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MoeNovel: “This is not an experimental sales scheme, …our goal is to spread visual novel genre”

AMA_08_001SSome Moenovel quotes from latest Siliconera Article titled:

The Business Of Making Gorgeous Visual Novels And Releasing Them Outside Japan

Source: [siliconera.com]

Spread VN
Fuji-san: “This is not an experimental sales scheme. As stated previously, our number one goal is to get people unfamiliar with the visual novel genre all over the world to get to know about this Japanese-born genre, and while this might take time, in order to do so we’ll need to release other titles as well.”

“MoeNovel runs on the idea that it wants to spread to visual novel genre to people that might not know about it, so it’s not as though we’re only going to release high-resolution visual novels like IF MY HEART HAD WINGS. If there are any titles that we really feel we want people from around the world to play, there’s always the possibility that we might release such titles even if they aren’t high-resolution.”

About Content Cutting
…we thought, “What do we need to do in order to get people to become familiar with IF MY HEARD HAD WINGS? How do we get people to become familiar with the Japanese born genre, the visual novel”?”. “The answer was to get an ESRB or PEGI rating.“ There are many people all over the world who don’t know about the visual novel genre. We want those people to become familiar with it and take an interest.” This is what we thought. Those who were unfamiliar with visual novels or those who couldn’t take an interest in it, if we can appeal to those people I would consider our work a success.”

Support for Gaijin VN Creation
“This is still a sort of far off dream, and of course MoeNovel is simply a company that officially localizes and releases visual novels in the West, but sometime in the future I’m hoping that we can help out people wishing to create visual novels in various countries on a commercial level and perhaps offer them help by lending know-how on the matter from Japan. I think if we could do that, it would lead to the stimulation of the visual novel market.” [siliconera.com]

Now why didn’t they ask Fuji-san about the fan restoration patch like they mentioned? Oh well, I’m still happy they’re giving MoeNovel plenty of coverage. Their goal is to spread VNs and create a market. That’s MY slogan. lol

Tay

I'm the Fuwanovel community admin and a big fan of Visual Novels. The easiest way to get a hold of me is via a PM on the Fuwanovel Forums, by twitter (@ArchmageTay), or by email.

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Vladz0r
10 years ago

Top lel

Vladz0r
10 years ago

Spread VN
^Engrish title, just like the machine translation.

About Content Cutting
(completely ignores the topic)

Support for Gaijin VN Creation
AHAHAHA. They should hire some gaijin editors first -_-

And sorry for double comment.

cgcatcher
Reply to  Vladz0r
10 years ago

Did we read the same thing?

Spread VN: Are you referring to the lack of plurilization? You can view that with two possible reasons. 1) Spread VNs looks weird. 2) Japanese doesn’t really have plural nouns so they often have trouble with them in English. So not a machine translation, just human error

About Content Cutting: That was perfectly explained. In order to reach a broader audience you’re not going to put something as daring as h scenes. For a lot of people if the first game they played suddenly had sex scenes then they might turn them off of the whole VN genre.

Support for gaijin VN creation:…… Okay I might agree with you on this one. I understand wanting to do it in house, hut you need some form of quality control that they don’t have.

Silvachief
10 years ago

If they can release decent translations without cutting important stuff then i’ll support them. Until that point, however, Moenovel is not a company I will buy from.

Justin iZ Here
Reply to  Silvachief
10 years ago

This is my thought on the matter.

Mike
10 years ago

I support the idea of spreading the visual novel genre; but like Silvachief had mentioned, I won’t be supporting MoeNovel unless they can manage to convince me to do so by making better quality releases and no more over-censorship..

RWBY
10 years ago

The idea of supporting western VN releases isn’t bad at all, but the way they are handling the idea itself is completely wrong. If they want to support VNs in the west they should just stick to VNs that were all-ages novels to begin with and let others handle eroge since they are going for an image that has nothing to do with H-scenes.

Aaeru
10 years ago

convince yuzusoft for a reasonable priced license, then get dannychoo to promote it = win

Vladz0r
10 years ago

I’ll elaborate on what I said since I rushed my statements and was kind of vague.

Spread VN
Could be “Spread Visual Novel Awareness”, or something else.
I meant to call out on their lazy machine-like translation for the visual novel “If My Heart Had Wings” when I mentioned their “Spread VN” title.

About Content Cutting
They just keep citing their ESRB and PEGI Teen rating “necessity” . Censored VNs don’t sell better in Japan, why would they sell better here, when the majority of VN readers in the west are reading translations for the uncensored 18+ versions, not the all-ages console ports?
And no one would suddenly stop enjoying a visual novel because there a romance visual novel because there are h-scenes in it, but people can continue to believe that. Maybe the ESRB/PEGI rating might help this land on store shelves somewhere.

Anyway, the lack of quality control and their flawed marketing will lead to them throwing out another half-assed overcensored version that will inspire more h-scene restoration and major translation editing patches, which at least gets a fully enjoyable and translated version of the game out more quickly.

cgcatcher
Reply to  Vladz0r
10 years ago

After rereading the article I realized that the title isn’t even from them. It was Aaeru (OP) saying what the quote was about, but I get your jab.

You actually kind of proved their point though. The majority of people reading visual novels are 18+ or at least claim to be. They want to reach the younger audience so to spread the genre. My closest example I can think of is myself watching Yosuga no Sora. I had absolutely no idea the rating until…… Well all the way up until he started sleeping with one of the whores (not including Sora xD.) It wasn’t like I’d never seen a hentai before, but I was absolutely not expecting it and was in a public space. Just because of that I didn’t pick it back up until a year later when my friends convinces me to. For someone new to the VN genre, I can see them not picking up another one because of something like that.

As someone else said, they really should have picked a VN that was already all ages or even made two as some do. All in all, I’m not buying one of their games until they improve the translations. I could care less about the censoring for the most part.

Chipp12
10 years ago

Uh, looks like “their views on editing the content of their first game, If My Heart Had Wings.” was actually about their cutting of content, not about fan’s work on adding them back.
Oh well.

Spawn
10 years ago

Appealing to both fans and newbies is smarter($$). All that needs to be done is sell a 18+ and an all-ages version. Why is that so hard? Everyone on all sides is happy that way.

Whitetower
10 years ago

I would hate for VN’S to be made anywhere other than Japan. Simply for the reason that we can’t voice act, and our stories won’t be as good. Katawa shoujo was a massive success because they understood the beauty of VN’s and didn’t include voices. I only support VN;s coming into the west if it is only Japanese if the genre moved from there I am afraid the business would lose its brilliance

Lifesongsoa
10 years ago

Their goals sound noble and I am glad to see they are trying to reach out to fans, but they aren’t really addressing concerns. Having noble intentions with a poor product just makes Moenovel look pathetic in my opinion.

They have given their reason for wanting to get a rating, but it conflicts with everything we know about the market inside Japan and the market here. Wanting to sell VNs to 13 year old girls who are anime fans just makes me think that someone at Moenovel has been watching too much Oreimo.

They haven’t given a good reason why they can’t do a second release with the adult content, even if it is an online only release. This tells me that they either don’t understand the western market very well, or that their noble intentions conflict with what the fans actually want. It’s either a “fuck you we know what you want better than you do”, or a “we have no idea what we are doing so we got our game rated instead.” The other possibility is that they are actually working on an 18+ release and just keeping tight lipped.

I do agree with them on one point. If the market is really going to grow in the west then it will take western developers to make that happen. I think they are correct, but that is a dream that seems to be out of their reach at the moment. I think that for the first time that market is starting to find a small bit of growth, but I don’t see anything moenovel could add to help it grow. If anything I could see them getting in the way.

I’ve been reading their first release and it is… sloppy, to put it nicely. The cut content is annoying, but the real problem is that the English is unnatural. As far as cut content goes they actually needed to cut more than they did. The bathing scenes might get past the ESRB, but teen girls don’t want to read that. They are clearly supposed to be naked and if you understand any Japanese at all that just becomes even more obvious. In one scene they sit around talking about each others breasts… which they can clearly see even though you can’t. In another scene a girl fetches a towel for another girl who is already wearing… a towel… If Moenovel wants to become a influential force in the western market they need to go back to the basics and either provide a proper adaptation or simply localize their content the way fans want it. Also, hiring someone who can actually write for a western audience is a must.

Panda Turtle
Reply to  Lifesongsoa
10 years ago

I’m just hoping they pull it together soon. They do have good ideas and intentions, they just need to go about executing them better. What surprises me the most is that if AGM was actually the translator, why was the translation so bad? I thought hey had at least a decent reputation… I don’t know if editing falls in the hands of the publisher or the translator, but whoever it is, they need to step up their efforts.

And I think they should consider pushing future releases towards a higher T, or possibly M rating instead. M games still sell very well, as long as the game is good. (See 999 and VLR) It’s hopefully something they’ll learn as they go along. If they are open to change, I can see a brighter future for them, and other companies like them.

All in all, I think they just rushed to put this title out. It could have waited a few more months to go through script edits, but I guess MoeNovel got a bit too excited… >.>

ohyaa
10 years ago

All aged games simple don’t sell as much.

ohyaa
10 years ago

Also if the goal is to sell it to kids, I don’t think theres much public below 18 for VN, those people go with anime instead, I myself only start to feel the appeal of VN when I was over 18.

Kagomeko
10 years ago

” Their goal is to spread VNs and create a market. That’s MY slogan. lol”

That’s basically a statement meaning that you accuse them of copyright infringement on “your slogan” here, just FYI.

Aaeru
Reply to  Kagomeko
10 years ago

or the more likely possibility is that im making a light joke that the idea cannot obviously be mine and that they could have gotten it from any number of places anyway.