Being a Visual Novel Fan or in the Industry is Suffering

[Okarin]

On 18/11/2019 at 10:43 AM, NowItsAngeTime said:

• 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.

- Who cares about niche? What about roguelike RPGs? Aren't those niche too? If you really need validation to play something, just keep on with your Call of Duty.

- That's not true. It's true that if you turn your story into a romance moege with 4-5 heroines and spicy sex scenes, you'll be more successful (since that's what we have come to expect). But you can do great stories with all-ages. Check out Shinimasu for example.

- Yeah, fan TLs have it hard, but it's not all hardship; you can attract the attention of some publisher and get hired. And still, you do it because you want; not because of anything else.

- I bet localisation companies proceed with their business without minding those things much. Not all fans are unhappy. Deadlines... well... what about regular videogames, don't those have delays too?

- Yes, poor payment. Still, as with anything, there will always be people willing to do it. I wish that they were paid better. But to achieve that, the industry must improve.

- Dunno, Ebi-hime seems to be doing alright, and there are some fans who consume EVNs regularly.

- EOPs have a lot of games at their disposal now. I follow all localisation companies and I haven't got the time to play it all. There are some games I wouldn't play anyway but if you really like VNs chances are there are more TLed games out there than you can chew.

- JOPs... again with validation. If you're happy with it, why do you need it to be popular? Some people do it precisely because it's obscure. If everyone was doing it, well... might as well do sports or something!