VDZ

Developing passion for mosaics is unnatural... Nope. 5pb. has nothing whatsoever to do with Root Double. Developer is Regista, publisher is Yeti.

It's definitely the former. I don't know if any of you have ever heard of this, but dovac used to be an active member in the visual novel translation scene. He was mostly known for hosting several VN translation-related sites (for example, everything on the moelicious.be domain, including at that time the site of Amaterasu Translations; pretty sure he also hosted TLWiki). However, over time the fanbase got more and more ungrateful, both towards fan translators and towards original creators. Notable incidents that probably further soured dovac's opinion of the community were the Amaterasu-MangaGamer incident and the creation of Fuwanovel (which started out as a pure piracy site with a strong anti-copyright message). Eventually he gave everyone whose sites he hosted a deadline to find a new host, and after the deadline pulled the plug and more or less disappeared. Years later, he returns as the founder of a new localization company in a dead market, manages to reel in tons of new fans, brings unprecedented success for Japanese partners and brings over notable games that were considered unlicenseable (especially Clannad). And the response of the 'true VN fans' (talking mainly about the older communities like /jp/), who all these years have barely bought MG's and JAST's games? They shit on everything. They shit on Steam, they shit on all-ages versions, they shit on kickstarter (the method used to license said 'unlicenseable' games), they shit on the new fans brought in by Sekai Project, they even shit on the fact Sekai Project is a profitable venture (whereas MangaGamer has been struggling for most of its existence and even now isn't that profitable). They stir up shit among potential fans, interpret everything in the most negative way possible and spread misinformation. The only reason they haven't organized a proper boycott yet is because too few of them actually buy anything. Looking at it from dovac's perspective, I'm perplexed he even bothers with the old fanbase anymore. dovac has every reason to utterly hate the entire old fanbase; it's mainly the newer fans that allow Sekai Project to achieve the successes they've achieved so far.

Quoting Agilis (Narcissu translator) on Reddit:

Quoting a /jp/ post about the poll: I'm pretty sure the biggest reason MG wins in that poll is because all the voters hate Sekai Project. /vg/'s poll is more divided despite strong anti-SP sentiment existing there as well.

To explain the relations between the group of games that's generally referred to as 'infinity-related games': (tl;dr at bottom of post) It all starts with the infinity series (that is, Never7, Ever17 and Remember11). There are two relevant persons and one relevant group in this: - Takumi Nakazawa - Koutarou Uchikoshi - Other KID staff (including Takeshi Abo and Hayashi Naotaka) Takumi Nakazawa was the director of all three infinity games. Furthermore, he was the main writer of Remember11. He was also a writer for the other two games. Koutarou Uchikoshi was the main writer of Never7 and Ever17. He was also a writer for Remember11 (although using an alias). (Takeshi Abo was the composer for all three games. Hayashi Naotaka was one of the writers for Remember11.) Together, these two were the most influential people in the creation of the infinity games. After Remember11, Takumi Nakazawa left KID to form his own studio, Regista. Regista created I/O with Nakazawa as director and main writer. Meanwhile, KID was working on 12Riven, the first game of a planned new trilogy. Uchikoshi was the director and main writer for this game. (Naotaka also worked on it as a writer, and Takeshi Abo was the composer.) However, KID went bankrupt before its release; through Cyberfront, which bought the rights from KID, they were able to release 12Riven eventually. After KID's bankruptcy, a significant portion of KID's staff (including Takeshi Abo and Hayashi Naotaka) went to work for 5pb. Games. Under Naotaka's lead, 5pb. released Chaos;Head and Steins;Gate. (Abo was the composer for both.) Meanwhile, Uchikoshi went freelance and got contracted by Chunsoft (now Spike Chunsoft after merging with Danganronpa developer Spike) to create 999. After that, Naotaka continued to write a bunch of Steins;Gate spin-offs and the rest of the Science series, Uchikoshi wrote 999 sequel Virtue's Last Reward, and eventually Nakazawa's Regista released Root Double with Nakazawa as Director but not as writer. ---------- TL;DR: Takumi Nakazawa: Never7 (Director, writer) Ever17 (Director, writer) Remember11 (Director, main writer) I/O (Director, main writer) Root Double (Director) Koutarou Uchikoshi: Never7 (Main writer) Ever17 (Main writer) Remember11 (Writer) 12Riven (Director, main writer) 999 (Director, main writer) Virtue's Last Reward (Director, main (or only?) writer) Hayashi Naotaka: Remember11 (Writer) 12Riven (Writer) Chaos;Head (Main (or only?) writer) Steins;Gate (Main writer) Robotics;Notes (Main writer) Chaos;Head Love Chu*Chu! (Main writer) Steins;Gate Hiyoku Renri no Darling (Supervisor) Steins;Gate 8bit (Main (only?) writer) Robotics;Notes (Main (only?) writer) Steins;Gate Senkei Kousoku no Phenogram (Supervisor, writer) Chaos;Child (Supervisor, writer) Steins;Gate 0 (Main (only?) writer) Takeshi Abo: Composer for the infinity games and everything Naotaka has worked on (except Love Chu*Chu?) plus some other 5pb. games.

As usual, live blogging will be at http://bayoab.info/live/live2.php. Except the version of Nekopara that made the biggest splash was the all-ages version (45k sales on Steam back in April). What else can you call it than a moege?

This used to be the case, but I'm pretty sure the massive success of recent games like Princess Evangile and Nekopara was enough to prove the potential of such games to localizers.

It's less 'expecting completion' and more 'expecting any kind of progress at all'. Saying you'll translate something is easily done, actually making some progress is another thing. (And then there's the real challenge which is keeping up the progress until the game's finished.) There are tons of 'translation projects' that never get beyond the initial announcement, so with the project members having apparently no previous experience it only makes sense to be skeptical.

Probably the extremely subtle Sayumi Ureshino from Daitoshokan no Hitsujikai. It's a damn shame her route didn't really do anything with the whole "invitation to hell" thing and was just a rather generic romance story.

The fan translators doing the localizations also have the tools (and sometimes also damn good hackers far better than the original programmers). The Japanese companies just want their own tools to be used, by their own people. It would be much more efficient if it were done by the people who can do it most quickly, but the Japanese side has a lot of negotiating power - if they insist on doing it themselves, there's not much the people doing the localization can do about it.