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Darklord Rooke

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  1. Like
    Darklord Rooke reacted to Clephas in Is this forum dead?   
    No, Fuwa is not dead, it is simply old.  I've seen dead communities, and no one asks if the community is dead there.  They just desperately post dozens of times to try to fool themselves into thinking the community is still active when the max number of members online at any given time in the past year was three.
  2. Like
    Darklord Rooke got a reaction from sanahtlig in Is this forum dead?   
    Reddit is inactive compared to what it was like in the past, /jp/ isn't what it used to be wrt visual novels, /vn/ over on /vg/ is all spam, the MG forum is dead, JAST is fairly inactive (last I checked), eroge forums are inactive, so I'm wondering the same thing. Compared with which similar forums? : S
    I was told a long time ago that the community was built around IRC, and now it appears similarly discord. Everybody's on discord so ...
    And also I don't think the forums are dead. 
  3. Like
    Darklord Rooke got a reaction from Jun Inoue in What Video Games Are You Playing Right Now?   
    Divinity OS are definitely the games to get if you want great combat. POE was more about stories, characters, and having a balanced role play system (#Sawyerism). Divinity tends to be more fun to play because of its exceptional gameplay, but I find Pillars has a better atmosphere because of the writing. They're pretty different, for sure  
  4. Like
    Darklord Rooke reacted to kyrt in What Video Games Are You Playing Right Now?   
    I have 17 hours in Pillars of Eternity 2 at the moment...loving it so far. It is definitely made for multiple playthroughs. Haven't had a huge amount of bugs but apparently one thing did glitch because for whatever reason one of my characters has the funny looking hat from 1 and he's supposed to have burned it. 
  5. Like
    Darklord Rooke reacted to sanahtlig in SRPG eroge Venus Blood Frontier to get an English Kickstarter   
    I prepared a few basic questions:
    What led you to choose Venus Blood Frontier over the many other excellent titles that Ninetail has released over the years? Venus Blood Frontier contains a great deal of sexual content.  Why Kickstarter and Steam rather than platforms that are more friendly to adult content (see Crowdfunding sites for Adult Content)? You mentioned that the game would be released on Steam with a patch to restore the adult content.  What would be the timing of this patch and how would it be distributed?  Other Kickstarter projects have made similar promises but have disappointed (e.g., 8 months after MuvLuv Alternative was released on Steam there's still no adult content patch). Ability to complete the proposed project on time and while meeting quality standards is always a concern on Kickstarter.  What experience does the project staff have with localization projects and crowdfunding in general? Early rumors have suggested that a single staff member will be performing multiple roles that are typically distributed among a team of specialists for a project of this size.  If true, does this staff member have prior experience in each of these roles?  What is the contingency plan if this staff member becomes overwhelmed? Success on Kickstarter depends as much on marketing and publicity as it does on a great product.  How does Ninetail plan to reach and appeal to the various fanbases (e.g., of strategy RPGs, visual novels, and ero) that might be interested in this product? A small number of generous contributors typically account for a large share of crowdfunding proceeds.  What sort of exclusive rewards do you have planned to appeal to these "super-fans"? A fan translation of Venus Blood Chimera was released in January 2018.  What is your attitude towards this project, and to fan translation projects in general? Backers of crowdfunding projects tend to be fans interested in the future of the company moreso than just the success of a given project. If Venus Blood Frontier succeeds, what next?
  6. Like
    Darklord Rooke reacted to Jun Inoue in Spring 2018 Anime Discussion   
    Is it weird that it bothers me how a female character has a silly reaction (like Kaos saying "thank you god" when another of the girls pushes her against her breasts) or her enjoyment of being scolded by a sexy mature woman, and there's a horde of fans that do not suggest, theory or wonder, but immediately exclaim smth along the lines of "Man, Kaos is such a lesbian". Just like one could say "Kaos likes wearing trousers".
    I don't know. I get super irked by people who throw lesbianism around like a buzzword for absolutely any female being to ever display any amount of interest or curiosity, be it sincere, fake or for pure comedic relief. Or, basically, for any female character that's not eating dick 24/7.
  7. Like
    Darklord Rooke reacted to ittaku in Spring 2018 Anime Discussion   
    Well said. I got sick of this joke in this series before I had a chance to find the series funny and promptly dropped it. It's capitalising on the recent rise of the yuri which is, of course, all done in the wrong way in anime; it's to titillate guys instead of be a meaningful portrayal of it (even when it tries to be the latter it has to be mostly the former.) Oh well, it is just anime and I can drop it and watch something else.
  8. Haha
  9. Like
  10. Like
    Darklord Rooke reacted to ittaku in Cost of localising a VN   
    Indeed they are but I prefer to see -ise which makes it clear it's not American (unless it's a typo.)
  11. Like
    Darklord Rooke reacted to ittaku in Cost of localising a VN   
    I have no idea but I heartily endorse your use of the English language with respect to spelling.
  12. Like
    Darklord Rooke got a reaction from ittaku in What Anime are you watching now?   
    A while ago I thought I'd give Gintama a go, because it was supposed to be really funny and popular. I dropped it midway through the first episode. It just seemed really stupid to me.
    Just recently though, as the popularity of Gintama doesn't seem to be waning at all, I thought maybe it's me. Maybe I'm just being really uptight and anal about stuff. So I sent it to my sister saying "give this a try, it's supposed to be really good". If she says it's good I'll give it another go.
    I got a message back today. "This is, most likely, without a doubt, the worst show I've ever seen."
    "I know", I said. "I thought it was pretty terrible also."
    "Then why did you pass it on for me to try!"
    So yeah, now I can safely ignore Gintama without thinking I'm missing something special. Happy days!
  13. Like
    Darklord Rooke reacted to Sparteh in Contrasting the Japanese and Western VN Fandoms   
    While language is an important barrier, I think that amount of pornographic content is another big issue. Many countries have problems with it as well. For example, in the region I live, the only true way to find any pornographic content is to google it. You cannot see it on TV or any kind of stores. It is viewed extremely negative. Due to this, it is hard to recommend it or to even talk about it with others.  Majority of VNs have little story and a lot of h-scenes. If you want to sell them, you need to censor them. 
    Another point, many cultures don't care about high school that much. While it focuses on specific demographic, but lack of variety is harmful. If more VNs with different settings and without h-scenes were released in the west, it might be easier for younger generation to freely introduce it to others, which in turn would lead to higher fan base. 
  14. Like
    Darklord Rooke reacted to BunnyAdvocate in Contrasting the Japanese and Western VN Fandoms   
    Yeah I agree, Japanese speakers are spoilt for choice. That theory also aligns well with the popularity chart, where even fairly unpopular EGS VNs can still attract large audiences on VNDB, probably because our selection is quite limited so we'll read everything.
  15. Like
    Darklord Rooke reacted to sanahtlig in Contrasting the Japanese and Western VN Fandoms   
    In my opinion, this is the dominant effect.  We don't choose VNs to play randomly; we pick games we think we'll like.  If I have a greater selection of games to play, I can choose VNs that I'm more likely to like.  Whereas if my selection is limited, I'm stuck playing games that have less intrinsic appeal to me, and I'm going to be harsher on them.
  16. Like
    Darklord Rooke reacted to Mr Poltroon in Contrasting the Japanese and Western VN Fandoms   
    Goddammit, Japan.
  17. Like
    Darklord Rooke reacted to BunnyAdvocate in Contrasting the Japanese and Western VN Fandoms   
    The Western VN fandom has long idolised the Japanese VN market. Before the recent growth of the EVN scene and official localisations, Western VN fans had to subsist only on the occasional fan-translations of Japanese VNs while being told how much better the untranslated VNs were. However this faith in untranslated VNs rested on an unspoken assumption: that Western and Japanese VN fans enjoy the same content. But is it true? Through comparing the largest VN fandom site in Japan (erogamescape) against the largest VN fandom site in the West (VNDB), we sought to find out.
    Do we love the same VNs?
    While the ability of a numerical rating to summarise a subjective experience (like reading a VN) is debatable, the average score a community assigns a VN provides a useful approximation of how highly esteemed that VN is within the community. Both EGS and VNDB allow users to rate VNs they’ve read, so comparing how the same VN scores on both sites gives us an impression of how much the communities agree on which VNs are best.
     


    We can see there’s a strong correlation between the score a VN gets on each site, especially for higher rated VNs, showing that both communities tend to agree on which VNs are considered “the best” (despite the ferocious arguments within each fandom over that same question). But as the score drops, so does the agreement over the VN score. So while both communities tend to agree on what’s good, we disagree on what’s bad.
    There’s also another trend that’s a little less noticeable, but becomes more apparent if we remove the untranslated VNs...
     


    While the untranslated VNs in the last graph seemed to fairly evenly straddle the equal score line, the translated VNs are frequently below it (meaning these VNs score higher on EGS than VNDB). But is the translation a cause or an effect of the lower score on VNDB (i.e. does the release of a translation lower the score on VNDB, or are only low-scoring VNs being translated)? To answer this, we tracked how the VNDB score of a VN changes immediately after a translation is released.
     


    We tracked 117 of the most popular Japanese VNs that had an English translation released in the past 5 years. In the first 60 days after their translation was released, their score dropped an average of 0.146 on VNDB, with Fata Morgana being the blip on the far right that significantly bucked the trend and increased in score. There also seems to be slight correlation with lower-rated VNs on EGS dropping more than higher-rated ones.
    So it seems confirmed that the translations are the cause rather than an effect. But why does this happen? This remains the subject of fierce debate among my friends, but we came up with a few theories:
    Japanese VNs are made for Japanese tastes, so Western fans might not enjoy them to the same extent. Western fans who learn Japanese and use VNDB might align more with the taste of Japanese fans rather than with their fellow Western fans. Japanese VNs are made for Japanese tastes, so Western fans might not enjoy them to the same extent. Western fans who learn Japanese and use VNDB might align more with the taste of Japanese fans rather than with their fellow Western fans. The high barrier of entry for a Westerner to read an untranslated VN (they have to know Japanese) filters out those who have only a casual interest in the VN. So the pre-translation score is dominated by hard-core fans who are more likely to rate it higher.
    The experience of reading a translation can be inferior to reading prose in its original language, so VNDB users rating a VN based on that translation might assign lower scores than those reading the original text.
    The larger drop in score for lower-rated VNs might be because they don’t attract the same care and attention by their translators, with any official localisation likely done on a lower-budget.
    VN popularity
    It isn’t just through scores that we can measure a communities’ tastes, we can also estimate a VN’s popularity through the number of votes it gets. In comparing the number of votes the same VN gets on EGS and VNDB, we can see whether the same VNs are popular in both Japan and the West.
     

    Note that this chart is using a log scale.

    The most obvious trend is the clear split between translated and untranslated VNs. Unsurprisingly, translated VNs and EVNs do significantly better on VNDB than untranslated VNs. But we Western fans aren’t especially choosey, even fairly unpopular VNs on EGS can attract large fanbases on VNDB if they’re translated.
    Given that translations aren’t random, they require either dedicated fan-translators or a localiser willing to invest in them, it’s surprising that the translated VNs span the entire width of popularity on EGS. So we might have expected it to skew more to the right, with unpopular EGS VNs being much less likely to get a translation. While the ratio of translated-untranslated VNs is higher for more popular EGS VNs, no VN seems to be beyond the prospect of being translated, no matter how unpopular it is.
    Overall, while there remains a correlation in popularity between EGS and VNDB, it’s far weaker than the score correlation. This mismatch might partially be down to the age of the communities. VNs have been a popular niche of the Japanese market for decades, but were virtually unknown in the West before the 2010s. So there’s quite a number of 80s-00s era JVNs that have hundreds of votes on EGS, but are practically unheard of on VNDB.
    Differences in taste
    So far we’ve been looking at each VN as a whole, but can we delve deeper? A VN can be seen as a package of tropes: childhood-friend heroine, tsundere heroine, dumb male protagonist that’s inexplicably beloved by all (these 3 criteria should narrow us down to approximately 90% of all VNs ever made /s). Through comparing the scores of VNs that have a trope against those who don’t, we can get an impression of how popular that trope is.
    Fortunately we don’t have to determine these tropes ourselves, both EGS and VNDB allow users to apply tags to a VN which denote the type of content it has. So let’s start simple and see which tags are correlated with a higher average score on EGS.
    This world cloud ranks the EGS tags by the average score of the VNs they appear in, with higher scores being placed higher on the chart, so we can see what type of content is most lauded on EGS. The text size is proportional to the number of VNs that tag appears in, so we can see what’s a common trope and what’s rare.
     

    A full size version of this image is available here, and a spreadsheet version is available here.  Note that this is mostly using google translate for the EGS tags, so the labels are… imaginative.

    Generally, it seems like complex VNs (with tags such as “intelligent,” “to solve a mystery” and “difficult to get”) are the most highly rated, while more sexual oriented tags seem to be linked with lower average scores (which is probably due to nukige/porn VNs). It also seems Japanese fans value the *novel* over the *visual* element in their VNs, with “CG is beautiful” being rated quite poorly. Towards the bottom are tags mostly related to being old or low-budget (with tags such as “Low price” and “XP supported”).
    This has only shown us what Japanese fans like, but we’re more focused on how Japanese and Western fans compare. So instead, let’s try comparing which VNDB tags are correlated with a VN scoring higher on VNDB or EGS.
     

    A full size version of this image is available here, and a spreadsheet version is available here.

    It seems like Western fans value romance and slice of life type stories more than Japanese fans do, whereas Japanese fans are more generous with their nukige/porn ratings. Perhaps we’re more judgemental in our view of sexual content here in the West? Japanese settings also seem to be more favoured among the Western fandom than the Japanese, the weeabooism is real /s. Slightly disappointing is how poorly female protagonists do in the Western fandom. While otomes are widespread in the EVN market, they remain a relatively unpopular niche on VNDB.
    Differences in the marketplace
    We’ve compared the taste between the Japanese and Western fandoms, but we haven’t looked at the differing availability of VNs in the markets. Are certain types of content more likely to be translated than others? How does the the home-grown Western VN industry differ from the Japanese one?
     

    A full size version of this image is available here, and a spreadsheet version is available here.

    It seems that action/violent type content -whether in the form of police investigations or wars- are especially popular subjects for translated VNs. Female protagonists are also surprisingly high, especially since otomes don’t seem to be translated that often, but that might be because an even smaller proportion of nukige/porn type VNs are translated, and they overwhelmingly have male protagonists.
    Lastly, let’s look at the EVNs. With a negligible presence in Japan (there were only 4 EVNs on EGS with at least 4 votes), we can’t really compare what the fans prefer, but we can see how the markets differ in the kind of content they produce. This next chart tracks which VNDB tags are more common in EVNs vs JVNs.
     

    A full size version of this image is available here, and a spreadsheet version that includes more tags is available here. The sexual content tags were removed because there’s so little sexual content in EVNs that it seemed a waste of space, and it gave room to include rarer content type tags.

    The clearest difference between the markets is in the amount of porn, there’s exceedingly little in EVNs. This is likely due to the smaller budget for EVNs which would preclude h-scene artwork, and restrictions on adult content on Steam discouraging such content.
    EVNs encompass a broader range of protagonists than JVNs with LGBTQ+ related content being much more common, and female protagonists being as common as males (unlike JVNs where female protagonists make up only a small proportion of VNs). But JVNs can be inclusive in other ways, like being the sole representation of protagonists who can turn into panties.
    Stories relating to personal difficulties, especially regarding depression, seem much more common in EVNs too. They also seem more willing to break from the usual high-school settings of JVNs, having more university aged and above characters.
    Criticisms
    Before we get carried away with forming any stereotypes of Japanese and Western fanbases from this data, let’s consider a few issues with the data.
    The VNDB and EGS userbase might not be representative of the wider Western/Japanese fandom. As per some of our earlier analysis posts, VNDB significantly undercounts the popularity of EVNs for example. So some caution should be taken in extrapolating what the wider fanbase likes based on this data. The VNDB and EGS userbase might not be representative of the wider Western/Japanese fandom. As per some of our earlier analysis posts, VNDB significantly undercounts the popularity of EVNs for example. So some caution should be taken in extrapolating what the wider fanbase likes based on this data. It’s easy to mix up cause and effect. Are sci-fi stories better than other stories and that’s why they’re associated with higher scores? Or is it that VNs that care about their story are just more likely to have a sci-fi setting?
    Some trends, like what type of content is more likely to be translated, might just be tracking the changing tastes of the era. With older VNs being less likely to be translated than newer VNs, the charts might just be picking up on what kind of content has become more popular in recent years.
    The dataset has some errors. EGS and VNDB catalogue VNs differently and that can cause some mismatches in the data. We’ve done our best to account for that, but with the dataset being so large, some mistakes will have slipped through.
    Acknowledgements
    A big thank you to /u/8cccc9, Part-Time Storier, and Cibelle for helping with this analysis.
    I hope you enjoyed reading through this, and if so, you should check out my tumblr and twitter for more VN analysis posts. If you have any feedback, questions, or suggestions for further analyses then you can reply here, on twitter, or DM me on Discord (Sunleaf_Willow /(^ n ^=)\#1616).
    Our next analysis post is likely to be on h-scenes. What type of content is most highly regarded by the fandom? How has the popularity in the fandom of certain sexual acts risen erect and fallen limp over time? How is the EVN market handling sexual content in contrast to Japan? Hopefully we’ll have lots of answers (and some painful puns) next time~
  18. Like
    Darklord Rooke got a reaction from Novel21 in Visual Arts 1st Localization Survey   
    Voted for the Gakuen Heaven series.
    You're all welcome, no thanks necessary.
  19. Like
    Darklord Rooke reacted to littleshogun in Visual Arts 1st Localization Survey   
    First of all, here's the Twitter from them below.
    As for my opinion, well nothing in particular that I want to be officially localized by them as of now. But still since this is VisualArts that we talk about, maybe it would be nice if somehow we can break Saga Planet curse through official localization (For the reminder Saga Planet is one of Visual Arts subsidiary). So what VN from them that you want to be officially localized?
  20. Haha
  21. Like
  22. Like
    Darklord Rooke reacted to Clephas in When is a translation considered a machine translation?   
    MirrorMoon's fantranslations are pretty grammatically-challenged, from what I recall... and I can say from working on fixing it that Dracu-riot (the version you must have played) had a lot of problems.   I'd say about one third of all fantranslations have a translator who is constantly referring to his dictionary and has trouble grasping context clues... or is just grammatically challenged (even if his Japanese understanding is just fine).  All of the Eushully games that have patches are basically 'modified machine translations'.
    The professional scene has gotten better in some ways, worse in others.  SP and Mangagamer are producing a consistent level of quality these days... but I still recall the original localizations of Edelweiss, Da Capo, and Suika (think ATLAS machine translations with no attempt to fix the grammar).  These days, we are more likely to see that kind of crap out of new companies than the older ones (though Moenovel seems to be incapable of doing anything right) as the Libra and Chuusingura translations show.
  23. Like
  24. Like
    Darklord Rooke got a reaction from Swim Swim in Spring 2018 Anime Discussion   
    I'm patiently waiting for some GOOD "person gets sent to another world and there's quality world building and indepth characters, even some political bullshittery" anime to be released, because at the moment we've got a bunch of "person gets sent to superficial alternate worlds populated by superficial characters ... and there's a gimmick. Watch the show people we have a gimmick, everybody loves gimmicks right?" 
    We've had in another world with time loops, we've had smartphones, we've had advanced knowledge about mechs, I wonder how long it'll take before they run out of ideas. Twelve Kingdoms did the genre well at a time when there weren't many of these sorts of shows being made. Nowadays there's tons of Isekai and many of them suck. Re;Zero doesn't suck though, it's just not that good  
  25. Like
    Darklord Rooke reacted to assasinzassasin in SRPG eroge Venus Blood Frontier to get an English Kickstarter   
    Well, it's not like I can't understand why you would feel this way, people can be very judgemental. I'll bring this up to the director but we are having talks with other sales platforms and we'll see if we can come to an understanding with company V to release on like, Jlist or something. 
    Also, there is something I want to confirm with the director that might skirt by this steam thing, and that has something to do with backer rewards on KS, but no guarantees unfortunately. will update you guys.
     
     
    I appreciate the feedback, guys. I must say, I'm almost a bit embarrassed at my TL quality back when I first joined as an intern. I'll definitely be going through everything once the, well, 'raw' translations are over and done with, and probably edit it to make it more...readable, so to speak? And the tenses are a problem I am aware of and plan to fix before release. Hopefully I don't miss any...
    Considering the current situation at our company, it'll probably end up being self editing after all is done.
    I'll look through the images, thanks for the help. 
     
    By the way, guys, most of the stuff here is technically off the record. If you want concrete answers or rather, official ones, please direct them to twitter or when the prefundia/kickstarter page is up. 
    Most of what I answer here does not necessarily mean that all of ninetail thinks that way, and could be tainted by my own bias or misunderstandings of the goings on behind the scenes. I'd appreciate it if you took my words more as a...personal prediction moreso than an official announcement.
    I do very much appreciate your advice and feedback, but please wait for official announcements by the official twitter, or on prefundia, or kickstarter and such! Thanks.
    Well, I mean, feedback and advice is no problem, but please direct questions at the official twitter, thanks!
    Edit: Also I got a warning from my boss that I may indeed be breaking NDA by revealing too much information here, so I'll probably be abstaining from posting anything more on this thread.
    Please direct any questions or inquiries at the official twitter, thanks! If you want to talk to me personally or have feedback and or advice, a private message on twitter would work, so please make use of that!
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