I have been lurking here for quite some time and was curious about something.
i have heard that popular games such as shuffle [not interested i playing this on though] cannot be translated because of their popularity but why is that ? shouldnt these companies want access to foreign markets? after all PP might make some money and they would as well everyone wins. after all this is consistent with global economic theory.
why does type-moon refuse to put their tsukihime collectors set into mass production after all they would only make money on it.
3.how does one go about establishing relations witha japanese ero company ? does it involve sake and wakazashi ? (Im looking at Mr. Peter payne)
and on a totally unrelated note: why does the Diet still insist upon censorship of er scenes?!?!?! [I suspect on Douglas macauthor was involved -_-]
shuffle may be huge in japan, but it might flop here. if i recall, somebody correct me if i’m wrong, kana was only a decent game in japan. but in the US, kana is considered one of the very best. (again, correct me if i’m wrong. i think one game is like that). and kinoko nasu is god, so he knows what’s best for tsukihime production. as for your other questions, raptor jesus went extinct for your sins, remember that.
The popularity for many games is due to the number of selections, plus the mentality of US.
FE: One Piece is far more popular in Japan than the US. In the US Naruto is far more popular than Japan. Both series are still popular in both countries though.
Plus some of those companies with popular and more established titles in Japan ask for possibly and probably ridiculously large licensing fees. The western market for these games is not huge, and if you pay more to liscense a title than you could even imagine profiting from it, then that’s a big no right there. These companies translating games to English can’t go into the red, the ones that have, as you can see now, are no longer producing anything. Hirameki being the latest example of that.
It boils down to a question of scale and expectations. Japanese companies with successful game franchises sell their titles in the tens of thousands, some over 100,000 copies, and they look at the American market and figure that since the US has roughly three times the population they’ll sell three times the games. They propose licensing fees based on this expectation, and meanwhile we’re selling games where we calculate success in much smaller terms (thousands of sales over a product’s lifetime, not tens of thousands). This mismatch in market expectations is one of the primary reasons we haven’t been able to license some of the most famous titles.
Another reason is that some companies are so big that they’re not interested in going through a middleman (a licensor such as us) to enter a new market. Companies like Circus and Type-Moon are like the Coca-Cola and McDonalds of the eroge world - they’re likely not going to relinquish corporate control over franchises in new markets, and they may set up branches of their own business instead if they decide to branch out. The company that tried this approach most recently was CD Bros. with their G-Collections brand, and they destroyed themselves in the process; we hope that other companies will at least consult with us (if not choose us to license their products) before attempting similar moves in the future. It’s not an easy market to engage in sustainably.
This is how I view the situation :
If only the non-H console Visual Novels/ADVs, etc had been picked up during the anime boom along with the anime titles companies were liscencing… If VNs, etc had laid their roots in force back then, I think these games might have a larger market/wider acceptance. Those who grew up with them would eventually lead to wanting more, and then finding out about H-games as a legitamate and more acceptable purchase [to the uninformed]…
But, what to do since that option of laying possible long term roots in youths is gone (or at least not useful currently)? At present I think Jast is doing the build something good and they will come approach. Word of mouth, a solid core fan-base that can be trusted to buy enough… and to spread the word; hopefully a slow steady growth of consumers.
Is there another option? Well I think the purchase of anime is currently in a kind of recession along with other things possibly. That makes it hard to figure out how to expand to new groups of consumers. Spreading the word to other adult markets is the method I think Jast might be taking? That should hopefully raise some awareness in circles of paying adult consumers…
The conclusion I keep coming to, is we need a miracle lol Didn’t I hear that population rate has declined heavily? In the US, black and hispanics are the ones making babies…and the rest aren’t doing their part…? Maybe H-Games can become the great population boom tool, if marketed just right… Then these games will become a respected household name!
“Time for some horny bunnies hunny?” “Make that Horny Bunnies 2!” “I’m Raidy!”
… lol guess I wasn’t any help after all
WAit :idea: I shall go pre-order Raidy 2!
It doesn’t just apply to bgames… it applies to nearly ALL forms of economics. Look at McDonalds and Philip Morris trying to butter up the hell out of commie China and our friends in India: its not so they can “Americanize” them or anything… its because they have a billion people… that’s a billion potential customers. Greed. Pure and simple. Now I’m not saying that all commercial ventures are just in it for the cash - but if you can make some $$$ out of something you love, then it doesn’t hurt to makes some $$$.
And can you blame Japanese b-game groups for the misconception? Anime, manga, toys, console games, and Asian porn have been selling like hotcakes in America and Europe. Thus one would think it only be natural, that another of Japan’s major entertainment markets sell just as good. But we all know the truth about that reality…
Don’t forget that you also have companies with successful properties, that just don’t want to be sold outside of Japan. Same here. There are tons of mega popular computer games that were released in NA and Europe, which never saw the light of day in Japan: Knights of the Old Republic and Baldur’s Gate 2 for example. There’s a rather interesting importing niche with Japanese gamers, for such things. Some of the larger gamings stores in Akihabara sell them (usually the European English editions, which I believe are from Australia judging from the manuals).
people who buy eroge are suposed to be over 18 at least, so it shouldn’t be a problem to receive your game at home.
But even if you live with your parents, do they automaticaly open your mail ?
Just tell them “don’t open it because you may regret seeing what I order…”
… hum now I wonder how many people here are in fact under 18…
or maybe there is a special rule that makes that everybody is over 18 (the same rule that makes every eroge girl aver 18 :D)
Only Type-Moon can answer. However, it’s worth noting that they’re open to the possibility of a future remake. My guess is that as a “professional developer”, Type-Moon isn’t inclined to re-release a doujin title with simple production values.
I suspect that Circus is more interested in the American console market than the adult PC niche. However, the impression I got from last year’s interviews is that they’re waiting for established publishers to pursue them (with a promise to look into appropriate licensing fees), which will never happen.
I know you think it sounds incredibly simple, but the fact is, it isn’t. Businesses have limited time. As a game developer who done some amount of negotiation to get people to distribute product, there are cases where the profit of increased sales seriously isn’t worth it because of the time involved in handling all the details.
Meetings, meetings, meetings, contract negotiation, asset delivery, artist contact, technical support, QA… all time that could have been spent doing something MORE profitable. Time spent on a barely-breaks-even English project that could have been spent on a wildly successful Japanese project doesn’t make business sense.
My problem was that my father and I share our first name. (The only thing different is our middle initial.) Back when I was living in their basement I couldn’t have hgames mailed to my house addressed to ‘Bob Johnson’ without taking the risk that my dad might think it was for him.
I’m in an apartment now, which means I don’t have to worry about anything of the kind anymore.
If you have a hundred dollars, and have a choice between investing that $100 in an investment that will return $200, or one that will return $120, which one are you going to pick?
This is a very good point, and another reason why some makers aren’t interested in doing business with us once they learn the real scope of the international market. Time spent helping us develop their games for English release is time they could be spending working on new titles for release in Japan.
To Lurker: I don’t have the knowledge to adequately answer your other questions, but I’ll try anyway:
As Skua said, only Type-Moon can answer that. My guess however would be that this is just another example of the Japanese love of the limited; it’s a common occurrence in Japan for limited edition items to be produced at numbers far below demand. This doesn’t make sense according to any economic theory I’m aware of; it simply is, and we have to live with the consequences.
I’d be curious to hear the story of how Peter initially got into the business back in the day as well, I’m not exactly sure what got the ball rolling back then.
Now that JAST USA is an established business, relations tend to be established either through introductions from mutual acquaintances (representatives of companies we have dealings with introduce us to representatives of other companies, etc.) or by us attempting unilateral outreach and contacting new makers directly.
I don’t know the details of these transactions personally, and even if I did it’s not the sort of thing we can really discuss on a public forum. ^^;;
This is a complex question with an even more complex answer, and you’ll find a lot of conflicting literature on it in various corners of the internet.
In the simplest terms, my understanding is that there are some vague laws against obscenity on the books with a few random points of specificity that were at one point present (no showing of pubic hair, etc.) but that have since been relaxed. Legally it’s a very muddled picture right now.
At the time the legislation was first enacted back in the 50’s-60’s-70’s, in the era of pink films and whatnot, film producers decided that the best way to abide by the law while still displaying erotic material would be to graphically censor the sex organs, or certain aspects of them to conform with what the law labeled as excessively prurient at the time.
The tradition of industry self-censorship has continued since then in various forms, and exists to this day. It’s not at all clear what the law requires, but media producers censor voluntarily anyway for fear of landing in legal hot water.
In the case of eroge in particular, if you want to be sold by a major game retailer you need to be approved by one of the PC game ratings boards (the EOCS or the CSA) which have their own particular requirements (no implication of character age by using the word “elementary”, “middle school”, “high school”, etc).
Sorry for the incomplete nature of that reply; I don’t know of any definitive resource that accurately explains the Japanese legal landscape when it comes to censorship, but if anyone does it would be great to see.
It makes me sad but I guess I’ll just have to hope in 20XX on the X/X aniversary they bring out a more stupendous edition.
I was making a slight yakuza reference but does that mean there is achance for Black cyc.
4.Yeah I heard that the pubic hair thing was what started the loli boom in the 80s . Oh well we need a PAC to pour hard money funds to parliament members in the Diet.
Well maybe after all even time can be considered economically because econ is all about tradeoffs. Still I would rather let someone else have a piece of the pie and get some as well :however small it might be than , than none at all.
