tymmur

This got to be number one. There are VNs where I have to disable the voice of some heroines because the high pitch voice is a pain, which I can't stand. Easy solution: play the game. They aren't virgins at the end Yeah, make something, which is actually worth reading. It often becomes 200 lines of "what goes where", "it feels good" and moans. My own list Less language barriers Less bad translations Less traps (0 sounds like a good number) Less pointless dialogue Less violence (not counting say killing monsters) Less cruelty Less generic (well everything, generic characters in a generic school doing generic stuff resulting in generic H scenes) Less nukige Less mixing good and bad stuff, as in releasing a really good VN, which suddenly switches to say H scene activities you don't want to see Less stories without any interesting contents or development Less stories where your choices have little influence (Utawarerumono is hard to replay due to being able to display all scenes in one playthrough almost independently of choices) Less characters without a well developed personality

I have never figured out why I would want to use a smartphone for anything other than the obvious tasks you have while you are away from home, such as looking up schedules for public transport or maps. The screen is too small, the touchscreen results in a lot of fingerprints, no proper keyboard and the list goes on and on. I know somebody who prefers to use the smartphone at home because wifi is free, which makes sense, but I haven't really figured out why the smartphone beats the computer for heavy web browsing even when you are in the room with the computer anyway.

I see a pattern in this and it's more general than what it seems at first glance. It's about the classic "you have to think like me". There are plenty of examples of this. It's very clear in politics where you can be called deplorable for just disagreeing on which politician to vote for. There are however lots of examples unrelated to politics. Few examples related to psychology. Introvert vs Extrovert While introverts have a high degree of "other people can do as they like", extroverts have a tendency to expect other people to act extroverted and they announce whenever they think somebody doesn't behave according to "extrovert guidelines". If a person have no interest in being the center of attention at a party or even showing up, that person is declared to be a loser. The same goes for a person with too few friends because apparently having 1000 friends on FB is a goal in itself. Introverts tend to care less for how cloth looks, but wearing something, which was the fashion 10 years ago is so not accepted by some other people. Asperger syndrome This diagnosis is likely to be removed in the next revision of official diagnoses due to being applied to people it was never intended for. However if we look at the core criteria for this diagnosis, it aims towards people (primarily children), which are different. On top of usually being introverts, they don't like crowded places like schools, mainly due to the noise level. They have a tendency to have a major interest, which they like to study, usually alone. This interest can be anything, but is often mechanical in nature (trains is a common interest). They don't mind studying insignificant details for hours and they build up a wast knowledge of the area and you can ask them anything and they usually remember. The problem with this description is that particularly the interest part of it fits most engineers, which has given it the nickname "the engineering disease". Most engineers tend to like studying "insignificant details", like engine parts, software algorithms, math problems etc. All those problems seems to be unimportant to psychologists, which by now has labeled them as deviation from perfection. One example would be Joseph Whitworth. He became obsessed with measuring small distances and in 1840 he achieved being able to measure a millionth of an inch. Just wanting to measure something too small to be seen provides a not insignificant score on the AS scale. He then proceeded to make a standard for screws, which made them interchangeable and it's this thing, which allows you to go to the hardware store and buy screws and bolts and know they fit whatever you need just by reading the numbers on the box. He also started making guns where barrel and bullet fits in size, making them long range and accurate enough to allow aiming in a way we understand as aiming. Somebody else quickly took his method of measuring and applied to it making cylinders and pistons for steam engines. This almost eliminated the problem of leaking steam around the pistons, which made them a lot more fuel efficient. This in turn changed railroads from something in coal field areas to a global thing because now they were beating horses in operation costs even in countries without coal. The importance of Joseph Whitworth is likely not possible to over estimate (but have you even heard of him? I didn't in school). The reason why I bring him up here is because if he had been born today, he would have been labeled as Asperger and put in counseling and possibly medication to make him normal. He would need protection against his own weird ideas. There is no room for being different anymore. Einstein has been labeled with Asperger, though luckily not until long after his death, meaning it didn't cause him any problems. Anime/VN/Japan I see little difference in this. There is some guy, who doesn't understand and doesn't try to understand what he is talking about and then he flames people for having interests, which are different from his interests. That he brings up childish as a psychologist (if he is that) is interesting because according to psychology, there are 3 categories: child, adult, parent and each person consist of something from each. Since only the child is able to have fun, people with little or no score in child aren't able to have fun at all. In order to be happy, it's important to have a non-insignificant score in child while at the same time it should not over shadow the others as that would make the person irresponsible. I wouldn't call it childish to follow orders. In fact it's actually a grown up thing to do. For instance there is a law stating that cars should drive on the right side of the road (or left depending on where you are). A child would go "me first, me not listen" and go everywhere while grown ups will understand that it's part of a greater plan to avoid traffic jams. You become one piece in a giant puzzle and you understand that it is in the interest of everybody including yourself that all pieces match perfectly. Another example would be to obey queues when going through a door. If you want to skip ahead in the queue, you risk ending up in a jam because too many people are in the door at once. The talk about Japan and WW2 makes no sense whatsoever. If true, then explain why what he claims to be a result of losing WW2 was present even more strongly in the 1930s than it is today. I wouldn't put too much into "somebody on the internet" flaming people out of ignorance and intolerance. The people he talks about do exist, but he puts it in way too general terms. Going back to the car example, it would be like saying people drive cars because they want to drive around a block repeatably honking the horn to annoy somebody. It has likely happened in rare cases, but it's not a general trait of car owners.

That makes me imagine a stereotype otaku, who somehow managed to get a date and then he pulls out a H-manga, claiming it's a manual for what to do on a date.

Ok, history lesson. Back in the 50s, drive in cinemas became a hit in America (they appeared in Europe too, but was never a hit). It became a popular activity for dating. Put some horror/monster movie on the screen and the girl will scream, get scarred and jump into the arms of the guy. She is then so horrified of the movie that she no longer objects to him touching her. That's the main point in all those 50s B movies, which nobody watch anymore. It most certainly wasn't movie quality when they aimed to get a new one out for each weekend. After all the girls should not go "but I already watched that movie". Fast forward to today. Some people still want to be afraid of the movies they pay to view and apparently for VNs too. I simply don't get it. It's not a feeling I enjoy and reminds too much about real life stuff I prefer not to think about. I view VNs and movies as single player things and I prefer not to go single player on dates.

Now that's an idea for a horror. Your date makes you go to jail instead of making out. For once my reply was not meant to be taken seriously. Honestly I'm puzzled by the idea of bringing a VN to a date, particularly a horror title. In fact I find that line in itself disturbing. Why would you want your date to be psychological disturbed?

The greatest horror I can think of related to VN is Dual Phase. Most readers are horrified by just hearing the title. The horror and agony of reading this horribly written VN is an out of this world experience. It's mentally disturbing and tormenting to read, but at least it's short.

Stephen Hawking once talked about the creation of life where he said something I quote once in a while. The theory goes that there used to be some pools of mud, much like we see today in volcanic areas. In here amino acids were floating around, bumping into each other, joining and falling apart. At some point they by chance hit a combination, which formed something we view as life and it started replicating itself. Critics says it's too unlikely to happen by chance. Stephen Hawking said if the probability of something happening is greater than 0, it will eventually happen if you try enough times regardless of how unlikely it is. The chance of winning lotto is close to zero, yet somebody wins nearly every week. For life to begin, it only needs to hit the right combo once. Not much happened on Earth at the time, meaning there would not be a problem if we would have to wait 100-200 million years for that one time event. Of all the great stuff Stephen Hawking have said, this one is likely the one, which means the most to me because it applies to everything and it touches the core issues of probability. Stephen Hawking also came up with the "mad scientist paradox" (look it up if you like), which shoots down all theories of time travel. Or rather as he puts it, all travel back in time. Approaching the speed of light will make time pass slower, meaning in theory you can spend 10 years traveling in space, age 10 years and come back to Earth to see 20 years have passed. The problem with this approach is that you need to be near a super massive black hole and the closest one is at the center of the galaxy, meaning actually using this approach involves some logistics problems. Speaking of black holes, Stephen Hawking came up with the name in his attempt to explain astronomy to the general public. Stephen Hawking died on 14th (aka 3.14 or π day), which happens to be Einstein's birthday. It's somehow fitting to connect those two because both of them did the unlikely feat of being a scientist, who became known in pub culture. I'm not sure if it's completely appropriate to mention right now, but he did have a few misses in his last years, such as fearing alien invasion, requesting planning to evacuate the solar system before the sun burns out and becoming anti-Brexit with a public statement about it being bad for science, without really telling why. The problem I have with the latter is not about being pro- or anti-Brexit, but rather that it's politics and politics are about opinions. We do not want people thinking they can take their personal baseless opinions into science. It's a big enough problem as it is without providing fuel for people to do so. I have decided to remember him for his scientific achievements and not those missteps. Well, we will all also remembering him for the wheelchair. He was diagnosed at age 21 and told he would live just a few years more. He very strong willed decided to carry on regardless of how bad things would turn out and he lived until he was 76. That alone is an impressive feat, though I'm not sure how journalists came up with "3 times as long as expected". "a few years"*3 is to me like 10 years, not 55.

Actually I don't think it's a good choice for a first VN as it is quite harsh to read. I'm not sure I would have read it to the end if I had no experience with VNs. Also I view it as mainly for a very mature audience, like 25+. If you read it too close to your own school years, you might have a mindset where you are still part of "the game" and not fully grasp what's written here. I suspect that's part of the reason for a lot of the dislike for YMK: it's from readers too young and inexperience to fully understand what they are reading. At first I thought it would be best to recommend everybody to read YMK because if everybody gets this insight into bullying, it would help alot towards stopping it. However today I know that some people read it and fail to understand what they read. In fact I fear more than half of the readers get absolutely nothing, or can't relate it to anything outside the VN. The biggest problem seems to be confirmation bias. If people believe bullying to be justified due to the victim's actions and that it's harmless fun, that's what they will keep thinking and intentionally not notice any evidence to contradict their point of view. Now I have no idea what to do or say regarding this topic. I still highly recommend YMK, but I no longer expect it to be the eye opener I once thought it would be. It's amazing how researchers can spend ages studying a problem and then end up telling what we already knew. They did however find a bunch of signs the schools should look for, which is then given to the schools. I know of at least one school which has every single sign on the checklist, which after being informed said "we have no bullying here" and then did nothing. Some of the signs of a person being a clinical psychopath Charms a lot of people to gather a crowd with him/her in the center Charms followers to be against his/her enemies without the followers fully understanding what goes on Charms followers to idolize himself/herself Always have at least one enemy Switching people between friend and enemy seemingly completely at random Changes the rules of accepted behavior in the group completely at random Has no bad feelings for bad treatment of others, regardless of how bad it is Have no sense of justice or right or wrong, only personal benefits Sounds familiar? It can be shockingly easy to bully others even if you do not want to do so. In my early school years, two names covered 5 boys in the class. To avoid the confusion with name clashes, each one got a nickname, often based on last name. It seemed obvious to me and like everybody else I used those nicknames. In 3rd grade (I think), one of them legally changed his last name to get rid of the nickname, which he apparently didn't like. At the time I didn't get why it would be a problem, but didn't think much of it. It wasn't until much later I realized his nickname wasn't only a word sounding like a nickname for his last name, but it was also slang for feces. I have no idea who started it, but the entire class called one kid feces for more than two years and most likely nobody but the kid in question and whoever started it realized what was going on. Well the teachers knew, but the school had complains from parents that those teachers ordered kids to bully other kids, yet the school did nothing. Actually at some point the school had to remove one of those teachers instantly, but that wasn't because of bullying. He had physically beat up a 10 year old for no apparent reason. Teacher bullying is an overlooked topic, which is not touched by YMK. Around one out of three bully victims in school claim the teacher to be one of the bullies. Not only that, if the teacher is a bully, half the time the teacher is the leader or the only bully.

I think you missed my point entirely. I didn't mention anything about how common it is. Instead it was about YMK making me realize what happened. Besides your statement about heavy drinking and drugs everywhere seems like a gross generalization. In my school time there was this case of drugs and one person dropped out due to an alcohol problem. A minority could drink Friday night, yet still do ok at school. I suspect that there are significant difference in this depending on where you are, but yes it is a huge problem in some areas.

This post made me stop and think. I never thought about it like that before, but you are right. Wanting to save somebody from a house fire is the same as wanting their house to burn. It also made me think back on one night when something completely unexpected happen. I was on a chat (not VN related) and one of the regulars announced that somebody did something awful to him. The culprit was sleeping in the next room and as revenge he had got hold of a knife and announced his plan to kill the culprit. I then decided to keep writing to him and telling him that would be a bad idea. In fact I had to write a lot of different stuff because it turned out that he had made the decision to follow through with it and in his rage he could not think clearly. It took me 1.5-2 hours to get him to calm down and convince him it would be a bad idea. Their relationship was wrecked beyond repair, but at least nobody got physically hurt. It did cost me around 3 hours of sleep that night though. Did I want to do it? No, it was horrible because it lasted for what seemed like forever and I didn't know the outcome. Would I want to do it again? No, I don't want to do stuff, which feels horrible. If I'm in a similar situation, would I do it again? Absolutely! Am I a hero for doing what I did? I will let other people decide that as I never considered the question at all. I did what I felt had to be done at the time without considering something like that. It was really hard to write this. First of all, writing about a bad experience like this isn't easy. The second is figuring out what is suitable to write here (not sure if I came even close). Last, I had to remove a lot of information because I want to ensure the person in question to be completely untraceable. He went into chock and had a moment of insanity. After having calmed down, he recovered just fine and I don't want this apparently once in a lifetime event to follow him for years.

Yume Miru Kusuri came to mind instantly. While it may not have downright changed me, it made me realize what happened at some events when I went to school. At age 17 (I think) one of the guys in my class turned into Nekoko. Sure some details differs, but overall it was pretty much the same thing, complete with even the crazy hat. Some days he was high and some days he kept falling asleep. He was a bit of a character even before this, but turning this weird ensured nobody wanted to have anything to do with him at all. One day after he had fallen asleep during class (again), I walked up to him and said "you know, this just can't keep up. You end up dropping out and throwing away your life". We then had a conversation about him not caring about his parents' expectations and I started talking about that it's his life, not his parents' life, which is at stake. It only lasted about 10 minutes, but within a week he was back to normal and he managed to not drop out. The answers he gave me were weird, but I didn't think much of it at the time. While reading YMK much later I realized what he said was sort of code to admit his abuse. In other words it was YMK, which made me realize what I had done. It's also a reminder how we can influence other people with what seems like minor actions. I just "wasted" a 10 minute break where my alternative was to just waste time. I never really had anything to do with that guy other than this, not before or after, though when I had a chance encounter with him a few years later, he was doing well and he clearly had a very positive impression of me. Another lesson YMK told me is that some people have decided a certain world view and rejects anything conflicting with that point of view. Specifically in the case of YMK, it's bullying. A lot of people have written online that the bullying in YMK is way too extreme to be believable. I wish that to be the case, but in fact it doesn't seem farfetched to me. During my schooltime, stuff happened, like adding gravel to food, hoping the tiny rocks would break teeth (didn't work, but each attempt caused a no lunch day). Also pouring water into a schoolbag to ruin all the books, which caused the school to demand the bag's owner to pay for new books. Overhead a similar plan being abandoned because one person chickened out and had discarded the collected urine. Then there are physical attacks, sending people to hospital and in one case somebody was arrested at school for attempted murder. My parents decided to move just to get me out of the school district and shortly after some government task force took over the school because everything had gone crazy and the school leadership did nothing. I really can't say YMK is any worse than this. Just because it didn't happen at your school doesn't mean it doesn't happen at any school at all. Just for the record, the Nekoko event and the bullying were two different schools. Speaking of bullying, research has indicated that it has nothing to do with not being friendly towards bullies. What happens is a lack of leadership. This power vacuum will make one person decide to be leader and collect a group of henchmen. The leader then orders the henchmen to bully a victim. The goal is to make the henchmen not want to be the victim. With this setup, the leader will gain complete power over the henchmen because if a henchman refuse to follow an order, he/she will be the next victim. The victim is often picked semi or completely random and can't do anything about it. The whole "let's talk it over and be friends" will never work because somebody has the goal of power rather than friendship. I didn't actually learn this part from YMK. It's just an important fact regarding the topic from YMK.

This is one of those topics where the answer somewhat depends on the person. Personality traits, such as attention span, introvert vs extrovert, need for visual aids etc plays a major role. For instance if the goal of a document is to explain some item, some people are ok with text only, some requires a picture, some want the item to feel on it and some wants schematics. Because of this nobody can read all the answers here to find "the perfect solution". Having said that, there are some general hints. First of all, avoid distractions. Turn off everything, which can give you an alert. That is forum, chat, email and so on, possibly even turning off the phone. If you get a message and read it, possibly reply, you will not just waste the time you spend on it, but you will spend 5 minutes getting back to fully focus on where you were. This mean getting 8 messages in an hour severely hurts your attention on what you study, even if you only spend 30 seconds on each message. It's not 4 of 60 minutes wasted, it's 44 of 60 minutes wasted (worst case). The 5 minutes is proven in scientific tests and is a lot longer than most people realize. Try to avoid noise. Background noise increase stress level and you remember less if you learn while you are stressed. The threshold for when continuous noise starts to cause stress (even just minor) is surprisingly low. In fact your computer likely has a fan, which is too loud. Mechanical HDs are too loud. Even if you can't block out all sounds, you could try to minimize, like not creating artificial ones intentionally, like music. Speak to yourself. I discovered this one way too late. In fact I didn't realize the full potential of this until a year after I graduated. When you think of a sentence, you use one part of your brain, when you say it, it will be another and a third when you listen. Activating all 3 will increase the chance of the information being stored. Information is also processed differently. I have realized that I have the easiest time picking up on grammar errors in foreign languages when I listen. As a result, I can say something and then change it because I haven't realized the error until I actually say it. However I learn from those mistakes and rarely make the same mistake multiple times. There is an often mentioned concept of using rubber ducks to aid your work. Consider writing old school with pen and paper. The movements of your hand helps you memorize what you wrote and it's processed way more efficiently than when your brain tries to remember which keys you pressed. I ended up with lots of handwritten papers and I never looked at the majority of them ever again, but the making process helped alot. Try saying what you write while you write it as this helps too.

This is actually a really good question. Usually I consider if I like a VN or not and not as much the individual characters. My first thought went to Musumaker, but I realized that's actually not a good candidate. It uses the sane man/crazy man comedy setup once in a while and while it works really well, it has to leave the protagonist as the sane man aka a more average man. He isn't bad, but he is not "the best" either. There are some other good candidates in that title, but none of those are protagonists. It's not that the protagonist has a shallow personality or anything like that. He just intentionally isn't the outstanding favorite character ever. I find this rather interesting as I never thought about this in this way before. After a lot of thinking, I ended up with Alice from Majo Koi Nikki. She is well written, cute, adorable, curious and funny. The fact that she is presented sort of like a heroine (displayed onscreen and with voice acting) does help her, but she would likely be my favorite even without that.

Ok, I will accept your salt.

What kind of question is that? The answer is obvious: I'm not here at all!

I wouldn't trust those numbers. It says 65.38% of windows users use traditional Chinese. I suspect your target group would be primarily those setting their computers to English, which would be 16.01%. Judging from those numbers, it's actually possible that none of the 1080p users speak English. I find it highly unlikely, but it's possible, which shows how screwed the numbers are. Now if it would be possible to filter to get only European languages, then it would be more accurate for the target group of a game released in English. It should be noted that most VNs are released in 720p. I somehow suspect this is what the Japanese companies view as the perfect balance between quality, size and supported hardware rather than just some randomly picked number. However I will not rule out that the often small Japanese homes could be less likely to have big monitors than the western homes. Also I woundn't recommend buying 1440p today (mine is getting old). There are some 1080p of good quality for a tight budget and if you want/have to spend more to get higher resolution, go for 4K. I don't think 1440p usage will rise as it's mainly a resolution from before 4K became good on a reasonable budget. That's the main issue with for profit software development. Regardless of what is said here, it will all come down to your risk assessment and prediction of consequences if sales fail. Nobody (sane) will blame you if you aim for lowest risk of bankruptcy rather than the most interesting game to develop or play.

Why this specific resolution? It looks bad on my 1440p monitor because upscaling is bad when each pixel becomes 1.x pixels. Upscaling from 720p looks much nicer because it's 1 pixel -> 2x2 pixels. Int ratio works better than float ratio, particularly for values below 2. On the other hand 720p looks worse than 1080p on a 1080p or 4k monitor. Last, but not least: I know of VN players with hardware, which can handle 720p, but not 1080p. I think you should consider making high resolution art and then use an engine, which can scale down at runtime. That way you can "natively" support multiple resolutions. I have seen 2500 pixel tall character sprites on a 720p VN and this allows it to display the character at any size needed and even do stuff like watching a character walking towards you and the sprite grows for each line. The growth will the be smooth scaling like changing from before to after size in 1-2 seconds and because it's so ridiculously overkill on pixels, each step will look smooth, even if zooming in on the head alone. Sure it has the downsize of more GPU load and bigger files. Another solution is to pre scale and release multiple versions. Steam can do that with the beta system. If people prefer the 720p version, they can just pick a 720p "beta". Be careful with those. Having a lot of effects or flashes on the screen can be not only distractive, but it can downright making me feel dizzy. Perhaps it would be a good idea to make game settings where you can set effects to high/low/off. That way you will likely entirely avoid the debate if you added too many or not. I know I will personally turn off all flashes if given the choice.

Bald empty eyed guy 2/10

You ask for a patch to fix this for the English release, which can only be released by the people responsible for the English translation. Nobody in Japan can fix the English release. In other words you end up blaming the people behind the English release, regardless of who caused the issues in the first place. Having said that, odds are that crashing in specific lines are an issue with the translation. Missing voice files are likely the result of them being lost or never recorded, meaning they are missing in the Japanese version as well and the only solution is the expensive one of recording them again. I don't think satisfied is the right word for including issues like that. It's likely more in line with "this isn't good, but we have no choice". Alternatively they might be unaware of all the issues. We don't know how they tested it. Maybe they read through samples and fast forwarded the rest. One of the reasons software is released with bugs is that it could take years to test every single combination. Because of this, people who encounter issues should report them, which then makes it possible to fix such issues. Your ranting reminds me of an incident I had a few years ago. Suddenly I was blamed for not fixing a bug and it had been broken for 3 months. The guy blaming me admitting that he was the one to break it. He talked with some other people about it and ended up figuring out that I was the one to fix it, only nobody told me and by chance I didn't encounter the bug personally. Suddenly getting attacked like that for not doing a task you didn't know about is no fun. Make proper reporting and rant if they are ignored.

If the missing voices are due to missing voice files in the Japanese release, there is not really anything translators can do about it. However translators can introduce crashes. This would be a crash when displaying a certain line, though this will usually cause a crash even if you try to skip passed it. Not all VN engines are equally friendly towards getting English text and it's can actually be a lot harder to get them working than one might think. Sengoku Rance (the patch, not the MG work in progress) has left some names untranslated because translating them would cause the game to crash. I had to write a program to insert English text into Musumaker because just replacing Japanese text with English will cause crashes and the workaround for that is too tricky to do by hand for each line. It's also worth mentioning that some official translations have been using different engines than the Japanese versions of the same VNs because of engine limitations. For all we know, Fan TLs can crash because of such engine limitations. Fan tls has less freedom when it comes to choice of engine because they can't repack every single data file to match the new engine. Also some VN engines use compiled scripts and moving those to a new engine requires the source code for those scripts. Just like pre-censored CGs, the source code is only available to official translators. In short: yes missing voices and crashes are annoying, but I wouldn't blame the translators for those, at least not without checking that the problems aren't present in the Japanese version or if they are caused by engine limitations. The script errors are due to translators, or rather editors and QC. @Fred the Barber commented pretty well on that part. I was about to write something about how that's not the case and fan tls are progressing etc. (at least those I have internal knowledge of). However your post made me think about this and I have come to realize something. Way back in the dawn of time for English VNs, lets say year 2000, translations were made by a group of people gathering in the same building to work on a translation. Once completed, it was put on CDs, placed in boxes and then the boxes were sold. In other words it was the pre-internet approach. The problem with that approach is that if you happen to live in an area without such a company and you can't or won't move to a location of such a company, the only way to translate is to make a fan tl patch. Sure enough fan tl patches started to appear. Now the one building resulting in CDs approach has died and most (all?) of the companies with it. Today we have some other companies and they have embraced the internet. Suddenly translators can sit in their parent's basement or in some foreign country or whereever they are and work on commercial titles. This means skilled people are no longer forced to only work on fan tl patches. What does this mean for the fan tl patches? Mostly it means brain drain. Skilled people figure why not get paid to do what they currently do for free? Is it the end for fan tls? Not as I see it. The fan tl community will likely shift towards having a bunch of people who does the work to gain experience, which will help them getting a paid job. This means it will not die, but since the official releases will end up with all the skilled and experienced people, we can expect the fan tl quality to drop relative to the official releases. I wouldn't call that dying, but we will likely see fewer masterpieces. Having said that, some people want to translate one specific title and if they can't get paid to do so, they could do it for free, which is likely the main reason why I will say that we might still get masterpieces as fan tls.

Some VNs are worse than others. I read one where one answer combo provided the true ending, as in most of the H contents. The other like 50 combos all resulted in a meh ending, usually the same. I had to use a walkthough to get it right because I don't want to spend days trying out all combos while getting the same scenes over and over. Asking for 100% savegames is reasonable and completely valid. If I should disagree with anything, then that would be skipping the story and knowledge of characters. It adds to the H scenes when you know the background, but if people want to rush H scenes and/or spoil themselves, then I won't try to stop them.

But dear ♚, the ♜ is faster than us ♟, meaning we have to follow him.

I'm not sure limiting the dataset is the way to go. In fact I wondered about writing something about trustworthiness related to using a relatively small dataset. The problem is that with a reduced set, you basically made an opinion poll of the votes rather than the votes themselves. Polls usually needs at least 1000 to be trustworthy, yet many specific titles seems to have less than 100. In fact some of them are so small that adding just one 10 or 1 vote would alter the score. The only thing to do about this issue is to increase the dataset. In order to get the most trustworthy scores, use all the votes for the score average. It could also be interesting to see the median score. Another option would be to get the average when the top and bottom 5% have been removed, which would remove some of the offset from people just voting 10. Remember this is useful for calculating specific scores (say female comedy), which can then be used to calculate score difference between genders, while it's horrible regarding finding male/female radio for a specific category. One reason for using the full dataset would be to avoid all the issues around using a sample of a set. For instance if you only use 10% and only 5% voted for a certain title, you can by chance get only 10% of the votes for that title and they could all be from the fanclub of said title, meaning they would be the top 10% and the average score could be say 1.5 lower. It's not likely, but at the same time not impossible. You can avoid this issue by using the full dataset. This in itself is interesting as it gives insights to something other than just what people watch. It does screw the results a bit. Maybe the best approach here would be to not balance for accounts, but balance for votes. Take the full set, count male and female votes in each category and then multiply female votes with (total male votes/total female votes). I think that would give the most accurate picture of what each gender watches when they watch something. I know it might not be the most fun reply you can get right after finishing what seems like a huge task. I intend this to be constructive feedback and I do realize that statistical analysis is not the easiest thing in the world and most people underestimate the impact of statistical uncertainty. I do not claim to be an expert in the field, but I have passed statistical analysis at the university. What I have written here is my educated guess on how to maximize the quality of the result while minimizing the usage of complex math.

What I find interesting is the distribution of scores and votes are between the genres. If we compare cars with yuri, it's a no brainer that yuri is really popular. Just look at the success of Sono Hanabira ni Kuchizuke. As it turns out, that's not the case. Male gives a score of 6.65, which is 1.49 below cars and cars have more than 4 times as many votes. For females we see the same pattern with cars getting 1.65 more and cars have 10% more votes. Keep in mind that cars happens to be the genre with the highest percentage of males. In other words yuri in anime seems to lack votes/viewers and those who watch it gives it quite low scores compared to the other genres. Out of the 19 genres with 65%+ male viewers, 15 of them have higher votes from the females. This means the females who watch do enjoy it a lot. However in the other end with a majority of female viewers, the same pattern isn't visible with male votes. In fact the absolutely lowest score is from males to a primarily female genre. Looking at the graphs, male have more votes in 7 and 8 than females while females have more 10 votes. Does this mean that there are more female than males, who doesn't scale their score and just gives 10 if they like it? Is that enough to give the offset where females vote a bit higher in most categories? It states that many genres have more male fans because there are more male accounts. It's hardly surprisingly, but it does bring up a problem: how would it have looked if we had precisely the same number of people of each gender? One way to get it this way would be to multiply female votes by (number male accounts/number of female accounts) when calculating the "male fanbase" column. This way if 10% of male and 10% of females vote for a specific genre, then the ratio would be 50%. This number actually tells more about preferences of each gender than the absolute number we are given. Me too at first, but if you look at the numbers, then you will see a different pattern. Females actually voted 7.97(I) and 8.09(II), which is actually pretty good in itself. It's not as high as the male votes, but it's still far better than "don't like". In fact it's higher than 16 of the male votes on the top 25 table for highest male vs female votes.