Narcosis
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Posts posted by Narcosis
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2 hours ago, ittaku said:On 10/10/2022 at 6:39 AM, ittaku said:
It seems people have misunderstood my reasons for leaving 2 routes out of the translation. It wasn't just because I couldn't find another translator, it's because those routes are really average compared to the wonderful routes that I was happy to translate. If they were good, I would have just translated them myself. In my opinion, the game is better without them.
People have the right to speak against a fan translation, where fan translator's sole decision upon not translating said routes conveys to arbitrary fan elitism. A good translator translates everything - as it was meant to be - so people can experience the entirety, both good and bad and deduce their own opinions. Omitting the bad parts is basically manipulating the fanbase to build a faux image of a game in the vein of a person who translated it. I personally find this kind of behaviour - regardless of initial good intentions - incredibly deplorable and hurtful towards the original creators; it's one thing to have opinions and another to push them forcefully upon others.
In other words - who do you think you are to decide what's in the best interest of other fans?
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I don't see how this can be turned into a success; especially after the fiasco Dies Irae was, with all it's mismanagement and issues piling upon issues, failed promises and general disappointment. No amount of petitions or votes will change the fact they're a very niche company producing very niche vns. Not the best kind of recipe for overseas localization.
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You go the average route, you get the average results.
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Just now, Clephas said:
That's true of all VNs, really.
Unless it's your new flavour of Nekopara.
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If I remember correctly form the past, most that remained of Light went under AkabeiSoft's wings - most likely in an attempt to secure talents - but there's no official statement regarding their current legal status. The sole fact they're still operating under their original brand name means they must have been given some degree of freedom/independency to pursue their own projects.
Regardless, no one will buy these vns aside from a small circle of rabid fans. I don't even know what's there to discuss.
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My initial experience with ATRI was very mixed. Minutes into game, I was trust into a story that seemed so hilariously bad, cliched and deprived of any sort of coherence or literal realism, I wanted to put my fist through the monitor. Another issue is that Konno Asta is good at writing heartfelt romance stories, but extremely bad at anything outside that requires him to step out of his bubble; not to say the writing itself is at most mediocre when it comes to dialogue and outright bland on everything else, including actual prose. It's just baffling to me he didn't even bother to do any sort of research, when writing the prologue. It really devalues the entire game afterwards and at the same time, forces you to greatly lower your expectations, thus lowering the enjoyment. There are moments, when the script shines, but these are an exception, not the rule.
I hope the later parts will make me change my mind, because so far what I've seen was severely disappointing to me. I came expecting something along the lines of YKK or Aria, but the story doesn't even try to properly utilize it's setting.
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1 hour ago, Yuuko said:
(Adabana has voiced protagonist male so clearly they wanted to save money because male voice licensing is expensive af)
That's quite possible, definitely more so than the GDPR conspiracies and whatnot. Add the fact Aniplex so far was working mainly on anime licensing and such practices aren't uncommon in this business.
I presume the reason they don't comment on it is... because there's no one to reply. Aniplex of America looks like a shell company and I wouldn't be surprised if they have barely anyone working there, least being responsible for any sort of PR.
10 hours ago, Zalor said:As for the business side of things with this strange policy towards Europe, well this sounds like just the kind of bullshit I would expect from Japanese companies. Its not just xenophobia, the boomers who are in charge of most Japanese companies are hardly ever business savvy, and this is in large part because in most Japanese companies you don't get promoted on merit but rather seniority. I don't know the specifics of the companies involved here, but the phenomenon I mentioned is just broadly speaking a major issue I've noticed in how Japanese business culture functions.
Also true.
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3 minutes ago, Silvz said:
I didn't say they would kill LS, but would kill their chances of getting back to the licensing table. I mean, Mangagamer is not doing a good job with their Liar Soft game either.
What do you mean? Are you referring to Sona Nyl? I'm kinda out of the loop with the latest news, but last time I checked they went as far as to port the game into an entirely new engine written from scratch in Ren'Py; hardly "bad" from my point of view.
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I don't know the background behind this release, but I would even go as far to say this might kill Liar-Soft, depending on the circumstances and their current legal agreements. Not to say they were doing bad... but their new games are considerably of lower quality - both story and art-wise - and it shows.
2 minutes ago, Silvz said:The only solution for many will be pirating, which will equal to lack of sales
Lo and behold - we just came full circle.
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Welcome to the world of modern day eroge.
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On one hand, I really want to support good visual novels and their developers. On the other, Aniplex is one of those companies I really don't want to have anything to do with. It's a tough nut to crack, especially considering it's the sort of a story I'm really in for.
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Just now, Zakamutt said:
this is original content though
just bad original content
much like your reading comprehension
I love you, too.
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Stop reposting bullshit from social media.
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>VtM
>5th Edition
At least it does look genuinely good for an adventure game.
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I still wonder who actually buys these vns. Definitely not the original target audience.
But you know? I'm totally not surprised and it's a perfect case study. This is what mindless piracy does. You have all these horny teens pirating every single game out of two reasons: 1. They have better things to spend what little money they have on 2. Why buy anything at all, if it's always available for free?
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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You're either bold or stupid... or both. Have to commend you for that.
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On 23.10.2019 at 10:37 AM, Dergonu said:
It's still a hobby I love, but I definitely spend less time reading VNs now compared to when I first got introduced to the medium.
The world is ending.
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3 hours ago, Plk_Lesiak said:
Like, really? Give me the proof that the global histeria about child porn is a leftist idea.
Examples? Majority of the global IT/internet tech/media businesses operate from the Eastern US, Steam included and they're all currently under the influence of left-wing American activists who aim to pigeonhole people in order to control their speech. In truth, it's not really even as much of an left-wing ideology being the culprit, but social justice narrative that comes with it to scrub all the content deemed as "offensive" and "hurtful" off the internet and it varies from party to party; a trend, that surfaced lately to score points with various groups of people to win them over. Straight from Google's social engineering, Sony's ubiquitous "censorship of the lewds" to certain third wave feminist groups literally attacking everything I and people similar to me hold dear; what these companies do is pander to a fringe minority of complete screwballs, lately going amok to try and restructure the entire world to fit their viewpoint. Certain communities - including those of gamers, old-time hobbyists and anime/manga/pop culture fans - are considered by them to be the last bastions of everything that's oppressive, which must fall in order to make place for their ideal interpretation of a brave new world. Why is this so unnerving to many people in the first place? Because a business should aim to deliver products to people, not advocate for sociopolitical viewpoints and it's been something that has been predicted by many of the outstanding sci-fi writers of the past century as the rise of collective corporatocracy.
It's clearly an ideological issue that has its roots in politics; how much of a threat you consider it to be to your own hobbies and your own well-being is up to you. To those social collectivists, Japanese pop culture in general is considered to be deeply rooted in "patriarchal" and "misogynist" ideologies and as such, it needs to be eradicated before it causes more harm; nothing else but buzzwords for being unable to mind your own business. Their self-need to validate their own moral superiority is slowly leading them to the point where they want to dismantle the entire system we built so far - one that gave us relative peace and prosperity for the last 75 years or so - in order to build their beautiful communist utopia. All under the guise of "compassion" and "mutual understanding".
As for your previous remarks - censorship in general is neither left or right wing; it's a tool to subdue people. There are certain right-wing christian activists advocating for the ban of porn who did meddle with gamers, but let's be honest - they've been making fools of themselves for the past 15 years or so and many of their latest claims on successful censorship have been debunked as well. If it comes to myself, I'd gladly prefer these old boomers over the social justice activists; the former are just religious lunatics, the latter are insanely dangerous people who justify and advocate for physical violence as an accepted tool in conversation.
It's slightly amusing to see such a train of thought coming from a fellow countryman, but who am I to judge.
3 hours ago, Plk_Lesiak said:You can hardly separate the two outside of literally a few franchises which achieved mainstream popularity. Half of them owned by Spike Chuunsoft which treated its expansion to the West seriously and without aiming at the super-niche VN community, but marketing them as any other games. Most other VNs are weighted down by just the same stigmas and cultural misunderstandings. For people not knowing much about the genre Clannad looks quite similar to any "creepy dating sim" or "hentai game". I didn't say there are easy answers to it, but I think you have a point about trying to please everyone. Because VN companies aren't willing to dedicate themselves to one or another, they keep their whole output is this weird shady corner. If they drop porn, they might gain something in the long run by creating a different image for the genre (or not, because it's reading and other unpopular stuff), but kill themselves in the short run by alienating the eroge fan base. If they do nothing, they'll never break through and are destined to forever barely scrape by. If they just focus on ero... Not sure if they can grow that much as porn games. We're fucked.
On the other hand, there might be solutions that we didn't think of yet. MangaGamer however seem to follow a truly Japanese philosophy of changing as little as it is possible as long as it's even marginally sustainable. And there's the issue of number of releases, which is in no way a clear one to me. Would less releases/less competition mean larger profit margins for the companies? Is the market oversaturated? Maybe Sol Press with their "love of the medium" are not really helping the niche, but adding another nail to its coffin? Anyway, my prediction is not a full implosion of the publishing market, but downscaling. The same seems to be happening to the EVN scene (which is very "SJW" BTW) for both related and unrelated reasons. We can all "stop scapegoating" and try to "take responsibility"... But then what?
This is exactly where both companies and fans need to be more transparent about their goals. This is exactly where translators should unionise and fight for their rights in this growing market. This is exactly the time to finally show the publishers that the community ascended from simply being mindless consumers into more self-aware group that also strives for the well-being of the entire market they get their beloved entertainment from. It is not only to show we're aware of the issues that ail all of us, but also to stop the scummy businesses from exploiting said issues for their own benefit. TL&DR a clearer conversation is needed between all the parties. In my opinion, our western publishers should also strive to help the japanese developers willing to reach out to us, so they can secure a safe marketing space to publish their works. I would rather not believe in such a pessimistic future, where crowdfunding suddenly becomes the only safe way to localize or even release these games at all.
1 hour ago, Mr Poltroon said:It is funny, but it is a true phenomenon.
If you do something enough, the magic of it will disappear or lessen. And then something else needs to make up for the difference. This is the reason I don't consider cases like this "exploitation", exactly. As fans, people are willing to take on bad deals or volunteer for things. But this spirit will not remain forever. Once the magic is gone, they might end up feeling like they let themselves be exploited, but at the time they did not feel as such.
Regardless, fans that work for free enough will generally start to feel like that isn't enough anymore. Not out of greed or any such thing. It's not the desire for money that increases, it's the will to work hard for their hobby with no recompense that decreases.
It's because at a certain point, it becomes a habit. It's no longer a "phenomenon" in one's life - a hobby, side-job or a way to spend free time - but a part of their life and with it, so comes the need to sustain it in the only adult-like way possible - by earning money for the work they do. Either way, this entire community is an ecosystem of it's own; take one part away and everything will crumble down. Exploit it and you'll feel the wrath of nature raining down upon you like the dozens of thousands of weebs reeeeing in unison.
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43 minutes ago, Plk_Lesiak said:
Holy fuck, the incelspeak is strong with you. Steam is pandering to SJW? You think that's where child porn laws are coming from? That's fuckin' delusional.
Western ideas about porn and the general idea of porn and art/serious entertainment incompatible with each other are possibly the biggest factor keeping VNs niche. Those have nothing to do with SJW positions. You can blame the "leftist culture" strawman as much as you want, but you'll be just deluding yourself.
Naivety at it's finest.
Do you even know who's actually influencing these laws in the first place? If there's any sort of strawman to be had, it's blaming the current industry issues on cultural differences; the greatest otaku demise of it all. Furthermore, are we talking about vns or precisely about 18+ eroge counterparts? There's a major difference between these two. One is a self-restricting niche, the other is just not as popular and won't ever be. This brings us to the beginning point - how in the world are you expecting an ultra niche market to sustain it's profitability, while satisfying everyone's needs? But hey - it's much easier to look for scapegoats, than take responsibility for one's own actions.
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42 minutes ago, solidbatman said:
The guy does have a choice, yes. he exercised it and you called it narcissism and virtue signalling that he warned others. Your obvious personal distaste for the guy aside, I am failing to understand your point. If the industry cannot survive without exploitation of worker passion, then the industry should not survive. The demand to support higher wages isn't there and MG along with other companies deserve to go out of business. Unfortunately, the VN community is stupidly passionate about working for free and taking for free, so yes, you are right. I doubt much changes. Maybe it's just the fact I study a lot of worker exploitation, have first hand experience with worker exploitation, but I will always supporter someone wanting a livable wage. The translator made a choice and is being paid better by translating mobile games. So I'm glad he made a choice while also telling others where they might be able to make more money and live more comfortably in a different market.
There's not much of advocating caution in here; all the TLs know about this. Every sensible community member knows about it. It's more of a market problem and balancing between profitability and future versus labour satisfaction in an ever increasingly hostile growing waters. If all the publishers go down under, there won't be any market and no games; It's all back to unofficial translations and piracy. As such, MG will either go bust or will have to adjust their wages, if applicable. Free market.
That aside, there's a very delicate line between balancing worker rights and market needs. I doubt vns and eroge have any place in this cucked future, hence I'm expecting things to only grow worse on the west. For a while, Steam had a chance to open up a new market, but they chose to pander to the left-wing social justice activists instead. Off-site adult patches can only take it as far and as expected from latest developments - if a game is deemed "harmful", target audience does not matter; as a developer, you're being devoid of any chance to publish your works. Does that mean all-ages games are the only choice? Not really, since they're often rejected as well. Without a large, safe and stable outlet, there's no chance for this industry to fix itself out of it's own problems.
Maybe it's time for the devs, publishers and community to sit down and have a chat?
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15 minutes ago, solidbatman said:
what an asinine remark. the guy merely warned about how shitty the pay is, and the constant cost cutting measures affecting quality. if virtue signalling is "please pay me something livable" and then leaving when the company refuses, then consider me a virtue signaler. if all the employees just keep their mouths shut then nothing changes. If companies like SP and MG are unable to survive without worker exploitation, then they deserve to go under. You seem like the kind of person that would have defended the government for their actions during various union busting exercises. After all, workers were virtue signaling and taking their problems into the public sphere by demanding 8 hour work days.
The guy has a choice. I'm not defending MG in this case, as they're a business highly fraught with issues, but downplaying them to suit a single side is just hilarious. You should know best, of all the people. This IS NOT an industry for sensible people looking for stable, high-paid jobs and judging from where we're heading with all the latest surfacing problems, I doubt it'll ever change.
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That guy needs to grow up. If he wants money, what is he doing translating japanese eroge?
That aside, talk about complete lack of professionalism, self-entitlement and narcissism. I'm tired of people nowadays taking their problems onto social media and constantly virtue signalling.
Haruka ni Aogi, Uruwashi No Translation Project (Completed)
in Translation Projects
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And if I paid you, would you?
Nice attitude, by the way.