to be generalized to the industry at large. I could however comment on other topics, as the whim strikes me.

"Eroge" is simply Japanese for "ero-game". It's used to refer to games with 18+ content. English speakers use the term the same way. Would you call a fanservice anime like Strike Witches an ero-anime? Would you call a fanservice themed game like Ar tonelico an eroge?

I know some Japanese, not enough to actually read a VN unassisted. I use tools like ATLAS and JParser together with text hooking tools to play Japanese VNs. Even counting fan translations, only like 5% of VNs ever get translated. Mangagamer is, for the most part, limited to working with the companies it has existing relations with. It's generally not reasonable to expect them to localize just any game that strikes one's fancy. They do localize a lot of nukige because that's what people actually buy. Those dollar votes steer their choice of localization projects. They do work on story-driven titles but these projects take more time and resources, whereas the nukige projects finish quickly and thus can be released at a relatively rapid rate with lower risk of financial failure.

I do like imoutos. In fact I play games like this.

This is quite the amusing game of telephone we have going here.

There's a number of reasons for this, chiefly being that lower resolution titles don't sell as well. Older titles also present OS compatibility issues, and the developer is more likely to not have data such as the original uncensored images on hand. While titles being released within 1-2 years of their Japanese release is also unlikely, the time frame of these requests being fulfilled is such that this isn't an issue.

Posting your requests on the Mangagamer board is good and fine, but you posted in the wrong thread. That's the thread for requests from existing partners. From a quick glance at your list, I don't see any titles that meet that criterium. You should instead post in this thread, but realize that requests from new partners are much less likely to get fulfilled (as Mangagamer is a tiny outfit that has very little negotiating power). You'd be better off picking 1 or 2 favorite developers and promoting those, since every title from a new partner is a new set of negotiations that must take place. To maximize the relevance of your voice, you should take a look at Mangagamer's current partners and identify untranslated titles that interest you. Recent titles (released within the past 5 years) are more likely to be picked up. As far as imouto-themed games, Mangagamer seems to be delivering. You might want to check out their upcoming Imouto Paradise. Harukoi Otome and Guilty the Sin also feature imoutos.

Looks like this topic received a Phoenix Down. That's basically the state of things. Both Mangagamer and JAST occasionally comment on the business side of things, if you frequent their forums. Licenses don't just happen, and JAST and MG can't just localize whatever they want. They have to find developers / publishers that are willing to invest the time and effort (read: money) to complete a localization project. The more successful a developer is, the less likely they're going to be interested in the tiny overseas market. Why is it tiny? Because Westerners don't buy stuff. What is the most common excuse? "There nothing worth paying for." As you can see, it's a circular argument that leads nowhere. But the sad thing is that Mangagamer's decent story titles often don't even outsell the nukige. They pump out nukige because the extra costs that go into working on story titles aren't worth it. We should be thankful they localize non-nukige at all--the business incentives for localizing story titles certainly aren't there.

In the first 30min of Aselia I don't even think you get to see the other world, or meet any of the actual heroines. You barely scratched the surface of the setting, much less the story itself. I'm finding the dungeon crawling aspect of Yumina to be not that fun (I just started Ch. 2). It appears you can bypass much of it (and just do the debate battles), which I might end up doing if I get altogether sick of dungeon crawling. Debate battles are interesting enough, if only because they don't wear out their welcome.

JAST just released a patch that I believe addresses the Chapter 3 crashes. http://www.jastusa.com/?p=1987

The trial reminded me a bit of The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi, character-wise. The protagonist getting swept up by Yumina's earnestness (who is being manipulated in turn by Kirara) is part of the comedy. The protagonist isn't so much spineless as lazy and unmotivated, which leads to him opting for the path of least resistance.