^Poster child for my observation that the fandom has way too many paranoid masochists for anything to go anywhere.
In this past decade, the number of “criminal” fansubs have tremendously increased thanks to the rise of P2P filesharing, exposing many non-Japanese to the world of anime, and coincidentally enough, businesses like Funimation, Pioneer/Geneon, and Bandai Entertainment started releasing more legitmate English anime localizations than ever done before. Ten years ago, “criminal” scanlations had begun to pop up all over the net, dramatically increasing western exposure to manga, and coincidentally enough, businesses like Tokyopop/Viz/Del-Ray started popping up and release even more legit manga localizations, many of which can still be found in many American bookstores/retailers/websites to this day. Despite all the flack the fansubs and scanlations have gotten for their “criminal activities”, as well as the existence of leechers who watch/read without buying, the legit anime/manga markets still continue to exist in both Japan and the west, and we’ve seen seen tremendous increases in the sheer number/diversity of localized R1 releases both markets over these past ten years–Do you honestly believe any of this success and the existence of such “criminal activities” is coincidental? Despite the number of legtimate releases the anime/manga market has seen thanks to all the exposure created by these “criminal translation activities”, everybody in the VN fandom is afraid of doing the same things the anime/manga fans have done, and lo and behold, the legit western VN market has gone absolutely nowhere.
Despite the abundance of “criminal translation activities” and paranoia over “legal issues”, the R1 anime market has released at least 2000 titles in the past decade, and the R1 manga market has released at least 4000 titles. The R1 VN market, on the other hand, despite being a market nearly devoid of “criminal translation activities”, has only released 80 or so titles in the past decade. The fact that VNs are already very difficult to translate, as well as its lack of gameplay certainly doesn’t help–Yet despite all the difficulties already inherent in translating VNs, we’re all afraid of doing everything we can to increase exposure and get new fans who might be potentially interested in legit localizations, even at the expense of a tiny industry we’ve come to know and love? All because of what? It’s conceptually “criminal”? Absolutely pathetic.
With so-called “fans” like these, who needs Canadian-style censorship?
Yes. Just because the two are coincidentally timed, doesn’t mean that’s the end of the analysis. I’m not going to try to dispute that some of the succes is because of fansubs and scanslations. But if more fan translations meant more commercial success - full stop - then the theory starts running into problems.
Manga isn’t doing so well anymore. And the anime market has been contracting steadily year over year for a few years now. Coincidentally, a couple years ago is when BitTorrent took off as the premiere way to get anime fansubs, and getting fansubs stopped being a kind of black art involving mail-order VHS tapes, and became simple and easy.
To a certain point, yes, fansubs might help. But that doesn’t mean more is always better. The illegitimate sources have just been getting better over time, but the legitimate market has started crumbling. And anime’s troubles started in 2006, well before the economy melted down.
HERP DERP RECESSION. People tend to buy less during periods of recession. I could say movies, software, music cds are selling less as well. Should we blame piracy, or an economic recession?
Not everyone here whines for no good reason.
You know, as in “No game is released, whine about lack of games; games are released, whine about game choice quality and fame; famous, popular and good games are released, whine about censorship; famous, popular and good games are released, uncensored; whine about translation quality; famous, popular and good games are released, uncensored with good translation; whine about prices; famous, popular and good games are released, uncensored with good translation and good prices; whine about how they cannot access some Japanese sites any longer.”
When they created something I enjoyed and/or felt was well done. I like people who put time and talent into a piece of art and respect them for that. Now, their behavior could possibly erode that respect, so in the end I might not respect them entirely, but I still respect them for the creation aspect.
Have they? And continuously since 2006? I thought people were recently saying that record companies and movie studios were making more profits than ever before… In either case, just as it is disingenuous to attribute the rise of anime market to increasing fansubs, it is disingenuous to attribute the fall of the anime market to increasing fansubs. The rise of fansubs and the anime market can alternatively be seen as influenced by the same external factors and not necessarily affecting each other directly. Furthermore, in the specific case of Geneon USA failing, it was that they were essentially involved in a scheme where they’d attempt to recoup their losses by licensing more titles and hoping they would sell, and they eventually found themselves in a hole they couldn’t get out of.
Actually many times entertainment consumables go up during recessions because people are gloomy and want their escapism. But that’s hardly a guarantee.
Look, economics are COMPLICATED. It’s pretty much impossible to actually PROVE what effect illegal distribution has on businesses, and even if you can find reliable data for one particular product that doesn’t necessarily hold for others. And it’s similarly really damn difficult to prove what effects certain law changes have on crimes and whether those laws are “useful” from a purely pragmatic viewpoint.
You can make valid arguments in favor of a lot of things. Opposing forces can both have good arguments and it’s really not always clear which one is “better” especially since people can’t even agree on what the metric of "better"ness is. But whining all over the place that everyone else in the world sucks because their judgement is not 100% the same as yours? Makes you pretty clearly an ass. (And no, that’s not aimed at you, umarekawari.)
It’s possible to increase awareness of the genre without pirating games or making unlicensed translations; thinking otherwise suggests a disturbing lack of vision or a desperate need for self-justification.
Thanks for totally missing the point, which is that you keep whining whatever happens and only do that, justifying piracy because of that. There’s just so much you can do with bitching and whining; exclusively doing so again and again doesn’t cause anything but make people be fed up with you.
And I’d love to see you give some practical suggestions that doesn’t involve wasting away countless hours talking to random strangers or spamming a bunch of emails that can easily be deleted by a spam filter to the Japanese companies in some attempt to get them to open up their websites; thinking otherwise suggests a disturbing lack of willingess to innovate or a desperate need to cling onto traditional perceptions of ethical behavior.
So do you just use your love of their works ignore the sheer stupidity we’ve had to deal with? They worked hard and made a good story–Is that all that’s important when it comes to evaluating a company? What about their friendliness? What about their integrity? What about their leadership? What about their innovation? What about their public relations? What about their willingness to communicate?
I enjoy and respect their works so much, I’d rather defend attempts to restrict exposure to it rather than promote measures that open the door to allow others to enjoy them–Nice logic there.
And I presume that nobody is fed up with people like you defending localization-induced censorship and content editng, ignoring the sheer incompetence and jackassery of the eroge creators themselves, and promoting cowardice within the fandom out of arbitrary respect for some corporate law? There’s only so much you can do with spewing bullshit; exclusively doing so again and again doesn’t cause anything but make people be fed up with the likes of you.
For all the ups and downs the R1 anime industry has been going through, you know what “piracy” has also been doing to it these past ten years? It’s made the companies think twice about messing around with their official localizations. Just look at how frequently anime titles (home releases) in the 80s/90s were edited and compare them to how infrequent edits have been in the 2000s. Free fansubs were just a click away, so companies were forced to do everything they can to appease their fans and convince them to buy their titles legally, meaning they have to release their DVDs without doing all sorts of crap to it for fear of fans turning to illegal means of viewing their titles. Recently, it’s even forced companies to pursue more innovative means of distribution. Without that kind of power in the hands of fans, who knows what worse they may have done in their localizations on top of the occassional crappy dub and bad subtitles? It may not be legal, but I’d rather not have it any other way–People don’t treat commercial laws as absolute if it gives businesses, foreign or domestic, room to screw around.
Because it doesn’t matter that much? How xenophobic a bunch of people on an internet forum think e.g. CROWD is shouldn’t bother anyone that enjoys their games. You can buy their games and play them, very easily, you can’t visit their website but you can find all the necessarily information you need about the games from other sources that should be able to provide far more. You aren’t blocked from accessing trials and demo movies from mirrors on Holyseal, you aren’t blocked from buying their works from dlsite or gyutto; if this is an attempt to make you unaware of what they have, it’s utterly weaksauce. Why is that? Because they aren’t trying to protect themselves from fans. None of them are. It’s the people who aren’t quite fans of their work, or eroge at all, that’s who they’d like to keep out - and I think this would be pretty effective at doing that. If you can’t access getchu and you can’t access the website itself, the most public-facing places for screenshots of the games is gone. You. as a hypothetical fan of CROWD, aren’t affected by this at all and can continue to enjoy their games as before.
Even eroge companies that go to truly ridiculous measures to stop people from playing, like minori-- it still doesn’t do anything to stop people who genuinely want to play the games.
So, you’re asking why I can defend a company I like for doing what it is well in its rights to do because it doesn’t matter at all or inconvenience me in any particularly great fashion and clearly said company thinks it is in its best interests to do it? Well, maybe because I recognise that I don’t matter as much to the company as the companies matter to me? I’ve bought nearly a thousand eroge, many of them new at full price, but even that’s not worth jeopardising the legal standing of the only product most of these companies sell in the only country they can freely sell it.
I defend their right to IP block foreigners because it is their right to do so, just as it is, for example, my right to protest by not playing eroge at all. The fact that some companies choose to exercise this right doesn’t mean I’m at all obliged to exercise mine. After all, the fact that they’re IP blocking me is only the slightest inconvenience, and if I stopped buying eroge altogether, the force of my boycott wouldn’t be heavy enough for anyone to notice (well, except for that doujin circle that released that abstract eroge on dlsite that only I bought wwwww)
Overall, yes, I do find the IP blocks annoying, but mostly because every time I see myself blocked from an eroge site, I think “oh great, next time I go to the JAST USA forums / the gemot / VNDB / IRC / anywhere on the internet somebody will be flipping a shit over it”. Almost makes me want to just stop visiting forums altogether. The ‘Japanese Bishoujo Game Discussions’ used to be about eroge, now it’s about ‘who’s blocking us now?’. While I can still enjoy playing the eroge, the English side of the fandom has pretty much been destroyed. I came to these forums because it was a nice place to talk about eroge with other English-language players of eroge, but generally it no longer is that, is it? So yes, I am pissed off, but I’m pissed off at Equality Now for starting this bullshit, the Japanese diet for turning it into a problem, the eroge companies for taking action and the English fans for dropping everything to bitch about it.
While people always seek some sort of escapism when they’re down on their luck and things look bleak, they tend to have less disposable income to do so with and thus items like DVD/Blu-rays and video games get trimmed down. A person may still buy some, but they may buy much less.
Those people are likely unaware of Getchu’s existance.
But we have to crack the game to make it playable, and cracks are usually found on websites which contain pirated software. I dislike having to go to those sites in order to play the game I legally purchased.
Grab a Japanese copy of Windows XP and all your problems will be over. I have one myself on another machine. In either case, I’m not unused to cracks - I’ve always sought out and used nodvd cracks when available, and CD check protection is almost as old as the CD itself. That doesn’t stop it from being extremely annoying, though. Someone that pirates the game has the disc image already- CD protection doesn’t MATTER to them, they probably don’t even notice it. Only the legitimate consumer is harmed, so this legitimate consumer cracks his games.
Hey, looks like we’re in the same boat. I can read Japanese, too. I know how to navigate through the hoops to learn about and buy these games, and I have a pretty good grasp of Japanese to play them without any patches.
I can read these games, I can buy them, and I don’t even need a translation patch. So why do I go on?
I have an appreciation for the Japanese language, that’s why. What you’re saying is essentially boils down to the classic argument that “one should just learn Japanese if he wants to play these games”. I know for a fact that it takes years of studying, practice and experience with your native language, and even moreso when it comes to learning a second language–It’s not for everyone. Oh sure, I can just tell someone to “learn the language” as if it were easy to do, but I’m not arrogant enough to commoditize what’s essentially an act of diving into a new culture (that’s what learning a language is all about), nor can I accept leaving a potential fan in the dust. If I love these games so much, who am I to tell a fellow fan to “deal with it” if he’s not fortunate enough to overcome the language barrier or access something he shouldn’t have to be blocked out of?
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’m not elitist; I actually pride in being considerate to noobs. The veterans of the market, both foreign and domestic, are eventually going to move on. The market is not economically stable enough to cut off all forms of exposure to noobs. The VN market as it is is already hanging on by a thread–A title usually only sells 3000 to 5000 copies, and they barely break even. It’s already bad enough that they’re not acting to oppose the politicians/feminists that threaten them, but they’re now trying to minimize their exposure and cut off all chances of selling to a new audience?
Then it’s pretty obvious you’re part of the problem. When it comes to being an “inconvenience”, you only think about yourself and not anyone else. You don’t take into consideration those who rely on these sites, you don’t take into consideration those who might’ve bought the games if it weren’t for the fact that the patches got C&D’d. It’s just all about yourself. It’s only a “slight” inconvenience to you, after all.
Hey don’t blame the English fans for bitching about being pissed upon. You’re the one defending the companies that are pissing on them, after all.
Yeah, it’s bad enough these games cost over $100 a piece to import, now you’re suggesting that people spend over $300-400 getting a copy of a Japanese OS? Get real.
Ojamajo_LimePie: If you’re still having installation problems, even when your computer’s locale set to Japanese, try adjusting your computer’s time zone to match Japan’s. Double-click on the clock in the lower-right corner of your browser, click the “Time Zone” tab, and select “(GMT+9:00) Osaka, Sapporo, Tokyo” from the dropdown menu.
I’m gonna have to object here. How is this any different than how the market was in… oh… 1991? The eroge industry has always lived off the sale of a few thousand copies, and breaking even. For decades they’ve lived off the minimalist Japanese fan base. Shoe string profits is a calling card of the market. As it stands, the eroge market is oversaturated with studios and titles. There have been years when more eroge titles were released, than the Nintendo Wii or Nintendo DS.
Every time an eroge studio goes out of business, two more take it’s place. It’s not unheard of when a studio goes under, it’s just reborn under a new name or different branch. Some ressurrect from the dead, years after they first when out of business. Even the multi-billion dollar console market, doesn’t have rapid regeneration like that. I think you’re GREATLY overestimating how much the Japanese eroge industry needs foreign capital - because it honestly doesn’t. For every 1 great eroge that’s truly memorable in a year, there’s 25 vague variations, and over the next year, will be another 25 wannabe clones of that great eroge. That is not what a struggling software market does. You want an example of a struggling software market that needs foreign capital to survive? See information databases or fleet management. Not eroge.
It’s been cited in several interviews, that breaking even is all they really want. Most are in it for the love of making eroge. They’re not in it to get rich. Those who do wanna make $$$ usually promote themselves into the anime/manga business if they’re artists, the anime/console industry if they’re composers or programmers, or the anime/light novel market if they’re writers. And when that happens in mass numbers - which did occur from time to time - after a 6 to 8 month lull, new blood take their place. Many of those who “make it big” even come back from time to time, just to help out old friends. That’s how little 'ole UNiSONSHIFT can afford Noizi Ito and Black Cyc can hire Yui Itsuki - they get massive discounts.
Eroge is not in danger of dying because of no Western sales. Please don’t delude yourself that it will. Making that kind of claim, is like saying Dragon Quest will die, if Square Enix stopped releasing it in the West.
I am so tired of hearing DOOOOOM when it comes to the sustainability of the eroge market. They’ve been claiming it will die within the next few years, back when they ran on DOS. There will peace in the Middle East, before eroge dies out because of dwindling sales.
Except that’s not my argument at all. See, look at it this way:
(1) CAN READ JAPANESE
(1a) You can still play the games even without being able to access places like getchu and the official websites directly. It’s damned inconvenient, yes, but the point is you can do it.
(2) CAN’T READ JAPANESE
(2a) You can’t read Japanese so there’s no point in you accessing getchu or the official websites, because you can’t read them anyway. You stick with English-language information, which you aren’t blocked out from. The IP blocking is even LESS of an inconvenience for you. If the game is localised, it will get an English-language website which you can read and get all the information you want from. If that information is insufficient, complain to the localisers.
Nobody even mentioned C&D’s, because nobody is arguing about C&Ds in this thread. We already did that in another thread. Getchu block doesn’t harm people who can’t read Japanese. Eroge company website block doesn’t harm people who can’t read Japanese.
Yeah, but that’s their business to worry about. If a company can’t sell enough games to stay afloat, natural selection says it will die and a new one will appear in its place - the eroge industry will grow stronger. Eroge is not selling any worse than it used to, really, and eroges aren’t exactly costing much more on the whole. Don’t be too worried about the industry.
I don’t see how getchu IP blocking foreigners is destroying the companies’ chances of reaching a localisation agreement. Besides, that won’t help getchu in any case - if JAST USA licenses, say, a new CROWD title, who is going to be selling it? JAST USA and its resellers, obviously. Getchu won’t see a penny of it! Yes, Getchu could expand their market, but that’s a lot of work for a small market that’s already saturated by several other companies and is essentially a legal minefield.
And I’m supposed to fix this situation for them by complaining loudly about every IP block that takes effect, every C&D that gets issued? If you haven’t realised by now that what YOU are doing is totally ineffective, you never will. What I try to do is repair the misunderstanding - because it only IS a misunderstanding - between the eroge industry and the English fanbase. I actually talk to these companies! What you try to do is perpetuate this whole xenophobia myth, the Japanese hate us which is why they’re blocking us. In that case, clearly an open dialogue with the companies will never work and we might as well all pirate and create unauthorised translations of all their games. Can you see why this mindset isn’t going to help the present climate?
What’s your point, exactly? That if I joined this ineffective campaign that everyone else would shut up and go back to talking about eroge? Hell no, that’d just encourage them. I am not going to perform {activity I despise} in order to get other people to stop doing {activity I despise}. That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard!
It’s only a suggestion, it’s certainly not the only way to get around restrictions.
Windows XP is not that expensive.
Besides, since when was a couple of hundred dollars a big deal to a player of eroge? $300-400 is still cheaper than Sayonara wo Oshiete.
But its not growing either and the demographic base, like the rest of Japan, is aging. Those is not what company’s, especially gaming which VNs are loosely classified under, want as its not a good long-term viable business model. See the western comics market (for single issues) as basic equivalent model.
There are a few other ways, short of going to those sites or decrypting the file and modifying it yourself. They do involve a high level of willingness to learn; that’s the tradeoff money vs. time & effort.
I’m sorry, that’s still not convincing. A temporary market collapse? Sure. In fact, that’s unavoidable, but it will reconstruct itself in a short time period. The comic industry has collapsed and been reborn several times over. These rises and falls, are one of the predominant factors of defining the “ages” of comic-dom (i.e. silver age, golden age, iron age, etc). 1980’s cartoons are another excellent example of when the target demographic lost interest and the downfall of Reganomics caused economic upheaval in the toy industry that supported it. Nearly dried up completely, then rapidly came back in a new presentation style and generation. Sure, Saturday morning cartoons will never regain their heyday of the 80’s, but they’re just as profitable. Rinse. Lather. Repeat. Market Decay != Market Obsolescence. Eroge will most certainly see a massive reduction of the studio glut and shovelware. The bubble has to pop sooner or later: maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but it will happen. That does not mean DOOOOOOOOM for all eternity, nor would Western capital prevent it. And honestly, there are many, who feel a cleansing is really needed: there’s so much garbage and crap, it’s burying the real diamonds and gold. Western money is not the salvation of eroge. Our piddling in the bucket, is not that important. The loss of Western money in Japanese eroge, is as detrimental as the loss of Western money in kokeshi manufacturing. It will go on without us. Japanese won’t lament over losing something, that really was never big enough to lament. Even if Jast and MangaGamers went under - Gods forbid it happen nonetheless - would not wreck havoc on the Japanese eroge industry. I doubt they’d even notice it, outside of someone posting it on 2chan, and then they’d just point and laugh (like they did at our misery with Brooktown High).
The comic market has not recovered since the 1990s. They’ve stabalized, but that great rebirth that brought about the iron age hasn’t come to usher in a new age. There are many factors for this, too many to derail the discussion here, but suffice it to say even comic book fans know the days of comics as individual issues which are iconic for the medium, are numbered. The age demographics for comics continue to rise.
For eroge, you fail to see the problem. The Japanese population is aging as a society along with the demographics of those who buy eroge in Japan. That makes the situation even worse. If you don’t have a population base to sustain something, eventually it will be a bubble that bursts and never recover because the foundation is gone.
