I think I saw it mentioned that Da Capo 3 has about two million characters, which is about twice the length of an average VN (TB and Himawari have around one million). That would take 1-1.5 years for me if I was working on my own.
If you combine all episodes of Umineko, I think you end up with around 3-4 million so that one is way more insane.
Apparently it has more than 4 MB of text so it should be the longest VN they've ever translated, since Koihime and Evangile just had about 3 MB. (Not sure about Umineko though...)
VNDB length infos are pretty unreliable since everything >= 2 MB seems to get the long description.
Tokyo Babel has about 2 MB of text and is listed as long. But Shin Koihime Musou too with almost 6 MB (!!!) of text.
So yeah, VNDB length infos suck pretty hard.
DC3 definitely progressed slower than a VN of its size normally does even with one translator. MG has had similarly sized projects that have progressed much faster, such as Princess Evangile, which was announced and released within the duration DC3 was in translation for. And even that was delayed for like six months during the beta testing process. Kouryuu often has other duties at MangaGamer as their head translator, though, which probably accounts for DC3's delays. I don't think anyone would dispute this, Kouryuu himself was saying how they were aiming for a 2014 release back when they announced it. They really were expecting it to finish and release it a good two years ago. Shit happens, though.
Aaeru was basically machine translating it. You shouldn't use her speed as a judge of anything.
I don't fully trust that DC3 is as long as MangaGamer would lead us to believe. From what I can tell, it's about on par with Princess Evangile and many of the other long-ish moege getting translated out there. It's not some incredible epic of unprecedented length. And if MangaGamer's forums were still up you could see posts in 2013 from Kouryuu stating they were aiming for a spring/summer 2014 release. Again though, I don't really blame MangaGamer and I'm not harping on them for this.
As for SP, they haven't really been announcing any Japanese VN translations outside of cons for the last few months to my knowledge.
As for someone who did followed Mangagamer blog or tweets(and the forums before it got bombed and still haven't recovered T_T), Da Capo III is a huge game. The prologue itself is big, The common route is also big. Overall DC3 is pretty much comparable to more or less Koihime Musou length which was the longest VN MG had worked on at the time. IIRC, perhaps Koryuu has compared words length of DC3 to LOTR novel length.
As for 3 years, Koryuu is the only assigned translator on it and it's mainly because for keeping the translation quality consistent as opposed to 2-3 translators on the project.
The point is: DC3 was never expected to be released within small timeframe after its announcement. And people who may want something similar to Da Capo has Princess Evangile for their fix. But most important of all, MG Project Status is steadily updated so people knew of its progress.
Well, aside from cons, SP did announce titles outside of them after all, and people may be including what accumulating to "announcing too much" backlog.
How about no
They're probably gonna get koestl again. I really doubt MangaGamer will work with ixrec, considering that he torpedoed a chance to work with age and release MuvLuv. Also, he sucks, soooo, yeah.
I think Dovac's frustration goes way beyond of just loosing the money for an upgrade patch. It's not exactly new information that sales on their Denpasoft site aren't particularly great. Dovac complained about that fact often enough and frequently used it as an argument to defend their all ages policy. And naturally, many people get upset about that, arguing that adult titles sell pretty well for MangaGamer.
However, what most people probably don't see is that Sekai Project isn't MangaGamer, and there is actually a vast difference between those two companies:
If it comes to all ages titles sold on Steam, both companies are more or less equal, because for a typical Steam user it doesn't really matter who's the publisher of the title he wants to buy. However, things are different if it comes to adult titles. Since those either can't be sold on Steam at all, or just as a stripped-down version, the own home site where adult titles can be sold comes into play. And with that we are slowly getting closer to the true reasons why MangaGamer are huge adult-freaks while Sekai Project just need to hear the word 'adult' to get into a bad mood and go tsun-tsun.
Overall, my personal estimate is that the MangaGamer site has about 10 - 20 times as much accounts as Sekai Project's adult site Denpasoft.
Now, what does that mean? First, it means that if MangaGamer sells an adult only title on their home page it would sell approximately 10 - 20 times better as if Sekai Project would sell it on their Denpasoft site. Second, it also means that titles which are also available on Steam can be sold on their own site which saves them the hefty 30% Steam fee. I'm a pretty good example for that myself. I've an account both on Steam and MangaGamer. And yesterday I bought Supipara on the MangaGamer site which means they didn't have to pay the 30% Steam fee for my copy. But I bought all the titles from Sekai Project so far on Steam because I don't have an account on Denpasoft, which means they lost 30% of my money to Steam.
So I think it should be clear that Sekai Project are in a significant disadvantage compared to MangaGamer if it comes to adult titles. But why has MangaGamer so much more accounts than Denpasoft?
I think that's also quite easy to answer. MangaGamer is a much older company than Sekain Project with an already established retail site for adult titles. Most people don't like creating new accounts (I personally hate it), so it simply takes time to convince people to create an account and you have have to give them a good reason for it.
But what has Sekai Project to offer on their adult site? Frankly, not much! Pretty much just a few adult patches for Steam titles where I can easily get the patch for free. And it's hard to make people feel guily just for downloading an adult patch if they actually bougth the title legally on Steam. And what has MangaGamer to offer? Lots of high quality adult only titles which were or still are very popular like ImoPara, Eroge, Koihime, Beat Blades Haruka and many more.
So what can Sekai Project do to get more accounts on their site? This is ironically almost a vicious circle. To get more accounts they have to offer something everybody wants which isn't available on Steam. A popular nukige for example, but who wants to give them one as long as their adult site is an account graveyard with an almost guaranteed sales flop? I'm sure this ridiculous problem makes them want to tear their hair out at times.
I personally think they have the best chances with Sayori's Boku to Koi Suru Ponkotsu Akuma since it's an absolute gorgeous nukige from a very popular artist with an already established fan base in the west. And while most people probably think that the Baldr Sky series is Sekai Project's most important license achievement this year, I tend to disagree. Baldr Sky won't solve the problem with their Denpasoft site but Boku to Koi Suru Ponkotsu Akuma might be able to. So I think for them this good for nothing nukige is even more important for their future than the hyper popular Baldr license. And if they really want to butcher this title for Steam (which might have been a condition from Smile to even get it), then I really hope that they are smart enough to delay the Steam release as long as possible. They absolutely HAVE to offer something exclusive on their Denpasoft site or people will continue to give a damn about it.
While this text wall won't make Dovac's answers more diplomatic, I hope it at least gives some understanding why he sometimes tends to overreact a bit if it comes to this topic. It must be absolutely frustrating for him to get constantly criticized for his all ages focus even if he tries to get his Denpasoft site going for years now. Steam and Kickstarter made the fast growth of Sekai Project possible, but unfortunately there's no 'adult Steam' site they could use. So their adult section will take longer for the simple reason that they have to establish their own site for it, and that can take years.
Actually, the best thing people can do who want more adult titles from Sekai Project, is creating an account on Denpasoft and buy every available title from there instead of Steam. Well, I'm admittedly a pretty bad example for that since I personally don't have an account there yet, but I plan to change that for the Koikuma release.
You don't need logic to hate. I can hate on SP whenever I want, wherever I want. You are free to white knight them too if you want. I just don't agree with how they treat their veteran fanbase.
No facts or convincing will ever make me love/appreciate what they do. It's more fruitful to learn Japanese than spamming Sekai's twitter to plead them of translating something. Your voice falls on deaf ears.
VLOCKUP reacted to Suzu Fanatic in Frontwing asks your thoughts on an issue regarding Corona Blossom
VLOCKUP got a reaction from Basileus777 in Otakon speculation and discussion thread