Moenovel teases localization of a new title

[WinterfuryZX]

PC is not the right place to release japanese games without ero. Simply as that.

Edited November 23, 2016 by WinterfuryZX

[Fred the Barber]

10 hours ago, Chuee said:

I don't know, with all the girls having balloon tits that spill out of their clothing I can't really say this is much better. 

I wasn't talking about whether it's "better"; like I said, the game looks like drivel. But we get so many people crying censorship over nearly every release these days, and most of those claims are iffy at best per any reasonable definition of censorship, that when a clear-cut situation like this comes up I feel a need to correct it before half the forum gets their panties in a bunch over nothing.

Edited November 23, 2016 by Fred the Barber
grammer

[jetpack003]

Looks like VNDB shows that this game is for people who are 17+ years. Which means, no ero scenes...

 

I mean, come on, you have all these characters with revealing clothes, high sex appeal and big boobs and you decided not to add in any ero-scenes for it?

This game is just literally cock-teasing you with all these revealing characters being shown around.

[Dergonu]

I think they are trying their best to make loads of fanservice to draw in the 18+ crowd, while still keeping the game safe for an all-ages release. Honestly not a bad idea to get more sales.

Though, they should just go ahead and make a patch with some ero or something, like Corona Blossom did. That would probably make it sell even more, though it seems like Moenovel is really set in their ways on not actually giving fans any 18+ content. They seem to have changed a lot since If my heart had wings at least though, gotta give them that.

 

Anyways, I probably won't be getting the game. It does look like a nukige with no H tbh, which seems utterly pointless to me. Guess the steam crowd will be happy to get some more fanservice games though...

[Shota_Victory]

31 minutes ago, jetpack003 said:

high sex appeal

???

[Nandemonai]

5 hours ago, Fred the Barber said:

I wasn't talking about whether it's "better"; like I said, the game looks like drivel. But we get so many people crying censorship over nearly every release these days, and most of those claims are iffy at best per any reasonable definition of censorship, that when a clear-cut situation like this comes up I feel a need to correct it before half the forum gets their panties in a bunch over nothing.

Even this isn't quite 100% cut and dried.  Sure, right now, it's obvious: there's no ero version to be censored.  But that doesn't mean they can't have censored anything.  All censorship requires is that content be suppressed because some might find it objectionable.  MoeNovel is deliberately choosing not to bring over adults-only titles for exactly that reason, probably for marketing reasons.

If it turns out that this game gets a Japanese release, especially if that Japanese release happens almost at the same time as the US release, and that Japanese version is 18+, it will be fairly reasonable to presume the title was conceived with the dual-release in mind, and that therefore the content was censored from the Western release.  I believe others in this thread have already raised that possibility.

Hell, it wouldn't be wrong, necessarily, to claim that this game was censored even if that doesn't happen.  Pulltop makes eroge.  It seems like a pretty reasonable assumption that a game like this probably would have had ero-scenes if it were intended for the Japanese market.  Pulltop chose not to even write the ero-scenes in the first place, where otherwise they probably would have, to avoid controversy from objectionable content.  In the courts, they call this a chilling effect.  It would be extremist, but usually even extremist positions make sense and are defensible from a certain point of view.

[Kaito1]

According to VNDB, the game is actually for ages 17+. And also from the PV, it seems the game will have some fan-service with the characters' breast bouncing. LoveKami Divinity Stage. 

[jetpack003]

6 hours ago, Shota_Victory said:

???

You can see their poses shown in the poster art. The pink-haired girl has her back turned showing her butt with her see-through clothes while the black-haired one is winking with clothes just barely covering her private areas.

Also, take a look at the character description on the official website. That clevage: http://moenovel.com/lovekami

 

Edited November 23, 2016 by jetpack003

[Shota_Victory]

47 minutes ago, jetpack003 said:

You can see their poses shown in the poster art. The pink-haired girl has her back turned showing her butt with her see-through clothes while the black-haired one is winking with clothes just barely covering her private areas.

Also, take a look at the character description on the official website. That clevage: http://moenovel.com/lovekami

 

I don't know. It just feels like they're trying too hard.

[Zenophilious]

7 hours ago, Dergonu said:

I think they are trying their best to make loads of fanservice to draw in the 18+ crowd, while still keeping the game safe for an all-ages release. Honestly not a bad idea to get more sales.

All that does is piss off the more extreme sides, though.  The people that don't want copious amounts of fanservice in their VNs won't touch it, and the people that want full-on h-scenes in theirs will do the same, leaving only people that like ecchi, except it's still a visual novel, so it'll never have the same success that ecchi harem anime does, on average.  Not to mention they now have to compete with all the SakuraShit, and unless it's priced accordingly, it probably won't do too well.  They're going to have to market it better than "Visual Novel HD with teh b00bies" if they want a decent amount of success, but I have a feeling that they're expecting a smash hit that was only really possible before Nekopara, when there weren't that many VNs on Steam to choose from.

Just my two cents, which is obviously purely speculation.

[Decay]

A couple more details from their twitter account: It will be $15 and will actually be a route based game with three routes. The latter is at least somewhat encouraging, a lot of these kinds of cheaper cash-ins tend to be short and linear with weak romances. This one may still be short but at least it might have actual romance with each of the heroines? 

[Dergonu]

3 minutes ago, Zenophilious said:

All that does is piss off the more extreme sides, though.  The people that don't want copious amounts of fanservice in their VNs won't touch it, and the people that want full-on h-scenes in theirs will do the same, leaving only people that like ecchi, except it's still a visual novel, so it'll never have the same success that ecchi harem anime does, on average.  Not to mention they now have to compete with all the SakuraShit, and unless it's priced accordingly, it probably won't do too well.  They're going to have to market it better than "Visual Novel HD with teh b00bies" if they want a decent amount of success, but I have a feeling that they're expecting a smash hit that was only really possible before Nekopara, when there weren't that many VNs on Steam to choose from.

Just my two cents, which is obviously purely speculation.

Yeeeah, probably. Will be interesting to see how well this sells. It's coming from a company that is highly discredited beacuse of their last release, and the market has grown an incredible amount since then, so they can't get away with "it's the best you can get, so just take it", anymore. Guess we'll see what happens.

[Fred the Barber]

4 hours ago, Nandemonai said:

Pulltop chose not to even write the ero-scenes in the first place, where otherwise they probably would have, to avoid controversy from objectionable content.  In the courts, they call this a chilling effect.  It would be extremist, but usually even extremist positions make sense and are defensible from a certain point of view.

That's not defensible at all; it's a combination of conjecture and nonsense. If you read the article you yourself linked, it specifically uses "threat of legal sanction" in the definition of a chilling effect. There is no such threat: at least dozens of eroge are released in the US every year, and obviously Pulltop is well aware of that since they sold IMHHW through the very same vendors who are hawking that eroge. There is no chilling effect towards eroge in the US, so let's stop throwing an incorrect term around here.

If you even relax that a bit and just say they're worried about the controversy of objectionable content (which is a different argument entirely, and which by the way is now way far afield of anything any sensible person would call censorship), then, what controversy are we even talking about? Do MangaGamer's roughly monthly releases of eroge stir up a ton of controversy that I'm missing? I'm sure there's some, of course, but I'm equally sure it's nothing to write home about, or I assume I would've seen it somewhere. If I'm not seeing it, where would they? What sensible grounds would Pulltop have for thinking that releasing a plain vanilla moege in the US is going to stir up some kind of firestorm of controversy?

I'll also throw out a roughly equally baseless hypothesis, but one that I happen to believe: they're releasing a non-eroge because they think it'll make them more money. Plain and simple. Sucks if you like eroge, but there it is, and it's unfortunately not something you can blame the government or SJWs for. Go change it with your wallet, and get more people to do likewise, if it's important to you.

[Nandemonai]

1 hour ago, Dergonu said:

Yeeeah, probably. Will be interesting to see how well this sells. It's coming from a company that is highly discredited beacuse of their last release, and the market has grown an incredible amount since then, so they can't get away with "it's the best you can get, so just take it", anymore. Guess we'll see what happens.

Didn't IMHHW's original Japanese version win an award for its story?  Whereas this has 'excuse plot' written all over it.  So they can't even lean on the underlying quality of the source material this time.  At least they seem to have figured out the appropriate price point for such things.

It's good that they seem to be responding to their critics by changing their strategy, but I'm not sure this really has the potential to be anywhere near as successful for them as their previous release.

[Mr Poltroon]

Damn. I forgot I'd for sure be in the minority who is interested this "drivel". Especially after hearing it has routes. Somewhat discouraging to see, but I'll just blame it on the fact that I'm limiting myself to reading posts on an Eroge site that values H-scenes and hates on the Sakura series disproportionately.

[VLOCKUP]

So what happened with IMHHW fandisk? Didn't they announced that last year or so?

[Shota_Victory]

8 minutes ago, VLOCKUP said:

So what happened with IMHHW fandisk? Didn't they announced that last year or so?

That's a fan translation.

[Decay]

2 hours ago, VLOCKUP said:

So what happened with IMHHW fandisk? Didn't they announced that last year or so?

No, they didn't.

[VLOCKUP]

Huh, could have sworn they have announced plan for the FD. Oh well.

[Nier]

2 hours ago, Decay said:

No, they didn't.

The West hate fandiscs, Peter Payne even said bluntly that people can't even wrap their heads about what they were, so they don't buy it.

We can say goodbye to that Gahkthun Fandisc: https://vndb.org/v12595

Heck, even Steins;Gate that was probably the most popular VN in the West didn't even have it's two fandiscs released:

https://vndb.org/v6618

https://vndb.org/v11660

[Nandemonai]

29 minutes ago, Nier said:

The West hate fandiscs, Peter Payne even said bluntly that people can't even wrap their heads about what they were, so they don't buy it.

We can say goodbye to that Gahkthun Fandisc: https://vndb.org/v12595

Heck, even Steins;Gate that was probably the most popular VN in the West didn't even have it's two fandiscs released:  https://vndb.org/v6618  https://vndb.org/v11660

MangaGamer has released multiple fandisks before.  Peter Payne making a decision based off of one flop is ... regrettable, but not representative.  And one of the Steins;Gate spinoffs launches next week.  It's not quite as bleak as that.  If Gahkthun really did do poorly, that would be a reason MangaGamer might skip the fandisc; but I wouldn't rule it out.

[Nier]

Steins;Gate 0 is not a spin-off, it's a sequel.

[Nandemonai]

The point remains, that Steins;Gate isn't dead yet in the West.  If S;G 0 sells well enough, those fandisks might materialize yet.  S;G has done rather well, in between the anime, the Jast USA release, the Vita release, and the Steam release.  In fact, the reason that Jast never put S;G on Steam was that Kodansha said "Hey, great working with you, but we want to release it ourselves."

[Zenophilious]

MangaGamer is currently translating two fandiscs, Princess Evangile W Happiness and The House in Fata Morgana: A Requiem for Innocence (which is itself a combination of two Fata Morgana fandiscs). They've already released the Edelweiss fandisc, the KiraKira fandisc, the combo KiraKira + Deardrops fandisc, and two (1) (2) Da Capo fandiscs.  They don't seem to have any aversions towards fandiscs, so I think the idea that we're never going to get any more is quite overly pessimistic (this is coming from a pessimist).  If anything, we won't get the Gahkthun fandisc because it sold like crap, not because "the west hates fandiscs".

If you said, "JAST isn't going to translate any more fandiscs ever again", I wouldn't disagree, but that defeatist attitude towards all fandiscs is rather unreasonable.  SP might start doing some as well, although there's no indication that that'll happen.  They haven't outright said that they won't, unlike JAST.

[Decay]

Don't forget about the Shuffle fandiscs. The real reason we won't get more Gahkthun fandiscs is that MG only has so much manpower and they'd rather spend that releasing new Steampunk series games instead of werld slice of life fandiscs. 

Edited November 25, 2016 by Decay