Lemma Soft Forums

Hello guys

I am working on a website, fuwanovel.com which revolves around spreading translated VNs overseas and promoting fan translations.


http://www.fuwanovel.com

Well what happens is, during my conversation with Raide and some others...
More and more I felt like there could be some way we can leverage what exists to also promote the creation side of the VN medium. Because to me, this idea that there is a very strict and very clear-cut division between "Creator" and "Consumer", that the Big Content Owners (and media) like to constantly remind us of... I think that is starting to fall apart. I think that on the internet, consumers are also becoming creators, and creators are also consumers. We are constantly working off other people's ideas and improving upon them, the open source development has many many stunning examples of this. Of course, they like to tell us that we should just consume, just purchase content and shut-up and enjoy. we are told to not create content (in the name of copyright), cause if we do, that means there will be more competition against their own products, which is certainly not good for business...... but anyway that's how I feel and to me, to promote a medium means to promote both the enjoyment of it and the engagement in it (i.e. the creation side). If you want to find out more, please check out "Everything is a Remix" http://c4sif.org/2011/03/everything-is-a-remix/. Or this Extremely Important & free documentary called : "Good Copy Bad Copy" http://thepiratebay.se/torrent/6022610/ ... y_Bad_Copy". <---This is strictly compulsory viewing for people who care about VNs.

So the idea is, Because fuwanovel is focused on servicing VNs to the casuals by making them very easy to obtain, I think it will draw a new crowd. And from some of that crowd, we might be able to attract new talent to the creation side of things. While Fuwanovel is supposed to be a repository for mostly fan translated works (because that is where I came from), Katawa Shoujo will be featured so I don't see why there couldn't be other works that should also see display. But of course fan translation and original VN development is so different - to mix the two up and build a Catch-all website that houses everything would be to insult both sides of the fans. And so the petition from me is not to ask for a whole bunch of suggestions for western developed games that should be included on fuwa, but it is: Can we come up with a sister site that is focused around creating content and sharing content to live side-by-side with fuwanovel.com? the site objective is as simple as, get ppl interested in the original english ones.

I already have the infrastructure (infinite upload and download) so bandwidth is a non issue. The thing is, I know next to nothing about what OELVN people need. I only know I want to promote their work and attract new people to join their ranks. I also heard from Raide that there is some sort of fragmentation currently and the community is split, which doesn't look too good. To me, being spread out is exactly the problem that the fan translation scene faces. And I see there are a lot of individual places where you can buy their games, which is fine, but it doesn't really work well if you want to reach 'the hundreds of thousands' level of visitors because it is low visibility. This is what Raide wants. He wants western developed VNs to make it BIG. (and it is really big now compared to pre-katawa shoujo days) I want to leverage that increase in popularity to attract more attention to VN creation.


One more thing,
Visual novels is a Japan-only phenomenon. To create VNs is to work off what already exists. It makes sense to create content that is inspired by those that have come before, i.e. those that have been fan translated OR developed overseas... but that is not to say you can't base your work off................. basically Anything. because,

[*]"Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing."
Salvador Dali
http://www.learcenter.org/html/projects/?cm=ccc/fashion

That is why it makes sense to put Japanese and Western ones side-by-side in a sister site format with a strong sense of cross-promotion.

What is your take on the idea?
And I really do envy that you guys have a wiki like this: http://wiki.renai.us/wiki/Main_Page having consolidated and open resources like that...
I want to make an equivalent for fan translators, it's under construction right now but it looks like this: wiki.fuwanovel.com
And here is the thread from a while back when we were discussing the possibility for a sister site at fuwa forums. http://forums.fuwanovel.com/index.php?/ ... fuwanovel/

Aaeru

Um, are you seriously saying you're going to ignore copyright and that it's a bad thing?... For any work of art, copyright is essential not to get screwed over. So telling creators here to ditch that? Eh, yeah, I'm out, bye.

Hmmm... what I'm observing is that the "best" EVN creators don't need to gather in forums anymore (other than perhaps to market their games or to do one-time recruitment) since they're too busy actually making their games. Sometimes they even have their own forums on their own websites. Twitter seems to be the thing nowadays to promote things.

And I sincerely hope the EVN sister site of fuwanovel won't attract the /jp crowd like fuwanovel did. It's hard enough to find motivation to work on your game when nobody cares... it'll be even harder if there's people around whose goal is to make you fail. 4chan is fickle in terms of what projects it supports... I even read something to the effect of "no shitposting your OELVN please" but then that "OELVN" turned out to be Hatoful Boyfriend (a Japanese game), "...oh. Nevermind, then."

There are currently three ways to "make it big" with an EVN:
1.) gain the approval of the 4chan crowd
or
2.) gain the approval of the indie crowd (Indiegames blog, tigsource, and the holy PC grail: Rock, Paper, Shotgun)
or
3.) gain the approval of the casual crowd (Jayisgames)

An EVN is "notable" if it is able to gain mention in one of those outlets.

About Fuwanovel sister site being a community both for creators and consumers, well isn't that what Lemmasoft is, already? Actually, it's has been recently raised that that's one of it's main problems... too many people who should be on the 'consumer' end clogging up the postcounts with nothing to show but ideas. So much so that WIP now is strictly enforcing the "Nothing substantial to show progress, then don't post here" rule.

People demanded that EVNs have better production values, and that means elevating the hardcore creator from the casual one... someone who isn't satisfied with just any release -- and that is similar to separating creators and consumers.

A community can't be all-inclusive and elitist at the same time. LSF has chosen to be all-inclusive. Will you follow the example of the minor splinter groups and become elitist, then?

If the tone of this post is not as friendly as expected, I remember a post you started on gemot "No OELVNs please." and from that I already cemented that you're were not really a keen supporter of EVNs, at least until Katawa Shoujo came along and out-popularized every single Japanese visual novel out there. I am still sympathetic with what you are trying to do with Fuwanovel proper (sadly, I'm not a translator who can say I'll be on board). But at this point I think it's best to be frank and spill everything that's on my mind. PyTom and Blue Lemma went through a lot of headaches running this forum (and a lot of the problems weren't even related to game-making) I'm sure you yourself went through a lot in setting up Fuwanovel... are you sure you are up to setting up and maintaining another such community?

Also, you may find it far easier to build a community if you have a game engine for people to congregate around. Just look at the explosion in the Unity3D and UDK forums. If your purpose is to popularize the medium -- well the splintering can actually be a good thing... finally, I can concentrate on my own specialized genres, whereas before you'd have to give a nod to games I would normally not play... e.g. otome games... simply because there was not much else.

You might still have a chance of grabbing the otome crowd before they solidify -- since I can see the roots of the movement starting to form already. (BxG is still of a mess... basically 4chan or bust)

@DaFool: I found out someone'd posted two of my stories to 4chan. They actually liked it. Irrespective of that, I am neither a big maker nor considered a particularly successful or popular one, am I?

Personally, I'd like the idea of a platform or a web site that people visit and where we can share our created stories. No offence to Lemmasoft, but the crowd for release here is small, and for any creator of Visual Novels, whether free or paid, I can think of no greater joy than to spread it with the largest crowd without being bogged down by the need to excessively advertise your work to various news outlets. Having one big, centralised place to promote the works seems like it'd benefit the community as a whole.

EDIT: @Anna: I don't think fuwanovel promotes piracy or breaking copyright. Fan translations are a grey zone right now, and fuwanovel intends to promote those under the banner that it makes foreign games more accessible in the west. Whether you buy the games or not, fuwanovel only intends to be a repository of fan translations, like vndb is a repository of all Visual Novels.

Eh...all the forums around visual novels I've frequented (that only read JP VNs) are fairly harsh (to put it mildly) on OLEVNs. I can easily imagine a huge backlash. Unless there's a huge filter option (in which people would surely complain about being over-monitored) or a careful selection of the best OLEVNs (in which a lot of creators would get excluded), I can't imagine a good scenario. My experience here has taught me how sensitive a lot of creators can be. I've read a lot of posts where critiques were not welcomed and I can only imagine how harsh criticism would go over >.>. I can easily post some examples, but I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings at this point. Just trust me when I say, I highly doubt the response would be positive only....

Also: I think the piracy discussion on fuwanovel stance is fairly easy to get if you read their forum.

QUOTED FROM FUWANOVEL FORUM:
Posted by Aaeru:

Conclusion

For the future of visual novels, and the only future that I care about, it is a world where VNs can exist without copyright.
And that goes for any entertainment medium as well. Be it balerina to academic writings. If we want fan translations to progress in any significant way, first we must champion the abolishment of copyright.

Because what is easier? To criminalize over 3/4 of the planet's population for piracy because they make $2/day and can't afford to monopoly prices of a 1st world country's entertainment media, or just say: uhh we should change the law?
Ideas and Knowledge should not be rationed to people by their ability to pay. The Single Man in Ethiopia should benefit from our human invention of virtual girlfriends, just as anyone in Australia should.

and from a few posts down:

Posted by Aaeru:
And we paid our fair share to the publishers to enable centralized distribution. They printed it on paper for us, they deserve our money. But with the Internet, it no longer makes sense to have to pay someone to copy it for you when I can copy it for free in my own bedroom. Internet obsoletes copyright. (Oh... if it is a packaged video game with instruction manual, yes. make sure you pay money for it and dont steal the box)

This is why I hate the 'Big Content Owners' and the 'copyright industry' companies. I hate them with a passion. I love revealing their crimes for what they've done. They've brainwashed us with artificial, BOGUS truths about Rights to things we have no rights to by natural law. Copyright is an invented legal concept. It is not property. Ideas cannot be someone's property because the laws of the exchange of material behaves so differently to that of the exchange of ideas.

Source: http://forums.fuwanovel.com/index.php?/ ... w-hosting/
-----
I like the idea of promoting visual novels. However, I can't imagine this working out well. Besides KS and possibly 3 OLEVNs, the rest I think would be worth recommending are commercial. Commercial works depend on copyright.

Applegirl, the first half of your sig really makes me laugh for some reason.

Okay, I'll be honest: I don't think I'd want to be associated with this. You and your site only seem to promote piracy and I can't really get behind that.

Applegate wrote:EDIT: @Anna: I don't think fuwanovel promotes piracy or breaking copyright. Fan translations are a grey zone right now, and fuwanovel intends to promote those under the banner that it makes foreign games more accessible in the west. Whether you buy the games or not, fuwanovel only intends to be a repository of fan translations, like vndb is a repository of all Visual Novels.

Em, that was the plan some time ago yes, but then they went and took up the 'copyright is evil and VNs for free + pre-installed patches' banner. They actually took their original methods and made it worse, so I'm not going to be associated with this in any way.

Anna wrote:

Applegate wrote:EDIT: @Anna: I don't think fuwanovel promotes piracy or breaking copyright. Fan translations are a grey zone right now, and fuwanovel intends to promote those under the banner that it makes foreign games more accessible in the west. Whether you buy the games or not, fuwanovel only intends to be a repository of fan translations, like vndb is a repository of all Visual Novels.

Em, that was the plan some time ago yes, but then they went and took up the 'copyright is evil and VNs for free + pre-installed patches' banner. They actually took their original methods and made it worse, so I'm not going to be associated with this in any way.

Ah, I see. So they changed stance.

Yeah, in that case I don't really see much chance to have that fly; associating yourself with copyright infringing is commercial suicide for anyone, and it certainly doesn't make western VNs that much more popular.

First of all, I suggest you drop your crusade against copyright. You want to make a site that promotes visual novels, that's fine. All this talk about copyright is just inviting needless drama. From what I've seen, you can't cope under all the trash talking which I think you brought upon yourself. Do this and your life will be a lot less stressful.

With that out of the way, here is my idea on how your sister site should be. How about something like “So you’ve played some visual novels. Why not try making you own.” as a concept. Rather than focusing on games (OELVNs), focus on the tools so people can have a go at making their own games. A site housing information on tools and material assets for visual novel creation, as well as step by step tutorials. Information on freelance artists, musicians, and voice actors/actresses would be good as well.

If you must feature OELVNs, only do it as examples to show what people can achieve. The main focus should be tools, resources, and tutorials.

It's one thing to criticize the current copyright laws; there's a lot broken with them, and some criticism is perfectly valid in my book. Stuff like the "Mickey Mouse Protection Act" a few years ago (that extended copyrights even longer beyond the original creator's death) and the slow degrading of Fair Use rights shouldn't become examples of "modern copyright law". I'm a creator myself, and my stance is pretty much that the way copyright law was originally designed (to give the creator and his heirs ample time to earn money off a creation before it passes into the public domain) doesn't need to be changed - especially if "changing" means "preventing stuff from ever passing into the public domain.

That much said, actively promoting copyright infringement or even infringing copyrights yourself is an entirely different matter. It has nothing to do with activism; activists have no right to ignore what they fight against. In Germany, we are currently hotly debating the rights of divorced fathers to spend time with their children against the will of the mothers, and we have fathers who go into hunger strikes and publicly chain themselves to courthouses in order to protest against our current jurisdiction (strongly favoring mothers). That is perfectly okay. However, we also have fathers abducting their own children in order to spend time with them, and that is not.

Copyright infringement as a means of protesting against copyright law is just like that.

Erm....I don't know what to say(since i only play english visual novels in english and play the japanese ones as japanese since i can read them alright), but if it would REALLY mean promotional piracy then NO. I mean, you translated our precious games(some might be thankful, okay) but what would you rather say when the company goes down thanks to that? Japanese companies translated their stuff(like yo-jin-bo) and they still went down, what would happen if it's goddamn free and gettable in your fastest torrent downloads?

I don't even see the reason why you are posting it in this forums were(ahem, if you haven't noticed, or maybe I'm the only one who thinks so), where lots of users are strongly against piracy including me.

To be honest, if you did translate something commercial and release it free(worse if not), I won't be surprised if the lots of you gets sued. I'm just gonna shrug and say, 'I thought so!'.

I'm still not convinced the whole anti-copyright rhetoric isn't satire. You never know, this is the Internet, after all. Like when JAST contacted translation groups and game developers to try to acquire distribution rights. Can you imagine that? The translators would get paid, the original Japanese creators would get paid, and gamers would be able to get a polished, virus-free game with tech support for a decent price. How do the dare!?

@Aaeru

There's actually already a thread regarding your site. I highly suggest you go read it.

http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... 13&t=13659

As I am the creator of that thread, I will gladly link it here. http://lemmasoft.renai.us/forums/viewto ... 13&t=13659

And I still do not agree with your concept as it stands. A place to hold patches and freeware games is all fine by me, which would be made all the better with links to buy the games and being an information portal. But you originally planned on being a pirating site and claimed it would help better the industry when it was already weak. I am afraid that nothing can be done to make me support this endeavor now, as I have seen your reactions and responses on other sites.

I do, however, hope your change your stance somewhat and wish you luck with whatever you plan. I may hold mirth toward your idea, but I do not hold any toward you.

In addition, yes, OELVNs have been, and may always be, held poorly within the general community many times. If you do plan on advertising them, I think you may want to do so with the intent on bettering the community and showcasing the creators, not simply individual games that are the best (though showing the best forefront would also be a good idea, just don't discriminate toward the best only).