sanahtlig

Sales of individual Japanese titles are generally decreasing, probably due to competition from other forms of media and the sheer number of titles being produced. At the same time, production costs are increasing in response to demand for ever higher resolutions and production values. Based on what I've heard, the general feeling is that it's becoming increasingly hard to remain profitable. There's an interview with minori's producer on the subject posted on Visual Novel Aer: http://visualnovelaer.fuwanovel.net/2013/02/the-unstoppable-downfall-of-the-bishoujo-ge-industry-interview-with-nbkz-producer-at-minori/

VNs are becoming increasingly popular in the West. A greater variety of high profile titles are being licensed. The fan translation scene continues to pick up steam. Nonetheless, the paying fanbase remains limited save for a select few titles published by established brands (e.g., the odd handheld title). Despite the growing popularity of VNs in the West, the sustainability of the English market remains in question, and it's doubtful VNs will become anything more than obscure otaku specialty items in the forseeable future (next 10 years). Quite a lot is riding on whether Mangagamer can manage to remain profitable without becoming a nukige clearinghouse. If Mangagamer goes under, and JAST once more becomes the sole purveyor of localized eroge, then we're going to return to the Dark Ages of 2-3 official releases a year. MoeNovel remains a wild card, and it's unclear whether they'll ever release non-Pulltop titles, or whether their business model (of selling censored eroge) is sustainable. In terms of larger trends in commercial titles, we may actually see the most growth in OELVNs in the coming years, as Western VN fans deconstruct the genre and reimagine it for Western audiences sans the porn and with added gameplay elements. We may also see a polarization of the genre along pornographic lines, with localized story eroge releases gradually declining and being replaced by nukige and all-ages titles, mirroring the current divide of entertainment in the West (all pornography or no pornography at all).

Voiced MC is always better. Why? Because if you don't want voice, you can just disable it in the options. Many eroge these days let you disable voices on a character by character basis.

I don't read manga, light novels, or novels in general (anymore). VNs have a number of features that make them distinct from and not comparable with books, whereas VNs share a number of characteristics with games. In fact many VNs ARE without question games, while there's not a single VN you would say is a "book". And in general, my favorite VNs are the ones with greater interactivity and gameplay elements. I play VNs and games for immersion in a fictional world. This is something VNs can do better than just about any other medium out there except for other games. Over other games, VNs have the advantages I've already discussed.

I meant that VNs are above the reading level of anime, JRPGs, and most manga. It's exceedingly obvious if you're learning Japanese and you try and see what you can understand in various media types. The level of grammatical complexity and variety of kanji you see in VNs isn't something you find in anime and many manga, especially anime. Anime tend to be targeted at teens. I had a rather interesting conversation with an NISA employee. He claimed that Japanese language and culture was simplistic and limited the level of storytelling that could be achieved (as evidenced by the bland and repetitive dialogue that had to be improved and given added flavor in the game localization process). Well, obviously, his reference point was (NISA) JRPGs and what anime culture he'd been exposed to. It didn't dawn on him that his exposure was predominantly biased towards media aimed at middle schoolers. If he'd played a selection of the best VNs in the genre he'd probably have revised that opinion. The specific media I had in mind for comparison were anime, manga, and games--mostly anime and games, since I don't read manga. Every medium has tropes. Especially compared to games, VNs offer a low-cost solution to tell a story without having to spend most of their budget on 3D graphics and sound effects. I see VNs with gameplay as the cure for the common JRPG: a medium with manageable development costs, targeted at an adult audience (less chuuni, more mature themes), with a potential for innovation amidst the stagnation of the JRPG. I can't recall the last children's production that appealed to me at all. The need to appeal to the mainstream dictates the type of story you're allowed to tell, or if you're allowed to tell a story at all. Look at RPGs these days; conversation skip is becoming increasingly common because many players just don't give a damn about the story at all. We're seeing a move towards optional storylines and narrativeless gameplay, because that's what Western gamers are demanding. I suspect we aren't going to reach agreement here. I doubt we even share the same tastes in VNs, much less other types of media we'd use as a reference for comparison.

Here you go: http://vndb.org/v/all?q=;fil=tagspoil-0.tag_inc-994.lang-en.tag_exc-31~35~41~42;o=d;s=rating English-language medieval fantasy setting VNs without the most common gameplay elements. They're mostly OELVNs, with a few nukige from Mangagamer. Remove the English language requirement if you want a more expansive list.

This is mostly true, as most VNs are tailored for a male audience in much the same way many softcore porn novels are tailored for a female audience in the US. Indeed, many would argue that the concept of moe itself is sexist, and Japanese culture overall is heavily gender-biased. Otome games with H-content do exist, and I expect they would address your concerns to some extent, especially since the choice of male heroes would allow you to filter out the ones with overtly sexist attitudes. I do think the H-scenes in some male-oriented eroge would challenge your accusations of sexism. The scenes in Saya no Uta for example didn't seem particularly sexist to me. Cruel and inhuman maybe, but not sexist.

Sex appeal is pervasive in anime culture. It's a highly sexualized medium. Eroge are simply the culmination of that. One of the disappointing things about eroge is that many of them don't do a very good job with the buildup. You have all these fan-servicey scenes in anime, yet often in eroge they just skip right to the sex. Whether H-scenes "cheapen" the experience depends on what you're looking for. If you're looking for romance and/or sexiness, then I don't see why a decently written scene would necessarily detract from the experience. If you're not...why are you playing games that center on romancing a selection of pretty girls? Are H-scenes truly the "problem", or would the wider issue be that romances are crammed into stories that don't necessarily need them? I think it's interesting to ask oneself why one plays these games. If one of the answers is "pretty girls" or "art", then perhaps you should reexamine your position. It's one matter to dislike H-scenes on principle. It's another to dislike badly written or superfluous H-scenes.

I come across fantasy setting VNs without gameplay all the time. It's rather irritating actually.

Just sent Aaeru a PM.

Mangagamer is requesting feedback / suggestions for its Affilates program: http://forums.mangagamer.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=103 Join the discussion or post here and I'll relay the suggestions. Is there anything in particular that would sweeten the deal for Fuwanovel?

One of the major advantages of eroge is that they're targeted at an adult and highly literate audience. This sets a higher bar for storytelling that's difficult to achieve when everything has to be dumbed down to a 5th grade reading level to appeal to a mainstream audience. Also like Clephas said, not having to appeal to a mainstream demographic allows a much greater freedom of storytelling and the ability to explore themes that wouldn't be accepted by a mainstream audience. It's not really the medium that's special. It's the unique market that has risen around the medium that's special, enabled in part because VNs are cheap to produce and don't require the massive budgets that other mediums require (thus necessitating mainstream appeal).

If Aaeru is looking into it, that's a start at least.

Does Fuwanovel have any plans to host affiliate links for official localized visual novels? Not only would it provide a source of revenue for the site, but it would encourage people to support official localization and would alleviate the constant requests for uploads of localized titles. It would also help improve Fuwanovel's reputation in the eyes of the wider community.

Sakurasou no Pet na Kanojo. I don't usually like moe slice of life, but this one grabbed me.

I've played Castle Fantasia 2, some of Men at Work 2, and several other Studio Ego / Debonosu games. The writing in these titles is always very weak. They can never seem to get past the silly moe stereotypical banter to write a decent plot. Even a game like Kamidori Alchemy Meister ended up with a more interesting story, and that's not saying all that much. It's a shame, because the gameplay systems are often fairly decent.

There's a number of VNs where the gameplay is a minor element, like minigames (e.g., Princess Waltz, Koihime Musou). Victory is a bit sweeter when you're actually engaged in the fights--this also applies to some extent when you have to make a series of tough choices (e.g., Soul Link).

But you forfeit the right to expect respect from others when you fail to respect the wishes of others to begin with. Fan translators provide a service with no expectation of compensation. Seeing their wishes disregarded, their good will trampled upon, can be very demotivating. At the same time that you're reaching a wider audience with existing translations, you may very well be hindering future translations because fan translators get sick of their work being associated with piracy. Imagine yourself as a fan translator that's a huge fan of Company A, and you want to see official releases of its titles someday. You translate Game A, and it becomes very popular in the English community. Encouraged, you approach Company A with the number of patch downloads / VNDB ratings, asking if they'd be interested in an official release. Company A does a quick web search, sees the patch bundled with the full game across the web, concludes you're promoting piracy, and terminates negotiations. Doesn't that seem aggravating, from the fan translator's perspective? From the perspective of many fans, Fuwanovel's activities disrespect and disregard fan translators and Japanese developers. You can't really complain when they reciprocate with disrespect. I personally don't really mind what Fuwanovel's doing, but I can completely understand why people would be upset, and their complaints are legitimate.

You'll probably be given a big text file in stilted or broken English, and be told to edit lines X through Y, possibly along with a save file so you can play along in the game. No technical knowledge should be required. That's what the hacker or existing tools are for. If you can pass an introductory college English writing course, you can edit a VN.

None of the above. Yumina the Ethereal awaits.

The blog post is up: http://visualnovelaer.fuwanovel.net/2013/07/yumina-the-ethereal-the-first-high-profile-official-h-rpg-release-in-english-but-will-jast-drop-the-ball-and-forget-to-market-it/ I also aired my concern that JAST won't even market the game.

I was planning to post on the NIS America forums. I was kind of hoping I could get ahold of more marketing materials first. I threw out a probe to a fan translator to translate the demo, but he had too much on his plate and didn't want to interfere with JAST's release. Looks like I might be able to get my hands on a fansubbed OP though. JAST is being pretty useless. Their forum is dead, the moderator is gone, and I doubt they even intend to send reviewers a copy before release. It's a royal mess. It's like they want the game to remain in obscurity.

I'm not being condescending. Brave Soul was a decent game (but not particularly noteworthy) released 10 years ago that I wouldn't expect anyone nowadays to have heard of (especially someone that busies themselves with untranslated releases). As an analogy, would you go to a mainstream RPG site and expect demanding RPG fans of say...Dragon Age 2...to have even heard of titles like Legend of Dragoon? It's an enjoyable but largely mediocre relic of an age past. Keep in mind, I'm responding to someone who just dismissed Yumina as good, but not deserving of the attention I'm giving it (i.e., potentially someone with very high standards). My point was that even though Yumina is a great game, it's not all that hard to be the "best" when the competition is mediocre. This is the first really great H-RPG to be OFFICIALLY released. And that's how I'm promoting it.

Keep in mind, the best H-RPG official English release to date is Brave Soul. You probably haven't even heard of it. But thanks for the review! Also, I wrote the OP for a mainstream gaming audience. I'd rewrite it if I really really wanted to appeal to the VN crowd. But this isn't exactly the best *VN* ever.

Would you reconsider if there was a playable demo available that would allow you to see before-hand whether the gameplay "got in the way of the story" as much as you fear?