novurdim

Ah, sorry for the misunderstanding, I actually didn't mean you specifically, I have just recently had similar discussions all over the place.

I... really doubt that 20k for a game is considered that much for the market. And I'm 100% sure it's not a correct number at all, as I mentioned before companies usually crowdfund only part of the costs. But it's honestly better not to discuss the licensing fees much, we know literally nothing and most always assume them to be a lot lower than they actually are for some reason. These speculations are so baseless and harmful that even Sol Press themselves commented on this in the last update that "the past funds raised in our previous campaigns have not always been enough to cover what is needed". Some have even already accused Favorite of being cashgrabs just because the goal is higher this time. I feel like some people would be shocked if companies revealed real licensing costs they usually pay.

I highly doubt people (especially those who care about translation's quality as much) are that stupi uninformed. Different company, different translators, different everything. IroSeka is just a lot less known in West than HoshiMemo by itself + Sol Press has a lot less followers than Sekai, even their "very successful" (as it's often called) KS of Newrin has gathered only around 88k + it wasn't really marketed much but that's almost always the case with VN KS. I've also heard people complaining about the tiers/rewards and such. There are a lot of reasons why it is kind of naive to believe that IroSeka can easily gather more than 200k but if they can at least organize the shout-outs from Sekai, MG, Degica etc. during the last 5 or so days, base goal is still more than reachable. 45% in half the time isn't a fiasco for a KS yet.

That's what they often do though. Pull more money in the latter half. Especially when the base goal is in sight. So I'm still hopeful for the main goal to be reached during the final spurt but looks like it will fail horribly as a crowdfund for the trilogy either way. Not that anyone expected otherwise with those stretch goals.

Heh, it's funny but after May's route I consider the 3-rd problem a relative positive. I'd much rather have a lengthy epilogue for h-scenes like this than three obligatory fucks in a row during the end of the story that would kill any goddamn flow of the ending. I know you could just skip them but gah, those are irritating still. Also,

Decided to come back to this yesterday and even read Natsume's route. And guess what, it was a much better experience all around. It wasn't amazing or anything but with how low my expectations had been by now, I certainly enjoyed it more than I thought I would. Definitely gives me the fuel to finish the novel sometime.

VNs are and should be localised for the western world into the common "english", not "murican", for endless logical reasons. Most of NA and EU speak english at least on the most basic level, after all, english language is not an american property. There are phrases that can't be translated as is so it can't really be called a straight-up literal translation but at the same time overbearing cultural arrogance from one of the countries is among the worst things that can happen to the localisation intended for the widest audience, the whole english-speaking world. But, well, you would definitely win a title for the narrowest understanding of the words, it's so extreme and die-hard that it's almost admirable. Probably. Though his comment history suggests he might be serious. At this point I can only hope he's not. at least Kiriririri is usually trolling

Sure, and I would consider it a borderline disastrous choice of words 99% of the time. It only exists because one person who doesn't like a bokukko archetype made one bad decision and it lives on as a meme. That's not really an argument for turning onii-chans into dudes, ya know. Hopefully the world will catch on fire when localizing would mean that everyone has to speak like weird american teens like in the ideal world of the guy below. I kind of missed the moment when delusional and completely inane ineptitude became an ideal localization. You should also try to think about the amazing fact that visual novels, on the contrary to the movies and other pieces of popular media which have a version for every country, are not translated only for the glorious americans, even here at fuwa, when you finally look around for the first time, you'll see that half of the posting users are not even american. Americanizing it as heck just because you have a grandeur delusion (in the extreme version) of what localization is, is basically alienating half of the demographic. Which is really just silly and prideful even if you consider americans your main audience. Heck, not even all localization publishers are american. Honorifics are one thing and can be up to the debate depending on the title and translation team, but everything else should be decided on most sensibly and case by case basis.

Inb4 for years to come Light only translates Pantheon and its endless events.

It was only for the sake of counter-argument, I was offering theoretical possibilities Okay, then the only person who might have wanted to fan-translate IroSeka (at least indecently) ended up founding NekoNyan. I imagine if it wasn't done by some maniac in complete silence, Favorite would just try to shut down any attempts at this point.

This is pretty weird indeed, who disabled an edit button. Well, as I mentioned above, this is a pretty poor and unfounded speculation so I wouldn't just blame Favorite for the expensive goals, there are dozens of variables. Yes, this is why I brought it up in the first place. I know you are speaking extremely hypothetically but we should live in the present. It means that we either get VNs like this officially or don't get them at all. The only person who could, in theory, decently fan-translate IroSeka has founded NekoNyan. Nowadays you won't get fan-translations of the publishers who already dabble in the western market no matter how long you wait, unless it's some miracle release like Baldr Force, for the few exceptions readable fan-translations are basically dying out and that's actually a good thing. Saying that it "should have been fan translated for free because I think Favorite asks too much money" is just so senseless that I couldn't keep my mouth shut. I do regret the impulse already, I know this won't get me anywhere.

Well, I may have painted too grim of a picture, the sales have surely grown a lot compared to, say, 2010-2012, and we do get a lot more localizations in the latest years (and even some big shots) since West is now considered a real market. So yeah, on the positive side we have come a long way and do live in a comparatively great age. We even have a chance to gripe about some of the best eroges not selling as much as we hoped they would. My 2010 self would surely slap me for being too depressive.

Since you have not seen and not sure, I'm mentioning that we shouldn't treat those numbers as accurate or official. And, well, I'm just repeating myself but I basically said that it did well for a first week on a pretty mediocre as a whole western market. At least I believe so. Did it do well in general sense for this specific publisher? I don't know, nobody does, you should ask Visual Arts CEO, only they know what numbers can be considered good for their localizations. Answering your initial question: no, I highly doubt that Visual Novels are growing in the West at this point, they were a relatively popular gimmick for a short time but now that bubble has burst. There are some rare hits but that's it, West won't save VNs or anything, its market isn't even nearly as big as chinese. Make this five times worse for the plot-oriented VNs.

Ignoring the fact that you should take anything Nier says with a grain of salt and assuming he is right, 6.5k for the first week is pretty darn far from terrible for a VN on the western market. I don't know what expectations VA had for it after Clannad but I wish the general VN sales in the west could let us consider this a bad number.