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BunnyAdvocate

Fuwa Dev Team
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Everything posted by BunnyAdvocate

  1. If the quote “our language is the reflection of ourselves” is true, then what could we learn from Steam user reviews (other than that we deserve every bad game ever published there)? I thought it’d be fun to generate some word clouds of Steam VN user reviews: what words tend to pop up in positive reviews vs negative ones, which words are overused in 18+ VNs, and how old can I make myself feel by seeing all these memes references. Data collection Using the Steam API, I collected the English user reviews for any VN released before 2019 on Steam, giving us 250,000 reviews in total. I filtered out Doki Doki Literature Club’s 71,000 reviews to prevent the results being skewed too heavily towards one VN. I also filtered out any word that appeared in fewer than 5 different VNs to prevent character names from popular VNs from filling up the results too much. Word associations A higher resolution set of these word-cloud images can be found here. The larger a word is the more frequently it’s used. First up is a comparison of what words tend to appear more often in VN reviews vs a random selection of other games on Steam. There’s nothing too surprising here, it’s mostly just popular VN series and various “weeaboo” terms. “Uncensored” also pops up quite prominently, showing how much 18+ content matters to the medium. Next is the list of words that are more likely to come up in reviews the user submitted as a thumbs-up (a positive review). While there’s all the usual flattering terms you’d expect, it’s fun to see how many words traditionally associated with negative feelings come up here: tears, cry, sadness, and bittersweet all show up indicating how much we seek a deep emotional release in VNs... also “memes.” What goes up must come down, here we have words that tend to come up in thumbs-down Steam reviews. Despite VNs being a visual medium, almost all the terms would seem to describe their opinion on the story/writing rather than the visuals, with “boring,” “waste,” and “stupid” all coming up more often than “ugly.” This suggests the most common way a VN can disappoint its users ie through its writing rather than its aesthetic, although this may because it’s easier to judge the visuals from screenshots before you purchase the VN. The English-developed VNs reviews are mostly full of titles of popular EVNs, but we can also see how much more socially progressive EVNs are, with terms like gender, diversity, and lgbt coming up more often than in JVNs. Truly Japan is the land of wonder, or at least kawaii catgirls according to these results. It’s curious that “fighting” would be linked to JVNs, perhaps because there’s so few EVNs that depict violence. Thank you Steam reviews for telling us in the review that a free VN is free. Truly a valuable service. There’s a certain irony that the words that come up more often in commercial VNs are all about how to get it cheaper: sale, bundle, and discount are all prominent terms. These are the words that tend to come up more often in otome VNs reviews (VNs with a female protagonist pursuing male love interests). Words associated with fantasy type settings pop up frequently, queen, princess, and prince are all present which is unsurprising given otome’s love of the fantasy genre. These are the cursed words which come up more often in 18+ VNs, what is lacking in eloquence is at least made up in “tiddies.” These are the words that tend to come up in shorter reviews. We’re told a picture paints a thousand words, but who needs a thousand words when you have swear words to convey meaning instead? Who needs verbose reviews when you have “fuck gay catgirl boobs.” I’m sold on that VN already. You can find higher resolution versions of all these word cloud images here (as well as the longer-review wordcloud which wasn’t included here because it’s boring). You can also view the results in spreadsheet format here, which is useful for reading the smaller (less-common) words. Review trends I’d be ashamed to put my name to an analysis post that didn’t have a graph or two, so to cleanse the palette after all those word clouds here are a few graphs looking at some review statistics. Typically reviews tend to be fairly short, just a few sentences at 150 characters, but there’s no stopping the more long-winded of us who might be few in number, but dramatically pull up the average wordcount with their detailed account of everything that happens in a VN. I expected that the longer a review was, the more likely it would be that the reviewer liked it. It’s the fans who want to talk about it the most isn’t it? Well it turns out to be the other way around, the longer a review is, the more likely it is that the reviewer disliked it. Perhaps unhappy user’s feel the need to justify their opinion more when it goes against the general positive consensus on Steam, where 86% of all reviews are positive. So in accordance with this trend and the excessive length of this post, I hereby give my Steam VN review analysis a thumbs down. Not enough kawaii catgirls. While I don’t think any of these results were surprising, I hope you found it a fun read. If you’re interested in more, check out my other posts on tumblr. Feel free to give any feedback or suggestions for other analyses either here, twitter, or Discord (Sunleaf_Willow /(^ n ^=)\#1616). Thanks to Lunaterra, /u/8cccc9, and Elm for their input during this analysis.
  2. The results of the poll and the suggestions from the community are now up here! Thank you to everyone who voted or offered ideas to add to our list! I hope you had fun with the poll and see a few new VNs you might be interested in this winter season~
  3. Higurashi Rei came out after the original 8 arcs and is split into 3 stories, the first two are just comedic and aren't translated (although you can watch the anime versions with subtitles), but the third one has a fan translation and is well worth reading, especially if you go on to read Umineko as it explains the background of a certain character that reappears there. You can get the patch via vndb here: https://vndb.org/r9207
  4. The connection between the sites is a little complicated, they aren't officially linked yet. fuwanovel.se was initially organised by @Palas along with a few other regulars here on the fuwa forums (me, @MaggieROBOT, @lunaterra, @Emi, and a few others - sorry for not mentioning everyone). Emi is currently paying for the hosting and is in the process of taking ownership of the old fuwanovel.net site so they can revive it, at which point the sites will probably be merged, but it's taking a while to get final approval. We'll keep Symphonic Rain in mind thanks, although I think with all the rainy weather in it I might associate more with early spring. But I'll mention it to the others. Generally we were looking for "cosy" VNs so that tended to mostly just leave us with romance/drama oriented stories, but we opened up the list a little bit to just good VNs to read during winter, so yeah Swan Song would be great. The poll is now live here.
  5. Our poll on the best VNs to read during winter just went up here if anyone wants to vote~ Thank you to everyone who offered suggestions! We've kept note of all the suggestions and those who didn't make it onto the poll are very likely to make it onto our recommendation list that we'll be posting next week alongside the poll results. We're still accepting suggestions for the recommendation list if anyone has any other VNs you think are great for winter.
  6. @littleshogun Ah True Remembrance is perfect, a cute little heartwarming story set during winter~ I've not read DC2 but I'll check it out for the list thanks!
  7. Thanks for the suggestion, I'll check it out. Oh it'd be great to have a few otomes on the list too. I'm not sure if we have any yet. Although I'm not sure yet if we want to cover fan discs as we were hoping the results would serve as a list of recommendations for those who hadn't read a lot. But I'll note it down to check out thanks!
  8. Haha yeah, Swan Song was the first I thought of with the winter theme. Just thinking about that VN makes me cold. We thought it'd be more interesting to narrow down the category a little bit for the poll though. Six Days of Snow is a little borderline on the heartwarming element yeah, but there is a strong theme of understanding others so it definitely seems like a contender. Oh I should have specified that we're mostly after translated VNs, as the site is primarily for recommending VNs to English speakers, but Kanon is a good pick and I'll keep the others noted down for if we include an untranslated section in the curated list with the results. Thanks! Added to the list~ Yeah the only heartwarming element is the rage over wanting to smack Yuni to get him to tell us what he knows! Ah thanks for the suggestions. Snow Sakura should definitely make it, but S;G 0 might be a bit of a maybe depending upon what else is on our list. I'll also add the other 3 suggestions you added later.
  9. I suppose the poll doesn't necessarily need to all be great VNs, we'll need something to end up at the bottom of the poll result. But yeah it'll be better if we have more higher rated contenders to choose between.
  10. @Plk_Lesiak Oh I'd been thinking of A Winter's Datdream too. I hadn't heard of Wolf Tails before, that looks like it might be "warming" something other than the heart, but I'll add it to the list so it should find a spot either on the poll or part of the other suggestions posted alongside the poll results. Sakura Santa might actually be worth adding. I've not read the Sakura VNs, but they seem to sell well so presumably they have a fair size fanbase, so it might be worth an inclusion on the poll?
  11. We're going to be running a poll on http://fuwanovel.se/ next week on the best VNs to read on a cold winter day, much like the one we did on Halloween VNs. Anything with a cold setting and a heartwarming storyline. If you have any VN suggestions to add to the list please let me know! Not every VN will make it onto the poll, but we'll also have a curated list of community suggestions listed with the poll results.
  12. The results of our Halloween poll are up! The top 10 voted spooky VNs are up here along with our VN recommendations that range from the comedic to the existential-angst inducing~ Thank you to everyone who took part in the poll, and thank you for all your suggestions! We didn't manage to squeeze in all of them, but we tried to include at least one suggestion from everyone who recommended some.
  13. Ah thanks, I'll add it to the list of contenders.
  14. Yeah I found KQ quite disappointing. After spending the intro explaining all these elaborate rules and complex individual objective system, it just basically throws it all away. It could have been really good. I've heard the remake Secret Game is much better in that regard, but I've not read it. Ah thanks, I'll add it to the list of contenders.
  15. Thanks for the suggestions. I'm not sure yet how much of an untranslated section we'll have, but I'll keep Sayonara o Oshiete in mind if we do. Killer Queen was a pretty fun Battle Royale, I just wish the improved remake Secret Game got a translation.
  16. I considered adding Cartagra, but as we already had Kara no Shoujo, I thought that might be enough as it's all the same series. I'll look into it for the longer list on Friday though.
  17. This VN? While the bunny outfit does mean it warrants an automatic 10/10 from me, I wasn't sure if it was a scary/halloween themed story? It looks more a winter theme.
  18. Yeah Saya no Uta is deeply unsettling with how it makes horrendous acts seem so rational in their own way. SubaHibi seems a good suggestion, I'll make sure it's on our list~
  19. We considered adding DDLC, but we figured that at this point everyone and their mother has heard about DDLC so there wouldn't be much point listing it on a recommendation site.
  20. With Halloween fast approaching, we thought it'd be fun to create a list of VNs that fit the season on the Fuwanovel VN rec site. We're creating a list of suggestions and we'd be interested in any ideas anyone has, but we're also interested in the communities' collective opinion and put up a VN poll asking which VNs you think are the spookiest~ The poll is going to be up until the end of the week, with the results posted this Friday evening.
  21. JPVN works pretty well, I like that. I also wanted a shorter term for the free VN category, but I didn't want to add yet another acronym like FVN.
  22. Thanks Poltroon, I was a little confused by all the reply notifications I was getting on something unrelated to the analysis post.
  23. To what extent do JVN and EVN fans on Steam overlap? How many VNs do they buy? Who spends more? Which fandom is more elitist? As an update to my last analysis post on VN sales on Steam, I trawled 100k Steam profiles to find out. Here are my results~ Data collection and definitions Using the Steam API, I checked over a million steam profiles and collected public game lists on just under 100k users. I then used Steam's "Visual Novel" tag to identify which of those games were VNs. As Steam tends to be more lax on its definition of what a VN is, I cross-referenced this with VNDB.org and only included those games that had a VNDB entry. VNs were then split into three categories: JVNs: non-free VNs created by a Japanese company. EVNs: non-free VNs created by a primarily English speaking developer. Free VNs: free VNs created by either a Japanese or English developer. Unlike the non-free categories, users are only counted as "owning" a free VN if they have logged some time playing it. Those of you who follow my twitter may notice a few of these graphs are different to what I teased earlier. When investigating the overlap between VNs, I consistently found one group of VNs that were an outlier in terms of their fanbase overlap with other VNs, their userbase size, and their average price. It was always the Chinese and Russian VNs. So in the interests of better analysing the English language VN fandom, I restricted the dataset to only those VNs developed originally in English or Japanese. Results Let’s start simple and just see how widespread we VN fans are on Steam: While VNs remain a niche, they seem to be widespread enough among the Steam userbase that most users should at least be familiar with what they are. EVNs are penetrating Steam better than JVNs, perhaps due to bundles and lower prices. But they’ve also been on Steam longer than JVNs, with Analogue: A Hate Story being released back in 2012. Overall, 37.9% of Steam users either own or have played a VN of some kind. But owning one VN doesn’t necessarily make you a fan, so let’s see how many VNs these users own. The dramatic drop for free VNs show how dependent it is on a few VNs that reach more mainstream attention. 26.5% of free VN users have only played Doki Doki Literature Club for example, and only 53.2% of free VN players have ever bought a VN. This suggests that free VNs might not be an effective strategy for promoting a later commercial release as so few of these users buy VNs. EVNs drop at a faster rate than JVNs, showing that EVNs’ wider userbase doesn’t necessarily mean they have more users who would identify as VN fans as they tend to only own a couple of VNs. However once we get past the casual crowd, we see EVN owners seem to be more prolific purchasers than JVN owners. EVN owners purchase more VNs on average (5+ EVN owners own 23.7 EVNs on average, whereas 5+ JVN owners own 17.1 JVNs each). This may be because there are 66% more commercial EVNs on Steam than commercial JVNs so there’s more to buy, and they cost far less (the average EVN is £7.31 vs £14.00 for JVNs). So let’s try comparing the average spent on VNs next. image These prices assume users paid full price so are overestimating the total spent, but the relative value between JVNs and EVNs should be fairly accurate. Here we can see the influence of those higher JVN prices. While EVN fans may buy more, they spend less. On average, EVN owners spend £60.87 while JVN owners spend £81.12. The richest 10% of spenders have a disproportionate influence on the industry, accounting for 60% of all EVN revenue and 53% of JVN revenue. This is broadly in line with the Steam average, where the top 10% of spenders account for 61% of all revenue. So far we’ve been treating JVN owners and EVN owners as distinct entities, as if they were two warring tribes. But are they actually the same users? Let’s investigate the overlap~ Given that 86% of free VNs currently on Steam are by English developers, I expected the free VN fanbase to overlap more with EVNs, but it’s actually JVN owners who play free VNs more frequently, as 62.1% of JVN owners play free VNs but only 52.9% of EVN owners do too. Perhaps it’s because there are more EVN owners who are only lightly into VNs so are less aware of other free VN releases. Equally surprising is how many JVN owners also own EVNs: 75.2%. Despite the reputation of JVNs being the elitist community, it’s EVNs owners who are less likely to try JVNs where only 52.4% of them own a JVN. "But what about bundles” I hear the comment sections cry. Perhaps some EVN/JVN owners just picked up one in a bundle and aren’t really fans of them? OK, let’s retry this overlap with only those users who have at least 5 EVNs/JVNs/Free VNs in their library. The biggest drop in size is the free VN category, who lose 88.5% of their users. Meanwhile, the overlap between EVN and JVN fans has only grown tighter; with 60.1% of those who own 5+ EVNs also owning at least 5 JVNs. So it doesn’t seem like bundles explain the strong overlap between JVN and EVN fans, but let’s try another test. If someone picked up a VN through a bundle that they aren’t interested in, they probably wouldn’t play it. So let’s try only counting VNs that have been played: There’s been a slight drop in how many JVN players also play EVNs, at 67.6%, but it’s still a significant overlap. So while bundles likely do inflate EVN numbers slightly, there’s no denying how linked the fandoms are. Overall, 59.3% of owned JVNs were played, while 56.2% of EVNs were. The lower EVN percentage is perhaps due to user’s owning more EVNs on average. Although both played stats were higher than the Steam average, where only 49.2% of owned games have any recorded playtime. So what explains the lingering lower JVN ownership among EVN fans? Are EVNs perhaps catering to a wider audience? One thing the EVN scene is known for it its profusion of otomes (VNs with a female protagonist pursuing male love interests), so let’s compare their overlap. Rather than being more insular, otome fans are even more willing to try VNs developed in another language, with 81.2% of EVN otome owners also owning a JVN, and 90.3% of JVN otome owners also owning EVNs. However the overlap between otomes fandoms is smaller than EVNs/JVNs overall (68.6% of JVN otome owners also own EVN otomes, and 37.9% of EVN otomes owners own a JVN otome). Something that especially stands out is just how many otome fans there are in the VN market. 33.1% of EVN owners and 42.1% of JVN owners own an otome. They make up a significant part of the fandom, but many online VN community hubs either ignore or are outright hostile to them. So it otome’s don’t explain the EVN/JVN gap, what does? To further investigate we’re going to need to delve into individual VN statistics and look through a lot of lists, so I’ll keep that for my next post in a week or two. Potential issues We’ve been basing these statistics on public user profiles, however only 7.4% of Steam users have their game list public. So it’s possible we’re undercounting the more casual userbase who are less likely to have configured their profile to be public. This has been an analysis of only Steam users, and while Steam is a major part of the game industry, it’s not the only source of VNs. JVN fans may prefer to stick with Mangagamer/Denpasoft etc, while EVN fans may prefer itch.io. So it’s possible the JVN/EVN fandom splits more than these figures would imply. Conclusion In my experience, the popular image of the VN fandom is of a male JVN elitist who hates EVNs and would never read an otome, but that really isn’t representative of the customer base. The majority of JVN fans also enjoy EVNs, the average JVN owner owns more EVNs (10.9) than JVNs (7.6). The same is true of EVN fans, who while preferring EVNS (8.5 owned on average) still frequently own JVNs (5.0 owned on average). So the canny VN developer would do well to advertise in both EVN and JVN fandom communities. --- I hope you enjoyed the analysis. Please let me know what you think and share any alternative theories you have on these stats. If you’re interested in more, check out my other posts on tumblr, watch for updates on my twitter, or give me a yell on Discord (Sunleaf_Willow /(^ n ^=)\#1616). Special thanks to /u/8cccc9, Part-time Storier, and Lunaterra for help with the analysis. I just do these analyses for fun, but if you want to support my work with a tip, I accept small donations at ko-fi.
  24. The only VN that seemed totally out of proportion with everything else was DDLC, which had almost twice as many owners as the next most common VN. Fortunately DDLC was a free VN so didn't factor into the EVN and JVN trends, as those included only commercial releases. Another VN that slipped through the cracks as Dies Irae. As it had a rather unique strategy of making the common route free, and then selling the endings as DLC. As the DLC didn't count as a steam app in itself, there aren't any stats available on the DLC sales. I only had how many played the free portion.
  25. The only outliers removed were DDLC and Emily is Away in one of the total review graphs. I was wary of removing any outliers without a clear definition of what is and isn't an outlier. It's a slippery slope once you start removing VNs, how far do you go? As it is, I think there are enough VNs in the dataset with moderate sales to balance out any outliers (there were around ~1000 VNs in there).
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