Discussion Poll: Which classes of sites or organizations have done the most to promote VNs in the West?

[sanahtlig]

Compiled from the earlier thread Which organization or site has done the most to promote VNs in the West?, now as a poll.

 

This is a thread to discuss the classes of sites and organizations have done the most to promote VNs in the West over the ~25 years or so that VNs have existed in English.

[monkeysrumble]

Fan translator groups have played a big part in bringing VN's to the west, they've been our bread and butter for sometime. And as much as a lot of people are against it piracy has played a big part in getting me into VN's. If I didn't pirate my VN's I would have never gotten into them or bought any when they were more accessible.

 

Now it seems Sekai Project has been doing the most to promote VN's in the west with crowd-funding and steam greenlight showing that their is an interest in the west. Other companies like Mangagamer and Jast were moving at a snails pace when it came to localizing things that weren't nukige.

 

Fan sites do play a role by introducing new VN's to people. For example if I never found Fuwa I would have never have heard of Konosora or Grisaia and those are two of my favorite VN's.

 

Though most of these examples are anecdotal I feel like I'm probably not alone in this. I could be wrong though.

[Eclipsed]

Illegal download sites ftw

[the_dive]

To promote as in advertising or publicity? Probably social media? I know I found out about VNs through a Reddit post on /r/gaming. Yeah I know default subreddits are mostly shit, but they're pretty good if you want something to be viewed by people. You'll get tens of thousands of views guaranteed, even up to hundreds of thousands of views. Some of those people looking at those posts are bound to get into the VN scene. The VN scene from what I can gather is pretty tiny ( <100,000 people? Being really generous here) so this is pretty good imo.   This was a couple of years ago though so I'm unsure about recently. Reddit is a social media site with lots of fan communities, so I just decided to vote for both in the poll.

 

Steam is also pretty big for promoting VNs. Millions of people use Steam. Millions of potential customers! Exaggeration of course, but it's a pretty big deal to get your game on a storefront where millions of people can view it. Yeah VNs will probably be subject to a lot of jokes, but some people will be genuinely interested. Not real surprising to see VN localization companies translating a lot more all-age titles. Probably raking a lot more cash than when they were just selling their stuff on their own sites. 

 

Piracy? Yeah it's big no doubt about it. 

 

This is all just about advertisement though.

 

Historically as in the last 25 years though? Dunno, haven't been around that long.

 

A cop out answer would be that all of these sites and organizations have done a lot to contribute to the VN scene in the west and that you can't really give one the most credit as a lot of them are interconnected.

[kingdomcome]

The poll question and thread heading are two different questions imo. Promotion vs contribution have different answers.

[CryingWestern]

To be honest, i found out about visual novels by anime... I never new of Jast and MG until months later.

[XReaper]

i´s say sites like getchu or others, as i personally came across said medium in that way by incident. other than that its possibly public advertising, like banners, posters on busstopps etc.

[sanahtlig]

i´s say sites like getchu or others, as i personally came across said medium in that way by incident. other than that its possibly public advertising, like banners, posters on busstopps etc.

Getchu is an online shop.

[XReaper]

yoah i know, but if you land on the site by chance you get into it as well, by digging through the titles available.

The point is, when you are absolutely clueless about the medium itself, then the chances of coming in contact with it are equally shit for all the ones above & its totally up to pure luck. only if you are somehow into one or another related medium, like anime, hentai vids or stuff, then you might get into vn´s as well by recommendations or links or whatoever. problem is that vn´s are still are considered a niche in most countires, so there´s like zero public advertisment aka posters, banners tv spots etc that you could possibly come across.