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Being a Visual Novel Fan or in the Industry is Suffering


NowItsAngeTime

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  • Its the most niche set of media among weebs not guaranteed to sell well or most people have even heard of most of them (outside DDLC)
  • Being a Japanese company/writer sucks because if you want to write a story you care about, you basically have to insert porn just to make sure you game sells to the people willing to spend big yen
  • Being a fantranslator gets you no pay, and if a localization company happens to get the license you're likely screwed unless you get lucky.
  • Being a head localization company means you're at the mercy of deadlines, incredibly unhappy fans who hate kickstarters and (lack of) updates, and basically whatever demands JP company wants to throw at you. And you can't talk about anything publicly and risk PR despite the constant demand of updates.
  • Being a worker in a localization company gets you very poor pay (varies depending on company apparently), so you're either stuck going full passion project, getting a secondary job, or just finding a better way to support yourself.
  • If you're an (original) English Visual Novel Developer, unless you're in the 1% that makes if big (and even then...) you will get shunned/insulted for basically not being developed by a Japanese company.
  • English only readers... waits between releases or even TL/Kickstarter/Backerkit updates can be frustrating with little to communication. Learning Japanese for certain releases you really want takes time and effort you may not actually have.
  • Japanese only readers...having a much smaller pool of people to get people to read the stuff you like is hard when only a minority of readers can actually read visual novels in Japanese, let alone want to.
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1 hour ago, NowItsAngeTime said:

 

  • Being a Japanese company/writer sucks because if you want to write a story you care about, you basically have to insert porn just to make sure you game sells to the people willing to spend big yen

Whats makes you think that including porn in the story disincentives the writer from writing a story that he wants?  including porn in the story will not make the story good or bad... the story will remain as it is... off course there are SOME ( Not all ) writers who dont want to include porn.. and feel like if they dont include it wont sell well.. but like i said there are only some..

 

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incredibly unhappy fans who hate kickstarters and (lack of) updates,

Offcourse they will be unhappy.. they paid for it, its their money..so obviously  as the ones who took their money its your responsibility to keep the people whom you took money from a little bit updated from time to time..  Its not as if their saying we want our stuff asap.. they just want to know how things are progressing.. if there is any progress or lack of  it...

 

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Being a head localization company means you're at the mercy of deadlines,

Also who isnt at mercy of deadlines even outside of localisation companies..
you think we dont get shit from our clients when we pass deadlines.. trust me your not the only ones
 

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Its the most niche set of media among weebs not guaranteed to sell well or most people have even heard of most of them (outside DDLC)

Being a worker in a localization company gets you very poor pay (varies depending on company apparently), so you're either stuck going full passion project, getting a secondary job, or just finding a better way to support yourself.

Its Natural that if the company involved incurs loss upon every release.. it will run short on funds to pay its employees..unless they have some sort of external  sponsorship or financing....
Why loss.. there are alot of factors.. decision making by the company heads also pays an important role... ( like deciding which VN to get localisation off,  Deciding how to go about promoting the said localisation ,  and you definitely dont want to get on bad side of your customer.. your dependent on their money after all  )..

 

Edited by Wildbreed
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Another day, another big brain post by ange.
 
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Its the most niche set of media among weebs not guaranteed to sell well or most people have even heard of most of them (outside DDLC)


It's not exactly a bad thing for a hobby to be more closed off than others. There are plenty of VN communities.
 
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Being a Japanese company/writer sucks because if you want to write a story you care about, you basically have to insert porn just to make sure you game sells to the people willing to spend big yen

How about writing a book/manga/LN???
 

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Being a fantranslator gets you no pay, and if a localization company happens to get the license you're likely screwed unless you get lucky.

Yeah, well, that's what fan translation means, dude. Hello???
 
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Being a head localization company means you're at the mercy of deadlines, incredibly unhappy fans who hate kickstarters and (lack of) updates, and basically whatever demands JP company wants to throw at you. And you can't talk about anything publicly and risk PR despite the constant demand of updates.

I think they're partially at fault for this. They could announce games only when they're closer to completion, not run update blogs, and not create things like discord servers where they're more easily exposed to toxicity.
 
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Being a worker in a localization company gets you very poor pay (varies depending on company apparently), so you're either stuck going full passion project, getting a secondary job, or just finding a better way to support yourself.

I imagine it's the same for something like anime. Anyhow who studies Translation will have their teachers tell them that literary translation pays the least. It's just the way things are.

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If you're an (original) English Visual Novel Developer, unless you're in the 1% that makes if big (and even then...) you will get shunned/insulted for basically not being developed by a Japanese company.

Not sure about this either. There are plenty of decent EVNs which are recognized by the community. But there's also a ton of games that are simply amateurish and sometimes try too hard to be Japanese.

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English only readers... waits between releases or even TL/Kickstarter/Backerkit updates can be frustrating with little to communication. Learning Japanese for certain releases you really want takes time and effort you may not actually have.

This is BS. There is more stuff being released nowadays than ever before. I've talked with several Japanese learners who say that if VNs were translated at the same pace as they are now back when they started, they would never have started learning Japanese.

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Japanese only readers...having a much smaller pool of people to get people to read the stuff you like is hard when only a minority of readers can actually read visual novels in Japanese, let alone want to.

Had to re-read this a couple times to actually understand what you were trying to get at. Honestly, tell me what matters most: the amount of people you can talk to, or the quality of the discussions? I am completely fine with sharing my opinions with a restrict group of friends, though now and then I feel the urge to write a review or two. Perhaps you're the one at fault since you seem to enjoy sharing every little opinion you have with the wide world.

 

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3 hours ago, NowItsAngeTime said:

Being a worker in a localization company gets you very poor pay (varies depending on company apparently), so you're either stuck going full passion project, getting a secondary job, or just finding a better way to support yourself.

Not sure what you are basing this on, but as someone working in the industry I disagree. Sure, some companies pay low rates, but there's equally many, or more, who pay pretty good. Some pay very good. You obviously can't get too much information about specific rates as an outsider due to NDAs and such, so whatever information you have to go on is probably just from specific cases of drama etc in the community, which can hardly be used as the actual industry standard. 

It's absolutely possible to make a good living working in the VN loc scene. Many people do. Just know your own worth and have the guts to say no if you get offered a terrible rate. 

3 hours ago, NowItsAngeTime said:

Being a fantranslator gets you no pay, and if a localization company happens to get the license you're likely screwed unless you get lucky.

Uh, once again I must disagree. In fact, most of the big names in the translation industry right now came from fan translation, and did so thanks to loc companies offering very nice deals bringing them onboard. I myself got started with a fan translation, and I know many others who did too, none of which were "screwed" by loc companies. Tbh, if you are good at what you do and you have a partial translation for a game, contact a loc company, chances are you will "get lucky." It's... not as hard as people seem to think. Very little screwing involved / 10.

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Life is suffering. In my experience, being a VN fan is one of the least miserable things about it. ^_^

But that's maybe because I have more backlog than I might be able to read in my whole life and can't relate to all that translation/KS anxiety.

Also, wouldn't being a JOP mean the possibility of talking about eroge with Japanese fans? And how many people do you really need to have a good conversation? The Japanese-only sections in major VN communities don't look that barren...

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5 hours ago, NowItsAngeTime said:

and if a localization company happens to get the license you're likely screwed unless you get lucky.

nah mate you can just ignore the dmca or whatever, especially if you don't live in the lol usa lol.

this will cause condemnation from some but why care?

The company might even buy off an incomplete, terrible quality fan tl just so you don't use it once finished, even

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7 hours ago, GXOALMD said:

Being a vn fan is suffering because everyone around you either has sh*t taste or doesn't read vns (and has sh*t taste.)

Being a VN fan is suffering, because to enjoy it wholeheartedly you first have to accept your own shit taste. Luckily I've accepted mine a long time ago. ^_^

Funbag Fantasy 2 is coming out soon, right? :lol:

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I can see that the OP here really have some experience, although unfortunately some of those are either wrong or lack of research. As for the reason why, I think we already have enough comment about that from accross three communities (In here, Reddit, and VNDB) but may as well give my comment here.

1. I think it's reasonable to think VN as niche. But I think there's something wrong in the OP wording here, namely that the VN fan will suffer if the genre is niche. As in if we want to enjoy the media it should be mainstream here, which to say not the most correct mindset to have as VN fans here because no one can control people taste here and that someone can have niche taste as well. I know the OP may didn't think like that, but it's what I get from reading it. Also DDLC is free for the info, so the creator of that didn't get the money.

2. They should always read the contract before enter the company. I remember that Itou Noizi entering Unisoft Blossom without knowing that the company is producing eroge (And she only know after accepted in the company), but it didn't mean that she suffer it because otherwise she wouldn't stay in the company. Besides the writer can always write what he/she want in eroge, and once again the writer should already know that they should add the sex scenes when they enter eroge company. And no, adding a lot of sex scenes is not a guarantee of success as shown with minori here.

3. So the OP here prefer fan translator to get the money and have them got the trouble with the legal? In any case it happened when Aroduc do his Kickstarter to localize Romanesque and as expected Littlewitch react. As for whether they screwed when the company react, usually they'll release C&D notice so you right about that. Then again, there's always exception though as shown with Alka here.

4. Usually the company set the deadline by themselves, so at least they should know their capabilities before set their deadline. It's also normal that there's bound to be a delay because a lot of unexpected things can be happened in the middle of the translation process, so it's understandable if the head company need to issue delay. Oh and it's also normal if the fans didn't know the inside company, so I can see why they ask the updates whenever the delay happen. I'm sure that head company already have their precaution when it come to delay (ie announce it to the fans), so to say that they suffered is a bit of stretch (By the way Sol Press here really overconfident when it come to announce their deadline release date at AX).

5. So far we only got Arunaru, and his case is so far the only one that got a lot of attention just because he tweet a lot about that. Of course there's a lot more translator out there, so we can't say whether the case is true or not. We can also assume that the late Conjueror also might got a less payment that lead to his unfortunate action, but it's only speculation so there's no enough proof for that unless someone here can summon him to write his situation about his payment here (Sorry). And no we also don't really know whether the employee (ie non translator one) salary is under the standard or not, so we better leave it to the employee here (It's depend on what neccesity that the employee need to fulfill).

6. I admit that I didn't pay attention to OELVN much, although in this case it's more because I prefer to focused on Japanese VNs. Of course some OELVN can be gather some attention (The most well known one are DDLC and Katawa Shoujo), but most of those are more or less unknown one. As for me, so far the only interesting OELVN is Katawa Shoujo, Lucid9, Ace Academy, and Crystalline. There's Sakura franchise as well, but I can say that Wiged Cloud here is infamous not because it's not Japanese company (There's a lot of other reasons here).

7. I know that, and I think the only way for the fans to suffer would be if they didn't have other media to distract themselves from the wait (Don't tell me that they prefer to not touch any other media besides VNs if they wait for the updates). As for learn Japanese, well it's up to them and as for me I chose it to not learn it because learning Japanese to read a VN is not quite worth the time to me (If you think otherwise, it's okay).

8. Well as long as they happy it shouldn't matter, only that they can't share it to majority of the people (It's more a minor setback and less suffering to me). Thay said, if someone want to arouse the interest in Japanese VN they can always write their experience (Just ask mod Clephas).

For the closing words here, we can't say those so-called suffering is unique for VN fans, because we can have all of those eight 'suffering' above for other media here (Anime, game, movie, novel, comic book, manga, etc.) in different forms. I wouldn't explain the example though, because there'll be a lot of it and I don't do enough research for that. I guess that's all for my comment here.

Edited by littleshogun
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