Quit Forever

A lot of people seem to think the state of VNs in the West is the best it's been so far. I'd argue it is worse than ever.

Yesterday, Sekai Project announced the intention to translate a (good) VN called Root Double: Before Crime * After Days. Yeah, VN names are frikkin weird. Anyways, hooray! A good VN was announced that it was going to be translated, this is a good thing right?

Well, if you dig deeper into it, you find out that the fine folks at Lemnisca are doing the translation!

And no one probably knows this but me, but they were fan-translators translating cool western games that never got a Western release. Like I/O, and planned released for 12Rivern and.......Root Double.

So, Sekai essentially legitimized the fantranslation for Root Double. No harm there, right?

Oh, wait, no.

Bad Thing #1:
https://twitter.com/sekaiproject/status/625065367967109122
There's a senseless Kickstarter even though they're CONFIRMING it's coming to steam? What's the Kickstarter for? Why should anyone donate?

Worse Thing #2:
https://lemniscatranslations.wordpress.com/2015/07/05/root-double-before-crime-after-days-xtend-edition-official-localization-announcement/
They had to TAKE DOWN THE FAN TRANSLATION of other games they had released. So this means the legitimizing of Root Double has TAKEN AWAY the translations for two other games. If you want to read I/O or Killer Queen, too bad, sucker. Great!
AND this means that 12Riven will likely not be translated either, since they're now an 'official' group.

So, where do we stand with this announcement.

We're down 2, potentially 3, translations. We're up 0 translations, since Root Double was planned to be translated regardless.

Oh, wait, it gets worse! They also announced that it will have a Kickstarter! (https://twitter.com/sekaiproject/status/625065367967109122)

Wait, that doesn't even make sense? They say it's DEFINITELY coming out on steam, but that it'll have a Kickstarter. What's the Kickstater for?!

---

Look, I think it's great more Japanese companies are willing to work with Western translation groups. However, what we've created is an incentive for a few awful things.

1. There's a financial incentive to only translate trash moe games.

These games seem to sell best on steam, the gimmicky dating sims like Hatoful Boyfriend and sleazy VNs like Nekopara sell more copies than anything of substance. If translation companies pick and choose based purely on economics, which is what makes sense, they're likely to just choose 2 categories:
* VNs that are ALREADY POPULAR, many of which already have fantranslations (recent efforts to officially release Steins;Gate and upcoming plans to Kickstart Muv-Luv come to mind)
* VNs that are substantially worthless

Neither category is really all that beneficial to people who want substantial stories to read.

2. These translations are almost always accompanied by a Kickstarter.

Regardless of whether it even makes sense, and regardless of the financial situation involved. Sekai Project has previously mentioned that the Japanese companies almost always ask for a Kickstarter to be held, regardless of necessity because it's LITERALLY FREE MONEY. This is horrible, I hope I don't even need to explain why.

3. Niche titles will likely never see the west now

With the rise of official translation has come the death of fantranslations. The more successful groups get bought up and made official, meaning they likely won't or can't work on a translation for a game they don't have the license to. This means that if something DOESN'T get an official translation, it won't get ANY translation.

This leaves us in a state where only a few safe, big titles and a lot of trash get translated. And that's it. Thanks, Sekai.