TexasDice Posted February 1, 2015 Share Posted February 1, 2015 ... KiraKira... ... Kira Kira (also has all-ages version)... +1, because I love Kira☆Kira so much, I'd put a ring on it. Can't recommend the fandisc, though. Maybe it's because I haven't read Deaddrops, but I found the first hour of Curtain Call to be an overall unpleasant experience. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XReaper Posted February 1, 2015 Share Posted February 1, 2015 feel the same way comrade texas, the original was way better than curtain call. & though i dont consider deardrops a bad vn, i just felt bit disappointed that 2 out of 4 routes were nothing more than troll routes ala mare and therefore big waste of time. but overall compared to its predessor it lost in every category, starting from its story, to characters AND definitely when it came down to music Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darklord Rooke Posted February 1, 2015 Share Posted February 1, 2015 feel the same way comrade texas, the original was way better than curtain call. & though i dont consider deardrops a bad vn, i just felt bit disappointed that 2 out of 4 routes were nothing more than troll routes ala mare and therefore big waste of time. but overall compared to its predessor it lost in every category, starting from its story, to characters AND definitely when it came down to music I have the exact opposite opinion. In fact Kira Kira is the only VN which caused me such intolerable boredom that I wanted to physically harm it in some way, shape, or form. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Decay Posted February 1, 2015 Share Posted February 1, 2015 say what you want, but after sekai proudly announced their 2 new upcoming titles yesterday, i seriously felt the urge to throw up. compared to that piece of rubble, most of the mediocre porn released by mg so far seems like heaven to me.... Well, they certainly don't look very good, but that's still a weird reaction. Sekai Project must have a weird selection process. By that, I mean that they probably will translate anything at all if a Japanese doujin developer requests it. Because I certainly can't believe they sought these titles out. One doesn't have an EGS or VNDB entry, the other does but has barely any votes on either sites, and the ones it does have are unflattering. Apparently the insect monster girl gimmick game is bad, who coulda guessed. But you better believe that monster girl and sekai project fanboys will eat it up because its indie as hell and people love rallying around sekai project. They could probably raise another $100,000 on kickstarter to translate these <2 hour titles, like they did with WAS. I'm still baffled by that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darklord Rooke Posted February 1, 2015 Share Posted February 1, 2015 I can understand people's reactions to Kokonoe Kokoro, but Hitomebore doesn't SEEM horrifying. The summary you get on VNDB reminds me of average otome, which while not stellar isn't BAD compared to some of the stuff that has been released. Also, according to dovac on Reddit, Sekai had already licensed these projects last year and were sitting on them. It's entirely possible they had licensed these titles before they became "big" *shrugs* Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
suikashoujo Posted February 1, 2015 Share Posted February 1, 2015 I don't know, the Cyclops girl is at least sort of cute (in a way), but that insect girl game is, well, not my thing. At alln. I'm convinced that they saw the success of Hatoful Boyfriend and thought, "Hey, people like gimmicky VNs, so let's put out more of them." And the sad thing is that these will probably sell more than any of their GOOD titles, thanks to YouTube Lets Plays and all that. ...or maybe I'm over thinking this, and they really were just approached by the developers. The world may never know. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
XReaper Posted February 1, 2015 Share Posted February 1, 2015 *sigh* as long as some cockroach living under my fridge can get a boner while i´m out of the house..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sanahtlig Posted March 8, 2015 Share Posted March 8, 2015 Peter Payne (owner of JAST and J-List) has been active in the JAST forums lately, and he had an interesting viewpoint to share that happens to coincide with mine. (With Steam on the horizon, there's a chance that all games will go to this platform. If 90% of all licensors' money comes from Steam and there's the risk of fans pirating our adult games anyway, it may make it hard to do adult games at some theoretical point in the future. This is why Steam is really dangerous for the industry...every [Japanese] company is expecting a big payday, as long as they censor their games or make them all ages from the start.) https://connect.jastusa.com/support/discussions/topics/5000037016/page/last#post-5000067148 I can see a world where only good story based [all-ages] games coexist with tentacle Imouto trap nukige, and there'd be nothing in between. For our part, though we plan more Steam games, we will always make proper versions for people to buy, and also package versions for people who prefer those. This is coming from a guy who's managed to run a solvent eroge localization company for nearly 20 years now, during a time when all his peers were dropping like flies. And obviously he has insider behind-the-scenes knowledge of business negotations that we aren't privy to. So maybe it's a little early to go popping Champagne bottles at the burgeoning success of VNs on mainstream platforms like Steam and Kickstarter. Reading between the lines, my guess is that he's been in negotiations lately with Japanese eroge publishers who are demanding higher licensing fees because they're anticipating big success on Steam, perhaps to such an extent that it's killing negotiations that would've otherwise been successful. Tay 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlexZandria Posted March 8, 2015 Share Posted March 8, 2015 Mangagamer has stated that before late 2013/early 2014 they didn't really have a huge consumer base of anything but guys who bought nukige. Their requested titles included a whole hell of a lot of nukige aimed at hetero males. With No, Thank You!!! (Which while eroge heavy is NOT a nukige it actually has a really nicely developed plot that weaves itself through all 4 stories between all the h-scenes) and soon Ozmafia they are still trying to branch out but since before those requests they didn't have a huge basis to make VNs that weren't nukige it isn't a surprise that most of what they made and most of what they sold was in fact a bunch of bad sex games. I'm just hoping that with what Mangagamer is pushing towards at the moment that this year will be different. Mangagamer specifically stated that all they wanted was for their bl/otome titles to do as well as their nukige and they'll continue making them. They already have a decent wish list for both genres and with how NTY!!! Has been doing and they hype that Ozmafia has been getting I think they will start to bring more variety into their catalog. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlexZandria Posted March 8, 2015 Share Posted March 8, 2015 edit: And if you really want to feel down, you should recognize that it's highly likely that in its first week of release, HuniePop probably outsold everything listed in this thread. Will shamelessly admit that I thought Huniepop was gonna be a cute bejeweled otome game. I bought it the second it was released and then was thoroughly disappointed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Decay Posted March 8, 2015 Share Posted March 8, 2015 So here's the deal, the types of games Japan makes isn't likely to change any time soon. This means that JAST and MG will still have the same selection to choose from for localization, which means that they will be choosing eroge that they have to convert into all-ages versions. However, the additional cost to release and support an additional 18+ version are likely to be trivial compared to the expected return for doing so, there's no reason for either company to stop releasing both all-ages and 18+ versions, even if Steam becomes dominant. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kelebek1 Posted March 8, 2015 Share Posted March 8, 2015 Well I'm happy they're focusing on Steam. Because what does Steam sell? Games. It makes perfect sense for localisation companies to actually try and focus on VNs that have some gameplay in them. Those are my favourite types of VNs too, so for me I'm glad it's happening. So far we haven't seen their direction move towards game-play-orientated VNs, but I'm still hoping it will happen. We should start to see it move more that way over the next year or two as they consider which titles to pick up, while aiming at Steam as their major release vector. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tay Posted March 8, 2015 Share Posted March 8, 2015 Reading between the lines, my guess is that he's been in negotiations lately with Japanese eroge publishers who are demanding higher licensing fees because they're anticipating big success on Steam, perhaps to such an extent that it's killing negotiations that would've otherwise been successful. Bingo. I had the same thought. I think the aggressive release calendar for the next 18 months adds to that sense of momentum, too, and the Japanese publishers are unquestionably going to leverage pricier deals. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sanahtlig Posted March 8, 2015 Share Posted March 8, 2015 On 3/8/2015 at 1:02 PM, Decay said: So here's the deal, the types of games Japan makes isn't likely to change any time soon. This means that JAST and MG will still have the same selection to choose from for localization, which means that they will be choosing eroge that they have to convert into all-ages versions. However, the additional cost to release and support an additional 18+ version are likely to be trivial compared to the expected return for doing so, there's no reason for either company to stop releasing both all-ages and 18+ versions, even if Steam becomes dominant. Well, here's the counter: if Japanese companies start factoring expected success on Steam into their license fee equation, that shrinks the selection of available titles to license to ones that can easily be censored and sold on Steam. Imagine the next Shiny Days animated eroge comes out that JAST is interested in, and maybe the Japanese company demands 5x more in license fees than they would've otherwise. JAST tells them that censoring with this particular advanced game engine will be problematic, therefore the game can't be sold on Steam and sales will be below expectations. Japanese company shrugs and tells JAST to take a hike. Depending on your perspective, success of non-ero releases could be a bane or a boon. It might bring more companies to the bargaining table, but on the other hand it could also end up restricting choices too, just as the market demand for mosaic removal has led to projects being dropped in the past (negotiations with GIGA stalled for this reason). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Down Posted March 8, 2015 Author Share Posted March 8, 2015 Licensing deals are not necessarily about paying a certain amount of money upfront - in fact I doubt most of them are. The companies can simply strike a deal where the japanese developer will get a percentage of the sales of the game. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sanahtlig Posted March 8, 2015 Share Posted March 8, 2015 Licensing deals are not necessarily about paying a certain amount of money upfront - in fact I doubt most of them are. The companies can simply strike a deal where the japanese developer will get a percentage of the sales of the game. My guess is many negotiations probably feature a combination of these two models: money upfront to justify their investment in assisting with the localization process, and a percentage of sales. JAST and MG don't talk about their business negotiations, so this is pure speculation. In any case, localization is mainly about fixed costs, so if Japanese publishers start demanding a higher cut on titles that don't have higher expected sales (because they can't be sold on Steam), then that could cut into JAST's revenue enough to make a particular project unprofitable or a loss. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zenophilious Posted March 8, 2015 Share Posted March 8, 2015 My guess is many negotiations probably feature a combination of these two models: money upfront to justify their investment in assisting with the localization process, and a percentage of sales. JAST and MG don't talk about their business negotiations, so this is pure speculation. In any case, localization is mainly about fixed costs, so if Japanese publishers start demanding a higher cut on titles that don't have higher expected sales (because they can't be sold on Steam), then that could cut into JAST's revenue enough to make a particular project unprofitable or a loss. Makes sense. I don't know a lot about business, but I'd assume that there's some kind of flat rate plus a percentage of the total sales. That's what I've heard most companies do when they license IPs or other copyrighted material to other companies. Really don't understand why they think there's such a huge potential in Steam. I mean, sure, a lot of people are getting money so far, but if they oversaturate the market, people will lose interest. I'm not talking about people already interested in VNs, of course, I'm talking about potential buyers that are on the fence. At least that's my prediction, anyway. I think they're jumping the gun a bit on this one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sanahtlig Posted March 8, 2015 Share Posted March 8, 2015 When in doubt, right holders are going to overvalue rather than undervalue their properties. They can always adjust their asking price lower in the future, but if they sell low to start with, there's no recovering the missed royalties they could've gotten if they'd held their ground. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sanahtlig Posted March 10, 2015 Share Posted March 10, 2015 I was reading Mangagamer's ask.fm page and this comment amused me: It's definitely been a pleasure to work with some of the great developers trying to create eroge in the West, and we hope that more continue to arise. Especially ones willing to develop adult content. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Satsuki Posted March 10, 2015 Share Posted March 10, 2015 They still need more r*pe and g*ngb*ng for their collection. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kurisu-Chan Posted March 10, 2015 Share Posted March 10, 2015 ... *bookmarks mangagamer* For scientific studies. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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