Category Archives: Bishoujo Gaming

January 25, 2012

On Google Search, Ads, And Anime

By omo

The other day I was thinking about who matters–a company that created a set of products sells it to their customers. By some chance or reason a lot of non-customers end up with the same products and it took off, generated a scene. What should the company’s response be?

Do the voices and activities of these uninvited third parties matter? I’m thinking it does in some cases, and it does not in others. The very obvious use case of this is in media piracy when you have a niche, expensive release of something (like a galge) and it is then widely pirated (perhaps even fan-translated) and enjoyed by a lot of people, perhaps even more people than the number of legitimate purchasers of the game.

In this case, the people who pirated the game should only have a say as someone who has played the game in the way they did. For example, if most people who bought the game prefers one particular way (for example, physical releases over digital) and most people who did not prefers another way, it would make little sense for the game company to change their ways that would isolate the people who buy the game to satisfy those who didn’t. Ideally, you want to satisfy both groups, and satisfy those who didn’t buy the game on the promise that it will lead to those who didn’t buy the game to buy the game. And outside of that promise, it’s hard to say what and how would motivate the example game company.

I mean, I suppose there are examples like societal pressure (eg., Rapelay incident) which influences how game companies behave. Government regulation and stuff like the Tokyo Nonexistent Youth ordinance, too. The government is not a consumer, a customer, or a player (typically), so I’m not sure how it fits, but the government reflects the general public (typically) so it is an instance where non-buyer of a game would influence the game company almost in a direct way.

And then there is the topic of this post. Relevance.

To actually talk about anime now, one major pet peeve I have is when I go google the title of some show, way too often the results end up being illegal streaming sites or download sites. I realize you can actually issue DMCA takedown requests for google search results (and I invite license holders to do so, if anything, just to improve Google’s search results). It’s even worse when it comes to manga, but at least in those cases a lot of these semi-legal or illegal sites are actually the best sources of information on the material.

WSJ today posted the story of a US Federal Government sting operation that painted Google as a criminal organization of willingly advertising illegal activity, specifically of pushing ads of foreign illegal pharmacies to US customers. And as an ex-Adsense customer I know I have served ads, on occasion, that advertised these kinds of sites. It was hard to fish for them because it comes and goes, and 99% of the time I was on an ad-blocking browser, but I saw them.

This stuff is a real concern. Granted, it doesn’t really matter in the big picture, but better SEO and fluency with Google search from a marketing perspective will deliver a better experience for everyone who wants to work with your title, even if they are not buyers.

The real question is how does non-purchaser’s web activity increase the relevance of these illegal sites. That is what I mean earlier by relevance. As you might know, Google rank its search results by how “relevant” a particular link is to the search query. Loosely speaking (since nobody but Google knows how it works exactly) it means how pages link to each other, and the “quality” of a web page adds or removes credence to the things a page links to. So if a very popular forum links to some DDL sites, those sites will get props. There are companies out there that create content on the web to “game” Google search ranks that is the basis of “SEO” or search engine optimization. And that is beyond the less controversial stuff, like developing your webpages in a way that is friendly to Google’s web robots that index and discover your page’s contents and display them the right way on the search results page.

Of course, it’s not to ignore the “real relevance” of non-purchasers on purchasers, let alone the content publisher. That is why copies of things are given to press to review, and why word of mouth is a powerful advertising tool. Similarly it can lower sales in such a way. I think one example that shows up statistically is how piracy-before-purchasing can change some potential buyers into non-buyers, after they have sampled the thing and found it not satisfactory [which says nothing about such an effect being, in my opinion, a very good thing] or otherwise undesired due to some other reasons [which could be a bad thing].

The responsible thing to do, in light of this, is actually police the things you link to. As a blogger it is clearly one venue where it could happen (and I profess linking to at least a couple sites where wholesale copyright infringement was at hand, despite the quality and legitimate information it provided). Other places include twitter, Google+, forums, and lots of other fixed web media. You know what? If you manage the online presence of a brand, the least you can do is make a website that is informative. So many companies fail on this in the anime/game/manga sphere it is incredible.

For companies, it is to monitor relevance and get people to realize the impact, both as purchasers and non-purchasers. But also to respect people who don’t buy your stuff, to the degree that it facilitates people who do buy your stuff. This is a vague statement to put into practice, but that has to be the overarching goal, I think. What I invite people to do is storyboard specific use cases. I think the better you are at this, the more likely you will be successful at niche markets like for anime, manga, and bishoujo/otome games.

I mean, if I want to find a download link, I’ll add the search term “download” to the query :p

4 comments | posted in Bishoujo Gaming, English Language Modern Visual Fandom, Modern Visual Culture

August 23, 2011

Making Doujinshi in America

By omo

I was walking through the artist alley at Anime Expo this year with Tom and the thought kind of came to me: in the US we sell crap as it is in the Artist’s Alley–character merchandise labeled with our favorite ideas, like t-shirts with sarcastic or funny phrases on them. In this case it also doubles as a stylistic option given the artwork on your hat or pin or the print you hang in your bathroom wall. [I’m so hanging that pretty neat Miku print I got last year in my new bathroom.]

The whole thing is more along the lines of an arts and craft show than a maniacs-of-franchise swap-a-thon, the latter being the case of Comiket, where fans flock to pick up their doujinshi or whatever. From a copyright perspective the differences between American and Japanese fans explain the nature of copyright enforcement in this practical application of law between the same two countries. At the same time, it feels like the American artist alley wares fill in a gap in the consumer market: the lack of licensed merchandise and goods at the right price.

Except that isn’t even quite the case anymore. There are licensed merchandise for a lot of this stuff available in the US. It may be hard to find sometimes, and there may be smaller gaps (licensed “sarcastic t-shirts” are hard to find and really expensive when you do; always make me a tad bit sad when I see those Jlist shirts) that are not fulfilled, but merch presence is by and large there in some way. What’s a fan to do in this context as a producer of stuff to sell? The thought came to me about doujinshi, then, as what market segment it really fills.

I mean in some ways there were always American fans putting together these coterie magazine like EX or that new Colony Drop zine or Super Rat’s zine. There are plenty of examples littered across the past 20 years. Even now, I know some folks I work with on Jtor also are interested in making that kind of stuff. There’s a particular attraction to that publishing format. I think especially today in America, where e-readers and tablet computing are truly the order of the day, there’s a rich visual space now available that would really suit publishing for this kind of material. (Not to mention that for photogs there’s also something a nice print offers that your monitor is definitely missing.)

It just makes me wonder why people don’t flock to this format in the artist alley. I suppose, comparing workflows, it’s way less work and pressure to just make prints of random stuff you draw or make buttons or whatever. In Japan people bust balls (often together!) trying to put together their 16-page manga or whatever before the various deadlines for the various doujinshi events. It feels like the former is run like a lemonade stand and the latter is run like an actual project.

I’m not really here to minimize the contribution and hard work of artist alley types or lemonade sellers. I’ve bought my fair share of things from them, and some of those arts and craft stuff are well worth of our money and attention (in fact, I want to highlight that here). And we all know lemonade makes a delicious summertime drink. The artist alley concept is fine to have these vendors and artists participate, and for the most part the notion of artist alley as we know it works perfectly, and each con’s add a piece of the local flavor and culture to the overall convention experience. But culturally, the con artist alley is a creatively dead space, full of two types of things: people making a quick dollar on derivative copyrighted works and well-known trademarks, and artful people making cool art stuff. Sure, there are still some people doing their original stuff here and there, but I mean, I want my US counterpart of the doujinshi market to be able to provide an environment where a Tsukihime or a Nyoro~n Tsuruya-san will be able to thrive. But I just don’t see that being ever possible with the way things are.

Where is this happening? Where everything else is happening: the intarwebs.

The mode of consumption, I wager, has completely screwed the pooch in terms of where “content” buyers go to shop. People who buy crap at the artist alley at an anime con are shopping for some kind of image-based good. They want merch; they’re not as interested in content. By this I mean we’re after just ideas, icons and signals; not narratives. For that we go buy anime or manga, even web comics, forums and fanfiction. If we want a cute story about Cirno, for example, we can go read a Japanese doujinshi. And I imagine any American doing the same thing is likely going to publish it online anyways. It’s like, you can’t make it as an artist in the artist alley; you make it as an artist somewhere else, and you use the artist alley like a dealer’s room: sell crap.

With that in mind, I’ll cop a line from Makoto Shinkai’s Otakon press panel (my version w):

With the changes to animation and computer technology, how have things changed in the past 20 years as an artist?

Shinkai: Today the circumstnaces are better, the hardware is better, and there’s the internet to help distribute. There’s better software. The truth is what you want to express in your work is still the basis of that. When you are creating it on your own, the effort goes into making it look good. So today even when the circumstances are better, if the artist doesn’t understand that you need to express through from what you want to show, then things hasn’t really changed much.

So how do today’s independent artists accomplish this, at least in the context of the artist alley situation? To me the solution is obvious for an organizational body. Tap into the fan-creation communities (lots of places) and make a call for self-published works in the long format. Work with an online print company to organize some kind of infrastructure where you can do, for example, print on demand, bulk, negotiate on infrastructural burdens and prices for those things. Set a deadline for submissions, screen the submission and assists authors and creators with their work, and submit the end results to the print-on-demand service. Be the go-between for the printer and the artists. Set a fix date (like a week) where people can buy the doujinshi from the site at a discount and they will be all shipped together at the end of the period. Market the hell out of the online event during that time. Debut all those submissions at the start of the week and take them down after it is over. If you’re awesome, you can also make them purchasable via e-reader/tablet-friendly format.

  • Divorce the “con” culture from the nature of the creative endavor but still put it in context of the fandom; use the internet instead.
  • Reach the people who are already interested in these expressive forms of discourse by marketing to specific grottoes on the internet
  • Create value for POD/publisher by bundling eyeballs online and attach their brand to the effort
  • Create value for buyers and artists by bargaining collectively and sell in bulk, reduce shipping charges
  • Provide the middleman for technical help and billing, education and generally assist artists in online sales.

There are a myraid of technical challenges along the way, but the biggest question in my mind is what would people want to buy? Doujinshi as we know it? Doujinshi as it is in reality (ie., a lot of text-based things)? Music? Games? I see things like, say, Altogether fitting this idea closely. Translating a doujin game is a very different process flow than running a lemonade stand. But what else? I think people would buy photo books of figures. Even more people might buy your garden variety cartoon for adults, but that runs into some problems. Who would buy some home-grown Touhou doujinshi? Is this like the field of dreams, where if someone builds a cheap, accessible way to create, sell and buy doujinshi, people will come?

And again, to address my previous point about artist alley, in reality it isn’t the fault of anyone that our American artist alleys are like that; it is just much easier and natural to do a lemonade stand than to manage a project on the scale of a properly-made doujinshi. It’s also much easier to run something like a dealer’s room than to manage something like Comiket. So rather than to change a thing that works, maybe I’m just looking for something that’s not offered by that space.

Though, this isn’t a chicken-and-egg problem. Comiket and its kin can’t exist without doujinshi, and doujinshi cannot exist without passionate creators and fans. So at the core of it all are dedicated fans who want to semi-formally communicate with each other (and also less-dedicated fans) about the stuff they love. Maybe that is the true test of the nature of America’s fascination with Japanese pop culture from the lens of anime, manga and games. I have no doubts that these people exist, I just don’t know if they can be organized enough to build on top of the same feelings and emotions that drives them.

Leave a comment | posted in Bishoujo Gaming, Conventions and Concerts, English Language Modern Visual Fandom, Figures and Models, Modern Visual Culture

July 18, 2011

Tanto Cuore or Dipping Into the Madness of Actually Playing Japanese Tabletop Games

By omo

So at Anime Expo there was this booth which hawked translated “tabletop” (I use the term in the context of tabletop gaming as found here, and not so much by definition) deck building game Tanto Cuore. It is appropriate to hawk that at an anime convention (but then again, AX is an all-kind-of-things convention when it comes to the dealer’s hall) because this deck building game features the artwork of a lot of pretty popular Japanese artists among anime/manga/game/whatever fans. The game comes in a cardboard box that houses all the cards (and some extra room if you want to sleeve them); about a little bigger than the one Aquarian Age (a semi-popular anime-style TCG from 10 years ago!) card box that I own from waaayyyyyy back. Funny thing is, Aoi Nanase’s characters adorned both of them. What are the odds? I don’t even like her stuff that much!

This particular booth belonged to a tabletop game retailer that is also footing the localization effort for Tanto Cuore, at least from what I can gather (I did not visit their booth). It is originally a Japanese game, and by all means a “maid” spin on the popular deck building game Dominion. For those familiar with Dominion, by “maid” it just means instead of kingdom cards, it’s maid cards. For those unfamiliar with either game, in a deck building game, you basically have a set of cards in which you treat as your “deck.” You then draw from it, and play the cards from the deck for what’s written on the cards. Usually these abilities allow you to add or subtract cards to your overall deck, and/or alter the victory status (get more victory points, change victory conditions, etc). Part of the game is upgrading your existing cards in the deck so you can draw better cards instead of worthless crap cards. Part of the game is playing versus other players and competing for those better cards to add to your deck. Part of the game is managing your deck so it is rid of useless cards, so you can pull off combos. There’s a lot of other stuff that you could do, too, and often times you’re doing several things simultaneously.

So in Tanto Cuore, you do this with maids. And with love. And with serving. And employment. It’s an oddish concept if you think about it. Yeah, look at me, the guy with 20 chambermaids. With a billion victory points. What does this mean? Do I live like a king, because I can afford a dozen employments a turn? Or I have a bottomless pool of love to spend every turn? Or because I have dozens of concubines? How about the maids in the deck but not in my chambers? Why aren’t there more Mariannes to buy? The mind boggles at the implications.

There isn’t a whole lot to this game in proper English yet. From what I can tell, there are 2 expansions released for this game, but in Japanese only. You can also get special promo stuff like this (or this, for the base set). There are character goods if you look at the usual places. At the same time, you can already get the translated rules and card list for the first and second expansions from the usual place, AND from Arclight’s site directly. The localization company wants to bring the expansion over, but only if the sales are good enough. Naturally like other newbie localization efforts they need a lot of marketing help. But there’s a strong board game tie-in demographic that is receptive of this Japanese fantasy lunacy, so the player base probably does exist. I’m just doing my part to get the word out–the game itself is solid, offers some refinement you don’t quite see elsewhere (in an elegant, simple, dare I say, Japanese maid kind of way), and it has the same grip on you that Dominion and its ilks do. It’s legit, even before the whole moe-moe-meido part of the game.

Again, the Japanese company publishing Tanto Cuore is Arclight. Arclight publishes also several other original games, as well as localized western favorites like Thunderstone and proper board games like Powergrid (mmm Funkenschlag). That idol game…seems pretty interesting! And I’ll take most non-Aoi Nanase cover artist any day. There’s also this Anime-Nazi-Bishoujo-Invades-Russia game, which also has translated texts for cards and rules. Tempting! Because it’ll probably never get published in the US LOL.

Last note, this is the romanized list of artists (and links) that worked on Tanto Cuore (base set). I don’t know why they didn’t romanize it on the English language site, because some of these guys are popular names, and BGG already has them listed:

CARNELIAN, COMTA, Takahito Ekuchi, Takuya Fujima, Takehito Harada, Akira Hayase, Kira Inugami, Ishigaa, kawaku, KEI, Souji Kusaka, Misa Matoki, Rin Minase, Miki Miyashita, Misoka Nagatsuki, Nana, Aoi Nanase, Hiroki Ozaki, Poyoyon Rock, Ruchie, Satoru Satou, Mushimaro Tachikawa, Yuiko Tokui, Ofuu Yamadori.

Even the official card lists on Arclight’s site have romanized artist names. What gives?

Leave a comment | posted in Bishoujo Gaming

June 20, 2011

Akasha, Religion And Chair

By omo

In the middle of a discussion about what makes for “chuunibyou,” I thought about Nasu’s… Nasuverse. In that world, mages are people who take magecraft like a trade: you have teachers, craftsmen, unions and guilds, rivals, people who do it for fun, people who do it for profit, and people who do it for the hell of it. You have artists and salarymen, parents, children, and heroic spirits. Swords and sorcery? People who are dead because they are killed? People who are the bones of their swords? It’s, in a word, chuunibyou to a tee.

But in that silly world-creation exercise, Nasu laid down some foundations that I particularly like in this kind of setting. It’s a bit like Fuyumi Ono’s Twelve Kingdoms, where the laws of the world are absolute; Gods and emperors speak with not so much authority but with reality-bending, “let there be light” powers. I like that sort of thing.

The cool thing about Nasu’s magecraft is in its adherence and pursuit of the akasha, or the origin. In a way, the attempt to understand Nasuverse’s notion of origin is just like a mage’s pursuit of understanding of origin of humans and the world, existence in general. [Cynical: both are fraught with irregularities and illogical examples!]  The cute thing (and adding to its middle-schooler-illness) is that the notion is not original. I just think it’s a beautiful parallel to the act of introspection: when we examine deep within ourselves, conflict invariably will emerge. When mages fight each other in Nasu’s universe, it is a clash of different origins, cloaked by the personalities, motives and external reasons (eg., fate) behind these conflicts. These conflicts are external manifestation of internal turmoil. These conflicts are thematic.

Because, after all, the darkness inside of ourselves is the one that brings about the most enduring and endearing conflicts. Tsundere, I’m looking at you.

The other neat thing is that this is a central concept that perpetrates consistently across all of Nasuverse. In a way it feels like those Tolkein-style students of arcane magic, living inside their towers, honing their art. It just has taken a 21st century turn of events. And of course, these Nasu-mages are hardly anything akin to a D&D mage in practice. It’s the thin veneer that keeps his works at least somewhat credible, sure, but I appreciate at least the consistency.

The way I model these things in my mind is kind of how I look at, say, how one could reconcile religion with anime. For example, Mike’s the real deal. And I find it an uplifting testimony to read. It’s more about us than the anime that we watch. It may be reasonable to say that Nasu’s writing is horrible (I don’t know, I can’t tell anyways), but it resounds with others, with a purpose, so it is fine. I see it specifically in pursuit of science. It, too, revolves around the notion that we are students of the world; we are learners, not teachers. Because we know we don’t know, it is why we do these things. It is why GlaDOS gets away with the things she does. It is why Academy City exists. It is why we pursuit the study of the world. Scientists are eternal newbies: that’s where the action is, that’s where the new revelation is, that is where the new science happens. It is driven by the same budding curiosity and imaginative power that makes Steins;Gate an amusing watch on principle. In other words, it is the same force which powers chuunibyou bubble. Scientists, too, are just human beings with all the contradictions humans have, seeking the origin of all things.

Times like this I wonder if THIS CHAIR is just a reference to AI development.

Leave a comment | posted in Bishoujo Gaming, Kara no Kyoukai, Modern Visual Culture, Steins;Gate

May 18, 2011

Bamboo Shoots

By omo

Not a Nichijou post, sorry.

I am not really an insider with regards to MangaGamers and their relationship with the various bishoujo game makers/eroge scenesters, pro and otherwise. It feels, at times, a fairly close knit circle because it’s full of small timers doing something that they like, making a living off it. It’s kind of the feel you get from how characters relate to each other in Koe de Oshigoto. In some extreme cases, it really is a family business, like in 07th Expansion’s case (and others I’m sure).

But from seeing the way he does things, both at AX last year and now in the thread he started in the forum of the company he produced (it sometimes gets left in the cracks, but it’s vital to remember that MG is a company created by the Japanese!), I get the idea that he has a solid grasp of the issues surrounding the growth, sales, proliferation of these games.

So when he decides to go directly to the BBS, it makes you wonder why. He’s also taking requirements for their made-for-foreign-player tourism game (granted it looks close to be completed). By “taking requirements” I mean he’s soliciting opinions on it. But anyways, it’s interesting to note a few things. I’ll just quote EvoSpace’s translation:

First of all, I would like to start from the current status of the Japanese bishoujo game industry.

<Current Status>
Many companies in Tokyo and nearby regions were heavily affected by the earthquake in March and their schedules were thrown off. Although the damage may differ in size, companies working with MangaGamer, such as Circus, OVERDRIVE, Navel were all affected as well.

This has finally calmed down now in May, but it’s still not safe to assume things. I wouldn’t say it is bad as Fallout3, but we are still having difficult times.

It’s cute, and by Fallout 3, heh. There totally needs a game that uses American oldies and pairs that with the Japanese visual novel experience. Ideally, it wouldn’t “heavy” or “noire.”

<About the titles we are negotiating>
As a premise, most of the bishoujo game companies in Japan make their games with the minimal number of staff, and obviously, their main market is Japan. And because of piracy and the unknown size of the overseas market, many times, they are uncomfortable about working with us, and it takes quite a long time to have them understand what we are trying to do. As the producer of OVERDRIVE, my company is not that big either. Yet, I am trying my best to go around trying to talk to different companies while releasing our games in Japan.

Most Japanese game companies are thinking this,
– Is it really going to sell overseas?
– What about the laws?
– Is there a demand?

This probably is on the mind of 90% of the companies that you wish for. Since sales in Japan is going down recently, it is even more diffcult for them to look at the overseas market.

We’ve been running MangaGamer for a while, and have visually seen that there are indeed fans and demands, and our sales has been increasing over the years gradually. Using such data, we are trying to negotiate with several game companies.

So, first, MangaGamer is doing better than before. That’s good news. It’s a big takeaway.

The second concern is well-phrased. I think Bamboo is realistic and understands that ultimately the western VN community is full of people who would buy games, but also full of people who would pirate them. There’s an overlap, of course, but it does nobody any good to dwell on it. It’s probably better to think of it as an availability issue. It would be reasonable to pin the lack of availability as one of the primary reason people pirate stuff, after all. With digital distribution, this is even more of a glaring gap.

Looking back from the perspective of a Japanese development house, then, the same issue is one based on increasing risk. That’s how I read “Is it really going to sell” and “Is there demand”? I think there’s nothing we can do about laws, but there is money to be made. To that end, Bamboo’s statements is pretty simple: buy his games. I’m not a big customer of MangaGamers, so I’m indifferent about it, but if the proof is to be in the pudding, he’s well on the way to make some.

<minori and ef series>
We are still working on this game with minori.
They are the ones helping us with the actual development of the English version.
We are taking a good care of the translated script, even if it is fan translated.

<age and MuvLuv series>
“Muv Luv” is a big title from age, and they take significant care about their games. It’s not that they are ignoring the overseas fan, but because they still put their priority in the Japanese market, their response is slow. The Japanese fans refer to their 3 years as “1 age”. That’s how long and serious their development span is.

Also, they just announced the Xbox360 version but it took a while until they told me about those things. However, it’s natural that they needed to keep things a secret until the announcement. For a large budget game such as that, not only the game company, but several companies may invest for its rights. This is called the “Development Council” in Japan and it is a common form of how anime are produced. Although there are some merits, there is the demerit that unless all of the members of the “Development Council” agree, they can’t make decisions.

It’s a good insight into how a big game production is like versus the little ones that localization companies typically deal with.

The rest of the post contain the plea from Bamboo about improving the image of western market in terms of piracy and what not. I think that’s a long, long road, but one that has an end. If people really like the stuff, they ought to walk it. And maybe talking despite the language barrier is a start.

Leave a comment | posted in Bishoujo Gaming, English Language Modern Visual Fandom, Franchises, Modern Visual Culture