Leaderboard

I try to make sure that I read every comment that I can on here, and I can guarantee that I understand the position that you and Sol Press are in. Hopefully, I can provide you guys with some information real quick, and be as open as possible! In terms of licensing, this is something we've even discussed with different partners of ours. We are still small, so it is difficult to actually acquire anything substantial. The titles we have though mean the world to us, and we wouldn't have picked them up if we didn't like them. It's a growing game, so hopefully, in a few years you'll see us up near the top. For Kickstarters, I have the exact same worries as most of you. Translation quality, becoming reliant on Kickstarter, and reliability are all issues that are currently plaguing the industry. I personally have read each and every complaint about the translation quality of Sakura Sakura. We hesitated to release a Kickstarter Update until just a few days ago because there were so many changes happening each and every day in Sol Press to fix this. It was literally a "Let's wait until tomorrow to announce this because this is happening tomorrow also" that would repeat every day. In the Kickstarter update, we addressed the issue of translation quality by doing the following: We brought on more experienced translators (TBAC and Ningen) to assist with the translation. We also brought on two very experienced proofreaders and beta testers, Kitty-tama and Haerts (whose names I think most of you will recognize). To address issues of becoming reliant on Kickstarter, we've already begun projects that are not reliant on Kickstarter. We don't plan on announcing any of them through until they're much closer to release, but I can guarantee you it is something we want to move away from in the future. In summary: We'll get bigger titles as we slowly grow our name, but in our personal beliefe, each one of our titles is special and worth a read. I personally read all the criticism I can find, even if it hurts. We're actively taking steps to improve on our weaknesses. We're going to be moving away from Kickstarter, although the first few Kickstarters are to Kickstart the company as a whole. They help to build a rhythm and structure our deadlines/timeframes. alice is super cute. I've always been available on Discord for any DM's. If you see an issue arising at our company, please let me know! It's a lot easier to fix issues before it becomes ingrained in company culture than after. I also want to point out that we are trying to identify issues we see are arising as well. An example would be honorifics. To help alleviate this issue, I came up with the idea of a honorifics toggle system. Our surveys have pointed out that there is a large demographic that was being ignored with this. 13% of readers prefer no honorifics, while 54% prefer honorifics (33% don't care). Our entire goal is to make reading visual novels a more pleasant experience. From our review poll, this was a highly utilized and appreciated mechanic. If anyone sees other similar issues, please let me know and we'll try to brainstorm solutions!

For people who like it. Like me.

We're on track for a December digital release for Sakura Sakura (with physical goods following early January). I'm glad you guys are excited about Newton! We've all had our eyes on this for a long time, the op drew our attention to it right away.

The scales have fallen from my eyes.

I take it you've never played Saya no Uta?

That's one hell of a master's thesis

There are many kinds of tentacle rape, there's probably one for you as well.

Nah, that might have something to do with it, but that's not the real reason. The real reason is it was a workaround for Japanese censorship laws. See, back in the 80's censorship was much worse than it is now. Really old h-ovas would have the whole cock disappear or turn into a vague white outline during a blowjob, for example. Male-female penetration and pubic hair were the big things, though. The key thing is that technically, a tentacle is not a male sex organ. So you could have 100% uncensored tentacle scenes in your h-ova, with no legal problems, but you couldn't show vanilla consensual sex without censoring the heck out of it. That is the real reason tentacle rape became "a thing".

Well they just finished their first kickstarter successfully a few months ago and i just noticed this announcement http://solpress.co/projects/newton/ I could only go 'the f*ck?' when i saw the title lol Kickstarter scheduled for 1st December

I'd still really recommend setting the Kickstarter updates to public. It's a good idea to let as many people as possible see this type of news in as many outlets as you can. It's also easier for me to just find the Kickstarter, and I'm pretty lazy : P As Silvz said, linking to your dev blog is not against the rules. As long as you don't spam the link in multiple threads over and over and over again without contributing anything else, I can guarantee that you have nothing to worry about. Might want to do a quick read through of Fuwa's rules, btw, if you haven't already. Only other relevant rules that might affect you guys, besides spam (which I doubt you'd even come close to violating), would be posting embedded NSFW content in the forums, and the loli/shota rules. I'd hope you wouldn't post torrents or other illegal content, considering what your business is I don't even tell most of my friends that I watch normal anime, man Publicly confirming I like anniemay tiddies would be unimaginable. I hope that develops. I'm definitely not alone in preferring a non-Steam distribution platform. I don't expect anything anytime soon, considering how new you guys are, but I hope you invest in that eventually.

I've been reading all your comments too and I think any points I could raise were dealt already in some way. Let's wait and see what will happen in the next episodes.

If anything, the titles Sol Press have been able to obtain indicate that they have a short reach when it comes to licensing deals. I think that they'd most likely be unable to obtain a license for a 07th Expansion VN, considering that both titles Sol Press have snapped up aren't very popular at all. Now, that relies on 07th Expansion asking for more for a license than companies like Hiqo Soft and Laplacian, but considering that the former has actual name recognition and a series of popular titles and the latter don't (at least in the west, anyway), that's almost guaranteed. MG is making actual progress on their backlog, and I wouldn't really say that's a factor against new acquisitions. All the major TL companies are making new licensing deals pretty much all the time, regardless of their release backlog. Hell, look at Sekai's backlog. I'd still recommend communicating to MG that you're interested in newer titles like Trianthology. No, you're not wrong, but Sekai has a track record of decent to great TLs. With the experiences I've had, if Sekai Project was just starting up now, I'd say the exact same things about them that I'm saying about Sol Press. There's no reason to assume that companies like Sol Press and OG Sekai Project are competent and will provide good products, and placing your trust in them is like playing Russian roulette with your wallet, you just have to hope that they aren't lying, that they aren't incompetent, and that they have the skills needed to deliver a quality translation. Pre-ordering VNs is bad for the exact same reasons that pre-ordering traditional video games is bad: it encourages bad business practices and is typically a bad deal for the consumer. I'm not advocating not giving them a chance, I'm saying there's no reason to throw money at them without results first. Ultimately, your money is your money, and you're free to do what you want with it, but all actions have effects. That's not what I said, though. I'm saying that people in this community should be more wary instead of just tossing money at every VN translation company that exists. More titles translated is always good, but I don't think it's worth it if they're poorly translated, because that almost always means that we'll never get a better one. After Libra, Taisho x Alice, and most of all, Moenovel, I really wouldn't suggest that being skeptical about new players in the industry is such a horrible thing. Feel free to imply that I'm a jaded, awful Negative Nancy, I really don't care. Doesn't really bother me in the slightest I never claimed to be an optimist.

Sorry, dude, but no less than Toshio Maeda, the creator of Urotsukidoji (which literally invented tentacle porn) has denied this: Edit: I might have been off on the timeline, and the specific detail about censorship in early H-OVAs might have been incorrect. But the anime version of Urotsukidoji came out around the same time as the manga. And the creators of tentacle porn have said quite clearly that they were covered by the censorship rules, and that's why tentacles came into existence. And censorship also clearly used to be much more extensive than it is now. Nowadays it's common to find stuff so minimally censored it might as well not even be censored at all.

That is an Internet myth that became popular because it provides simple answers for something most people can't understand, but it is actually not true. Censorship was very lax in the 80s. The reason for this is that home video anime was still a new medium and hentai as a genre wasn't yet as pornographic as it is today, so the creators didn't know yet how they should apply these censorship laws that initially were invented for 3DPD porn. Tentacles back then were uncensored, but so were also vulvas and other things without a pornographic context. That changed a few years later when hentai became mainstream and censorship was enforced vehemently. Not only needed human genitals to be censored, vaginal and phallic objects, like tentacles, had to be censored too. Tentacles being a workaround for censorship laws is therefore nonsensical. There were no need and when the need arose, tentacles too were victims of it. Also, littleshogun already provided a source showing that tentacles were part of Japanese erotography for a long time already, so tentacles becoming a "thing" in the 80s couldn't have been true anyway. That was for aesthetic reasons since mosaics are ugly. For some reasons the perception of this changed in the later 90s, but that has nothing to do with censorship either.

Don't ask me why I quoted you like that. I, uh, kinda derped.

You memer, you

I think you just won the internet, sir. Dude, are you new in the internet? You know what, nevermind, stay pure, don't ask these questions, it's better for you. nnnnnn, putting the thread back on track, sometimes I'm the mood for really unusual things, tentacle on male is nice.

The logic is faulty. If a person who tends to dislike moege likes one, then it may very well mean it's not all that good at being a moege.

I want to read this thesis holy shit

I really have to do this…

I'm very proud of it. I'm actually trying to expand it into a PHD project nowadays, with mixed results, but I should be able to pull it off with sheer persistence (even if I'm too dumb to create an actual academic career for myself). :3

Vanadis mostly produces vanilla h games, though. To be honest, I prefer the corruptive or otherworldly aspects. That said, there's not that many games, where tentacles are either eldritch manifestations or creations brought through human sins/greed/destructive behaviour, as in tampering with powers that are beyond their control.

This is just my thoughts on the matter... Tentacle H and tentacle rape (consensual exists, in some VNs) is all about the defiling/tainting/corrupting of humanity by the obviously inhuman. Since some of my tendencies head in that direction (I like the Vanadis monster girl VNs) I can theorize... I've also played several games of the type, primarily the Venus Blood games and a few Black Cyc games back in the day. For the most part, whenever tentacles get involved, it seems that character corruption accompanies it as a set, regardless of consensual or non-consensual aspects. Edit: This is rather obviously illustrated by the fact that females that are normally associated with 'purity' or high culture tend to be the majority targets of tentacle rape... Mahou shoujo, princess knights, princesses, exorcist miko girls... etc etc.

Like everything it is white people at fault, Japan used to freely show dicks in its' porn, it wasn't until the Meiji Restoration (aka let's be a European colonial power) that porn was frowned upon. It got worse when America occupied the country and further stigmatized porn, but as we all know the power of boners would not be stopped. The desire to get around censorship laws that were put into place to copy western culture, plus a complete lack of understanding behind the reasoning of these laws, is why censorship in Japan is a mess of contradiction and nonsense.

As for who, obviously it was for the people who like that although apparently in Japan it was one of well known fetish. The reason was apparently because some of the men was like to read the work with woman getting raped by something non human, and so some company do their best to fulfill that niche. There's also a fact that this fetish was already exist since back at 18th century in one of Japanese portrait (Called Ukiyo-e), and apparently there's a manga that popularized tentacle rape there - the reason for tentacle was because the author want to get around the censorship law which censored penetration by penis.

I really "loved" Fal's route because of how very different it was I was really taken in by her character from the get go so I was floored when her betrayal finally hit me. I love when something affects you like that. It was like Jade Empire all over again. I didn't even see it coming that's the best part. Anyway, I felt the final ending was like a nice cherry put on a delicious but tear drenched cake. Plus the last song was just wonderful.

Syuji Asanaga Role: Multidirectional drill (Including heroines from the waist down)

It doesn't have to be a fap emote per say. I would be happy with something like this?

This is a tale of chips, bugs and DEATH. Enjoy: Last week I had the joy of seeing a cockroach in my bathroom. My reaction was obviously to scream, shut the bathroom door and flee into my bedroom, where I remained for 30 minutes, stunned by fear. After playing with the idea of never ever setting foot in my bathroom again, I thought to myself: "No! I have to man up and fight this thing!" Grabbing a plastic bag, I rushed into the bathroom, ready to trap the fucker and throw him in the garbage. But... he was gone. Now, there is absolutely nowhere he could have gone. My bathtub is stuck to the floor, so there is no crack to hide under, and I looked all over the tiny, tiny bathroom and he wasn't hiding on the ceiling, or in some corner. He was legit gone. This of course made chills run through my body, as I thought I had found a cockroach with superpowers. Scared to death, I went back to cowering in fear for another good 10 minutes, before I decided to just stop thinking about the fucker. I started brushing my teeth, getting ready for bed. Then, as I spat into the sink, and the toothpaste ran down into the drain, I saw something rush past me. Turns out, the cockroach had fled into the pipes, then hooked onto the pipes and sat in there. (They can do this with their hind legs, apparently.) The fucker was back, and he was almost touching me. Screaming, I ran out of the bathroom and grabbed whatever I could find that could be used to trap the fucker with. And there was... an empty pringles tube. I ripped the lid of the thing and slammed it onto the cockroach, trapping him inside the tube. Luckily, the roach was just perfectly sized to fit within the dimensions of a pringles tube, so no part of him was sticking out. I had him completely trapped. Rushing back into the bedroom, I grabbed another plastic bag and some duct tape. I then tried to push the roach into the plastic bag, but he almost escaped as I tilted the tube, so I had to improvise. Pushing the plastic bag against the tube, I stopped the roachs' escape, and shoved him further into the pitch black abyss. Once the whole bag was inside the tube, I taped it shut with duct tape, and threw that into another plastic bag. After a short victory dance, I brought the bag containing the defeated roach outside, and threw it into the garbage. Derg 1 Roach 0 - Fin -

There will be!

Well, thing is, you have no way of telling if that's true, and the record tells us that in fact it most likely is not. As wary as you may be, there is certain malware that is simply unavoidable. Fortunately, we are not its target. Let's see, for the sake of an example, do you remember all the fuss Stuxnet made in 2012? That is deemed to be the greatest known endeavor to date in malware development, exploiting up to 4 zero-day vulnerabilities. FYI a zero-day vulnerability is an exploit the software company itself is not even aware of yet. They're obviously really difficult to find, and ludicrously expensive to buy, yet Stuxnet made use of 4. Well, when shit like that comes to light you realize that in all likelihood every system in the world is infected in one way or another. Even intelligence agencies put malware into commercial software. Ask Snowden about all that.

It's bad.

A terrible betrayal, the likes of which you've never ever seen!

I will make no effort in grandstanding by trying to defend my position by conjuring up some elaborate excuse, I simply like h-scenes because I'm a horny bastard. I've recently gotten allot of shit for rating some eroge higher than story centric visual novels on vndb. No, I don't think Funbag Fantasy has a better story than Kara no Shoujo, but they weren't aiming for the same goals. You can't rate a comedy on the same grounds as a action film, just as you can't yell at Stephen Hawking for being shit at baseball. I know that isn't what this topic is about, but I wanted to preemptively explain that before getting to the meat of the matter. The real question is how to feel about sex scenes in story focused visual novels. Well personally I like them, I'm the type of person that after becoming a fan of characters in fiction I look up fanfiction and doujin about them fucking. Having the porn in the source material beforehand is something I find incredibly convenient and a major time saver. Do I expect people to be fine with this? Absolutely not and I completely understand why people would dislike these elements in visual novels. Not everyone has a masturbation addiction to help deal with the condition known as "living", some people drink alcohol instead...... or they just like a great story to distract them from life. I find the question of whether "sex" can be used effectively as a narrative tool to be an interesting one. It's pretty common for people to cry out that an H-scene is "unrealistic", which always baffled me. We don't cry fowl when a FPS doesn't include a 40+ hour rehabilitation simulator after the player character is shot and no one complains that half of rom-coms don't end with a sloppy divorce. Fiction will always contradict reality on some level. I have never believed that a sex scene in any medium was "realistic" aside from Harry Turtledove books and quite frankly it kinda sucks. Realistic depictions of sex without dramatic flourishes are no different from depicting eating a meal or getting over a cold, it's just another boring part of life. Would I like more story centric visual novels with sex scenes integrated better in their plots? Absolutely, but as I stated before it's not that easy. Sex is a relatively boring act as a plot device, without going into FSN territory and inviting contrived reasons sex is required, it can only be used as a plot device in stories of youthful indiscretion, Romeo/Juliet rip-offs, and stories of jealously. In all three instances sex isn't even necessarily required and could be substituted with something else. Sex isn't as big as a deal as society makes it. Oddly enough I think the horrible act of rape is a much better plot device and something that society needs to be better and handling. This act of abject evil opens the door to a menagerie of storytelling opportunities, however if the writer isn't incredibly skilled and knowledgeable it will come across as a cheap shock tactic that is "trying too hard".

One should keep in mind that just because a certain contribution to the story could be made without the use of H-Scenes does not mean the H-Scenes are unnecessary, for by that logic, most things are unnecessary. Just because I am the author of "Gadsby" (which I am not) that does not mean the letter 'e' is unneeded. Take into account games like Grisaia no Kajitsu and G-Senjou no Maou (which is actually a bad example because no official 18+ version exists), where the act is meant to display the emotions and scars of the characters. How you evaluate the H-Scene will then depend on the execution. If it devolves into a fairly normal H-Scene with the occasional mention of the character's emotions, then it may be failing to create a scene that meaningfully contributes to the story, instead creating some fan service (which can also be done badly, as Fate/stay night and Key VN's tend to demonstrate). If it devolves into Gahkthun and every line is a metaphor or euphemism used to describe the character's emotions, then it probably is making a greater contribution to the story than the former situation. By my evaluation, Grisaia and G-Senjou are both more interested in providing good H material to the reader than developing its characters, because they certainly wouldn't need scenes that extensive for the latter. But as a wise someone once said somewhere: "Why not both?" H-Scenes can also be used to characterise characters in ways specific to sex. In Majikoi and its sequels a lot of characters have specific traits that they only display during the deed, and, in that sense, contribute to the character. These would not manifest themselves if all we had was an "and then sex happened" line*, or if there was no sex at all. Of course, these don't quite contribute to the overall story/plot in most cases (though it depends). Margit's route in S (which, to be fair, isn't very good by most accounts) is entirely dominated by sex, and could not be done any other way -- more fitting for a nukige, really. *Even if mentioned in conversation afterwards, the "show, don't tell" adage would dictate that explicitly writing the H-Scenes would be the best approach in these cases. In Moege and certain Charage, where characters and their interactions ARE the plot, H-Scenes can obviously have a greater impact and contribute to the "story" in different ways. This is not always the case -- certain Yuzosoft VN's and the already mentioned Chrono Clock have a plot that supports the story by itself, and is not simply characters doing random stuff every day. Of course, if you've played a Yuzosoft VN you would know that in these cases the H-Scenes are very much fan service, and represent both a culmination of a relationship (sometimes -- exaggeration and blatant pandering in most routes creates and obviously unauthentic and fan service-y scenario) and a means to reward the reader after the considerable hours of investment already put in. In fact, representing a relationship between two characters of ages around 18 without H-Scenes could seem out of place. Keeping in mind that everyone is different, most romantic relationships include sex at some point, and people around this age have, allegedly, more interest in the act. It also provides Of course, none of these require explicitly written out H-Scenes, and mere mentions could and should be sufficient. By generalising my personal experience, it's in this latest sense that I appreciate H-Scenes. That is also why I skip the meat of them, as, from my point of view, their presence is necessary but depictions of them not quite. I remember how Brighter than Dawning Blue lacked H-Scenes, and that severely hampered my enjoyment. The characters had very little apparent displays of affection, and too late into the routes. Despite their age, displays of affection consisted, at most, of holding hands or being shy. The route might culminate on a kiss! Obviously, that by itself isn't a problem, some routes in Clannad or Little Busters! are similar. I imagine the problem arouse from the fact that the story had little more to offer than the character's relationships, and that the route I read, in particular, was about a more standoffish character. My interests don't align, so I'm not well-versed on this topic, but the exploration of certain fetishes, such as sado-masochism, could in themselves be the topic the VN explores. Assuming most fetishes create emotions other than simple sexual excitement, these are topics that could be contemplated in VNs, and would necessitate semi-explicit scenes. Cute Demon Crashers! has a scene lightly exploring one, and due to how the VN is executed, all sexual acts in this VN, although explicit, are extremely tactful, and the culmination of the story (which would technically be a nukige, maybe?). Yume Miru Kusuri is, I think, perhaps my best counter-argument to allegations that explicit H-Scenes add little value to Visual Novels that aren't focused on sex. The visual novel is about indulgence, youthful indiscretions, vice, drugs, pregnancy, and bullying. So yes, not your run-of-the-mill affair, but it should be credible that even more explicit H-Scenes could meaningfully contribute to these themes. School Days is another good example, if you can be convinced that it isn't a nukige. I don't believe endings where where the protagonist essentially prostitutes himself, or endings where multiple relationships are tolerated because of his bed skills could be quite as effective without depictions of the act. I'll also take a moment to mention Rance and its particular brand of disagreeable comedy, one that results from having a protagonist so dastardly and outside the norm. A form of black comedy that necessitates at least some explicit scenes to drive the point home and is unafraid of tackling many sexual matters in both comedic and serious manner. All this said... I will concede most H-Scenes exist to provide fan service and check a checkbox. That checkbox that lets them put X-Rated on their game boxes.

There are some places where having an H-scene is appropriate, but a lot of games simply throw a scene in for no other reason than "it's an eroge must have sex" as far as I can tell. I wouldn't mind giving H-scenes the fade-to-black treatment, though even that has its time and place.

While I agree on the overall point, I have to mention Grisaia no Kajitsu as an example for this exact thing here:

I'm a pretty wierd VN reader as I don't really care for H-scenes, at least hentai as such simply doesn't do it for me and is usually inserted in ways that rather hurts than add to the narrative. Same goes to milder fanservice in many VNs and anime, it's simply so superficial and dumb that it takes me out of the experience. I think that its just as much about culture as it is about negative tropes within the genre and looking for broad appeal - some people expect fanservice and actively look for it, even outside of straight up "adult" titles, so it ends up being pushed into everything. Still, I'm not a prude, especially when sexual content uses well written text rather than just explicit visuals and has clear reason for being there, I can enjoy it a lot. Especially yuri, as I find it much cutter and more interesting than straight sex scenes. In one of my favorite yuri VNs, Love Ribbon, theres a pretty explicit masturbation scene, that still manages to fit very well with the theme (a lesbian discovering her sexuality) and acts as an important plot device. When it's done like that, I can't complain, but it's a bit rare IMO.