Thoughts on Mangagamer and other english VN producers...

[jeffreymgibson 10]

First I want to say that even though I am a software thief, I bought School Days Collectors edition because I wanted the free goodies and I was looking forward to the game and I also bought EF as to encourage these 2 companies to keep producing decent titles. I have also also downloaded and played many more without ever paying a dime. I don't know why I felt the need to say this, but I did. Now to the reason for my post.

 

That being said, What is up with Mangagamer picking out all these bargain bin type games to produce to English. Before sexy demon transformation was released, I checked it out on VNDB and some Japanese sites as well. It's a low rated game that sells for about $20.00 in Japan. It seems to be the same situation with Boob wars too. Mangagamer knows these games are weak before they translate them, but they produce English scripts for them anyway.

 

They probably got a great deal on the Softhouse-Seal stuff, but why not spend their time and effort pursuing better visual novels. It's not like there's a shortage of untranslated visual novels out there. Japan is full of smaller companies writing quality visual novels.

 

There are so many visual novels I would like to see translated into English, but the softhouse novels I can live without.

 

What do you guys think about some of Mangagamer's choices?

 

I know someone will post a reply saying if you don't like them you don't have to read them.

[desi 53]

It's much easier for MG to sell nukiges. It doesn't take too much time to translate, they can release it relatively quickly, and they can make a good return. Also, the licenses for the nukiges are way cheaper than some of the bigger VNs. I do wish they pick up more story driven VNs, but the points made earlier still hold valid. That being said, MG does have 2 secret projects that are supposedly story driven VNs. Look forward to them in the future.... whatever the hell they are.

Edited October 21, 2012 by desi

[Avenger 11]

I think there isn't a large enough market for English VNs. If they can't get a good deal, they won't make much profit. Hence, they go for the cheap ones.

Japanese companies are wary of selling to the western market (Remember/look up the Rapelay incident), and so don't want to invest heavily in translation. So, they send out their suckier titles to be translated instead, which, being low-scoring, get a bad reception in the western world and then the japanese companies don't see the potential market.

 

That, and the majority of people who've managed to find out about eroges also know how to pirate. While pirating the game isn't reducing their profits (as many anti-pirates claim), there is the lack of profit they would have made had you bought the game. There just isn't enough demand for it to be worth their while.

• Think about it. There are 4,000 registered members on this forum alone. If each of them pirated 10 games, at the MG average price of $40, that's a potential $1.6 million that could have gone to MangaGamer. Then expand this to the whole of the world (the several hundred-thousand people who download from erogedownload, hongfire, etc), and the wide range of eroges out there (hundreds), and the high prices of some importable eroges, and we're talking tens/hundreds of millions of dollars. Now, I'm not saying we should pay for eroges - I don't believe many of them are worth the money - but that is what would have to happen for there to be more English translated VNs.

Edited October 21, 2012 by Avenger

[iLoveTsundere 10]

Quantity rather than quality. nuff said.

[RussoTuristo 10]

Pretty much what desi said. These titles are cheap and quick to translate, and they're guaranteed to bring profit.

 

Additionally, I'd like to note that it was "that" dreadful AX panel that caused so much not entirely warranted discontent about MG. People expected at least some story-driven titles to be announced, but there were none. It was a really bad move for MG, but in all honesty, it's not like the ratio of cheap nukige to story-driven titles changed that much. MangaGamer always has at least 2 and as much as 4-5 story-driven VNs in the works pretty much against business sense, as those titles can bomb spectacularly (Kara no Shoujo, DC fandisks) and rarely become a huge sales success (Shuffle!).

 

The argument regarding time and effort that could be spent working on story-driven titles is somewhat solid, but it's really not fair to say that releases of story-driven titles slowed considerably because of that. It is not MG's fault that Harukoi takes forever, cause the work that stalled the project is carried out by a third party.

[Harlequin 17]

So here's a viewpoint coming from me, a VN noob (and pirate), meaning it's probably silly in the end since I don't really have much experience or knowledge about these things in general.

 

... I'm not too fussed about all of this since good titles are still being translated by people such as Aroduc (just one example). He does fantastic things with some of these VNs with gameplay in them, right? In other words, it just doesn't matter to me if these two companies release nukiges for the most part or not. Now, I'm guessing the two of them can give out higher quality releases sometimes. Like Ef from MG. It has uncensored CGs for example, right? Still, for me, that's no big deal. It's a plus, sure, but it's not going to make me want to wait for their release before reading the already translated version, if there is one. As long as the actual text translation is complete and good enough, that's all I care about. But yes that's going to differ from person to person. Some might prefer waiting if a more polished version is incoming.

 

And yes, of course it would still be nice if they did handle more bigger titles instead of these "easy cash" nukiges. Yes. But that has never truly entered my mind as something important since I see translations coming from elsewhere anyway. Could be I'm just stupid and missing the point. But also, I pirate these things, so there's even less reason for me to care about what MG/Jast decides to do because of that.

 

Yea sorry, I know, this might be alittle bit offtopic. I was really just wondering why I didn't have anything good to add to this, or why I haven't given it much thought before myself. Well that's the reason.

Edited October 22, 2012 by Harlequin

[Ryu 15]

MangaGamer is a subsidiary originated from japanese companies Circus, Tarte, Overdrive and Nexton (including the BASESON and LIQUID sub-labels), and has a partnership with Minori, so they translate their almost exclusively their games with a few expections like Shuffe (Company Navel).

 

First of all, they have to honor their deal with the parent companies, giving priority to their games.

 

The can't just grab any VN and translate it, first they have to contact the company and ask them if they are interested in releasing their game on the west. After the Rapelay incident back in 2006, many japanese companies are scared of the same thing happening again so they just focus on releasing their games on japan and refusing any chances of a deal, started to send C&D (Cease and desist) notices to fan translators (Eiyuu Senki and Yosuga no Sora), some even blocked non japanese IPs (Alicesoft).

 

And also, you can't really blame MG, with piracy and stuff they have it tought, take for example Koihime Musou (Released voiceless and ony after 2000 sales they would add the voices, this number was archieved almost a year after the game was released), IIRC Ivan told us on the shoutbox that the game was downloaded +100.000 times from here. Take that into accout plus other sites like Hongfire and even PirateBay. They have to release nukiges because they are easy to translate and quick buck games. Honestly, to me the only reason they are still on the game is because their parent companies are backing MG up, if not they would go bankrupt right away.

[Virsia 10]

first of all i think piracy will never gone away, the problem is creating game equal money, without money no game will be created?? thats right, i wont mind buying, in fact i brought some of my vn from local store, i have my agent, my favorite store, backalley store, and online store, but mostly what i brought is an outdated games, i never get new released one, which i found rather annoyingly the new one always japanese one, and the reason is they dont release it in english or afraid it wont hit the market or other marketing stuff.

 

personally i brought many games online like starcraft II worth 109$ sgp, but the thoughts of what i buying is an outdated stuff give me uneasy feelings, like i'm getting something from junkyard or yard sale, i will gladly line up if they give me something epic and of course "new", i'm no cheapskates i'm an addicted gamer, otaku and fans.

 

i'm going piracy on vn coz they taking their sweet time translating crap, so rather than waiting for uncertainly i better make my own move and browse the internet

[OneManArmy 82]

These titles are cheap and quick to translate, and they're guaranteed to bring profit.

This and it's his god damn right to translate nukige.

[Bane Doyle 10]

The reason has actually be stated in interviews and has been touched upon here.

 

While they do make back their money on story games and they do make a profit, it's not really enough to get them more of the same stuff. Short nukige are easier and cheaper for them to get, faster and easier for them to translate, faster for them to push out, and cheaper for them to sell. Ergo, they get these and sell them to make a quick return and then add up their profit to show they DO make a profit and so they can use that money made back to get better games.

 

It sucks. But it's true.

[W-Z 10]

So here's a viewpoint coming from me, a VN noob (and pirate), meaning it's probably silly in the end since I don't really have much experience or knowledge about these things in general.

 

... I'm not too fussed about all of this since good titles are still being translated by people such as Aroduc (just one example). He does fantastic things with some of these VNs with gameplay in them, right? In other words, it just doesn't matter to me if these two companies release nukiges for the most part or not. Now, I'm guessing the two of them can give out higher quality releases sometimes. Like Ef from MG. It has uncensored CGs for example, right? Still, for me, that's no big deal. It's a plus, sure, but it's not going to make me want to wait for their release before reading the already translated version, if there is one. As long as the actual text translation is complete and good enough, that's all I care about. But yes that's going to differ from person to person. Some might prefer waiting if a more polished version is incoming.

 

And yes, of course it would still be nice if they did handle more bigger titles instead of these "easy cash" nukiges. Yes. But that has never truly entered my mind as something important since I see translations coming from elsewhere anyway. Could be I'm just stupid and missing the point. But also, I pirate these things, so there's even less reason for me to care about what MG/Jast decides to do because of that.

 

Yea sorry, I know, this might be alittle bit offtopic. I was really just wondering why I didn't have anything good to add to this, or why I haven't given it much thought before myself. Well that's the reason.

 

I have to strongly disagree with you on this one. Your main point seems to be that all the good story titles are being translated by fans, which simply is not true. If you look at the number and description of visual novels being published in Japan every month, data available in English from say omochikaeri @ wordpress, there can easily be upwards of a dozen visual novels coming out every month. Many of these are story driven and have large scripts above 5 Kb. Obviously not all of them are spectacular and which ones you like is largely dependent upon personal taste but there are bound to be visual novels that are released regularly, even every week that catches your eye. The vast majority of these will never be translated into English simply because there are not enough fan translation groups to handle it all. Translating visual novels is VERY time consuming and requires a fair bit of computer know how. Plus as the years have gone by, story driven visual novel's text files have gotten much larger. Manga Gamer has stated in forum posts that the reason they do not plan on doing the Koihime Musou sequel is because it is so large that they probably won't be able to sell enough to make a profit. It had to be split up into 3 files and each of those files are roughly the size of the Koihime Musou that MG did, which is already a fairly large game. The bottom line is a lot of high quality visual novels slip between the cracks because the resources to translate them simply aren't there.

 

To get back to the OP, I think most of the relevant points have already been said, but I would like to add that an underlying cause of the lack of translations is the market they are trying to go to. The key point is that the general public does not really know much about visual novels and those that do are by and large computer savvy enough to pirate the games. This combined with the amount of money and time it takes to acquire and translate story driven visual novels means that they have to carefully consider what novels to translate in order to make a profit, which leads them to translating nukiges because that generally sells and has less overhead costs.

 

[/rant]

[switch 13]

as a veteran playing VNs for 10 years this is my verdict:

 

anything tat becomes commercial, fuks up cool and replaces it with faggot bullshit...

WOW , diablo, crisis, mass effect, halo are just a few cool>faggot transformation examples

these VNs are TLed by companies, but they are also MODIFIED to become faggots

one piece was reduced to justin bieber level when it was "localised" by a company....

 

commercialization ======= gay porn

 

nuff said