Sanahtlig's Corner

Good job.

I was looking forward to reading this since you mentioned it back on the Venus Blood font patch entry.

It's been sitting on LewdGamer's desk for 10 days with no progress, so I decided to go ahead and publish it--especially since the recent controversy over the Ultimate Loli Sim thread (the corresponding personal blog post was also forcibly removed by moderators) and the surrounding toxicity (which is evident in the FuwaHistory thread) puts my future at Fuwanovel in question.  Might as well tie up loose ends just in case.

It still sounds like they are xenophobic to me, especially with comments like these:

 

To be blunt, when we received very early reports of the bug from users we believed to be Chinese, our user support team felt they were really skirting the line with regards to the JP ONLY clause, thinking 'I hope these people are playing within the country.' They puzzled over how to handle the issue.

 

If a user buys a game in Japan, returns to his home country, and plays it on his own PC purely for his own enjoyment--is that ok? Where's the line? As just one company of many in this industry, it's extremely hard to make such a decision.

Why is this even a question? Of course it's okay. They purchased the game didn't they? So they have the right to do whatever the hell they want with it afterwards.

 

Also, I have no idea what is wrong with this:

In the past, certain distributors bought up Japanese eroge and sold them overseas without consulting Japanese developers. This led to an international scandal, causing considerable turmoil within Japan as well. Since then, we've been obligated to display warnings like "For sale in Japan only" during game start-up and on the packaging.

 

So long as the distributors buying up Japanese eroge are buying them and not smuggling them; then there is nothing wrong with them selling them over seas. If a book is released in the US, there is nothing wrong with me buying up a couple hundred copies and reselling them to customers in other countries. 

 

The fact that these issues are even questions in the first place is what is Xenophobic. 

It's important to put his response in the context of the eroge industry as a whole.  His views are decidedly liberal compared to his counterparts at other companies.  The eroge industry itself has decided that eroge should not be sold to foreigners.  By even considering supporting non-Japanese OSs, he risks being shunned by the rest of the industry.  He's taking a real social risk here.  And that's very courageous of him.

Are Japanese the xenophobic ones or are we the ones that forced them to take action against something that used to be normal for them?

I really don't like thinking that the Japanese are just xenophobic, we're a huge part of the problem, we're the ones that overreact and have power over them, that's why they don't want to consider us, because we give them a hard time for it.

I really liked seeing this side of a developer, it really goes to show that it's not just because xenophobia, but because they want to avoid legal trouble we western folks give them.

It's important to put his response in the context of the eroge industry as a whole.  His views are decidedly liberal compared to his counterparts at other companies.  The eroge industry itself has decided that eroge should not be sold to foreigners.  By even considering supporting non-Japanese OSs, he risks being shunned by the rest of the industry.  He's taking a real social risk here.  And that's very courageous of him.

 

My problem isn't with him as an individual (I understand why his position is guarded). But with the industry as a whole. And if his views are "liberal", I would hate to see the conservative views. 

 

I really don't understand what could possibly be bad with expanding to overseas markets. It's obvious there is demand. As companies do they not want money?  

 

What bothers me the most is the irrationality of this collective stance by the industry. 

Because it only takes one "scandal" for everything to be destroyed. And trust me the West is the best at coming up with scandals.

There's demands by fans, but over here you also have all the people who turn games into a political thing and would likely attack many of Japan's games to fill their political agenda.

The west is plagued by people that work for the sole sake of running their mouths over every little thing and turn it into a national issue. Because they have nothing else to do with their lives but to complain, otherwise they have no jobs. Eroge becoming popular here would be like building a huge bait for them.

I'll say it again, all it takes is one game to get enough attention to make the whole company come crumbling down.

We have nothing but our own culture to blame.

And if his views are "liberal", I would hate to see the conservative views. 

I direct you to the feature image.

I really don't understand what could possibly be bad with expanding to overseas markets. It's obvious there is demand. As companies do they not want money?  

 

What bothers me the most is the irrationality of this collective stance by the industry. 

There was a time when the eroge industry did not care about distribution. This was until the "mainstream" Western world 'discovered' eroge and branded it terrible and disgusting. The natural reaction of course is to recoil into their own shell to avoid future incidents/'scandals'. So unfortunately you're putting blame in the wrong place: Reversing this would require a change to reception of eroge overseas, not a change in the attitudes of the Japanese developers.

All of their games contain 2D loli content and let's not forget that a common attitude of people in the west is that this is equivalent to child porn. Being cautious about openly endorsing child porn overseas is practically common sense.

 

The eroge business in general barely functions as is with dozens of companies in danger of closing their doors any minute because of lack of profits. Rocking the boat when the situation is already unstable is most often not the best policy.

 

Companies that can get by on all-ages products could have a chance of thriving overseas but a company like this one where the sex is practically unremovable from the experience is kind of screwed. There's hardly anything to be gained from branching out overseas and it comes with a ton of risk and exposing themselves to scandal. I don't know how opposed they'd be to being picked up for official releases since in that case I think the English release company would sort of act as a middleman to take some of the heat off of them, but without that they're just a big target.

 

In order for circumstances to change the western attitude towards this kind of thing would probably have to change first.

Although now that I actually read the tweets, it's less about him being cautious about the overseas reaction and more like "This is a system that was put in place and is now emposed on us (unofficially or officially and to what extent it's enforced I don't know) and if we don't follow it our company could be looked upon with disdain." and then he goes on to muse about to what extent this 'policy' extends to.

 

I guess it's more complicated that just what each company personally wants to do.

出る杭を打つ is drawn from a Japanese saying that is basically the opposite of the American saying 'the squeaky wheel gets the grease'.  He is taking an even larger risk than Sanahtlig is hinting at by saying this.  Japanese companies in general do not take kindly to their employees putting the company out there on a limb, and the industry already suffered badly as a whole from the infamous Rapelay incident and a number of follow-up incidents. 

 

I don't think those of us over here can really comprehend the pressures the average Japanese companies are under.  For one thing, social pressure can turn into economic pressure with alarming swiftness over there.  For another, Japan is reliant enough on other countries' trade for its survival that these kind of scandals overseas can cause hysterical reactions from their lawmakers.  The eroge industry, being a niche industry by nature, is vulnerable to crackdowns in a way that the car and food production industries aren't.  Since eroge are basically a guilty pleasure and a luxury, there are plenty of lawmakers that wouldn't see a problem with doing away with them if it meant they could improve their own chances of remaining in office.  It isn't like they are universally accepted, even by otakus... so before you criticize eroge-makers for being 'xenophobic', you should at least try to see the bind they are in.

My problem isn't with him as an individual (I understand why his position is guarded). But with the industry as a whole. And if his views are "liberal", I would hate to see the conservative views. 

 

I really don't understand what could possibly be bad with expanding to overseas markets. It's obvious there is demand. As companies do they not want money?  

 

What bothers me the most is the irrationality of this collective stance by the industry. 

 

You should keep in mind that it's the Rapelay incident that caused this whole "Japan only" thing to begin with, and it has nothing to do with Japanese and everything to do with the dumbasses from UK. It's not about them being xenophobic, but about west being openly hostile toward their product.

 

Try looking for a "Japan's Sales Only" label in a game released before 2009 -- you won't find one. This wasn't a thing before the west outright attacked eroge industry. Also, from the way it's worded I'd say the "is that ok? Where's the line?" is a question that's partly directed at you, the west, as in: will you come with burning stakes at our door again if someone has brought home a game he bought in our country?

 

What we need is to make west accept the concept of visual novel and eroge, and the "Japan Sales Only" label will swiftly go away. No one's so xenophobic here as to ignore profit, as long as it doesn't mean you're gonna end up lynched for it ( ). How would you fix this is beyond me though, eroge aren't particularly respected in Japan either. Aaah, just remembering that RapeLay debocle fills me with so much rage... It's as if some ppl exist solely for the purpose of ruining good things.

Otherwise, yeah, what Clephas said.

出る杭を打つ is drawn from a Japanese saying that is basically the opposite of the American saying 'the squeaky wheel gets the grease'.  

"The nail that sticks out gets hammered down." (Source)

 

This is actually a fairly well-known Japanese proverb, enough so that an English spin-off was created.

Thanks for the explanations everybody. I didn't realize that Western media outrage had so much to do with this. Or rather, I knew such incidents happened; but I didn't know it had such a tremendous effect. 

"Try looking for a "Japan's Sales Only" label in a game released before 2009 -- you won't find one. This wasn't a thing before the west outright attacked eroge industry."

 

You're wrong. "Japan only" warnings have been around for a very long time. Maybe not as prevalent, but certain companies have had this attitude since forever. The issue isn't exactly xenophobic, but certainly there is fear involved on the developer side. Justified or not, it was there before the Rapelay scandal.