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MoeNovel's next title - Cross Channel


Satsuki

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1 hour ago, Mr Poltroon said:

There are studies indicating spoilers make people enjoy things better. While this is no exact science, clearly this shows that this is but a carefully thought out marketing decision.

I've heard about the same studies.  I personally find the opposite is true in my case, but I don't pretend to think I'm all that similar to the average consumer of media.

I'd argue that it doesn't really indicate that they did any careful thinking at all, since it's textbook marketing to spoil things to generate interest.  Look at Batman vs Superman trailer, for example, or this trailer for The Shape of Water.  The latter basically summarizes most of the plot points of the movie, leaving only the inevitable confrontation between the protagonist and antagonist and the actual ending itself unspoiled.  This is now considered the norm, unfortunately, at least for movie trailers.

1 hour ago, Decay said:

I feel like it's necessary to spoil CC to an extent when marketing it to people. We're talking about the basic premise of the game here. I wouldn't write a marketing pitch without that. I understand that some people would enjoy the game more if they didn't know that, but if you're that kind of person then you shouldn't be reading game summaries at all. Look at the score on VNDB and make your decision based on that.

That's pretty fair, but I still think that it fundamentally cheapens the experience.  You're supposed to be confused and not quite sure what's happening when you're reading, and the spoiler MoeNovel used to market it has you going in with basic knowledge of the first twist.  Some of my favorite parts of CC were when I was completely clueless as to what was going on, like 

Spoiler

the discovery of the true function of the shrine,

for example.

I'll concede that spoiling that twist was probably necessary to get average people on Steam to pay any attention to CC at all, but it just doesn't sit well with me.  I fully expect it to flop, so the chance that it will be for nothing is even more frustrating.

1 hour ago, Dreamysyu said:

It makes sense, and I agree that the enjoyment of the story will probably be the biggest if you don't know that stuff, but let's be real, many people who are going to buy it on Steam never really heard about this VN or about what makes it good. The first route is literally presented as a simple moege, you don't even know at first that they are alone in the world, but practically all description of CC I've ever seen mention it. Spoiling important plot point from the middle of the game is really unnecessary. As for those tags? I'm not so sure.

Actually, about the spoiler in the descriptions. I wonder, for Japanese VN fans, is the

  Reveal hidden contents

timeloop in the story

"Luke, I am your father" type of spoiler: it exists, but everybody knows about it?

A pretty good rule of thumb for good spoiler-free descriptions is to only use the basic premise combined with a minor hook, and to not delve much further into the story.  What they did is spoil something that is only discovered after approximately a handful of hours (depending on reading speed) in a game that they themselves describe as being "over 20 hours".  Mentioning that the entire town is now devoid of human life is integral to the setup of the story, and is fine, at least in my opinion.  Those tags 

Spoiler

essentially spoil the ending to Misato's route, which I don't think is okay.

Not really too sure if the JP descriptions spoil the same twist.  There's several JP web pages still up, which are for the PSP versionPS3/PS Vita version, the Final Complete version.  The original site for the first Windows release loads a blank page with a blue bar at the top (in fact, FlyingShine's entire site does this), and the other sites for the Xbox 360 and PSP releases just redirect to some weird Japanese iPhone repair site.

I have no idea what they say and can't Google Translate them, since the JP characters are displayed through an embedded image instead of normal text.  If someone else that knows JP wants to go through them and see if they spoil the same twist MoeNovel did, feel free.

EDIT: I forgot, the working PSP site actually has text.  Here's what Google spit out: 

Spoiler

"CROSS † CHANNEL ~ To all people ~" appeared in PSP®! 
A text adventure that progresses as you progress through the text. 
By choosing occasional emerging choices, the results of the story will change. 
In PSP® version, Mr. Matsuzu was in charge of character design, 
A lot of new cuts of the drawing are collected. 

◆ Story "Until that day the sky disappears until that day -" 
A long summer vacation at the school. 
The parts of the broadcasting department that collapsed, 
Even at individual levels it was going to collapse. 
Since we came back from the training camp in the early summer, the unity of the members are different. 
It is now that there is only one person participating in club activities properly. 
The hero is a member of the broadcasting department. 
The main character interacts with school which made it quiet during the summer vacation, fellows who show up in the form of popularity. 
If you go to the rooftop, director Miyazumi ri is assembling a big broadcasting antenna. 
alone. 

It was "club activities" as a broadcasting department during summer vacation, 
It was also a challenge to complete and broadcast the radio. 
Previously everyone was engaged. Last summer we all united. 
One participant is participating now. 
Former colleagues who look coldly for such two people. 
Various conflicts that are rolled up together. 
And settlement. 

The hearts of the disjointed members are close to each other little by little. 
And on the last day of summer vacation, the transmitter is completed. 
The device puts a message on it and to the world -

 

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2 hours ago, VirginSmasher said:

They can't even get the descriptions translated in a proper, grammatical matter. :reeee:

The sad thing about it is it can be fixed by like ... inserting 2 words and joining a sentence together. A 2 second proofread could have saved much mockery and laughter:

The school club the protagonist and friends belong to. Working mainly on the school roof, they assembled an antenna etc etc

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40 minutes ago, Darklord Rooke said:

The sad thing about it is it can be fixed by like ... inserting 2 words and joining a sentence together. A 2 second proofread could have saved much mockery and laughter:

The school club the protagonist and friends belong to. Working mainly on the school roof, they assembled an antenna etc etc

It's definitely a bad sign of what's to come with this release.

I guess we'll have to have a thread to judge what is the worst CC TL once this comes out. :makina:

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5 hours ago, Darklord Rooke said:

Fiddling lewdly with the school roof, they managed to coax out an antenna which they then began to abuse. Much later they would also use this antenna to send out radio broadcasts ... of a questionable nature.

I like this description better :P 

I don't know if the lewdness is part of the game or your humour, but if it's the former, what the fuck is this game

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Lmao

Steam doesn't allow pornographic content and for good reason (kids can and will access any porn), it's not a tirade of censorship on moenovel's part, they just want to sell their game on Steam. 

Also likening a repression of sexual content to the political left is just... Hilariously off-base, to say the least. 

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14 minutes ago, Funyarinpa said:

Steam doesn't allow pornographic content and for good reason (kids can and will access any porn),

Please. As long as there is porn on the Internet, kids will have access to it. This argument is basically the same as saying as all porn online should be censored, which is stupid. It's essentially parents' responsibility to watch what their kids do online, and the companies don't have to think about this.

I am not implying that there aren't other reasons why they do that.

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Since MoeNovel is a part of Pulltop, I would say that the blame should go to the Pulltop for their crappy policy instead of make SJW conspiracy analogy thing that derailed the thread earlier. Okay, maybe people may say that Japanese company still traumatic with Rapelay incident, but still with many people already knew that VN usually did have 18+ scenes I said that Pulltop here is the most likely clueless and dense about their demographic target with their censorship like I stated few times earlier. Especially so if we realized that they never release Miagete 18+ patch to make up the censorship back at the VN release itself, and more if we knew that Pulltop did sold Konosora at Mangagamer site and they did localized Princess Waltz with JAST back at 2008 (Obviously with H scenes).

Edited by littleshogun
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1 hour ago, Dreamysyu said:

Please. As long as there is porn on the Internet, kids will have access to it. This argument is basically the same as saying as all porn online should be censored, which is stupid. It's essentially parents' responsibility to watch what their kids do online, and the companies don't have to think about this.

I am not implying that there aren't other reasons why they do that.

Let me elaborate. A platform with access to porn and without access to porn are different things, especially in Western countries. 

As soon as laypeople perceive that Steam can allow access to porn, it'll be the death of the platform- it'll deter parents from allowing their children to use it, it'll affect Steam's treatment by the law of many countries, they'll likely need to implement new background check methods to so much as be allowed to operate in many places under many jurisdictions.

I do not condone the fact that porn itself is so stigmatized (beyond concern for children), but as it is, it's really easy to understand why Steam (like most other platforms) doesn't allow pornography.

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*Sigh*

Let's try to keep things on topic, shall we? Because many comments were half and half between serious points and derailing comments about all sorts of unrelated things, I had to hide a decent chunk of the most recent comments. If you want to continue the discussion, please do so without derailing the thread into oblivion.

 

On the topic of MoeNovel's censorship. While it is understandable that they want to market their games for Steam, (something most companies do,) this doesn't excuse the lack of any form of 18+ version of their games, either in the form of patches, or separate games sold on different stores. (The dumb part being, they actually DO sell their games on other stores, for example on Mangagamer, but this version is still censored.) This is especially silly, seeing as every single game they have ever localized has been an eroge originally. (Even Love Kami, as it was discovered that, while the games were released first in the west as all-ages games, the original still had the 18+ content written into them, but it was simply sold later in Japan, most likely to avoid the eyes of western fans complaining about censorship.)

In Cross Channel's case, they do have a console version they can use, (this still bothers me personally, as the original release was an eroge, and the console port came later, so I'd want the original version localized, and not the console version,) but it is at the very least a bit more defendable. The terrible translation is not, though.

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9 hours ago, jetpack003 said:

Well, this is another VN that you will never see having an 18+ version.

I seriously don't understand why they are so keen to make their games only 17+...

Because of Steam. Unfortunately, MoeNovel can't see the profits in localizing an 18+ version that would appeal to people who purchase such things.

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6 minutes ago, littleshogun said:

Just in case you want to buy it, it'll be released at 26th later according to their (MoeNovel) tweet. Let's see what kind of translation that they'll have for Cross Channel later.

I'm just hoping that the sales bomb so that MoeNovel starts thinking about changing their attitude towards localization.

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5 minutes ago, VirginSmasher said:

I'm just hoping that the sales bomb so that MoeNovel starts thinking about changing their attitude towards localization.

I'm just hoping that the translation is great because it's a simpler wish than hoping it fails with the ultimate objective of them eventually doing better some day.

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