Nandemonai

For the record, the flak they're getting from me (as I can't speak for anyone else) is a) for being hypocrites, and b) for not apologizing to the Kickstarter-using companies they hypocritically insulted earlier.

Yeah. I'm giving them flak for the flip-flop, because... they deserve it. Doesn't mean I think they suck. Just means they did something that I'm giving them flak over. And I'm with Fred: nobody is in this industry for the "sweet sweet cash". The cash is paltry and mostly sour. Most of the companies that ever tried to enter this industry either died, or gave up. The ones that are still around are lucky to sell a few thousand units of each game they release, with a very small handful of lucky exceptions. Sekai Project might not even still exist if it weren't for NekoPara.

Setting aside the fact that I disagree it's a mistake... Even supposing it was a mistake, there are still much worse mistakes that have been made in the past. Nocturnal Illusion was translated professionally, yet it chose to translate one of the girls calling you Shinichi-oniisama as ... Brother Shinichi.

The problem is this is what they actually said: But before we talk about individual titles, I would say it's important to first off all talk about ourselves -- NekoNyan. You see, all of us had been pretty dissatisfied with how things were going in regards to the Western VN/eroge market. It just felt like many -- not all -- of the only few localizers don't really have a passion for what they're doing, nor do they seem to actually understand much about it. We talked to many of the Japanese devs, and the truth is (unsurprisingly), they had been getting the same impression. That whole KS practice that just came to be the default for most companies is anything but liked over in Japan. One company we talked to said it'd feel like those localizers are trying to span a safety net, which would, in turn, give off the impression that they don't really believe in their title(s), nor care. .. All right, let me now quickly share with you guys how we're planning to go about things in general, and the direction we want to take this endeavor. ... - No crowdfunding. The first few releases have already been fully funded using our own, private money, so no worries there. We're likely going to offer pre-orders, though, and throw in some extras there for those who really want to support us ahead of release. Don't worry though, pre-order bonuses will also be included in all purchases up to a few weeks after release.

Nekonyan deserves to take flak for this. In January when they first launched, they sure talked big about Japanese companies disliking localizers 'relying on Kickstarters', even though only two VN companies have a history of that. They went on about it at some length. Then it turns out that running a company is harder than talking trash, so before they've even released all their initial announcements they're turning to Kickstarter. I'm glad they're around and releasing games. Even with them and Sol Press new on the scene, there's still far too many good games to ever have all of them released. But the least they could do is acknowledge they publicly and disdainfully denounced a practice they're now considering embracing not even a year later. Just pretending the first statement never happened isn't fooling anybody.

Indeed, the translation is now at 100%. But please, don't anyone get hopes up. That's a very misleading figure. The translated material is not in a very satisfying state. Editing is required. And the editing percentage is highly misleading also. The material that has been edited is not up to par. Sometime in May, I realized this and decided to start over; now I'm playing with the game open, listening to all the dialog. This is actually the reason that status updates have stopped: editing is not back to where it was originally yet, but the stats no longer reflect this. (It has also been much slower going, since real life got inconvenient for me. Such is always the way.)

I think it means 'no announcements this weekend', but he could just be pulling our chain.

So, you're announcing your announcement displeasure at their announcement of a forthcoming announcement? I do declare...

Propeller is a sub-brand of Will, and they're still around. DameKoi's brand - Hermit - is far deader than Propeller. DameKoi was that company's final game (they only made three) and it released in 2007. If that game can be licensed, that significantly increases the chances that Propeller games can be licensed. Also, MG's Propeller releases took place after the company stopped releasing anything in Japan. So I wouldn't rule them out altogether. Someone might want some of their other stuff.

Well, you put everything on a continuum even though it's not really a continuum. (I.e. there's two different variables here - skill with English, and skill with Japanese). So I'd be careful with these results.

And now you know why many of these companies are uneasy about allowing unmosaic'ed releases. They are worried about legal exposure from Japanese people buying the US release, then patching in Japanese text. In Japan, that may or may not be enough to get them in trouble. H-OVA releases dried up because the places to sell said DVD's dried up (or so I recall hearing) but also because Japanese customers figured out that overseas releases were half the price and uncensored. That happens too.

I played, like, one route from the PSP release of HakuOki. It was... underwhelming. (Not least of which because I failed to get on a route and ended up on the fallback generic route, which is supposed to be kind of underwhelming.) Mainly I bought it because it was the first time anything like that had ever been released and I was willing to give it a shot, and to try and give a little support to the otome fans (who were a much-underserved segment before then). I've picked up a few others - FLML, Ozmafia, and some of the Vita ones - and Fxxk Me Royally looks great. But I haven't actually played any of them. My backlog is the stuff of legends.

Shinji, you suck. Get in the robot. Yeah, the backend is old and using deprecated crap. But this is still pretty funny.

No, they really couldn't, for the same reason you can't use them to gauge popularity.

This is an easily-gamed metric. It's decently useful, but definitely not perfect, because of review bombing and other such shenanigans. (For example, there was that one game Sekai Project had to kill stone cold dead because they caught the dev hiring paid reviewers.)