The Interview

firestorm717

1. Can  you tell the fans a little bit about Otome Eternal? How did it start > up? Whose idea was it.
1) Otome Eternal started out as an idea between me and Cattleya (cc’d on this e-mail). We were both interested in otome games, but seeing that no group had attempted to translate these games, we decided to create our own. Our projects are focused on Japanese dating sims where the player plays a female character pursuing romantic relationships with various male characters.

2. Do you have a forums? Or do you mostly communicate through the wiki
2) We communicate mostly through e-mail and occasionally post updates to a community on Livejournal.

3. Are you still teamed up with Roken Translations (and what happened to their website?)? Are you in any way associated with the Princess Maker 5 team on TLWiki?
3) I have not heard from them in awhile. Cattleya may have more information about their status and the Princess Maker 5 project.

4. It has been a very long time since the blog has been updated. Can you > provide a brief progress recap for the fans for both your games. What > problems had  you run into (programmer left team, etc.), how much more > translation is needed and what kind of staff are you looking to recruit > right now
4) Most of the staff are busy with school, so work is sporadic and dependent on the time constraints of the translators. We would be delighted to have help from translators, programmers, and experienced editors.

5. Why do you think there are so few Otome or BL games being fan translated? > What can we do to get more girls interested.
5) Few people know of otome and BL games, as they are difficult to obtain outside Japan and occupy a very small niche market. The games are mostly choose-your-own-adventure stories, which may put off gamers used to more mainstream action/RPG/adventure games, which feature more interaction. I believe few of these games are fan translated because the majority of project groups consist of fans of (boy x girl) ero games, which enjoy a larger market, and there is generally little overlap between their audience and the audience of BL/otome games. It is difficult to find people with the necessary programming skills, as reverse engineering/decompiling games requires specialized knowledge that is generally not taught in university.

6. Why should the fans play Princess Nightmare or Princess Maker 4 when they > are finished? What is so great about them.
6) I think I will let Cattleya answer this question, as she has played the games more extensively than I.

Thanks for the reply firestorm717. If Cattleya should respond to fill in some of the blanks, I will add any new material to this page.