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How can we make visual novels more popular in the west?


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On 7/9/2018 at 8:55 PM, tymmur said:

Sounds right at first glance, but it's a slippery slope. Next the stories are too long, then it's lack of minigames. Eventually it will be something, which might be more popular, but will they still be VNs? Sounds like you want to take the path of sacrificing the existing VN readers in order to maybe gain new ones.

Nothing wrong with having a higher diversity of VNs that focus on different tastes. The VN medium has a lot more potential for artistic expression then it is often self-limited to. It wouldn't be a bad thing to have a a new pool of VN fans and readers that are into something else. And it wouldn't mean "sacrificing the existing VN readers". There is no reason the two can't coexist. 

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I don't really think there's really much we can do to make that possible. Most of my peers view all visual novels without exception as mere porn games, and fail to recognize that there are all-ages versions of games and eroge that, despite having erotic scenes, have fantastic stories. Until this view of visual novels is eradicated or at least alleviated, I don't think visual novels will get as popular as anime and manga.

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According to Aaeru, download an English patch and pirate the VNs.

According to localization companies, donate money to them by paying for nukige so they can translate more nukige (and a long, story driven VN once in a while.)

According to common sense, share games via YouTube and word of mouth without seeming like a shill for the company who is translating a VN (that part is very important and some people forget this.)

Take your pick.

Edited by AdventSign
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4 hours ago, Hetzer123 said:

You forgot to mention about kickstarter for localization companies.

Kickstarter is a place where people go to donate money to the poor and those who "need" it, like a church.

But I guess fundamentally I guess it's a place to get people to know a VN, though I get the same experience shopping in JAST's shop, except you can be more descriptive.

Edited by AdventSign
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11 hours ago, Hetzer123 said:

More like crowd funding pre-order because they offer reward depends on how much you pledge. (although you can pledge without rewards)

It seems localization companies use different ways of funding. Like MG use nukige while SP use KS.

Sometimes steam indirectly promote the VN when the timing is right. Localization companies should also promote on non-English platform (I heard 9tail's Venus Blood promotion on weibo/bilibili) along with CN translation.

That was sarcasm. Kinda. There are people who abuse it, but there are others who need it. I generally support projects that already have work done on them, such as a demo. Someway to show that there committed and have exhausted all other avenues of generating revenue.

Kickstarter is a quick and easy way to get money, but I question large companies that use them on a constant basis when they can take more risks and have more experience than one that are just starting out.

Recently, it seems like Kickstarter is almost like a step in a product's means to generate money rather than a last ditch effort to get things done.

Promoting can be done outside of Kickstarter. When larger companies use Kickstarter, it's saturating the already crowded market, which means people starting off will be less visible.

Which is why I generally don't kickstart Sekai Project. I'd rather pledge money to small companies or companies trying to make a mark in the western market and are taking a major risk with little reputation in it, such as Venus Blood. Kickstarter is meant for those guys.

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Making Visual Novels popular is a goal that goes way further beyond the thing you guys are trying to consciously achieve. Most people consider what we think Visual Novels are as Animegames and Porngames, but the genre has so much potential being way more than that if we think about what the genre is. Nowadays people don't read that many books anymore, because everything has to be quick-quick entertainment. In that regard visual novels could provide a new way to tell stories, but it just did not reach this hemisphere yet and this is obvious because the people make VNs without having a real team try to abuse the visual novel genre as a way to get access to the gaming industry. That is also a reason why people try to convert their half-assed fanfictions into visual novels and then make actually sellable games out of them. But what if we make it possible that capable book authors find the genre and think it is revolutionizing? They could produce amazing stories and have the funds to actually found big western based publishers/development studios because they can hire capable people. If we are actually attempting to make VNs popular over here we have to get away from the selfish goal to bring only japanese gems over here. We have to create our own amazing stories, with western-based writing and settings. The art can still attempt to be moe and japanese, but the settings should not try to simulate a japanese one. I'm sick of western studios attempting to create foreign settings they don't understand, because they only gloss over the source material and attempt to rehash what they know from anime, storytelling takes A LOT of research and I'm surprised how japanese manage to use western philosophy in their works better than western developers do..

What I am trying to say. Try to promote the genre in itself and improve on creating new things instead of rehashing japanese ones and localizing games. We have so many capable people over here in the west, but we don't use their potential which is unfortunate. I'm not telling that we should completely cease localizing japanese titles but we should be less selfish.
 

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On 7/19/2018 at 1:00 PM, AdventSign said:

Kickstarter is a quick and easy way to get money

It certainly is not.  Kickstarters are a pain in the ass to set up, requiring months of work to line up.  We know this because of how long elapses between when companies announce they're going to do a Kickstarter and/or when the Prefundia goes up, and when the Kick actually Starts.  Just because you don't see them doing that work in public doesn't mean they're not busy bees.  Don't be Mr. PHB.

What are they doing?  They're figuring out what their budget is going to be.  That tells them how much money they need to ask for.  Who's going to translate the game and for how much money? What's it going to cost us to get rights to the voices?  How much trouble do we expect from the engine?  Are we likely to need 1 dev for 3 months tops for a few minor changes, or a major overhaul involving a whole team for the better part of a year?

And they're trying to nail down stretch goals.  What can we offer as a stretch goal?

If it's merchandise, you have to estimate how much it's going to cost for shipping or you end up losing money on every pledge.  Do you have piles of unsold merch laying around that you want to try to get rid of?  If you're going to offer new merch, do you make it before the KS and risk ending up with piles of unsold merch that you need to get rid of?  Or do you only produce what's actually demanded from the KS (plus some extra for lost or damaged merchandise)?  How long a lead time will that take, who are you going to order it from, how much is it going to cost, and what's the minimum print run?

If it's extra content or added features for the game, there are similar problems scoping and sizing all of that.  Is this bonus content something that's easy enough for us to do?  How much do we think it will cost us to do the extra work versus how much extra money do we think we can ask for?  Can we even get the voice actors back into a studio?  Is the writer interested in writing that extra scenario, and are they available?

In other words, to do a Kickstarter right involves a whole lot of pre-planning work up front to scope out exactly what you think you can do, and what it's going to cost you to do it.  That work is not free; it's money spent and time not available for other things.  All in the hope that your project might get funded.  Try to skimp on this, and you can easily end up with a successfully-funded project badly in the red because you're on the hook for a bunch of obligations the Kickstarter did not bring in enough money to cover.

And that's not even including the giant pain in the ass that are Kickstarter projects that get delayed.  How long did it take Sekai Project to deliver on all their Grisaia promises? I believe the physical rewards shipped in April.  2 and a half years after the projected date.  The Kickstarter has 75 updates.  As someone who's had to prepare similar updates before, I guarantee many of those updates took hours to prepare, in terms of meetings and follow up to gather the info contained in them.

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On 7/20/2018 at 11:36 PM, Nandemonai said:

It certainly is not.  Kickstarters are a pain in the ass to set up, requiring months of work to line up.  We know this because of how long elapses between when companies announce they're going to do a Kickstarter and/or when the Prefundia goes up, and when the Kick actually Starts.  Just because you don't see them doing that work in public doesn't mean they're not busy bees.  Don't be Mr. PHB.

What are they doing?  They're figuring out what their budget is going to be.  That tells them how much money they need to ask for.  Who's going to translate the game and for how much money? What's it going to cost us to get rights to the voices?  How much trouble do we expect from the engine?  Are we likely to need 1 dev for 3 months tops for a few minor changes, or a major overhaul involving a whole team for the better part of a year?

And they're trying to nail down stretch goals.  What can we offer as a stretch goal?

If it's merchandise, you have to estimate how much it's going to cost for shipping or you end up losing money on every pledge.  Do you have piles of unsold merch laying around that you want to try to get rid of?  If you're going to offer new merch, do you make it before the KS and risk ending up with piles of unsold merch that you need to get rid of?  Or do you only produce what's actually demanded from the KS (plus some extra for lost or damaged merchandise)?  How long a lead time will that take, who are you going to order it from, how much is it going to cost, and what's the minimum print run?

If it's extra content or added features for the game, there are similar problems scoping and sizing all of that.  Is this bonus content something that's easy enough for us to do?  How much do we think it will cost us to do the extra work versus how much extra money do we think we can ask for?  Can we even get the voice actors back into a studio?  Is the writer interested in writing that extra scenario, and are they available?

In other words, to do a Kickstarter right involves a whole lot of pre-planning work up front to scope out exactly what you think you can do, and what it's going to cost you to do it.  That work is not free; it's money spent and time not available for other things.  All in the hope that your project might get funded.  Try to skimp on this, and you can easily end up with a successfully-funded project badly in the red because you're on the hook for a bunch of obligations the Kickstarter did not bring in enough money to cover.

And that's not even including the giant pain in the ass that are Kickstarter projects that get delayed.  How long did it take Sekai Project to deliver on all their Grisaia promises? I believe the physical rewards shipped in April.  2 and a half years after the projected date.  The Kickstarter has 75 updates.  As someone who's had to prepare similar updates before, I guarantee many of those updates took hours to prepare, in terms of meetings and follow up to gather the info contained in them.

Oh. Guess I hit a nerve. You're right. That is as long as people follow through with their promises. Otherwise, it's nothing more than an essay written on Kickstarter for dem $$$.

Over-saturation. I guess the one thing I'm guilty of, as with you, is overgeneralizing. Ever heard of people promising the world, only to suddenly vanish? Some *honest* people that *try*... Yeah, it's hard work. Not everybody is like that though. Some people charge a *bit* more than they need, or cut corners to make an extra buck or two.

Just because you wouldn't abuse it doesn't mean others wouldn't. People have been burned by Kickstarter before, just like projects have been saved.

Despite all this though, I do owe you an apology, as do I to the honest companies/people that actually do use, especially since the not so honest people I'm talking about are mostly outside of the VN market. Sorry for generalizing and stereotyping you guys and thanks for putting me in my place.

 

Edited by AdventSign
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4 hours ago, Tamaki Sakura said:

Let the market develop naturally.

I think VN's will get more and more animation as the market develops, which will help.  Eventually I even think that the standard practice of reusing sprites will become a dated feature of VNs, and they will have more animation instead. I say this because I think people put a lot of value on the visuals of VN's, and there are definitely companies that have improved their standards over the years.  Like anime, at a certain point the quality will be high enough to where it will break into a western audience.

Edited by PiggiesGoMoo
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15 minutes ago, PiggiesGoMoo said:

I think VN's will get more and more animation as the market develops, which will help.  Eventually I even think that the standard practice of reusing sprites will become a dated feature of VNs, and they will have more animation instead. I say this because I think people put a lot of value on the visuals of VN's, and there are definitely companies that have improved their standards over the years.  Like anime, at a certain point the quality will be high enough to where it will break into a western audience.

That'd be pretty cool actually. You talking about taking School Days game play and making it standard across the board?

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19 minutes ago, AdventSign said:

That'd be pretty cool actually. You talking about taking School Days game play and making it standard across the board?

Hopefully he's referring to sprites where the transitions are animated. School Days is basically just an subbed anime hentai that you progress by clicking IIRC.

Edited by 1P1A
English is hard
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On 21.07.2018 at 2:20 AM, EroHataVNI said:

Making Visual Novels popular is a goal that goes way further beyond the thing you guys are trying to consciously achieve. Most people consider what we think Visual Novels are as Animegames and Porngames, but the genre has so much potential being way more than that if we think about what the genre is. Nowadays people don't read that many books anymore, because everything has to be quick-quick entertainment. In that regard visual novels could provide a new way to tell stories, but it just did not reach this hemisphere yet and this is obvious because the people make VNs without having a real team try to abuse the visual novel genre as a way to get access to the gaming industry. That is also a reason why people try to convert their half-assed fanfictions into visual novels and then make actually sellable games out of them. But what if we make it possible that capable book authors find the genre and think it is revolutionizing? They could produce amazing stories and have the funds to actually found big western based publishers/development studios because they can hire capable people. If we are actually attempting to make VNs popular over here we have to get away from the selfish goal to bring only japanese gems over here. We have to create our own amazing stories, with western-based writing and settings. The art can still attempt to be moe and japanese, but the settings should not try to simulate a japanese one. I'm sick of western studios attempting to create foreign settings they don't understand, because they only gloss over the source material and attempt to rehash what they know from anime, storytelling takes A LOT of research and I'm surprised how japanese manage to use western philosophy in their works better than western developers do...

What I am trying to say. Try to promote the genre in itself and improve on creating new things instead of rehashing japanese ones and localizing games. We have so many capable people over here in the west, but we don't use their potential which is unfortunate. I'm not telling that we should completely cease localizing japanese titles but we should be less selfish.
 

Too bad very few people share our mindset.

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On 21/7/2018 at 2:20 AM, EroHataVNI said:

Most people consider what we think Visual Novels are as Animegames and Porngames

People with that kind of view prefer to watch TV with real people. You know shows where you lock 10 people in a house and with nothing to do, the highlights in the house are drinking, sex and showers. You know entertainment for mature minds, not that drawn immature stuff where people go nuts over topless drawn girls.

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On 7/26/2018 at 6:21 PM, Hetzer123 said:

Not many people are willing to spend their time and resources on learning Japanese language. Casual VN consumers are different from hardcore consumers. They won't buy VN that they don't understand. (that is the purpose of localization)

It is not merely a problem with buying things that you do not understand. For example, lets treat VNs as standard PC games. All of us who have ever bought any game just need to ask ourselves a question why we did it. Lets be honest, the majority of us did it for 1 of 2 reasons: saw it somewhere (youtube or even picture on game box itself) and it looked cool or our friends kept talking about it. For reasons already mentioned before, both of these are unlikely to ever happen.

Second point is that Japanese language is hard. Yes the culture is interesting and all, but still Japanese is one of the hardest languages in the world. For some people it can take longer to learn kanji alone than entire different language.

Edited by Sparteh
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16 hours ago, Hetzer123 said:

I am talking about people should not look down on localization companies. If those people buy untranslated VNs then why do you need to spend time and resources into translation? They rather wait for translation than learning Japanese.

That is assuming there is a reason to wait for. As far as I can see, the majority of translated stuff can be summarized as moe/hentai. How many VNs with an actual plot are released in English compared to trash? 1 to 15 or 1 to 20 at best. I can't understand why people would even bother to buy them. If there was enough good supply, readers wouldn't bother to do something as troublesome as learning Japanese. I think that if localization companies actually localized more good content, VNs would receive better exposure, which in turn would encourage people to try more VNs, which would likely increase the demand for good stuff, which might reduce the cost of VNs and make them even more accessible. 

Another thing is that with all that moe stuff being released it is hard to find something good. I don't mean that it is a problem for us, those who have already read dozens of VNs and know a lot. I am talking about new readers. There is little to no exposure, no commercials or anything similar. If they actually buy something and it turns out to be moe/hentai story, many readers would never buy it again. Who these days actually pay for porn? Not to mention that many actually decent PC games cost the same or less than VNs and are superior in terms of content, time you can spend on it and it is way easier to come into contact with information about it. 

For a specific example, an VN on Mangagamer website on average costs about 40$. If I search a bit, I can find VNs like KnS series, Dies Irae or Umineko, but at the same time such trash like Side Boob story or Boob Wars... The majority of new readers would not even bother to search that much. To compare, for the similar price I could buy entire Prince of Persia franchise, WoW Complete Collection or an entire collection of Sherlock Holmes books on my local supermarket or online. Which would you choose, Boob wars or anything else I have listed? From this point of view, localization companies are at fault for not providing quality content. It does not matter how much you localize if it is all trash...

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