The Perils of Editing Nukige…

Whenever I tell people that I work with porn for a living (and an ero scene in and of itself is porn), they always think that it’s the coolest job ever. And to be honest, it’s pretty nice. I set my own hours, work from wherever I want, and generally speaking, it’s a lot of fun. There is, however, a dark side to it…

See, we know a lot of you guys and gals buy our games for the stories, the characters, the artwork, and so on, but we also know some of you buy them because you’re filthy perverts. And hey, that’s cool. It’s what we’re here for, and we’re happy to provide you with all kinds of wank fodder (which you will, of course, buy direct from us and not pirate), but how a player approaches a sex romp and how the staff approach a sex romp is completely different.For the player, it’s perfectly acceptable and easy to stick the game on, speed click through the story, and then get out the lotion and the tissues before hitting auto mode and enjoying the action onscreen. When it’s done, he can hit save and go do something else and visit the game again when the mood takes him. For us, however, it’s not so simple. And the truth is, nukige burnout is real.

See, we’ve talked about deadlines before on here, and from a production side, time is always a luxury. Because scripting dates, marketing plans, and so on are set ages in advance, it means that there’s a real push to get everything done on time or to make up lost time elsewhere (e.g. if a translator’s late, I need to work some long-ass days to still make my deadline). And this often means that we’re cramming a lot of sexytime into not very much real time.As an example: I’m working on a chapter of Game M today (edit: or at least I was when I first wrote this a month ago). Of the 19 scripts submitted, six are ero scenes, and each ero scene is about as long as three or four plot scenes combined (the plot scenes are admittedly quite short). While the player may get through one or two sex scenes and then come back in a few days, I’m going through these six ero scenes in the span of about four hours when today, I’m not so much in the sexytime mood. For our translators, whom I guarantee spend FAR more time on each script than I do, it’s a compounded issue, especially when some of our upcoming releases have Overdrive long sexytime (Game W is particularly guilty of this).

Thankfully, some of these scenes are pretty fun, and show the insane, over the top WTFery that made hentai famous in the 90’s, but a lot of it is straightforward vanilla wham bam thank you ma’am. And doing that in quantity? Well…it can be a bit… draining. And soul sucking. And kinda not sexy for us after a while. On the upside, not stopping to…*ahem*…enjoy the material does mean it’s that much easier to focus on getting the work done and making deadline, but it also makes what should be a lot of fun feel like a bit of a slog – especially when you’re stuck doing two (for the translators) or four (in my case) of these games in a row and the content takes a turn into territory that’s antithetical to your personal kinks and turn-ons.

On the upside, we’re all pros here and we refuse to do a second rate job on your porn. But please, spare a thought and some prostitute (or therapist) money for the men and women who must climb Mount Nukige on your behalf.

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31 Comments

  1. I would probably end up hitting CTRL without thinking if I were in your shoes.

  2. Thanks, this post made my day. 🙂 Be careful and don’t get sick from exhaustion!
    To myself: still, this guy’s job is awesome.

  3. Very admirable! Yes, I’ve always thought it must be really mind-numbing to translate ero scene after ero scene.

  4. I can see how editing/translating ero-scenes can be a real pain in the ass. ^^ That’s why I’m glad I’m not doing it, but at the same time grateful to those who do it for us. =) For what it’s worth. ^^

  5. just wondering what game are the scenes from?

  6. can anyone tell me what games those are

  7. lovely two games I have no interest in playing (not sure where 3 is from but probably won’t have an interest). I’m not a fan of Nukige. I do however respect that you are taking the time and effort to do what you do. I would get bored out of my mind if I were to translate a Nukige game. props to ya.

  8. Indeed, I feel your pain. While I’m not QC’ing a nukige myself, I’ve heard and can imagine how awkward it is for the people in question to translate/edit the moans and descriptions, and to go back and reread what is essentially their own words. I’m almost dreading how it’ll be like for me when I end up having to edit the h-scenes for the game I’m working on… Fight, editor-kun!

  9. i can only imagine, ero scenes can be annoying in themselves just having them appear a lot seeing as i read VN’s for the story. ero scenes are just a plus..you have my sympathy..

  10. Nice article.

    Though I don’t typically play nukige, Goshujin-sama Daisuki looks quite cute. I’ll be looking forward to it.

  11. Goshujin-sama Daisuki actually looks good and Queen and Princess also doesn’t look bad. Probably will be getting those eventually.

  12. Which is why we need more Utsuge’s.
    /shot

  13. Nukiges is for entertaning,history in these are so unveiled u.u

  14. dunno bout u guys but da reason i play VNs, 1/2 of it is for da story, 1/2 of it is for da ecchi/hentai…for me it doesn’t make any sense if u have a love story but none of those ‘IfYouKnowWhatImean’ scenes(though there are a few exceptions)…but still i know wat u guys mean, it is soul-draining…but there’s always the skip button…keep up da good work guys…GAMBATTE!!

    • “for me it doesn’t make any sense if u have a love story but none of those ‘IfYouKnowWhatImean’ scenes”

      You’ve never heard of Platonic love, have you? Or the concept of “no sex before marriage”?

  15. “The spirit is willing but the flesh is spongy and bruised!”

  16. anyone knows where i can get the queen and princess? i googled and it says it was released in english on 2009 but then was taken down.

  17. Ok thanks joker.

    • You mean “Ok thanks Joker and Kouryuu!”

      • If you look at the dates/times, you can clearly see that SHINN posted this message before Kouryuu posted his reply, thus he couldn’t really thank Kouryuu yet.

        But you knew that, right?

        • I didn’t look at the dates.

          But you knew that,right?

          • No, I didn’t know that. I assumed people were intelligent enough to use common sense.

            Sorry if that come off as offensive, but honestly now… It really is just common sense that SHINN made that post before Kouryuu commented…

          • Hmm well I assumed the one UNDER Kouryuu’s post was the newest.

            I’m pretty sure you made that sound insulting intentionally.

          • Well, fair enough… Just remember for next time that blog comments don’t work that way. There’s a reply system that can mess up chronology in a way.

            Come now. If I was really trying to insult you, I would’ve tried harder than that. That wasn’t meant offensively, as I mentioned already. No need to start an argument that can be summed up as “Did too — Did not!”

  18. So whatever happened to that ‘Circus RPG’?

  19. How do you start to be able to translation a eroge game? Like how to edited the words to other kinds of language? Some kind of program?

    • First, you need an excellent grasp of the language (your native language, if editing, or your native language and Japanese, if translating). After you legitimately get permission to work on the game and receive the scripts from the creators, it’s a LOT of typing in Word, or your text editor of choice.

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