Kimochi shutting down

[erobotan]

Re: Kimochi shutting down

Highly disagree about hentai struggling as far as exposure goes in the west, I mean, even THE OFFICE references it;

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Searching "porn" on google brings up 358,000,000 results,
searching "pornography" on google brings up 68,100,000 results,
searching "hentai" on google brings up 75,100,000 results,
searching "eroge" on google brings up 881,000 results...

...but searching "h-game" brings up 448,000,000 results. (granted, google realizes that h-game = hentai, so it combines them, but even that should show how well known it is.)

10 years ago, I would have agreed with you, but MAINLY focusing on translations = the west is continued to be seen as "only good enough to convert pre-existing material, not to create new material", and focusing on translations isn't going to magically create people who will be skilled enough to produce solid games.

we might have tons of google search, but the one who buy the game is very small sadly .. just compare the sales of DLSite Japan & English.

So far, the part of the english eroge community that actually has good buying power is the VN fans (and furry fans i think?). We need more than that but at least it's a step forward

"DLSite and Steam have new games on a daily basis, but it's not as if it's the same person putting out these games daily, of course."

The problem is the number of output, who make them is not important. The problem with english eroge community is we simply don't have enough devs to give high output. That's why we need support from translated eroge titles.

DLSite is Japanese website, yet they also release english title. Steam is a western website, yet they also release japan, chinese, and korean title. There is nothing bad with releasing translated stuff

Kimochi shut down because they have a good number of games released when they start and then nothing for several months. we can't rely on quality alone, we need both quantity & quality to keep people interested in visiting the store. Small & simple games can be fun too.

Additionally, I think saying that "there's no one in the west with enough talent to rival Japanese games" is ridiculous, when there's numerous games on Patreon that easily rival everything but the very cream of the crop Japanese games, and in almost all cases (yes, there are exceptions of course of 1 person teams etc.),

You misunderstand, i think no one here said that, what some people here are saying is we don't have enough, their concern is about the number. And that's only on the doujin level, we lose in all aspect in big companies' level, we don't have anything comparable to Illusion, Alisoft, etc.

 

[HentaiWriter]

Re: Kimochi shutting down

we might have tons of google search, but the one who buy the game is very small sadly .. just compare the sales of DLSite Japan & English.

This is where Patreon comes in; the reason is because the western community pirates games far more than the eastern community does, so Patreon is the alternative for the western community on that.

(English DLSite is also incredibly unwieldly and difficult to deal with, and spikes prices as well, which also aids in why not many people here do this.)

That's why we need support from translated eroge titles.

This is where I'm confused, like, how does the western hentai game development and western hentai community get supported by translating games that no one in the west had a hand with originally creating?

If it's just to get the word out that hentai exists, again, that's happening exponentially every day, and it's not gonna get any less prominent here either.

Small & simple games can be fun too.

Definitely agreed on this, for sure.

You misunderstand, i think no one here said that, what some people here are saying is we don't have enough, their concern is about the number. And that's only on the doujin level, we lose in all aspect in big companies' level, we don't have anything comparable to Illusion, Alisoft, etc.

There's stuff in the works, not sure if I can say it publicly, but it involves companies at that scale selling western-made hentai games, and even without mentioning those people, we do have MangaGamer selling western-made games, and they're fairly large AFAIK.

If you mean like, "hentai circles", that's true, but that's I think a cultural thing more than anything (as the west tends to be more small groups or "go it alone" type things, as we're much more competitive and much less co-operative here when it comes to this kinda stuff)

My bad on mis-reading the thing about people saying we don't have any, I do agree we don't have enough solid stuff out there.

 

[erobotan]

Re: Kimochi shutting down

This is where Patreon comes in; the reason is because the western community pirates games far more than the eastern community does, so Patreon is the alternative for the western community on that.

(English DLSite is also incredibly unwieldly and difficult to deal with, and spikes prices as well, which also aids in why not many people here do this.)

patreon definitely help a lot but we still need a real store like kimochi. Like 100k people love hentai, 1k willing to buy, maybe only 100 willing to use patreon to support dev (these are just random number btw but you get the point right ^^). Other reason is well, not all of us are good marketing our patreon ^^; .. that's why we still need something like Kimochi (basically something like DLSite with less cut ^^).

This is where I'm confused, like, how does the western hentai game development and western hentai community get supported by translating games that no one in the west had a hand with originally creating?

If it's just to get the word out that hentai exists, again, that's happening exponentially every day, and it's not gonna get any less prominent here either.

This is to help the english stores. I think kimochi fails because they have a good number of titles during their launch but then no new release at all for several months. People get bored & stopped visiting their forum. I think they can avoid this if they can steadily release new titles every week. And since english eroge devs don't have the capacity to do that, we need help from translated overseas titles.

Steam & DLSite both has foreign titles in their list so there is nothing embarassing if our english eroge store also sell translated english titles.

There's stuff in the works, not sure if I can say it publicly, but it involves companies at that scale selling western-made hentai games, and even without mentioning those people, we do have MangaGamer selling western-made games, and they're fairly large AFAIK.

If you mean like, "hentai circles", that's true, but that's I think a cultural thing more than anything (as the west tends to be more small groups or "go it alone" type things, as we're much more competitive and much less co-operative here when it comes to this kinda stuff)

Yeah, I mean big english companies who create their own eroge, not simply publish stuff like mangagamer. Imagine if Valve, CD Project, Disney, etc start making eroge XD. Well, it's still a far away dream .. for now we got to do with what we have and make our english doujin scene big first

 

[HentaiWriter]

Re: Kimochi shutting down

And since english eroge devs don't have the capacity to do that, we need help from translated overseas titles. Steam & DLSite both has foreign titles in their list so there is nothing embarassing if our english eroge store also sell translated english titles.

Okay, I think this might be where a lot of the confusion lies.

Are you talking about independent translators (like the people on this forum, for example) getting big Japanese games and then translating them, then giving those translations to places like Kimochi etc. to sell?

Because that would be super illegal

And if you're talking about working out a deal with those companies to translate those games and then sell them legally on places, very, very few Japanese companies/circles will ever allow this, and usually they'll only allow it for big western companies that have shown extremely good relations with the Japanese (for example, Nutaku).

So I'd say working stuff out with big companies to do this stuff would still only result in about 0.01% of all Japanese Eroge (of any form) releases getting translated officially and being released over here legally, and that's not really going to ever get moreso because that's more of a cultural thing than a "we don't have enough people doing it" thing.

 

[SunsetRiders7]

Re: Kimochi shutting down

I have been reading this thread since the beginning and really wanted to post something, but every time I wrote something it would end up a rambling mess. Kimochi shutting down sucks, like really sucks. It solved a huge problem we were facing when we planned to move OC. Now I must say the community is rather creative and a new product or service will be designated the go to source soon enough. I just think right now with Patreon being the major source of income stream for non-established/established devs we may see a distribution system struggle, unless it has deep pockets.

Now on to what can we do to make it work. The answer is simple, we need to grow the market. I read in the official Kimochi thread that they felt the market was at a generous $10M dollars (western market). This is super low, I mean in my relatively small city of 1M people we prob have higher Slurpee (7-11) sales than this. With large companies like pornhub pretty much telling people that this stuff should be free really impacts everyone. So we need to capitalize on extracting revenue anyway possible. Now a distribution system can go and use established revenue sources as a way to ease the burden for a period of time (translations, ads, affiliates), but what will happen with this is the devs are going to go this route also. Now I don't want my game burdened with ads (much like mobile). There is a ton of creative ideas on the SFW side, release a game for free with ads, paid premium, freemium features, 18+ patch. I just think that when a party comes forward and executes an idea that solves all the Patreon problems, actively recruits devs, and is low fee (Patreon =5%, and shares the processor fees) we may see a switch. But the longer it takes the harder it will be for that party as moving 500-1k paying fans is not fun.

-SmokeShank

 

[Lozagal]

Re: Kimochi shutting down

Please email me the details of your situation: steamydev at gmail dot com. I'll do whatever I can to help you.

Any updates on the missing software?