Two main Touhou games announced for Steam release!

[Hello Purvis]

Holy sheepshit. I never thought this would happen.

Well shit, now I have to find money for these. THANKS GABEN >=|||



Does Steam allow for non-English language games to be released? That is, will it have to be translated, or can it be tossed on there raw?

[KaiserKnuckle]

Does Steam allow for non-English language games to be released? That is, will it have to be translated, or can it be tossed on there raw?

Yes. A recent Chinese release, Barrage Musical, states on the page that it does not have English support, so I assume there are other games on Steam with that same situation.

[#JUNKO4TH15.5]

AoCF release date tho, YESSS.

[Drake]

For reference, ZUN starts the Steam talk at 35:45 of Nikenme #86.

Misc. things I gathered on a relisten: (because I was first listening on a bus through shitty earbuds while asleep)
- ZUN wants to release HSiFS-Steam before AoCF releases because he wants it to be first, while Unabara plans to release on Steam shortly after the AoCF physical release. This gives him a soft deadline.
- ZUN seems to further suggest that there wouldn't be any international features, if that wasn't already obvious.
- Part of why he wouldn't bring Touhou to Steam before was a translation requirement, but at some point that washed away so it's more feasible. Which makes it clear he doesn't intend for any sort of translation.
- He briefly mentions that he'd have preferred if Japan had a similar platform overtaking Steam, but since one didn't appear... [then Steam is fine]
- ZUN also doesn't discount the possibility of more of the games coming out, but I think everyone already assumed that without confirmation anyways.

[Hello Purvis]

Okay, I have a question.

Has anything been said on pricing, yet?

[Drake]

nah, assume it will be equivalent to base price with conversion

[N-Forza]

- He briefly mentions that he'd have preferred if Japan had a similar platform overtaking Steam, but since one didn't appear... [then Steam is fine]

I get where he's coming from, but still.

ROFL

[Drake]

same

(And by "overtaking" I do imagine more specifically a Japanese platform that becomes competitive with the Steam ecosystem for indie games in Japan, not actually something that beats Steam wholesale. He very clearly says 勝てる though.)

[Fluury]

International features being what exactly? Achievements, or?

No translation (probably) happening is an obvious bummer which will scare a way a lot of potential buyers, sadly.

[Drake]

I say "international features" in the general sense of translations and offering any kind of language support. Entirely possible there won't be his self-translated custom.exe or even a non-Japanese Steam page (is this allowed?). I'm paraphrasing, not quoting him.

That being said, achievements and other such trinkets will even more definitely not happen if ZUN can avoid doing them. If there's anything that will keep the man from releasing on a new platform it's giving him more work to do for literally no benefit.

I don't think it's productive to talk about a lack of translation "pushing away" potential buyers when the game is, in all official capacities, not translated to begin with. If people don't click because they don't even understand what the game is then you haven't really lost anything; Touhou (and most games) spreads through word of mouth, not so much blind discovery. If people get to to the point where they don't want to buy purely because it isn't translated, they'd also have to avoid the fact that many other people do play the game translated. In this case we assume these people want to play the game, so if it can be easily figured out that the game has a fan translation, this is easily resolved. I think this use case is a good opportunity to bring back static patches that can be easily applied to any random buying the game, because god knows many people won't want to go through the full setup of thcrap.

[Mero]

Okay, I have a question.

Has anything been said on pricing, yet?

DDC was 15 USD on Playism iirc, seems like a reasonable price for Steam to follow

International features being what exactly? Achievements, or?

No translation (probably) happening is an obvious bummer which will scare a way a lot of potential buyers, sadly.

Well, you don't really need to know Japanese to just play, most basic menu options are already in English, and one can easily tell who's what character and figure out the controls after a few minutes. Even then, Steam has its own forums for games, which would help give exposure to things like thcrap (and maybe even have proper static patches, like Drake suggested)

I do wonder if this is why ZUN's been holding up the 1.00b version of HSiFS, there are some game breaking bugs in the current version, and those usually do get revisions made for

[Fluury]

Well, you don't really need to know Japanese to just play, most basic menu options are already in English, and one can easily tell who's what character and figure out the controls after a few minutes. Even then, Steam has its own forums for games, which would help give exposure to things like thcrap (and maybe even have proper static patches, like Drake suggested)

I say "international features" in the general sense of translations and offering any kind of language support. Entirely possible there won't be his self-translated custom.exe or even a non-Japanese Steam page (is this allowed?). I'm paraphrasing, not quoting him.

That being said, achievements and other such trinkets will even more definitely not happen if ZUN can avoid doing them. If there's anything that will keep the man from releasing on a new platform it's giving him more work to do for literally no benefit.

I don't think it's productive to talk about a lack of translation "pushing away" potential buyers when the game is, in all official capacities, not translated to begin with. If people don't click because they don't even understand what the game is then you haven't really lost anything; Touhou (and most games) spreads through word of mouth, not so much blind discovery. If people get to to the point where they don't want to buy purely because it isn't translated, they'd also have to avoid the fact that many other people do play the game translated. In this case we assume these people want to play the game, so if it can be easily figured out that the game has a fan translation, this is easily resolved. I think this use case is a good opportunity to bring back static patches that can be easily applied to any random buying the game, because god knows many people won't want to go through the full setup of thcrap.

Thanks for clarifying.

Steam works kinda differently and appeal to a lot more different folk; If they see Touhou on the frontpage or anything like that, they'll check it out and end up seeing everything in a language they dont understand. That alone is extremely unattractive to most customers - and while there are patches, most people dont want to download unofficial patches to make the game playable in english. People just wanna play the game, not jump through extra hoops.

As they say, convenience is king, and it not getting any official translation or whatever is a shame if you ask me.

On the other hand: Does the same go for 15.5? No Translation alongside of no achievements/cards/whatever other steam gimmicks? And more importantly - in 15.5's Case, is there anything to measure if it'll have proper Steam "Online features" such as "Join game" and the like, or will it be bare-bones? I often see people calling Tasofro a "wild card" in that sense.

[Drake]

Thing is that's only relevant for reach. ZUN doesn't need reach, he already has it. He is also likely still mainly concerned with reception by the Japanese side, in which case not having translations is obviously unimportant for reach. On the international side, this is about accessibility, not reach; the intention is not to spread but to allow people to purchase easily overseas and at a legitimate price point.

Convenience being critical to purchase is why this is important. Being on Steam is the convenience. The majority of this fanbase still pirates absolutely everything and a significant part of that is because of the lack of cheap and convenient ways to purchase, which Steam unequivocally solves. This is just one game to be released so far, but realize that this changes the situation from one where: some people find buying to be cumbersome and expensive, some people don't know how to buy the games, and some people don't even know Touhou isn't freeware to begin with; to a situation where you pretty much literally cannot make it easier for the western audience to see and buy.

[Hello Purvis]

and some people don't even know Touhou isn't freeware to begin with

This is a biggie. People talking about pirating the games is by far the most common report the moderators get.

[Fluury]

Thing is that's only relevant for reach. ZUN doesn't need reach, he already has it. He is also likely still mainly concerned with reception by the Japanese side, in which case not having translations is obviously unimportant for reach. On the international side, this is about accessibility, not reach; the intention is not to spread but to allow people to purchase easily overseas and at a legitimate price point.

Convenience being critical to purchase is why this is important. Being on Steam is the convenience. The majority of this fanbase still pirates absolutely everything and a significant part of that is because of the lack of cheap and convenient ways to purchase, which Steam unequivocally solves. This is just one game to be released so far, but realize that this changes the situation from one where: some people find buying to be cumbersome and expensive, some people don't know how to buy the games, and some people don't even know Touhou isn't freeware to begin with; to a situation where you pretty much literally cannot make it easier for the western audience to see and buy.

You are right I suppose - perhaps translation, caring about reception overseas etc. are gonna be things that will be relevant in the far future.

[TresserT]

Thing is that's only relevant for reach. ZUN doesn't need reach, he already has it. He is also likely still mainly concerned with reception by the Japanese side, in which case not having translations is obviously unimportant for reach. On the international side, this is about accessibility, not reach; the intention is not to spread but to allow people to purchase easily overseas and at a legitimate price point.

Convenience being critical to purchase is why this is important. Being on Steam is the convenience. The majority of this fanbase still pirates absolutely everything and a significant part of that is because of the lack of cheap and convenient ways to purchase, which Steam unequivocally solves. This is just one game to be released so far, but realize that this changes the situation from one where: some people find buying to be cumbersome and expensive, some people don't know how to buy the games, and some people don't even know Touhou isn't freeware to begin with; to a situation where you pretty much literally cannot make it easier for the western audience to see and buy.

Isn't that all kind of rendered moot when ZUN says "if Japan had a platform that could compete with steam I'd put it there instead"? If his goal was to make it accessible internationally, wouldn't that kind of defeat the purpose?

[Drake]

I think you're reading into that that he would rather keep the series exclusive to Japan? That completely is not the case. He just wants it to be easy and hassle-free without silly language barriers and legal issues on his end. Having the platform being based in Japan would just not have these issues. I think it would be warranted to guess that overseas accessibility in particular isn't the primary goal, like I said above, but it is still a goal that they talked about explicitly on the stream. If there were a Japanese platform competitive with Steam, I imagine that at the very least it wouldn't limit its sales within Japan just because. Considering it's Japan, having no international reach might theoretically not be considered a dealbreaker, but I remain optimistic that it would be.

[N-Forza]

That sounds about right. Though he already has a relationship with Playism (whatever its current state might be), it's hard to deny that Steam's made more inroads with the Japanese PC market.

[dosboot]

Zun got our macaroni greeting cards.  *sniffles* (つ﹏<。) ... ٩(^ᴗ^)۶

[friend]

zoop

[AzyWng]

Jesus, and people complained about CyberAngel?s post...

Dunno if this is Poe?s law or if you?re actually seroius here.

[friend]

I am always deadly serious.

[Gpop]

I don't think translations will be an issue, because there's already been a multitude of cases of Steam games allowing people to mod it for their convenience, and I'm pretty sure Touhou will be no different.

The game will most likely be released on Steam in Japanese, but I'm certain fan translation patches will work on it as well, and if not, they can be slightly modified to work for those versions, because I highly doubt ZUN will go after people modifying the game to make it more accessible outside of Japan.

[qMyon]

That's nice. Makes it far easier to actually pick up the game.

[Fluury]

Jesus, and people complained about CyberAngel?s post...

Dunno if this is Poe?s law or if you?re actually seroius here.

It's bait probably

What I'm primarily interested in is if ZUN will release future products and use Steam's patch system to his advantage.

[Aya Reiko]

I get where he's coming from, but still.

ROFL

Not even Kyouko could make that ROFL loud enough.  I've been casually observing the Japanese side of the industry for awhile, and there is, or will be in the foreseeable future, no way that was ever going to happen.

As for the games, I'll approach this with curiosity.  Mainly concerned with the price, and, to a lesser extent, translation patches.

[brliron]

Regarding translation patches, translating a steam game with thcrap seems possible.

[Drake]

Good to know. As I recall the standalone patches are more or less drag and drop; I think this should be focused on for getting any new players on board, because like I said god knows people not already invested in the series aren't going to want to set up thcrap in full.

Might also be a good idea to go over the translation again, as a personal note.

[GMOFucker: Makin' GMOs To Fuck 'Em]

hoping for cheevos and trading cards because i'm a tool

[Lebon14]

Credit to RomantiqueTp; HSiFS's page is already up on Steam:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/745880/__Hidden_Star_in_Four_Seasons/