sanahtlig

I believe distribution of unauthorized modifications (derivative works) is a breach of copyright under US law. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_infringement

Apparently not that easy, or otherwise someone would've added the adult content back into Aselia the Eternal by now (by applying the scripts to the Special edition). I wouldn't get my hopes up about a fan release with adult content. How many Hirameki titles with the adult content added back in have you seen?

I'll just leave this here: These changes are based on new information from a fan that e-mailed customer support. http://vndb.org/t4084#19 "Stance on censorship" was compiled in part using this information:

I have a pathological aversion to replaying games I've already played. Most of the time, I don't even play more than one route. If gameplay is involved, the likelihood of me playing more than one route drops even more.

I'm incredibly biased against OELVN's and doujin works in general. To get me interested, it would take a truly massive amount of hype that would make Katawa Shoujo (which I haven't played) look unpopular, together with striking Japanese-style art and a story concept I found amazing. It would also need good gameplay and probably ero. Basically, it would need to be professional grade and amazing overall.

I recall an image where two characters are parting from a kiss, a trail of saliva connecting two outstreched tongues. I can't find the image anymore--it might've been in the Mangagamer forum thread that's now lost.

Here's the source (a customer support e-mail posted on VNDB): http://vndb.org/t4066/14#349

I just thought I'd point out the irony that the VNDB discussion thread for this topic was locked, and within hours Mangagamer's thread was taken out by a catastrophic forum reset. I compiled a summary of news to date on MoeNovel's release of KonoSora: MoeNovel is the newest localization company to enter the market. The company appears to have connections to Active Gaming Media and Will, Pulltop's parent company. VNTLS MoeNovel news summary: http://vntls.org/news/ MoeNovel's debut title will be "If My Heart Had Wings" or KonoSora (http://vndb.org/v9093), one of Pulltop's most successful story-driven titles, and is slated for release at the end of June 2013. The original title was winner of 3rd place in the 2012 Bishoujo Game Awards, and ranked 4th place for Scenario. News that the English release will be all-ages (no such version exists in Japanese) has attracted criticism. Summarizing currently known information from the closed VNDB discussion of this title (http://vndb.org/t4066): Content rating: The game has received a rating of T from the ESRB and 12 from PEGI. Demo and translation quality: MoeNovel has released a demo. The translation is questionable and probably performed by a non-native English speaker: it appears to be accurate, mostly grammatically correct, yet very awkward. MoeNovel claims the script is still undergoing editing, and the final product should be more polished than the demo. Overall content edits: The game's art will have to be heavily edited. The original game had 17 H-scenes and 5 heroines (2 of which are twins). Shini's count of the game's CG are as follows (note that these counts include variations of the same base CG): Non-H: 463 (includes swimsuits, wet t-shirt with bra showing through, scene where it looks like a girl has nopan) Ero: 646 (includes CGs that are part of H scenes and bath scenes with visible nipples) SD: 110 (chibi characters) Known alterations outside of H-scenes: Kissing CG will be altered to hide facial contact / sexual suggestiveness. Heroines will be covered by towels in the bath scenes. Availability: The game will be available for sale from Play-Asia, Mangagamer, and J-List. An unconfirmed leak from Play-Asia suggests a Steam release may be possible. Promotion: The game has received coverage from several anime and gaming blogs including Siliconera, Anime News Network and Japanator. MoeNovel will be utilizing social media to promote the game, including Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

I wrote an e-mail to MoeNovel customer service and received a response. I'll post both here. My e-mail: Their response:

This really isn't a problem as those same translators could go work on something else just as good. Besides, they could just as easily re-translate the original with the H-scenes intact. Aaeru was C&D'd because she was "scooping" the localization. A small company is unlikely to care about a fan translation after the localized game is already released (and already being pirated). Large companies like Square and Sony are the ones super protective of copyright for its own sake.

You've shown that 18+ games are the norm in the PC market--in Japan. And that is in fact well established. Several Japanese developers have even commented that they just tack on eroscenes because otherwise the games don't sell. That doesn't prove your point in the Western market at all. It just isn't well tested. Hirameki tried, but they used that awful DVD player format that prevented saving. I do agree that all-ages VNs would probably work better on handhelds or mobile devices, especially tablets. Unfortunately, the mobile market demands short, cheap games, so the type of VNs we praise probably won't have much of a home there. And again, there's a huge stigma against ero in the West, much moreso than in Japan. Comparing the two markets like that doesn't work.

You mean one of these?

You bring up a widely held fear among eroge players, that success of all-ages VNs means the death of eroge, that this is a zero sum game where one's gain is the other's loss. What you don't understand is that the English market for eroge right now is barely viable. JAST is slow because their Japanese partners don't put any effort into the collaboration, because it's not a priority for them (because the income they get is barely worth the effort). What good titles they get are usually license grabs from fan translators who are willing to sell the translation cheap. Mangagamer can't even get enough sales to license voices sometimes, and now they're churning out nukige because that's what they can actually turn a profit on. If all-ages titles become successful, JAST and Mangagamer aren't just going to start churning out all-ages titles for reasons in the link above. They're marked. On top of that, if they wanted to do something profitable, they wouldn't be selling eroge to begin with; they'd be selling pocky. Besides, they don't make games; they merely localize them. If a market exists for English eroge, there will always be those willing to step in and cater to it, whether it be JAST, Mangagamer, or anyone else. IF the market exists. But the fallacy in the eroge vs. all-ages "battle" is that it isn't a zero sum game. Quite the opposite, the success of one FUELS the other because the fanbases are overlapping. Newcomers need to be eased into the genre. Anime / manga -> all-ages VNs -> eroge. Just as anime/manga build a susceptible population that are more likely to try VNs, all-ages VNs will do the same except much moreso. Once these players accept the VN medium (where gameplay is secondary to story or nonexistent) and grow to like moe dating sim elements, they're much more likely to become curious about eroge and give them a try.

It doesn't matter how good your game is if no one knows or cares that your game exists--or those that do care aren't willing to pay for it. Getting these games in as many outlets as possible is crucial to achieving the exposure necessary to create more paying fans. I'm beginning to realize that I want KonoSora to succeed, as a censored all-ages title if need be, even if I have no interest in playing it myself, even as I curse MoeNovel for botching a perfectly good title I would've loved to play. Because we can't have nice things unless the paying fanbase is large enough to fund these nice things, and growing that fanbase means drawing the attention of paying customers who are not currently fans. There's probably no better way to do that than selling all-ages titles. Piracy will not grow the paying fanbase because it just creates more leechers, who simply feed into a culture of leeching. They may eventually become paying customers but the process is slow and inefficient. We have enough leechers already. We don't need any more. Given a choice between cajoling an eroge leecher to pay up, and coaxing an all-ages VN customer to buy an eroge, I'd rather take my chances with the latter.

Because there's adults who won't play games with porn in them. And there's distributors that won't sell games without porn in them, if the company that localized them also localizes games with porn in them. Read that article I linked. It's eye-opening.

You would check the first two options, which consist of 18+ content.

VDZ posted a fantastic comment by the translators of Recettear that discusses why ero and all-ages games (from a publisher's perspective) don't mix in the West. It paints the MoeNovel matter in a whole new light. http://www.formspring.me/SpaceDrakeCF/q/277898826382050043

Quality aside, localization companies don't do the graphics editing. The developer does. That's partly why JAST's releases take so long. The market demand for mosaic removal is rather burdensome and prevents some titles from even coming over. The issue actually killed JAST's negotiations with GIGA.

People here wouldn't buy a game because the mosaics were removed, but would buy it if the mosaics were left in? Really?

There's a choice for that.

Would you choose NOT to buy a localized VN for any of the reasons listed above related to adult content (assuming the game otherwise has merit)? Choices should significantly affect your purchase decision, but need not be the single critical factor. This poll is limited to those that purchase localized VNs.

Also, auto mode typically doesn't work if you have text display speed set to instant (which is how I set it when I don't use auto mode).

For those unhappy with the auto timings: Keep in mind, the games were designed for Japanese readers. It's not terribly surprising that the timings would be off when the game is translated to English, depending on whether the timing was set manually (by the staff) or automatically (by the engine in real time). I've taken a liking to auto in English games, as I get wrist and hand pain from repetitive clicking / key tapping. It obviously doesn't work at all when playing Japanese games via machine translation. The timing issues are a drag though, and can significantly reduce enjoyment if the writing isn't top notch, since a timing that makes all text comfortable to read means you have to wait on simple lines that aren't all that interesting.

To quote Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship Content is being cut that would be considered objectionable to their target audience (the mainstreamers who don't acknowledge that games with porn can have literary and artistic value). So yes, this is without a doubt censorship. But I think a more appropriate term is "Westernization", as the creation of an all-ages version for a console could also be considered censorship, yet what really ticks people off is when an all-ages version is created for localization.

From the same VNDB thread: http://vndb.org/t4066/7#168 Say what you will about the effect on the story, but the artwork must've been heavily modified / gutted to get a T rating from the ESRB.