sanahtlig

One of the users on VNDB sent an e-mail to MoeNovel customer support about the all-ages issue and received a response: http://vndb.org/t4066/6#136 Also, a user on VNDB downloaded the CG pack for the game and browsed through. http://vndb.org/t4066/6#149

*sanahtlig activates Ougi: Flurry of Disagreements* This game maybe. Eien no Aselia 18+ version? Maybe not. At least, JAST USA didn't think so. In part, I like VNs precisely because of the cultural differences in attitude towards sex. VNs offer something I can't get anywhere else. To gut that element is to remove that which makes VNs special to me. I find it highly unlikely that Pulltop would make a sex-focused game. Steve is just hand waving. This is an aspect of American culture I find absolutely disgusting--our unthinking condemnation of that which doesn't fit our ideal of how the world should be, our need to proscribe our values onto everyone and everything around us. It's fiction. Get over it. If one doesn't like it, don't buy it, but don't go badgering others because fictional women are objectified or the characters aren't racially diverse or OMG THERE'S A LOLI! THAT'S SICK PEDOPHILE BAIT! A game is a game, reality is reality. Those that try to link them together are the ones that can't tell the difference. They don't understand their market. Like many (most?) VNs, this is a moege that is fundamentally about romancing a cute anime girl. With that concept, you've already lost any chance to appeal to a mainstream audience. Hirameki was a devoted champion of all-ages VNs that even got the games into mainstream outlets. Guess where they are now? And MoeNovel thinks they can do better? Waltzing into a niche and ignoring the wishes of your fanbase--and the warnings of veterans in the industry--is the epitome of arrogance. I reject your reality and substitute my own. I would say the same of live-action pornography. But that's curiously mainstream--although if you asked anyone to their face, they'd loudly decry the same porn they fap to when no one's looking. It's hypocrisy.

@Aaeru: You're awfully well versed in American domestic events (and constitutional law) for an Australian. I should point out however that 2/3 of those links are for laws that haven't even been passed (at the time the article was written). If you're going to link to laws to prove a point, at least make those links to actual laws that are in effect. Also, another accepted limitation to free speech is speech which involves minors (which is the justification for restricting sales of games to minors using a rating scheme).

I somewhat disagree. Free speech has a strong tradition in the West--except when sex is involved. There's a special exception to the US 1st Amendment for pornography (see the Miller test). It's simply a carryover from our Puritan heritage. Note that the strongest anti-pornography legislation (particularly anti-loli) in 1st World nations is in Britain and its former colonies.

Personally my enthusiasm would be diminished if they cut the H-scenes out. My enthusiasm would be further diminished if they only plan to do all-ages releases.

Available evidence suggests this is an initiative from the Japanese side: company based in Tokyo, awkward but grammatically correct translation, lack of advertising, no attempt to reach out to the fanbase. It's like Mangagamer's launch all over again.

With no fanfare, a company calling itself MoeNovel has launched a website and plans to release its first title by the end of May. The title is "If my Heart had Wings", a highly regarded 2012 VN from acclaimed developer Pulltop. A demo of the game is available on their website. Pre-orders are available for US $35 on PlayAsia. According to VNDB, the title is long and offers 30-50hrs of gameplay. The English release will have the H-scenes removed to "reach a wider audience". News as of 5/14/2013: MoeNovel is the newest localization company to enter the market. The company appears to have connections to Active Gaming Media and Will, Pulltop's parent company. VNTLS MoeNovel news summary: http://vntls.org/news/ MoeNovel's debut title will be "If My Heart Had Wings" or KonoSora (http://vndb.org/v9093), one of Pulltop's most successful story-driven titles, and is slated for release at the end of June 2013. The original title was winner of 3rd place in the 2012 Bishoujo Game Awards, and ranked 4th place for Scenario. News that the English release will be all-ages (no such version exists in Japanese) has attracted criticism. Summarizing currently known information from the closed VNDB discussion of this title (http://vndb.org/t4066): Content rating: The game has received a rating of T from the ESRB and 12 from PEGI. Demo and translation quality: MoeNovel has released a demo. The translation is questionable and probably performed by a non-native English speaker: it appears to be accurate, mostly grammatically correct, yet very awkward. MoeNovel claims the script is still undergoing editing, and the final product should be more polished than the demo. Overall content edits: The game's art will have to be heavily edited. The original game had 17 H-scenes and 5 heroines (2 of which are twins). Shini's count of the game's CG are as follows (note that these counts include variations of the same base CG): Non-H: 463 (includes swimsuits, wet t-shirt with bra showing through, scene where it looks like a girl has nopan) Ero: 646 (includes CGs that are part of H scenes and bath scenes with visible nipples) SD: 110 (chibi characters) Known alterations outside of H-scenes: Kissing CG will be altered to hide facial contact / sexual suggestiveness. Heroines will be covered by towels in the bath scenes. Availability: The game will be available for sale from Play-Asia, Mangagamer, and J-List. Promotion: The game has received coverage from several anime and gaming blogs including Siliconera, Anime News Network and Japanator. MoeNovel will be utilizing social media to promote the game, including Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest. VNDB link: http://vndb.org/v9093 Official website: http://moenovel.com/imh/ PlayAsia link: http://www.play-asia...en-70-6iiv.html

Hentai dating sims from Japan. I usually explain them as choose your own adventure books in anime-style with images, spoken dialogue, and sound effects. The JRPG comparison doesn't help if they don't know what a JRPG is.

The "developer Kickstarter translation" with a small budget would only work if the developer required the original game to be purchased. As Japanese prices are generally more expensive, that wouldn't go over well with Western fans.

I've seen some of your arguments on VNDB and VNTLS. Unfortunately, disrespect will be met with disrespect. Whether your ideals are right or wrong, you seek to topple the existing "order" by making piracy as easy as possible. with the idea that if piracy becomes pervasively accepted, copyright reform will follow by necessity. In the process, you disregard the wishes of fan translators who don't wish their works to be associated with warez, and you disregard the wishes of developers, who'd rather not have their works pirated. If you were just using your words to convince people, not many would care; it's your subversive actions that garner you such antipathy. You disrespect your counterparts, so they respond by ridiculing and ostracizing you. Yes, some of them are just jerks. But you've pissed off a lot of people who aren't jerks too. You don't actually NEED to subvert copyright law via piracy to achieve your goals. You could instead push for crowdfunding as an alternative model that could coexist with and maybe eventually replace the IP model. However change will not come quickly, crowdfunding has its own limitations, and the incompatibility of the two models will make progress in the VN translation scene difficult (since VNs are developed in Japan using the IP model). The key concept here would be pitching crowdfunding as an alternative, not the single *right* model that others must accept or else (which is what currently earns you scorn). Obviously it's rather unlikely you're going to have a sudden change of heart and dismantle Fuwanovel (and personally, I don't have a problem with Fuwanovel in its current form). But the following would at least minimize the people you antagonize in your pursuit of an IP-free world: 1) Rethink distribution of fan-translated works. Either scrap the idea of pre-packaged translations, or at least credit the translators and post a link to their page. Make it easy to buy the originals for those so inclined. 2) Give up on distributing localized titles (localized using the IP model). You could convince entrepreneurs not to use the IP model (or discourage end users from supporting it with words or crowdfunded alternatives) rather than subvert existing IP.

Also, my ballpark estimate for the typical localization costs of a decent VN are ~$25,000-$50,000 (based on some numbers Mangagamer has thrown out). $2500 only covers the slave labor salary of the translation team. Even if the project succeeds, it remains to be seen whether a Kickstarter campaign could raise the necessary funds for a licensed translation.

The project won't actually be funded for 2 weeks. It's quite possible Kickstarter will terminate the project before then.

I definitely think there was a fallout involved. Moogy worked with JAST, which works with Nitro+, and clearly Nitro+ didn't agree to the "unofficial release" as Moogy would've mentioned it if that was the case. JAST probably isn't making a big deal of it since Dra Koi wasn't that important to them or Nitro+. If Moogy were to start working on say, Muramasa, I doubt JAST would stay silent. In any case, there's no point in C&D'ing a finished translation. I don't think Age C&D'd Amaterasu's Muv Luv release.

I factored in the risk and the fact that this is an unlicensed translation into the amount I decided to contribute. With those factors in mind, paying as much as I would for a true localization seems a bit much to me.

Aroduc posted the project on Kickstarter: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1358146405/romanesque-translation-project It's Little Witch Romanesque. He's asking for $2500, and it's about half funded as of now. As this is one of my favorite VN genres, I'll probably pledge some money myself.

Zalas from encubed seems pretty mellow. VNDB has some strange rules (they're really gung-ho about censorship) but those in charge seem well-intentioned. Moogy is well, Moogy. Responding to intense criticism with aggressiveness is an understandable but probably maladaptive response. Even bullies can make good points, and completely closing oneself off from perceived threats to one's own ideas leads to fanaticism. One of the dangers of the Internet is that it's easier than ever before to surround ourselves with likeminded individuals and forget that alternative schools of thought even exist. This eventually leads to polarized communities that become so self-absorbed they can't even meaningfully communicate with each other anymore (e.g., political parties). Perspective comes from accepting that multiple points of view are necessary to fully understand complex issues.

I already played the demo. That's not the "pirate version" the developers released onto torrent sites (which was supposed to be the topic of this thread).

The original topic is defunct, because no one has provided a working link to the original "pirate version" of the game. I would've played along, but I've already bought the game and I'm playing through normally. It's sufficiently entertaining to justify the $8 investment.

None of your examples are from games. Gaming is a unique market, and VNs are a unique niche of gaming. You can pirate all your music and home movies and the companies can still profit off you, as both media forms have a social event aspect to them (concerts, cinema) that can easily make up the difference. On the other hand, game developers really do depend on consumers actually buying their titles or they'll go broke, especially if they're small. Merchandising could perhaps provide an alternative source of income (likely insufficient to fund development by itself), but I'd rather developers focus on making games rather than cheap gimmick items. I still don't get the mentality that developers must innovate (in ways that don't actually make their games better) or face the massive and contagious apathy of freeloaders, who are perfectly content to offload the burden of funding works they enjoy to a select few diehard fans.

The analogy is more like placing $100 on the ground, pretending to walk away, but actually just hiding around the corner and watching. They uploaded the torrent, but it's not like "uploaded by the developers" was in the title. But along those lines, for those in the know this pirate release is actually an extended 2nd "demo" that arguably is as legitimate as the demo they offer on their site. Of course, they should realize that their stats are only valid for as long as people don't know this is a prank (or a real full version is torrented). This stunt is actually a pretty clever marketing tactic, as people that otherwise would've never tried a game released by a no-name company will hear about the game and potentially become interested enough to buy it. Some people might even pay them $8 for a well-played joke on pirates.

Ignore the word "steal" and they make a pretty good argument about the actual consequences of piracy--for example, that a good title will not sell much more than a mediocre title. We can see this happening in our own backyard with Mangagamer. The caveat is that this dynamic plays out differently in different markets. If your game is mainstream enough, you'll always have havens of consumers that won't pirate your product. But if the market is niche, the target demographic is technologically savvy, and other factors such as latent social stigma are at play, piracy can be game changing.

I was going to use the "pirate" version as a demo. The concept seems interesting, and I might learn something about game development by playing it.

I browsed through some torrents and it seemed like the real version might've been cracked / uploaded. Several fake torrents have already been removed.

Can you give a working magnet link to the pirated version? I might accidentally download the real version.

36 My favorite anime is Elfen Lied. Love it or hate it, Elfen Lied is a shining example that shatters the classic stereotype of anime as kids' cartoons or porn. It's a mature, deeply disturbing tragedy that explores the ugliness of human nature. Not satisfied with simple violence, it takes classic moe tropes and uses them as so many knives to pierce the modern viewer's armor of violence desensitization. The stark contrast of cuteness and violence is masterful and a triumph of the anime medium. At 14 episodes, it's fast-paced, grabbing you and never letting you go with each episode typically ending on a cliff hanger. Extremely polarizing, this is a show you'll either love or hate; there's simply no inbetween. You'll either exalt in the way it toys with your emotions, or you'll find it absolutely revolting. Elfen Lied is cute and violent, romantic and tragic, thoughtful and gratuitous. More than any show, game, or anime I've ever seen, Elfen Lied delightedly revels in contrasts. What are the defining elements of anime? If your answer is sex, violence, and cuteness, then Elfen Lied is the anime that defines anime. 64