Doujin Makers in the West

Visual Novel Community Off Topic
#1

Something that’s been bothering me for last few months.

Given how massive the anime and gaming craze is in the West, and the savvy talents of many within that community, why is the Western dojin market so… well… weak?

When I go looking for “doujin” type stuff made by Americans or Europeans, its limited to MP3 remixes and sprite comics. Not that I have anything against these: but there’s no Type-Moon or French Bread type groups in the West that I know of.

Why? People certainly have the talent…

The thought got bigger in my mind - partly because I’m in a circle that plans to change this - but also because DLSite has been advertising like hell on the English side, that their looking for Western doujin talent.

And while doujin and DLSite are renowned for being hentai, doujin and DLSite are not just hentai. :stuck_out_tongue:

Like in Japan, the fear of lawsuits doesn’t really apply, because Square and Capcom don’t sue those webcomics that make so much profit their creators don’t hold jobs. They seem to overlook them… and indeed they overlook a lot of other things too: like OST MP3 pirates and what have you (although Apple and Square-Enix got cease and desist letters out to a few of the largest offenders).

[ 06-27-2007, 10:54 AM: Message edited by: Nargrakhan ]

#2

i think it has to do to a certain extent with the age (and therefore mindset), more on the former…as well as gender in the market here (way more fangirls than guys)

and also, what people here are into in terms of anime shows are not the same (or rather, limited) as people in japan

and most importantly, people’s perception to ecchi and hentai

#3

Something that bothers me is that there are fans who do anime fanfics and know Japanese, so why do not they just use a sound file, put in some background music and announce the title in Japanese?

#4

The sales figures displayed on the english side of dlsite are pretty pitiful, not really an encouraging prospect for someone looking to make money. And English-speaking artists tend to be expensive.

#5

Take this the way you want. For my part, I don’t care about the doujin side of things (either Japanese or English), so I wouldn’t agree nor disagree with pytom’s opinion.

Aside from renai.us, you can also check the Renpy Homepage.

[ 07-16-2007, 06:33 AM: Message edited by: OLF, i.e. Olf Le Fol ]

#6

If that’s the view of how most westerners see doujin, then that would really explain why there’s so few from them. :smiley:

#7

nod

I am a business, sort of, so that’s the perspective that I can give. Others, I can mostly only guess about. I get the impression on deviantart that a lot of artists get harassed a lot by kids who “have this great idea for a cool project!” and no clue what they’re doing and will never accomplish anything. The artists get very grumpy and start refusing to be in any project unless they are paid huge amounts up front.

Which doesn’t mean no non-business projects - it means only the non-business projects dreamed up by the artists or by their personal friends.

Lots of people have made short fan-comics… but usually VERY short, from what I can see. There does seem to be a lot of fear about copyright. People usually restrict their fanart to single images, or one-page parody comics - see http://bayimg.com/KADLbaaBO for an example. Prints and originals are sometimes sold at conventions, but if they actually bind a COMIC to sell at a convention, it’ll be of original characters.

DeviantArt specifically will not let you sell prints of fanart, afaict. The copyright issue IS taken seriously.

As for games - your best bet is the RenPy crowd, who do have an underlying non-commercial ethic and help each other out, donating skills in different areas to each other’s projects. It’s still a small scene and I wouldn’t really say it compares to the Japanese doujin scene yet, but it’s there. Of course, even they mostly steer clear of using copyrighted characters. You may not think lawsuits are a real worry, but to most people, they are!

Oh, and zeiva, who is both a good artist and interested in making flash games :slight_smile: ( http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/39931316/ ) also sells books through lulu.com

[ 07-16-2007, 01:11 PM: Message edited by: papillon ]

#8

You’re 100% correct. There are waaaay to many people like this. What’s even worst, is that these types tend to make others do all the work while they just tell the rest what they want. Said person never actually makes the game, they just “think of the plot” and nothing else.

There’s a ton of people like this in Japan as well… so it’s not just Westerners. I call 'em leeches. :stuck_out_tongue: Everyone has an idea, but few seem to understand that to make your idea take shape, you have to provide something in compensation: either money, or helping the other person’s idea take shape. I used to provide my services as a programmer and musician (8 years of violin) to doujin groups in exchange for help - although nowa days I don’t have time to program things for others - so I comp with cash if old favors can’t be called on.

EDIT
I also think there’s a slight misunderstanding of how many doujin circles work in Japan. For example Peach-Pit consists of an artist and a writer: but the artist adds writing and the writer adds art. That is to say, both contribute equally to a title - the artist will create new plot lines and the writer will sketch new character designs. In game doujin, this is even more prevalent. Each person would get to create their own level/character/etc in the final product (Ragnarok Battle Offline is a perfect example). Thus its not the result of a single person, but the whole group.

[ 07-16-2007, 02:56 PM: Message edited by: Nargrakhan ]

#9

oh, so narg is talking doujin GAMES as supposed to books/drawing as in a doujinshi because i have much more knowledge on the latter

alright then…

lets face it. visual novel as a “game genre” is still not widely accepted here so it’s not getting as much attention as japan yet

copyright issue…let’s just say people here are more anal/conservative over it, because people here love to sue others :stuck_out_tongue: in japan, as long as you dont go overboard to the point that it will damage the original maker’s image, you should be okay

as for “group management” or narg’s “leeches”, im sure such people exist anywhere, not just US or japan. also, what i think to be an issue that often led to projects (in the western world) canceled or under hiatus is that people are way too ambitious at the beginning and/or the fact that the project is taking too long that everybody is losing their enthusiasm. just look at those fan eroge-translations. how many of those finally came through complete, and how long did those take?

but obviously for say peapri, we get it done faster because we pay translators to do their job so narg is right in a sense that money will make things abit faster

i personally have worked on a couple of jp 18+ renai type doujin games years ago, which end up to be relatively well-known (i wont say which ones they are due to privacy concerns :stuck_out_tongue: ). the leader, who is some sort of an all-rounder (music, cg, storyline, although his focus is on music), did the storyline and was the producer managing everything including all the financing (making the cds and selling them), and since he is my friend and the work i was asked to do wasn’t too difficult (and it was really minor anyways) i did them for free and in return he just sells my books for me at comic market and what not (back then at least)

and i must admit, japanese people in general have MUCH better cooperative/teamworking skills than westerners, no question about it. i think it has partly to do with how they are brought up during childhood/school. here, they teach you to be more “individualized” which can lead to fights/quarrels in a team environment due to opposing ideals or beliefs

anyhow…

[ 07-16-2007, 09:10 PM: Message edited by: Lamuness ]

#10