Indeed, that seems to be the case. However, it is also true that Aaeru wished to develop strong links with the English Visual Novel Community. She wished to aid with the production of visual novels in the West, and attempted to establish links with the English community back in 2012.
And from some of the crowd, we might be able to attract new talent to the creative side of things. ... The thing is, I know next to nothing about what the OELVN community need. I only know I want to promote their work and attract new people to join their ranks. ... I want to leverage that increase in popularity to attract more attention to VN creation. - Aaeru 2012
Her overall goals were not hidden, or questioned. She wanted to make VNs popular in the West, which meant popularising fan-tls, and OELVN creation. 2 sides of the coin. However, you cannot aid in the production of visual novels with such a sloppy attitude regarding copyright. It was a lesson she quickly learnt two years ago, creators of works largely have different expectations and viewpoints than consumers. It was why her efforts were rebuffed in 2012, and it is why no progress has been made on that front in the past two years.
Furthermore, it is an undeniable fact that the state of the visual novel industry in the west is in trouble, both here and in Japan (for different reasons obviously.) You cannot make visual novels popular in the West without having a visual novel industry in the first place. Anybody with such a wish would also be required to wish for the prosperity of such an industry. If you have no prosperous visual novel industry, you have no visual novels with which to spread. This requires funds, therefore to wish for visual novels to be popular in the West is to encourage the FINANCIAL SUPPORT of such an industry. Increasing the fanbase is only part of this, the other half is to encourage the fanbase to support the official developers. If you do only part of this, then you are lax in your duties.
Following Aaeru's wishes or goals doesn't mean following her method. I want what Aaeru wanted back in 2012, but her method was not the way to achieve this.
And this brings me to my next point.
That's a nice little anecdote, unfortunately I don't roll with anecdotes. I roll with facts and figures. All I see from the fan-tl community whenever this issue arises is the tired argument that an expanding fanbase will mean an increase in sales. Well, let's look at the facts, shall we?
The fanbase has expanded exponentially from where it used to be, but where's the pay-off we've been promised? The influx of 'true fans'? JAST doesn't sell enough copies to remain afloat without being propped up by J-List. MG can barely sell enough to keep it's doors open, and the only way they can acheive this is to release a ton of nukige that only take a few weeks to translate for quick dough. They've had to resort to pleading with the fan-tl community to wait a couple of weeks before uploading cracked copies online, because as soon as you guys do their sale figures plummet. The truth of the matter is the vast majority of the VN community still can't be bothered to support the industry. And you are part of the problem Steve, because you don't actively encourage the final step. You automatically assume that expanding the fanbase will result in a flock of new fans willing to buy the product. Well, there's jack all evidence to support this. It's a naive point of view. If half the people who downloaded and enjoyed the damn game would pay for the product, the industry wouldn't be in the dire straits it is now. And maybe if you encourage the practice, more people would buy the game.
Like I said before, MG's bestselling games were around 2,000 copies before STEAM. It took a DRM platform to move a respectable number of copies. 5 times as many copies as their previous best-selling game.
Welcome to reality Steve, where fairness and justice are playground illusions. There will never be a perfect solution for all, there will never be fairness for all, and if you think there can then you're naive.
The feelings of the creators who poured hundreds of hours into making the damn game, and the condition of the industry – an industry we all love, trumps the rights and feelings of those souls who want the game for free. Because at the end of the day, if we don’t encourage the financial support of such an industry, there’ll be fewer VNs for everybody. Then nobody gets their VN fix.
I'll second that. Umineko has a soundtrack I listen to regularly. My ipod has 2 playlists: My regular one, and Umineko. Nothing but stuff from Umineko. Plenty of other games have decent sound tracks and OPs I can fully appreciate, but nothing comes even close to grazing how much I'm affected by the Umineko soundtrack both from when I was playing, and just listening to it by itself.
Well, I have less time than I even thought I would originally, being on x-mas vacation at my folks place across the country... So I had to write something as fast as possible, and looking over it now... WOW is it awful. I originally wanted to make the whole thing rhyme. Instead, it's a hastily and poorly written... thing, with absolutely no sense to be found.
As I don't really have a favorite character, I just decided to put a bunch of them in there somewhere, mostly KEY, though Umineko's Beatrice is the star. There's also Hachikuji Mayoi there for the hell of it, but who cares about that, right? Amirite? Yea... ok.
Anyway, try not to claw your eyes out.
Vemocleus got a reaction from monkeysrumble in Translating: Is it ok to cut H scenes?
Vemocleus got a reaction from Nosebleed in Translating: Is it ok to cut H scenes?
Vemocleus got a reaction from Nyanko in Favorite BGM/soundtrack of a Visual Novel
Vemocleus got a reaction from vibrantblade in solidbatman's New Years Giveaway Palooza!