I suppose it was just wishful thinking then. I actually agree wit you in some sense. Mainly in the nitro+ category. I find it unlikely that we will ever see a Chaos Head or Dra Koi release anymore. You know what forget what I said. I forgot that some companies have a bad habit of editing content and even games that do get supposedly picked up may never see the light of day…yeah forget what I said.
I completely agree with how the “otaku culture in the west” is described by Dark_Shiki and it is a shame. People who’ve already played those games wouldn’t in turn buy an official release later if later is ever a possibility. A vicious circle.
Can you ask how Peter will address this in the future after a collaboration with Nitro+? Would he feel confident enough to ship a product that everyone in this culture has heard of? With Steins;Gate being nearly released for PC in Japan wouldn’t it be wise to try to make a deal before a game of that stature is released?
The flip side is if the employees have left the firm (after a falling out) then they aren’t going to be available for things like making changes to the game’s engine, or uncensoring the CG. So the very thing that might be creating an opportunity also creates complications …
Those of us who started out as paying customers - or (uh) converted to paying customers - are loyal customers, more or less. But we’re the minority. By far most people who want these games pirate them. There’s really no way around it: the number of actual copies sold is significantly lower than the number of fans. I think you’ve got it backwards, unfortunately. A translated game is more attractive to a larger segment of the English-speaking hgame fanbase, so I’d expect piracy of a fan-translated game to increase significantly.
After all, most English speakers don’t speak Japanese, so a game they mostly can’t understand is not very attractive to them. But the patches work just as well with pirated releases as they do with legit releases. The people who fan translated Planetarian actually gave up fan translation because they were disgusted with the very high number of downloads of their patch, versus how few people followed their detailed step-by-step instructions on how to acquire the Japanese copy legitimately from a download store.
they could always use the MG approach and simply use a new (across the board) engine. As for the CG, shouldn’t they use the original CGs? The uncensoring should only come into the picture when the original is lost. (I am assuming that they still have access to the source script/code)
although, this remind me of a question that I’d love to have the answer for, Vardest hopefully you still have a chance to ask it:
Why do JAST need the original artiest when they are uncensoring images? or why would the losing of the original images prevent them from licensing? (basically, they only need to redraw the mosaiced part, so why not just redraw that part? no-one will be able to know if it was the original or redrawn! the company they are dealing with own those images, doesn’t it?)
when is jast’s panel going to be
It’s a near certainty that the existence of a fan translation will increase piracy of a Japanese title, but that in itself is neither here nor there. If it also increases legit sales of the game to the english market, then it’s a small net win for the Japanese company in terms of pure profit. The people ripping off the game are jerks but it’s vanishingly unlikely that they were going to buy the untranslated game from Japan…
The important question from a business perspective would be: Are there people who will pirate a fantranslated game that would instead have paid for an officially licensed translation? How many? And do the numbers add up?
I’m willing to bet that there are some people who won’t pay $100 to import a legit Japanese game and apply a fan patch to it but would pay $30 to buy the game officially in English. I just don’t know whether there are enough of them to make up for the cost of officially licensing, translating, and distributing a game at Western market prices.
… also, I still haven’t installed that game I bought off jlist to put the fan patch on, I should get around to that 
Importing eroge is an expensive hobby. Very expensive. The first class titles are $100 a pop ¬ñ not counting shipping ¬ñ and there’s always the chance Customs will intercept a shipment and detain it (and possible criminal charges depending what country you live in).
Then there are series that crank out fandiscs and renewals like water, and if you’re hardcore fan, you’ll be cashcowed into getting them. Heaven forbid if you have category fetish. When I’m stuck outside Japan for long intervals, I end up spending a monthly average between $500 to $1000 a month to keep my addiction going: I still don’t get all the titles I want. Under no means do I support piracy, but I can sympathize with people, because not everyone has a job that pays over $90000 a year.
I spend more on eroge software and nick-nacks (soundtracks, artbooks, body pillows – I sleep with twins every night) in a single year, than for every non-hentai console game I’ve ever owned in my life. Sad but true. That is the life of an otaku. Twincest? Must get. Hair hidden eyes? Must get. Yandere? Must get. Etc, etc, etc.
Piracy often occurs because even when people want to get them legit, they can’t possibly afford to get them legit… so they steal it. That in no way makes it right, but that’s the reality of the situation. 
They are not having a panel this year, although Peter said he would like to do one next year.
I can pretty much sympathise, really. It’s like a drug addiction - you get into it when you can afford it but if all of a sudden (financial crisis, loss of job et. al) you can’t afford it, well, you need to resort to crime in order to get your fix.
The difference with eroge is that it’s not as easy to quit.
But yeah, I like having the boxes almost as much as I like having the games themselves. Eroges have such nice packaging. I’ve bought Western PC games a few times and they were nothing like that…
EDIT: Although I’m beginning to suspect that I’m addicted to buying eroge, not to actually playing it. My justification is the insane backlog of titles I’ve bought and installed but haven’t finished or in some cases even STARTED. There’s more than a dozen in the latter category and I don’t even want to think about the former category. ???
I’m recently guilty of playing eroge only for the twincest (or yandere, or hair hidden eyes, etc) - then totally ignoring all the other scenarios to play another eroge for the twincest (or yandere, or hair hidden eyes, etc). Thus I’m playing all the eroge I get, but only for one or two girls. Basically I only know one route per eroge, whereas I should know all of them.
For example I got Classy?Cranberry’s, for the oppai doctor and only saw the ending for the oppai doctor. I’m really not interested in seeing the other girls, because I’ve got so many more girls to see that I rather want in other titles. For example the twincest and captain in Albatross Koukairoku (which I’m currently playing, and probably won’t see the endings for the other girls on).
That game has an unusually high (the highest I know of, at least) # of unique kanji (3108). I don’t disguise the fact that I’m getting it for the language =P
Yeah, but JAST USA currently has no staff who can actually do that (I suppose they could contract it out to some fan translators, but…). MangaGamer could because they could just get OVERDRIVE’s scripting people to help them out. Also, it looks like MG won’t be doing an engine revamp with Koihime Musou, and half of Studio e.go!'s games are more complicated engine-wise than that.
See, I feel like in that case, you’re not uncensoring the images (reversing a process), but you are redrawing the images. Hence, you’re modifying the art with your interpretation. Granted, translation does that as well, but theoretically that aims to keep it to a minimum.
I managed to ask a few more questions today, and I likely will be going for a bit tomorrow…so if anyone wants to bring anything else up go ahead.
Have they received any negative treatment as a result of the issues that hit the eroge industry? Not really, although what before would have just been a polite no might be a bit more harsh. Overall it hasn’t had a whole lot of an effect on things for them.
In regards to recommending titles for them to carry on J-List: Submit a ticket at their support center with the title you’d like to recommend, preferably with a link for the game (ie Getchu). They only put up a certain number each month, but he said that if they were getting a bunch of requests for a certain game they would be more likely to pick it up.
In regards to recommending potential studio licenses: See above. While this obviously wouldn’t guarantee a deal would be made, it might increase their likelihood of looking into working out a deal with said studio. So, to use examples that were brought up as questions, if you want Softhouse Chara, Studio E-go!, or Eushully titles it would behoove you to put in a ticket. Again, links to their homepage or Getchu would only help.
Considering I won’t be going on Sunday, I’ll only be able to ask questions posted by EARLY tomorrow morning.
Have you asked if Crowd’s blocking foreign access to their site means they’re no longer interested in licensing their games?
Considering Peter didn’t know about the IP block OR that Alternative 2 had been released, and that they haven’t really spoken in quite a while would seem to indicate that either Crowd or Jast lost interest. I’ll ask but my best guess would be that the two just drifted apart after their last release and never looked back.
Shame that. Maybe they still have connections to Crowd? Time will tell. Alternative 2 will sell though if it is released here.
Personally I think the best company they could release from at this time would probably be Eushully. They have some of the best games to date and with the recent license of the rpg title I think that Jast might have the capabilities to release some of their titles. Have they ever contacted Eushully? Or does anyone know what their stance is on games being released outside of Japan?
Thanks for the info Vard. I might have to do that. Hope it helps but who knows.
Mind you when picking/requesting releases for Jast I think it would be best to not pick titles that they are likely to censor or photoshop (or simply cut altogether). Then again if they stop the cutting/censoring then request whatever but until they announce that they won’t then don’t. Although I suppose they could get out of a big problem if they just do not put hentai pictures on the game box when shipping. Have the artwork be inside. I think annoying mailmen and the like would be much more likely to simply ignore the titles that way.
Be sure to remember to request titles without censor liable topics when recommending titles…mangagamer on the other hand might be the company to request games from that Jast is liable to censor.
I asked that at Anime Expo and the answer was no, they have not had any contact with Eushully yet but they might look into it.
Sometimes the data under the censored areas isn’t as well drawn as the rest of the picture, because they know there will be a censorship block covering it up. In general they want the images retouched. And they can’t just get another artist to do it because the artwork is an important part of these games, and the original creators would be uncomfortable letting someone else touch up the graphics.
As for having lost the image data … The images that are distributed with the game aren’t lossless bitmaps. (At least, usually they aren’t.) If you take a compressed image - even a fairly high quality one - and then change it, and compress it again, you get noise and artifacting, and in general the image doesn’t look as nice. So they go back to the original source images to do the modifications.
I understand where your idea is coming from and I agree with it (actually prefer it). But as Cleavage have shown us, if the original images are lost, and we stick to this thought pattern, then the VN won’t be released in the West.
what I am trying to point out here, if JAST got a license for a title (say Little Busters EX), then discovered that the original (pre-censoring) images are lost, what should JAST do then? should they just drop LB because the original images are lost? or should they ask for the mosaiced part of the images to be redrawn?
given the choice between not getting a VN and getting the VN with the hidden* part of the images being redrawn, which one would you choice? I’ll go with the redraw, after all, I won’t be able to know if it have been redrawn or not. No-one, except the original artiest, would know if the hidden part was redrawn or not! So why should we not get the VN just for that reason?
- only the hidden part, the rest of the image is clearly visible.
ok, this makes a lot of sense, I didn’t think of it this way :oops: . I guess I’ll leave it at this.