bakauchuujin

I think it would be interesting to have some idea of how successfull different VNs on steam are compared to each other and wonder if comparing amount of reviews on steam would be a way to do this. There are for instance some interesting patterns I have seen just looking at it quickly, like MG generally having low amount of reviews on their titles compared to the popularity on vndb. By this I mean low amount of reviews compared to many other VNs of that usually have lower amounts of vndb votes. Nekonyan seems to have done pretty well so far in terms of amount of reviews, at least compared to many other VNs and SP seem to have a large variation. I of course know that directly equating number of reviews to sale is not really accurate since things like length will determine how quickly they read it, controversial titles might get more reviews compared to readerbase etc. However I wonder if it is still accurate enough to give a decent understanding of sales regarding large differences in reviews, like 300 reviews vs 100 reviews. Unless I hear a good argument against it, I think I might want to try to look into amount of reviews for many titles on steam to look for general patterns. By doing this I think we might get a better picture of the steam VN readerbase and I think it would then be interesting to think if there is a chance for us who are more knowledgable about VNs to inform them about good companies and titles that are generally overlooked on steam.

Also want to mention that Jlist has a sale at the moment that is 5$ of on orders between 40 and 100$ and 20$ of on orders between 100 and 200$ as well as 40$ of on orders larger than 200$. Not really that great of a sale but it is something I suppose. From Rightstufanime there is a sale on Yume Miru Kusuri and the Moero titles, so quite a limited sale. Neither of these are really that important, but figured some people might be slightly interested.

So far I have yet to give anything a 10/10 so I will start with 9/10. Also these might not always apply since there is a wide variety in ways a VN can succeed or fail, for instance some parts can be really really good while others can be trash and my rating will then depend on my overall feeling of the work. For me a 9/10 is a really good VN which managed to really grip me push me to read for long stretches of times because I felt emerged in what was going on. 8.5 and 8 are VNs that I found to be really enjoyable and that I think back at fondly, this can be because it managed to sell me on the feeling of the VN with great comedy, music art or through a well executed story. For me the most important here is that I just feel really good thinking back on the title and have things I really liked about it. 7.5 and 7 are VNs that I found to be quite good, it was an enjoyable read and had some really nice high points, however it lacked the special thing that makes it really memorable. 6.5 are titles that are pretty close to a 7 however has some flaw that makes it not quite reach there. 6 are titles that for the most part are just decent but has some good points as well. 5.5 and 5 titles that just feel okay, they are not bad but they are not really good either. It does not feel hard to read through it, but the enjoyment I get out of it is rather small. 4.5 and 4 are disappointing titles, they are not outright horrible but can be boring at parts and lack really good highpoint. Often these just lack good writing and feel lazily put together 3.5 and 3 are titles I find to be really bad, there is very little good to say about them 2.5 and 2 are titles that really failed at being enjoying 1.5 and 1 are unreadable trash, I have not encountered anything I would give this rating to yet.

Mangagamer is having a black friday sale which will last through 1st Desember http://blog.mangagamer.org/2018/11/23/black-friday-hardcopy-sale-2018/ The sale is 25% of on all of their physical copies and seemingly also their physical goods. While the discounts are not quite as large as digital sales such as the current steam sales, 25% of is still a pretty good offer when it comes to physical editions as they much more rarely get sales and the discounts generally stay around this point. So I would recommend checking the sales out if you are interested in owning physical copies of VNs.

Majority of people don't listen to them but many of the ones with power does.

First of I didn't attack the article you wrote with what I mentioned, previously I also said I wanted VNs to become more popular but not mainstream so I think small efforts like what you attempted is valuable. What I meant with what I wrote was just that we shouldn't just think nothing of potential problems related to VNs becoming much more popular. Mainstream media don't care about content warning, the mere fact that something exist that they don't like is enough for them to attack it. The argument of people being responsible and checking content warnings only work on those with a functioning brain, unfortunatly lots of people don't have that and they can cause quite a lot of problems by getting things banned and putting harmfull legislations in place. Also news media tend to pick the things that are the most outrageous since that brings them the most views/clicks. As for the rapelay incident it is pretty much some news channels getting outraged about a VN (seems to also have gameplay elements so not sure if it completely count as a VN) in which you played as a man raping a mother and a daughter. Because of this many japanese developers got scared and there are probably some who don't want their VNs localized because of this and many japanese VN companies has blocked access to their site outside of Japan because of it. I am not an expert on the incident since I wasn't around the VN community when it happened so there are probably a lot more details other can tell you about it, or you could search it.

Honestly there are a lot of VNs with content that would really disturb regular people. If some of this got into the news it could lead to a lot of problems. The rapelay incident caused a lot of problems and I think it could be quite a disaster if the mainstream media went after VNs, especially now that so many are in the west. They could cherry pick some of the worst parts of things like Kuroinu, Starless, euphoria etc. and this would probably cause a public outroar from people who have no idea what a VN is since they might think that those few examples represent all VNs has to offer. Don't underestimate the power the mainstream, especially when they target niche things.

I follow the important localisers on twitter so I know everything that is coming out and I know pretty much everything noteworthy that has been officially announced for english since I made. As for japanese titles based on things that had an anime I know all the companies releasing these titles and they usually also get covered on animenewsnetwork. When I chose which VNs I would pick up when I went to Japan over a year ago I just skimmed through CGs of multiple hundred titles, picked out the ones that seemed interesting and looked at vndb to see the general opinion about the titles, then I decided to pick titles that felt decently different from each other. Atm I am not really planning to go to Japan yet so not sure how I would figure out what to pick, maybe next time I go there I will go with some really popular titles, like White Album 2 and Sakura no Uta since I would likely only pick up a few titles.

I think the current problem is that we currently have too few people buying VNs to actually support the current industry. The last few years there have been a lot of new english VN publishers and lots of new localised titles and it is uncertain if there has been a similar growth in terms of the VN community. Personally I would want VNs to become more popular to cope for this and also make it so that there are enough people buying them to warrant physical releases. However I would agree that there are some problems that would occur if it got very popular. As you said due to the content of VNs there would be a lot of potential controversies that could end up getting really harmfull. Another potential problem is that if an industry seems very profitable it attracts people who only want money and therefore only care about maximising profits at the cost of other thing (just look at the gaming industry). So personally I would want VNs to become more popular than it currently is, but that it still stays niche enough to avoid those problems.

The effect of piracy is rather hard to predict. On one hand it might lead to people who otherwise would have bought it not buying it but on the other hand piracy increase the amount of people interested in a medium and thus works to promote the medium. For instance the growth of anime I would assume is largely related to piracy. While there are countries where some anime is aired there might not be enough to make people get really interested in anime. Other countries don't have anime on TV and therefore lacks a chance to get to watch it outside of paid services. These places also generally has a lacking amount of titles on their paid services severly limiting the amount they can watch. Because of this piracy can generally considered the main way to get into anime, at least in some parts of the world. Also while you might think that people pirating anime don't pay anything in to the anime industry that would be quite wrong. On one hand they might recommend it to their friends who start to watch legally or they might buy blu rays or merchandise of serieses that they like. Personally I pirate anime, but I have also spent thousands of dollars on things related to anime, whether it is blu rays, original manga, artbooks, games, figures, wall scrolls or VNs based on the anime (japanese titles on ps4 or psvita). Now getting back to VNs, it is quite hard to know how the effect is. While I mentioned a lot of possitives for piracy regarding anime I am not sure how much these aspects can help. I would assume VNs are mainly promoted through the internet since I doubt most VN fans tries to introduce it to people they know in real life due to being scared about the person learning about eroge and calling them a perv or a pedo for being into VNs. As for merchandise there are some available through kickstarters and through some sites like MG, SP, Jlist and Denpa but the options are limited and there is also the problem with high shipping fees and lots of things being 18+ (some people don't want that in their visably in their house). As for physical copies there is the fact that VNs are usually not as attractive to reread as anime is to rewatch due to the length of them. Also the shipping fees are generally rather high and some people don't want to risk anyone finding out that they have physical porn around the house. Because of these things I would doubt that many pirates buy much merchandise other than those who pirated a VN before it was officially available. So to conclude I think that VNs don't get as much positive effect from piracy as anime does and I am not sure how large the negative effect is because it is hard to know how many people pirate and how many of these pirates would have bought it. My main message with what I wrote is that there are differences in the nett effect of piracy is in different mediums. In some mediums it might be benefitial while in others it might be harmfull. Personally I don't know regarding VNs as there are many factors I don't know about, but I would assume anime gets a more positive nett effect from piracy than VNs. Also while I do pirate anime, I have never pirated a VN. Just wanted to mention it in case people got mad at me.

Considering how many new titles are being released atm and how many companies there are I wouldn't be suprised if it might damage profit for some existing companies and make them pull out of VNs. Just speculation though and I don't know which company that would be can just hope the bad ones go under.

Last time they used the fact that it had been released in english to promote it, guessing that they felt like the fanbase in japan might think it is special in that case and they also used the fact that the japanese people would get content exclusive for them. So it might be that they feel like it help hyping up these low quality releases. Other than that there is also the fact that some anti censorship people in the west probably don't know to research it and assume that it isn't censored and that it is actually not an eroge based on no 18+ japanese edition (yet). So I think it might have to do with how they want to market it. Anyways I think it is scummy and I hope Moenovel just stops.

I think the only option that would work really well for VNs would be a dictator who loved VNs, though having a dictator wouldn't really benefit society at large.

As long as there is still an anime industry and western fans we will get anime. As for VNs well that is more so based on whether the VN fandom in the west buys enough to maintain a market, while people who are into VNs mainly came from anime I doubt a decline in anime will have major impact on the current VN community. I don't really think it is likely that VNs will dissapear completely in the west, rather what I am worried about is a decline in amount of titles and some current publisher shutting down due to oversaturation causing lower sales. Though even if we were to somehow get the worst case scenario where no more VNs were to be made or translated, there would still be lots of them to read even only taking the english market into consideration. Also if it matters to you that much you could also just learn japanese and then you would have an insane amount of titles available to read.

I think saturation is actually a much bigger potential problems for VNs in general than most other mediums. VNs are usually rather long compared to most medium. If you for instance decrease the price of VNs the sales might not increase that much since a lot of those who buys VNs won't have time to read it all. If you just build up a really long backlog you will probably end up only buying the most highly rated of the new stuff regardless of it costing almost nothing or consting a decent amount. With VNs you then also have to not only think about how much a customer is willing to pay but also how much time they have to read. As for how the current market is increasing in terms of amount of released titles I am a bit worried that there simply won't be a large enough community to actually keep the translation companies going. So even if we assumed that the fanbase didn't get bored of it I still think the saturation poses a problem.

What is the point of changing the CG, the later one seems more risky then the first one. If this is true I wonder if Sony are going full censorship or if they are just messing with japanese devs for lols?

They currently have that at 100% translated and 100% edited so it will probably not be too long, though I would guess they first have to release some of their VNs that are in beta atm.

Really hope it ends up getting a physical edition.

Guess it is just an other thing to add on to the list of why Sekai Project/Denpasoft sucks.

Haven't read it so not sure how good it is but eden* PLUS＋MOSAIC seems like a title a lot of people like and looking at the description it is a love story, so maybe that.

I have reviewed all the japanese vita ones I have currently read and it will probably take some time before my next since I have started reading Hanasaki Work Spring! which is listed as 30-50 hours, and I don't want to read more than one VN in japanese at a time. Though I will get to other PS vita and PS4 VNs some time in the future Here are all of my physical VNs which is what I make reviews of, so you can see the different titles I will make reviews of in the future. This both includes my english ones and my japanese ones.

Ye really looking forward to reading it myself, pretty much the main one that made me buy a vita and japanese VNs for the vita. Have waited before starting to read it though since I asume it is going to be a bit difficult to read.

Welcome to the forum, if there is anything you wonder about just ask, most likely someone will have a somewhat decent answer for you, at least if it is related to visual novels.

Ye but even a small amount of people screaming at the top of their lungs about something that the majority of gamers agree with them on isn't really good PR. Getting negative coverage can actually damage future sales, for instance Activision Blizzard has had massive stock drops after their last Blizzcon due to investors losing faith in their future due to all the negative PR they got for Diablo Imortal. Even if Diablo Imortal gets much more money that what is used to make it they might lose customers for other games because the negative press related to it and how it showcase how out of touch they are. For instance some people that maybe resub to WoW every once in a while to see if the game gets better, might see this as a red flag showing that they are too out of touch to actually make the game they want to play. If we bring this back to Sony, if people see Sony as someone who is unstable with censorship and may potentially start attacking AAA titles next, then people are likely going to go to their competetors the next console generation either in protest against censorship or to avoid potential problems of censorship, so ye what Sony are doing atm is just poor PR, the sales of the VNs might not hurt them, but the community backlash might.

While there were still people buying VNs from steam when they started trying to ban mildly sexual VNs, the backlash was quite large and made them reconsider and as such open up steam for actual sexual content. I am not saying that the same will happen with Sony, but I think using the steam suituation to say that backlash from people doesn't matter to the people running the platform seems odd.