Zalor

Wow, Google Translate really does work much better with German than with Japanese. Looks like you got a cool community there. I'm not a Discord (or any IRC) user, but I support your goal in popularizing VNs!
 

Hello, hello my fellow Fuwa'ers,

My name is Hata,
I've been allowed this post by Dergonu

Would you like to join our visual novel community? We are a small group of German people, that had the dream of popularizing visual novels in the west, same as you do. As we are currently expanding and exceeding 300 members in discord, of which quite a lot are active daily, we are finally trying to find some people from this particular community. We are a German website called Visual-novel.info. The domain for the site is http://www.visual-novel.info and we are posting several news, trivia, reviews (fairly extensive ones) and other stuff there. Our goal thus far has been to popularize the genre in Europe and especially Germany. We are also cooperating with Sciadv sites like Kirikiribasara and Japanese publishers like Chloro (2236 A.D) and Studiopolaris.jp . Since the website is completely German and for the time being will stay German, the least of you might feel interested enough in that. I've been told it is quite readable with Google Translate though but doing that would require some dedication  

But since we started expanding towards the further areas namely America and Japan via our discord server https://discordapp.com/invite/gtNRnbe we grew substantially and it evolved into a very nice place for people to gather, discuss, theorize and talk about their brightest and darkest eroge fantasies without getting judged. The server is as international as it gets with [EN/GER/日本語] because we split it into three language sections which are thriving to get equally populated. We also hold discussions about the currently released games and events. You can also learn japanese from natives and capable learners for your own enjoyment and going towards mastery for your own JoP needs!
If you are interested in talks about VN and Eroge or all the other games from glorious 日本 I'd be pleased if you gave us a chance and joined the server.

Lastly, I also want to mention, that there are quite a few company affiliates active on the server of publishers and KS/Indie and we are always eager to sort more potential visual novel enthusiasts into the mix.
This causes that the conversations don't really stay shallow, as we are very dedicated and passionate people. Also FanTLers are welcome to talk in private rooms about their stuff.

I hope you'll enjoy your time at our place. (｀･ω･´)ゞ
https://twitter.com/ghostryder333/status/1014613027398782977


Link to the server: https://discordapp.com/invite/gtNRnbe
Social Media: http://www.twitter.com/BishoujoNEWS

Most archetypes (modern tsundere and loli especially), terrible and predictable writing and story direction, unimaginative cg's which could just as well have been taken out from other vn's, utterly useless protagonists without a real personality, school setting......, too long common routes, protagonist acts like an asexual throughout the common route before he bursts out (i love you > kiss > sex) within the span of five minutes somewhere in the heroine route
There are probably quite a few more which i can't think of atm.

Moege archetypes.
They all act, look and sound incredibly fake to me.

Sounds like you need to git gud scrub!

Real life is too much of a pay to win for my taste. 

This is something I'd like to post about on the front site. A community update is long-overdue and there's a lot to talk about. I haven't looked at the analytics for a few weeks, but the site's still growing traffic-wise. The front site's major traffic goes to VNTS and Reviews. Kaguya showed some of the forums data, I'll add that walkthroughs are still big. And VNTL-Moon, oddly, is still getting traffic despite being woefully outdated and buggy. 

The Fuwa VN recommendation list is progressing well (see post). In just under a week, we've gotten over 17 thousand votes and a pretty reliable ranking of newbie VNs. I won't be posting the results just yet as I'll leave the voting open for another week and I don't want to distort any votes by showing the current ranking, but it's a great mix of genres so far. We're currently experimenting with a few different sorting algorithms to get the best result. 
We're also working on the website that'll allow users to enter their genre preferences and display the best newbie VNs in those genres, and are looking for any web designers who might be interested in giving a hand. While I'm adequate for an amateur, I'm no expert, and I'd love to get the input of some more experienced designers. If you're interested, just reply here, or send me a DM on Discord (Sunleaf_Willow ／(^ n ^=)＼#1616).

>community voted VN recommendation chart
>only /r/ users can vote
Reddit being autistic again.

We're gonna build our own recommendations chart, and make r/visualnovels pay for it!

I think VN's have more detail and exposition, which does make you a little bit smarter.
I agree with what soraa said. You'll see and experience new things, but you're not doing analysis probably so it's not a direct brain exercise. Maybe reading various types of prose will make your mind flexible unlike mind-numbing TV. But performance in other areas depends on skill and experience which aren't going to transfer at all from VN's.

Well we all know that the internet makes you stupid so whatever benefits can be gleamed from anime and vns are negligible at best.

Well, they are better than TV dogshit at the very least...

if anything i am dumber now and starting to enjoy seeing the same 3 stories told over and over

Woah! Hello! I was not expecting this many replies! Thank you for the warm welcome, everyone.
I was a bit of a strange kid in middle school (before YMK I was a big fan of Yume Nikki; I don't think most middle schoolers have the patience to play a depressing walking simulator), so I guess you could say I'm an outlier. I was primarily attracted to it because it dealt with tough subjects, and the OST was beautiful. Though I have heard of other people having Yume Miru Kusuri as their first visual novel.
Thank you! I still think your name is great.
Isn't she? Even though she takes forever to talk, I still like listening to her lines because her voice is so cute.
And that scene breaks my heart. It hurts even more if you've read what it's referencing...Night on the Galactic Railroad is pretty depressing for a children's book.
Thank you! I'll be sure to get in touch when I've finally annihilated my backlog.

Subahibi is great, and Zakuro (especially in Rabbit Hole 1) is so cute. Recently I've been rewatching this scene a lot:

Same pretty much. Though by "super interested" I mean I would check it out and if it captures my interest I might stick around to see the rest. 

I don't usually watch streamers and I don't think I'd even consider being one, but I'd be super interested in seeing what any Fuwa members are streaming.
I'm sure it'd be interesting.

Happy (late) birthday, @Down. Good luck with the science  
Happy (late) birthday to @Dergonu also, good luck with ... whatever it is you do  And happy birthday to @Zalor and @Dreamysyu too!

A long time ago I got into an argument with somebody that actually thought G-Senjou no Maou is good. 

A long time ago I got into an argument with somebody that actually thought G-Senjou no Maou is good. 

Every single "Trap's are gay" argument that people make despite it being obvious that if the trap has sufficiently feminine features apart from her genitals, you are totally straight.

You can  get some information about publishing figures.  Just not anything about visual novels directly.  All of the information about licensing fees and licensing terms is very much secret.  But there are times when companies get forced to reveal these secrets: when they have to go to court.  If you want to sue over something, you have to file the contracts, including real dollar figures, with the court.  And court documents are public.  Some lawsuits in the video game and anime business have resulted in some real interesting info surfacing over the years.
The complete contract between Bungie and Activision for publishing Destiny (which originally contemplated that Destiny 3 would already be out and Destiny 4 would come out next year) can be found here. A writeup of the significant parts (a contract is rather dry and boring) is here.
Now, Destiny is a far cry from your average visual novel.  But it's the only time a full contract has been released that I could find.  A bunch of stuff was released in the lawsuits over Curt Schilling and 38 studios: you can find more here and here (note that the actual document trove is no longer online).
But even that's a bit far afield.  There is some very interesting license data from the implosion of ADV Films, though.  When ADV was falling apart, Funimation sued them over a debt they said they bought from a Japanese company.  That led to some dollar figures being released. We know how much ADV paid for certain shows.  The list is on ANN and while anime is more popular than VNs, of the three I found, it's the closest match. I'm not going to reproduce the list here (just check ANN).  But there are a few things I can say about it:
1) It's not clear what these numbers are.  Are these the up-front minimum guarantee prices?  Or is this the total amount paid, including the up-front minimum guarantee and all the royalties that were owed?  Did they even owe any royalties?  The Crunchyroll coverage seems to imply that ADV paid a flat $25K per episode for 009-1.
2) Does this include the costs of translating the show and producing the DVDs?  Almost certainly not.  $21,335 for a TV show with 39 episodes (UFO Ultramaiden Valkyrie) is not enough money.
3) The numbers vary widely.  The lowest price for a TV show is $21,335 for UFO Ultramaiden Valkyrie.  That's barely more than the $20K for the Air movie.  The highest price is pushing a million: $960K for Kurau Phantom Memory.  Four of the listed shows cost ADV more than three quarters of a million dollars, and one more is just under.  On the flip side, six others cost less than sixty grand.  The most expensive show cost ADV nearly forty five times the least expensive.
4) Licensing costs are probably paid by every company in the business.  Even MoeNovel (a Pulltop subsidiary) probably on paper pays Pulltop for the rights.  This is something I learned when I got a job.  I worked for the phone company for awhile, and I found out my department pays another department for the phone lines.  This seemed really weird to me; I was like 'why bother?'  My coworkers explained that because of the way budgets work, if that division provided the phones for free, their numbers would look terrible. The cost savings they generated would make everyone else in the company look good, but their bottom line would look terrible.  This would lead to them getting punished (for being 'unprofitable') for being successful.
Likewise, Moenovel is owned by Will.  Money that they generate goes into Will's pockets.  But they made that money off of Pulltop properties.  So the deals need to be structured in such a way that the Pulltop entity reaps the rewards of Moenovel's success.  It is probably safe to assume Moenovel pays something to Pulltop.
The only company that might not have to do this 'one part of the company pays another' thing is Frontwing, because they might not have set up a different entity to run the overseas business.  It's hard to say.
5) The non-licensing related costs are going to be relatively fixed and predictable.  They will be a product of the size (in bytes) of the script, with added complications for things like actual gameplay elements.  Scripting costs (engine work) are less predictable, but compared to a 45X variance factor in licensing costs?  That's not too significant.
6) Licensing costs vary widely.  Sol Press seems to be licensing on the cheap (i.e. not going after famous or hugely-successful Japanese projects).  For all but the cheapest licenses, however? Licensing fees likely dwarf all other costs associated with the release.  Witch's Love Diary's script is about 1.5 megabytes, or about 750K characters.  Now I know MG pays by the character (everyone does) but not how much: if they pay 1.5 cents per, that's about $11K.  If they pay 5 cents per, that would be about $37K.  [Edit: Apparently some companies pay by the character, some by the line.  That probably won't change this math too much.]
Both of these guesstimates are on the low end of the ADV price chart.  Visual Novel licensing fees are going to be quite a bit lower (they have to be, or there's no business to be done, sales just aren't high enough).  But still.
7) For most titles, the licensing fee is probably the biggest cost.  Since this is the part that's least predictable, it's extremely difficult to say what a given title might have cost.

Well shoot, my classmates were morons in that case. They didn't even know anything about sex. They just bragged about it like most teen bros did at that age.
So in health class we dedicated half a semester to teaching about safe sex in ninth grade. Tests, quizzes, videos,  demonstrations, and yes, a project. My class did it all. It was all part of the anatomy section. Hell I even learn about female genital mutilation. (Off topic, but still kinda messed up)
Before that, in 7th and 8th grade we had monthly 90 minute seminars where leaders of the neighborhood would hold forums for both girls and boys about teen sex. The leader would stop class to bring in all the bros from all the classes to sit down with a bro who got a chick prego, or got an STI etc. They did the same with the girls in their presentations. 
6th Grade sex ed was a joke, a complete joke like you mentioned Zalor. But, however it was effective. Why?
Because it got us actually talking about it. Before that, sex is was a complete mystery to me as a kid. When I learned of the word "virgin", from one of my idiot friends fourth grade. They told me it meant that someone who just haven't did "it" What was "it"? They couldn't say. Because they either didn't know or they didn't want to get in trouble. Those who spoke of the s-word got suspended or got detention. They would say that it'll be on your permanent record. Some even got expelled for saying that they did it with girl X.
I recommend teaching them at 12 years of age like me with "good sex education''. Which is rather "Thorough sex education."