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We're gonna build our own recommendations chart, and make r/visualnovels pay for it!

I kind of wish they hadn't done this. "Illegal or trolling" is too low a baseline for admission onto the world's probably most influential and popular video game marketplace. It's this very stance that got games literally about shooting LGBT+ people and the like onto Steam. (And the fact that Valve removes (some) of such games upon public outcry doesn't redeem its appearance on the store in the first place.) It's too easy to disseminate bigoted content this way, and all Valve needed to do was to create a policy that says "Games made for the purpose of mocking a(n oppressed) demographic, or games that endorse such content, are not allowed on Steam.". Steam is not the entire internet. If someone's just fucking dying to distribute racist, homophobic or sexist games, there are other avenues. Steam doesn't have to, and in my opinion, mustn't give a platform to such games. Steam isn't responsible for giving every single game a fair chance. And, of course, any actual quality vetting policy would also catch the myriad asset flips, barebones Unity turds, shovelware and copyright-infringing works. But I'm honestly more miffed about the political angle (a game called Feminazi: The Triggering doesn't really have a right to be put on the Steam storefront).

I feel that this stance would have more merit if we didn't already have half a decade of exactly that. And we've seen the outcome: Massive oversaturation that hurts indie games, an entire culture of asset flips, a failed attempt at implementing user curation (Greenlight) that was perhaps due to the environment fostered by Valve's hands-off approach in the first place, outright bigoted games (anyone remember Slave Tetris?). Especially seeing as there are already huge swathes of the gaming community who are the sort of people who raise hell over a woman on a game cover or who stir shit the moment a gay character appears in a game, I'd say we've seen enough to know that neither the developers nor the consumers have the sense to fully regulate themselves in this regard (Bloodbath Kavkaz was greenlit), both in terms of the quality of the games on the store, and in terms of not promoting bigotry. There isn't much that the free market can do to decide right now. Many people don't know GOG or itch.io even exist, and even if they did, in terms of game availability, local pricing, networking (GOG's only recently rolled out a profile system) and other factors, nothing faces up to Steam. The only way to see if the market decides one way or the other is to make Steam implement curation and see how that affects the industry. Not that I believe following the money trail is necessarily the most wise, helpful or ethical choice in this regard.

Just talk shit about every single mod and all of their insane awful decisions here tbh. This site is dead and everything is a garbage fire. Bring Aaeru and lolis back.

As a philosophical stance, I find Valve's policy brief interesting. They're basically taking a hands-off libertarian approach, presuming that the market will sort itself out if the proper filtering tools are provided. Applied to the market as a whole, I find this viewpoint irresponsible--regulation and quality standards are necessary to prevent predatory practices and exploitation--but for a video game store it could be appropriate. We have curated alternatives, so there's no reason to cry 'the sky is falling' over an ideological experiment. Let the market decide whether it wants an uncurated store.

For those of you out of the loop, a couple of years ago @TexasDice (known for never changing his avatar,) made a thread stating that he would use a different avatar for X* weeks, IF Maitetsu would recieve an uncut 18+ release. He thought this would never happen. Hah. Well, jokes on him, because it is happening. (This month.) * He is going to use the new avatar for 1 week for each user who bet against him. The number of people is 19, so he will be using it for 19 weeks. The people who bet against him: So, this brings us to the point of this thread. Like Texas stated in his thread, the avatar he'll be using will be chosen by the community in the form of a poll. So, let's get some suggestions in here, then we can make a poll with the suggestions and pick a beautiful avatar for him! Just remember that the avatar needs to comply with Fuwanovel's avatar guidelines. So keep the memes within those rules.

No. I realize some people might be a little confused about what this thread is meant to do. To quote Down for those who haven't actually read the thread's first post: In addition, here is a snippet from the Forum Rules: In general, try to keep the above posts in mind for next time when deciding whether you should bump this thread or contact a moderator about the situation. (Most of the time you will be better off going for the latter.) On topic, I personally like to let users know when I hide their content, however the specific case in question had a certain user trolling, and other people quoting/ replying to him then also had their content hidden. In these cases, it can be hard to let everyone know that they had their content hidden, especially when many people join in. Like Palas said though, in those situations a simple "stop it" message from a mod goes a long way. That is something we can look into doing more often, so people don't make the situation worse by posting again, thinking it was some kind of mistake/ bug.

Let me take this idea one step further: Anything besides one-sided curation by Steam itself is going to fail miserably, no matter the tools. Why? Because this sexist/racist/homophobic/"hurrrr SJWs" games trend originates from within the gaming community itself. It's ingrained into the damn culture. People who publish moral turds (again, Slave Tetris) aren't outspoken outcasts. What they do is condoned, supported and disseminated in countless gaming circles. The principle of free speech was established to protect people who were under threat from those in power for their opinions. Now it's being used to legitimize acts of silencing the very people free speech was intended to protect. I believe the "censorship" argument is invalid for this very reason.

However it is possible. Like with any development you work within the device's limitations. If you have a low resolution feature phone maybe you should not write a 100 hour visual novel with long-ass lines. Something like pokemon on GBA has a fine looking text box. I think you can make a visual novel work just fine with that size of a box or maybe move to NVL format instead of ADV if not. I also don't think that anyone would read a visual novel for many hours on a phone but it would be every now and then and the visual novel should be adapted to a format that makes it work. Do not think how the CURRENT visual novels are but how the visual novels COULD BE DEVELOPED for a feature phone.

Well if Fuwa does one too, I'd happily support it as well.

I guess I, quite impossibly, agree with both you and @Funyarinpa to a certain degree. From an absolutely selfish perspective, I'm very happy about this policy because I don't see any other situation in which VNs are allowed to thrive on Steam. Beyond just the fact of having porn, Japanese eroge have tons on questionable content. If Valve wanted to make some reasonable curation policy against offensive/morally dubious games, VNs would be under fire literally all of the time and many publishers would just leave the platform. For our little niche, anarchy is the most desirable state of affairs IMO. On the other hand, I agree that giving space for racist, scummy, offensive games can backfire both against games in general and Steam in particular. Plus if Valve wants to actually give us good tools for filtering content, they will have to make major modifications to how their platform works, including forcing publishers to properly describe and categorize their own games and disclose any kind of questionable content. I would more likely expect them to do something half-assed, for example filtering based on user tags. There's a good chance that the means Valve is willing to take won't change much, while all kind or scum will be encouraged to create borderline-troll games and given a platform. Long-term consequences of this might be further normalization of all kind of fringe bigotry that would normally be contained to certain 4chan boards or other cesspools of the internet. In the end, do I trust Valve to decide what is "right" and "wrong" without fucking over the things I personally like and perceive as completely harmless? Can an incest porn VN such as Love Ribbon thrive in a world where Steam is properly curated? Probably no. Maybe I'm just that cynical, but if I have to chose between easy access to my favorite entertainment niche and good of the society as whole, I will chose my 2D waifus. *shrug*

I don't see what the issue with this approach is. An excessive number of games are released every day (this, of course, includes many which the vast majority of people, anywhere, would not consider buying - troll games, asset flips). Steam has made it a policy to allow every game to stand on its shelves. The closest to 'equal opportunity' they will get, and in my eyes, a good thing. However, this remains an excessive number of titles released daily. I will not insist that curation of these releases is impossible or unfeasible, but I do see it as wasted effort. Unlike a physical retail store, which has a limited number of shelves, Steam is a digital one. It has (for all practical purposes) infinite shelves, and virtually infinite games to go with them. Browsing habits in each store cannot be compared. Because Steam is digital, popular things will float up to the bigger shelves at the front, and ignored things will float down into the abyss of the warehouse. But, every single game is tagged, and these tags link games, meaning you can always pull games of a certain genre back up from the abyss. It is not impossible to browse Steam, and I daresay it does provide some fairly good recommendations. Even if I do get an asset flip or AIDS game put in front of me during my search, I can simply ignore and move on instead of making a video about it, sharing it* or whatever. There's so much stuff on Steam I probably won't see them again. I find that Steam does provide a decent browsing experience, so long as I keep in mind that I cannot see everything, and that Steam accepts everything (or it tries to, at least). And this seems to be the crux of the matter. People like to shout a lot about asset flips and troll games, but the issue they actually have is with a storefront that accepts all. Because 'all' includes bad games. I mean, maybe the storefront would be marginally better without hundreds of non-games being submitted all the time, but curation of said games will end up as a number of work hours wasted, when it could instead sink to the bottom of the store by itself when people ignore the game or refund it. Good games will drown because there are too many games. Of course they will. They'd also be dead in the water if Steam didn't exist or if they had to sell the game on their own. They can try other, more curated platforms. Still unpopular? That happens. The storefront will generally not bring success by itself, though it can. So you want Steam to accept only the 'good' games. Time to formalise 'good' then. A possible issue is that so many games (and non-games) are only made because Steam accepts them all. I can see there being some element of this. This is one criticism of the approach I don't mind. *Which might cause said game to gain popularity, have people visit its page, and have it re-enter the recommendation algorithms. Good job! I would, however, like to hear other opinions on this. Steam allowing everything has always seemed like an undeniably good thing to me that I am incredibly surprised to see so much hate for the policy. I imagine my viewpoint may be limited or skewered as a result, and would love to discuss this topic a bit. On the topic of VNs on Steam, I am not sure they have the systems to properly host what is effectively pornography on their storefront. For now. I imagine things will probably stay as all ages versions until they decide to try and create a system for more pornographic titles, which they might not ever do.

He gets his shirt back later ;D

Of course they did. There specifically was a huge clusterfuffle over 'anime games' not even a month before this was announced. This is as close to them publicly addressing that controversy as we're likely ever to see.

My top Ten VN Routes (regardless of heroine quality). This list is not in any particular order. 1. Evolimit Shizuku Route- With three great endings, heroism and redemption in spades, and villainy on a universal scale... it just doesn't get better than this. I cried, I cheered, I rejoiced, and I was satisfied. 2. Reminiscence Aki's Route- Best imouto route ever. The twisted relationship between the protagonist and Aki and the hidden feelings involved... 3. Hikoukigumo no Mukougawa, Eiri's route- Probably one of the single deepest, most powerful charage routes I've ever encountered, with the single best charage ending I've ever read. 4. Akeiro Kaikitan, Velvet's ending- Velvet is an individual who has suffered more than most people can comprehend, and she wants nothing more than to be able to die. I loved how this path played out, and though the ending is bittersweet, the sweet part is so good that I couldn't help but name this one of my top VN routes. 5. Konata yori Kanata Made, Christel's path (good or normal ending) - Konata yori Kanata Made is considered to be one of the top utsuge of all time, and Christel's path is the one that defines the game, for better or worse. The sense of deep sadness and resignation that defines much of this VN is obvious in this path, and I can still cry just remembering it. 6. Dies Irae, Marie's or Rea's path- I had to say it. 7. Vermilion Bind of Blood, Sheryl's path- It was a fight between this one and Ariya's path... but most people who read this VN will probably find this path to be fascinating. The protagonist is perhaps the most himself in this path and the Grand route (and I have mixed feelings about the ending of the Grand Route, despite how exhilarating it was). It is also nice and bloody, and it is the only route where Sheryl faces her personal demons... and big ones they are. 8. Semiramis no Tenbin, Ami's route- Just describing Ami, you would normally find it hard to empathize with her. She is manipulative, controlling, and vindictive. She doesn't trust rules or authority figures, and she absolutely loathes situations where she isn't in control. However, she is also a powerful character whose route is equally powerful. 9. Haruka ni Aogi, Uruwashi no Tonoko's route- This route is a rather beautiful progression through the process of an emotionally-scarred pair building trust between one another, progressing from a teacher-student relationship, to that of a father and a daughter, to that of lovers. It is beautifully paced, emotionally powerful, and a path I remember vividly whenever I start to lose faith in VNs. 10. Silverio Trinity, Grand Route- Honestly, though I loved Vendetta's route in Silverio Vendetta, this route felt like me to be a stronger climax in some ways. It was either this one or Vendetta's route in this spot, and I honestly had to think about it.

Hmmm. Tough one to answer. I'm just going to list them but not in order as that'd be too difficult Haruka route - Little Busters: This route really hit me on a personal level. I thought she was just a pest and silly, but that wound up being a really wrong impression. I do think the route was a bit overdone to elicit feels, but even so the themes it touched on and the struggles she had to face had me riveted to my seat for a long while, and left me thinking about the route even months later. Sasami route - Little Busters: As with the Haruka route, this route really hit me on a personal level. I really liked her whole "OHOHOHOHO" ojousama schtick throughout the VN and when it came to her route I didn't know what to expect, so when things started happening I was really really hit hard. True route - Steins;Gate: This was really well done. Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works (plus Sunny Day ending). I had a bit of a love/hate relationship with UBW, having watched the anime and thought it was too convoluted, then going back and reading the VN and all three routes in order. It's my favorite route in FS/N though, for a couple of reasons. I'm biased towards tsunderes (especially those with twintails) but Tohsaka is a great example. Not just that but the route itself feels pretty balanced IMO, and the action and events strike the right mix of feels + action + philosophy, where I felt Heaven's Feel went over the top. As for Sunny Day - I don't really like the main ending (it feels kind of just "there" to me) so while Sunny Day is far shorter and less descriptive I thought it made sense even if it is a bit cliche in the end. Koi to Senkyo to Chocolate - Chisato route: This might be a bit controversial but I liked the route and Chisato herself (again, twintail tsundere :D). I'd say most of the characters were pretty well done, but between the VN's focus on Chisato and the "hook" they used, I felt was unique and well done without going too far off the rails. That hook, especially, touched on a few themes that I felt were poignant, and though I wasn't entirely happy with the execution it still was a pretty solid, enjoyable, and memorable route.

I think I'm late in your time zone, but Happy Birthday to @Freestyle80.

Welcome and bienvenue to fuwanovel, at this point, i've ran out of ideas to great people, so, let's just say. Rock & Roll baby!

Meh, if I would argue for Sakura games being deleted it'd be only because of the shitty behaviour of Winged Cloud. Ecchi shovelware, as much as we might hate it, have full right to exist - after all, JP VNs market is full of trashy porn and fanservice VNs too. And it's not like Sakura Santa is in any way more inappropriate than most eroge - actually, all Sakura games are very vanilla, I have yet to find one with which I'd have actual issues beyond it being an uninspired, poorly written piece of trash. I'm not sure what would happen, however, if the broader public actually knew what's hidden behind the 18+ patches of most Japanese titles available on Steam.

Not enough trains in these options.

>texas has literally already addressed mosaics Further proof that nobody actually reads things As for avatar suggestions...

After seeing the post above, it remind me that I need to finished Yuzuyu's route and finally going to read Misakichi's route. I'll play Fureraba as soon as possible, Recently I just finished Eden, and from what I see it did good enough job to convey what minori want to tell. It's an utsuge like I said earlier, and especially so While I say that minori did a good job especially with the art, unfortunately the setting was a bit underdeveloped considering that it was very interesting, with the world was about to destroy and the great war was happening in the past. Also the relation between Sion and Ryou was can come as pretty sudden for some people because they development was happened off screen, although it's not like it didn't affect anything though - actually minori could show us some development between them what's happened in the journey though like what happened with Elica, but I guess what's done is done. It's not as bad as off screen school festival in Supipara, because we can see more of Sion and Ryou even though their early development was happened off screen. So in the end, I'm more or less content with Eden here and just in case you didn't agree with my notes there, you may treat that as my nitpicking there lol. PS - Interestingly Inaba's seiyuu is Yuuto's seiyuu back at ef and Elica's seiyuu was also Yuuko's seiyuu, while Natsume who supposed to be Inaba's lover was voiced by Kei's seiyuu. I don't say that they didn't do the good job for that (In fact they did good job), but I think it would be more interesting if for example Yamada Yuna is voicing Natsume, or alternatively Kyousuke's (From ef) seiyuu can voicing Inaba there. Not that I mind current cast though, I just think that it might be more funny if we have what I suggested lol.

Why hello there! This thread shall be my blog, and shall both be an opportunity to sesquipedalianize my writing and detail the trials and tribulations of the Supah Challenge. A week-something ago I realized that the challenge had potential. After some wavering, and a frenzied but ultimately unsuccessful search for the sixth edition RtK 1 online, I decided I would be a cool bro and scan it for upload... oh, and it could be cool to actually use too, so I bought it online like a boss. After waiting merely a week for its arrival, I set to my schedule: I would study at 22.00 each day for around an hour. I chose to do 34 kanji a day, as the first and second lesson combined had that many kanji. Previous experience include learning all the kana from Ixrec's guide (using mnemonics that aren't completely different from stories, in a way - み was midget, incidentally), and a few Kanji/compounds learnt from radical lookups and similar. On the first day, my workload was comparatively light; I had the advantages of knowing near all the lesson 1 kanji, and the lesson 2 kanji were very easy to remember in general. The only real issue was me writing stuff at the wrong sizes and orientations, which got unacceptably out of hand. However, that just meant doing it again while reviewing, so it was mostly alright. On the second day, god five mouths / nose over/between eye slept. Yes, I was tired as fuck all day and actually fell asleep laptop on chest at around ten. While I was tired as fuck, I did decide to at least review some old kanji. Which turned out to be a massive 4. Today, I woke up at 7am, feeling just as tired as the last day. This malaise slowly subsided, and at around 15.00 I managed to get 34 new kanji in as planned (I ws not at all sure I'd be in working condition at 22.00). I note that this took quite a long time as I experienced it, but not unbearably so. I also did this with a significant amount of auditory and other distractions around me for part of it, which was not the best thing to happen ever. Getting these kanji in was significantly more difficult; some of the stories were somewhat... lacking - some I constructed my own stories for, I think. With all that said, I still remember everything after some Anki usage, as far as I can tell. The Anki deck seems to be slightly off; post a bill (a kanji which had a pretty difficult story, but I spent enough time obsessing over that I'll probably remember it anyway) did not appear and two kanji that I weren't at yet did. That said, those kanji (deca...what the hell ten days and ladle) had extremely easy stories, and I just memorized them quickly. We'll see if I continue a slightly more haphazard way of scheduling my learning at this point until I feel confident I won't be messed up at 22.00 or not, and whether it will work. On day five, I will probably also experiment with using multiple learning sessions per day - this likely has its disadvantages, but will increase my speed (I'll aim for 50 a day, probably). Motivation: medium. Able to resume after 1 day of no new kanji. Able to survive despite using a different time. 34 kanji per day workable. Well, this might well work out for me! I am mildly surprised.