Sakunyuusha's Policy On Purchasing Hentai
Well, I want to buy it to show my support, but I may not be able to:
Shin Ringetsu (the PC game) costs a whopping ¥9,429 or
$98. I'm sorry, but that's just
too much! $100? For just one game? Console games and PC games cost half that price in the United States. DS games cost one-quarter to one-third of that price!
That was for the Special Edition. The
regular edition of Shin Ringetsu is still too expensive at ¥7,329. The DVD for
Shin Ringetsu Episode 1 alone costs ¥7,140.
Something comes out on November 27 for ¥5,040 but I'm confused: it can't be the original Ringetsu because it features Suzune on the cover, right? Also ...
The original Ringetsu PC game is still up for grabs for a disgustingly-overpriced ¥9,240.
The game is over 4 years old! And still they want $100 for it. @_@
I'll put it this way: I'm next to broke. As in, I have less than $500 remaining in my name and I have no source of income at the present time. But I still believe in paying for the things that you like if you want the companies to make more of them! That's not the same thing as saying that people who don't purchase them shouldn't be allowed to enjoy them at all (i.e. a strict anti-piracy argument). Obviously I don't feel that way, and neither do any of you. But here is what I
do think:
dollars are like votes. When somebody doesn't vote for a good law, he still reaps the benefits of that law just as much as the person who did vote. But if he never votes ... and one day he wakes up and no longer recognizes the country he calls 'home' ... who does he have to blame but himself? He could have voted but he didn't. Or if he couldn't vote, that's understandable but it's also too damn bad.
Only the people who vote get to change the country. And only the people who pay for goods get to change the market.
I feel this way about hentai, about anime, about pretty much anything people buy. While I'm certainly free to enjoy anime fansubs, I can't complain if one day my favorite show stops being made because it was no longer profitable. While you're certainly free to use an R4 card with a Nintendo DS to play roms of ripped DS games, you enjoy
no privilege to complain if one day the companies quit making the games that you like because no one was buying them. And now we come to hentai. Oh, hentai! I can't complain about the eroge companies making more games like
Nanatsuiro Drops and
Kanon and fewer games like Ringetsu if I don't show my support with a purchase. I mean, I'm certainly free to voice my disdain on webforums and chatrooms, yes!
But it won't change anything, will it? That's what I mean when I say I "can't" complain or that you can't complain either. I'm not saying you lack the permission -- I'm saying your complaints are entirely devoid of any efficacy to exact change. Hentai companies will produce the games which turn the biggest profits, pure and simple. So if I want more of one style of game and less of another style of game, it falls to me to at least
make an effort to buy the games that I like.
Of course I can't afford to buy every game I want. Even if they cost $40 I couldn't afford to do that. ¬_¬ Only the richest of the rich could afford that sort of lifestyle. And to suggest that only the paying rich are entitled to enjoy hentai is laughably dumb, considering the poorer origins of most of hentai's most popular circles. But to suggest that I can't save up really hard for a one-time purchase of $100 would be a lie. It may take me a year or two to save up that much money, but I can still try. And I will try. Because Shin Ringetsu struck me as being
that good. I owe it to myself and I owe it to Selen to at least
try.