Toranth

You called a 5 'passable'. What's that mean? To me, obviously, 50% is not passable. It seems, from your response here, that you would not consider 50% passable either. However, as you said, some people would consider it passable. And now you're left with not only a non-linear ranking scale, you've got one that depends on the tastes of the reviewer in multiple categories. Non-linear, subjective on multiple axes, all before getting to the actual source material? So much variance that I simply don't think you can make anything useful out of such a measure. Which means it really isn't worth discussing - it'll just become another argument trigger.

The problem with the idea of a 0 to 10 scale is defining what's in between. If zero is incomprehensible and 10 is perfect... is a 5 a 50% understandable translation? Because to me, that'd be as crappy a product as a zero.

As others have pointed out, the idea that anime, video games, or LNs don't have their share of translation arguments is... not correct, shall we say. I'm going to guess you're new to those communities. Back in the early fansub days, in the early 90s, when people had to mail VHS tapes around ($12 and SASE for 2 episodes!), there was vicious fighting. Anyone remember the Ranma Wars? Or the fights over the Shinsengumi subs of Ruroni Kenshin? Even in the 2000s, people used to mock most of the Inuyasha funsubbers, The joke in the community was that every new fanboy (and many a fangirl) would cut their teeth on Inuyasha, releasing many terrible subs in the process, before either giving up or growing up and moving on to real shows. Even now, you still get complaints. Remember this meme? Or sites like this one? The basic fact of the matter is that translation is an art, not a science. And as Clephas said, even good translators disagree over things. Honorifics, slang... I got into a fight with one translator over contractions, FFS. There will always be disagreement, and there will always be jerks who make a big deal out of it. Your bigger claim, that a bad translation is better than no translation, is very much a matter of opinion. To me, it's trivial to prove you wrong - just run a VN script through Babelfish, and try to read what comes out.

What are you talking about?! The producer's cousin's son got a 9 in 10th grade English, so obviously he's qualified to do the official translation! (I'll bet some of you think that's made up...)

I made no statement about the preferences of the general population. I made a general statement about marketing. I have not, personally, expressed an opinion in this thread. I have commented on the technical aspects of the poll. At this point, I have explained the limits of the poll. The limits are the exact same as they would have been had the results been reversed. As long as you recognize those limitations, and do not exaggerate or misrepresent the results, there's no problem. To do otherwise is dishonest.

Marketing should be primarily directed at growing the audience - those very same people that are random VN buyers on Steam are the ones companies should be aiming to attract - as long as they can do it without alienating the existing core audience (VN community members). If removing honorifics convinces those casual VN players to buy more, then it is the correct decision. The poll is not inaccurate - as long as you don't attempt to overstate the results. The poll represents the enthusiastic folks of the common VN communities, and they like honorifics. At the same time, a poll of all Steam owners of VNs would likely have different results. How different, we don't know, but dismissing the very real limitations imposed on the poll by the chosen polling method does not make them go away. Ideally, it would have been great to work with Steam and send a poll link to a random sample of VN owners... but it's unlikely that Steam would agree to work that closely with someone not associated with a VN publisher. Or even with, for that matter - privacy is big these days.

Let me explain it from the purely statistical perspective. Polls done measure the opinions of the group questioned. In order to get a good sample, honest pollsters attempt to ask a broad range of people. Asking the opinions of people in California may do a good job of telling you what Californians think about something, but it does very little to tell you what the French think about something. In this case, the poll was made available to people on Fuwa, reddit, and a few other VN communities. Therefore, this poll can be viewed as a decent representation of the opinions of those communities. However, these communities do not represent the entirety of the population of VN buyers or players. Second, the poll is a self-selected poll. That is, rather than randomly selecting people from the available populations, it allowed people to choose to participate. Self-selected polls are very vulnerable to differences in enthusiasm. People that feel strongly about something are much more likely to go and participate in these sorts of polls than those people that do not have strong opinions. This is why there is an entire field of statistics dedicated to polling methods: because careless polls produce inaccurate results. An accurate description of these polling results is that, amongst the populations of the larger VN online communities that chose to answer the poll, there is a bias towards keeping honorifics. One can attempt to draw conclusions about the larger populations from that sample, but your accuracy goes down the further out you extrapolate. Extrapolation to all users of the polled VN communities is reasonably likely to be accurate. Extrapolation to the population of all VN owners is much less likely to be accurate. Extrapolation to the general English-speaking population is very unlikely to be accurate.

Whoa! No. Just, NO. Military ranks are NOT honorifics, and if you try to use them as such you'll run into trouble. In fact, the military in general is a very poor place to look for 'normal' behaviors, in language or elsewhere. The demands and practices of a military organization are different than, normal society, and you should not attempt to treat them the same.

Fault is cheap - it's been on sale for less than $4. On top of that, it's been in the $1 tier of bundles multiple times. That'll pump the numbers up WAY past the actual number of people that have actually played it. Clannad has only gotten down to $18, and Little Busters is still $25. Both of those are above MSRP for Fault. It really isn't that surprising that cheap bundle fodder has outsold good titles.

Personally, I'm looking forward to playing "And And Of". Sounds like a great game!

The Nobel Prize in Literature is primarily a political prize, like a lesser version of the Peace Prize. Any VN that received the award would, without doubt, be a total piece of crap. Looking at the inside workings of the committee that are coming out due to the sex, gambling, bribery, and undue influence scandals that past year... Yeah, no. It would also, almost certainly, be a western language original, because it looks like no one on the committee can read Eastern languages, and translations are frequently looked down on. Winning a Nebula, on the otherhand is possible. Winning a Dragon Award - or at least, being nominated - is actually pretty likely, in the not-too-distant future.

I see no meaningful distinction between helping someone to do something and encouraging them to do it, but if you do, whatever. As I said before, the position of "Friends don't let friends machine translate" is half humor - associating it with harmful activities in a exaggerated manner. While I do agree that, ultimately, people can do whatever they want to themselves, I'm allowed to have opinions about what they do as well. Some people enjoy self-flagellation, but I think they're crazy. If someone bought Da Vinci's notebooks only to use them as toilet paper, I'd be annoyed. If someone buys an expensive prime Kobe steak, well spiced and deliciously rare cooked, then puts ketchup on it, I'd be annoyed. And if someone uses machine translation to 'read' a visual novel like Akeiro Kaikitan or Haruka ni Aogi, Uruwashi no then I get annoyed. Especially when they then try to discuss their experience with others. As I said before, it's only slightly better than trying to discuss the game with someone who hasn't played it at all. For example, before the Fate English translation came out, it was annoyingly common to have people who'd used a text hooker and machine translator to try to discuss the story. They were frequently wrong: about events, motivations, even names - but somehow that never stopped people from strenuously presenting their views. Crappy games, like most nukige, I care little about. Some nukige are solid VNs, even outside the porn - some Eushully games, for example, or the HEAT-SOFT Magic Girl series. But few people are interested in discussing fap scenes in ANY language, and I'm not one of them. I do care about good stories, and when machine translations mess them up, I'm get annoyed. Now, selling machine translations - or ANY bad translation - is a little different. It's a more extreme version of my views, because now they aren't just presenting a crappy version, they're asking for money. And like selling fansubs, that's just a jerk thing to do. In your very first post in this thread, you insulted Kiriririri's "Japanese fetishism" and "elitism". I did mistakenly attribute the phantomJS's middle fingers to you as well - sorry. pJS, naughty naughty *wags finger*.

You said "There is nothing wrong with machine translation". If there was nothing wrong with it, it would be accurate and representative of the source material. You are encouraging other people to use machine translation, which produces crap translations. To quote: "There's also nothing wrong with that [encouraging other people to use machine translation]" . That's encouraging other people to get a crappy, mixed-up view of the games - which is exactly the thing that many of us who like visual novels would prefer to avoid. You seem to be confused over what your own views are. Perhaps you should try to state your opinion clearly, in simple statements bereft of insults or other ad hominems.

It's a derogatory term. If you're using it as an abbreviation, you should either be using all caps (JAP) or a period (Jap.), and should only be doing that in cases where condensing the text is important (like Twitter). When you are writing full sentences, as here, you should strive to avoid using abbreviations, especially when those abbreviations are also epithets. There is a great deal wrong with machine translation, starting with the translation. You may end up with a rough understanding of what you are 'reading', but little to no understanding of detail, subtext, or (in many cases) context. You might as well ask for someone on the forum to give you a one page summary of the visual novel; it'll be more accurate, and better written as well. Learning Japanese is time consuming, but not difficult. I suggest you try it. But if you don't want to take the time to learn the language, that's fine. But please do not pretend that random words strung together by a machine trained on 2ch posts is representative of the actual source material. Half humor, but "Friends don't let friends read Machine Translations". Machine translated products are universally crap. Many of us who like visual novels would prefer that crap not be held out as representative of the genre. Not to mention, the only thing that is more of a waste of time than trying to discuss a visual novel with someone that read a machine translation is trying to discuss it with someone who hasn't read it at all. His comment it isn't "Japanese fetishism" or "elitism" or any other insult you can hurl. It's a sense of humor, combined with the basic understanding that what you are doing is not going to produce the best results, or even good ones. If all you want is crap, that's up to you. But don't go around making false claims like "there is nothing wrong with machine translations", and trying to spread that crap to others.

Tony Taka (Ciel, etc), Carnelian (Root), and Yamamoto Kazue (Studio e.go, Debo no Su) deserve a mention. Some of the games by these folks have wonderful art (and some... don't). Tony Taka is popular enough that he actually published at least one large artbook of non-erogame art.

Cobra Mission in 1994, followed by Knights of Xentar in 1995. Amy's Fantasies, Seasons of the Sakura, Divi-Dead, Nocturnal Illusion, Runaway City, Desire, True Love... all the classics. First Japanese language VN was Kanon in 1999.

Most of the characters listed aren't tsunderes, but I've long since given up trying to hold the line.

Less amnesia. Seriously - it seems like every other VN protagonist or heroine is afflicted with a severe case of early-onset Alzheimer's - unable to remember people, places, or major events until plot-magic suddenly restores the missing brain matter.

Back in the day, it was common, probably to save on money and space when neither was readily available. Some classic companies - like Alicesoft - still release partially voiced games even in the modern era.

I like voice acting. A good performance can turn a mediocre character into an enjoyable one. I can handle no voices if the writing is good. I despise partially voiced games. There is nothing worse than hearing a few scenes, usually just the H scenes, with voices. Ruins immersion, imagination, and are usually so low quality that you can even enjoy the half-assed moans someone's 'friend' ($10/hr) is spewing into a phone from the back booth of a familyres.

Look at where the "beam" is coming from, and look at the shape... In addition, the text reads "Hame-hame-ha", where "hame-hame" is sex slang basically meaning "stick it in". That game was actually amusing. Like Boob-wars, but a bit less over-the-top.

Er, yes? I would expect a British company to sell to Brits. For non-Brits that want to import it, especially those with incompatible systems (such as electrical voltage), you deal with it yourself. You certainly don't expect that foreign company to cater to you, unless they said they would. And as far as I know, they never said that. If common sense is the most ridiculous thing you've read this evening, you must be participating in something truly amazing.

Classic tsunderes are amongst my favorites, but the modern "Sunao janai" version that is randomly violent is something I hate. In archetypes, I dislike the Osananajimi, because it almost always is used to hide a lack of character development. All the other archetypes have varieties and different paths their characters can go, but the childhood friend seems to be doomed to be terrible.

I'm amazed at all the people who bought something from an American company and are now surprised that said American company was going to deliver an American-targeted product. Are any of you surprised that you get a Japanese copy when you order from Yeti?

Well, except for this game: Good ol' Softhouse-Seal...