Visual Novels; their place in the gaming world?

[Mutant1988]

*Snip*

Sounds like you suffer from http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AllAnimeIsNaughtyTentacles? and dismiss a medium solely based on your own ignorance and preconceptions.

Corpse Party
Dangan Ronpa
Phoenix Wright
Katawa Shoujo - Which can be played with censored scenes, but is in fact incredibly tasteful and respectful in how it handles mature themes and the subject matter of living with disabilities.
Saya No Uta - Where the H element is more disturbing than titillating
Steins;Gate
Hatoful Boyfriend
Snatcher
Policenauts
Higurashi: When They Cry.

All visual novels. All more than just "sex" games.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VisualNovel
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Utsuge

Of the games that are "sex" games, there's also considerable diversity in what gender the protagonist is and the gender of the characters they aim to woo. Not many genres outside of VNs that are as diverse, even if the subject matter is raunchy and the works partly exploitive (In the same vein as exploitation movies pander to trends and niche appeals).

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RomanceGame

Just because most games available on Steam are garbage doesn't mean that the entire genre consist of nothing but garbage.

 

[Lilani]

-snip-

I think they very clearly have a "place" in games already, otherwise there wouldn't be so many of them and they wouldn't be so well-known. The fact that they exist is not preventing someone from making a more interactive "artsy" game. And obviously there are plenty of people who approve of the format given the fanbases they have. There's really no point in complaining about them, they're already here and here to stay.

 

[Atmos Duality]

The few I've seen slide heavily towards the "no-agency" end of the spectrum, so even if they are "games" I wouldn't consider them good "games" to begin with...
...Which doesn't mean they're bad works or useless (good writing is good writing), they're just not good games.

Besides, such restrictions on player agency greatly limits discussion of them as games anyway...so basically the only people that even care if Visual Novels are "games" or not are those getting hung up on meaningless technicalities.

 

[maninahat]

*Snip*

Sounds like you suffer from http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AllAnimeIsNaughtyTentacles? and dismiss a medium solely based on your own ignorance and preconceptions.

Corpse Party
Dangan Ronpa
Phoenix Wright
Katawa Shoujo - Which can be played with censored scenes, but is in fact incredibly tasteful and respectful in how it handles mature themes and the subject matter of living with disabilities.
Saya No Uta - Where the H element is more disturbing than titillating
Steins;Gate
Hatoful Boyfriend
Snatcher
Policenauts
Higurashi: When They Cry.

All visual novels. All more than just "sex" games.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VisualNovel
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Utsuge

Of the games that are "sex" games, there's also considerable diversity in what gender the protagonist is and the gender of the characters they aim to woo. Not many genres outside of VNs that are as diverse, even if the subject matter is raunchy and the works partly exploitive (In the same vein as exploitation movies pander to trends and niche appeals).

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RomanceGame

Just because most games available on Steam are garbage doesn't mean that the entire genre consist of nothing but garbage.

I expect some of those on your list do not meet what I described as the "standard format", though the two on your list I had played do. Even if the rest didn't, they still don't exactly disprove that there is a standard format, just that there are some exceptions...which I obviously already knew, or I wouldn't be going on about Christine Love.

Taking your example of Katawa Shoujo, I think I can fairly direct all my previously made criticisms at it. It has:
a) Dodgy writing (the quality is very sporadic, perhaps due to having so many different writers).
b) Inefficient picture based format that mostly consisting of the same pictures of school girls, eschewing the showing of more than one line of text on the screen at once.
c) Sex with said schoolgirls (whether you choose to see the images or not).
d) Infrequent player input that largely serves to determine which girl you are going to chance upon, and whether you will get a good or bad ending, even though the decisions themselves are utterly arbitrary and not logically connected to those goals.

 

[maninahat]

b) Inefficient picture based format that mostly consisting of the same pictures of school girls, eschewing the showing of more than one line of text on the screen at once.
d) Infrequent player input that largely serves to determine which girl you are going to chance upon, and whether you will get a good or bad ending, even though the decisions themselves are utterly arbitrary and not logically connected to those goals.

Next you're gonna tell me that you don't like the fact that you shoot guns in shooters. That's genre convention and does not affect the game in any way. There's no reason to make special CGs for each scene, unless something interesting is happening it's just 2 or more people talking in a room. And player input is the only way to have variation on the gameplay.

It's a bad convention that needn't exist. The reason to make special CGs for each scene is the same reason for why you should also have different back grounds or different angles; it gives you so, so much more range to tell a story. Look at how in a single page of a manga or a comic book [http://i4.mangareader.net/yokohama-kaidashi-kikou/132/yokohama-kaidashi-kikou-89259.jpg], even something as simple as a conversation between two people will involve the "camera" moving around the room from panel to panel, focusing on different things, capturing the people and the story from different angles. It does a lot to set a tone, emphasis or a dynamic without having to depend on what is being said by the characters. It's so rare to see a comic not use these techniques that it actually becomes an neat story telling trick when it does pop up. [http://4thletter.net/wp-content/uploads//thiefofthieves-01.jpg]

In VNs though, there is no effort to experiment with these options despite being a primarily visual medium. The only thing that ever changes is the expression on the face of a static standing body. Imagine a manga series doing the same thing for thirty or forty panels at a time. It would be agonizing to read. How it still is so pervasive in VNs, I don't know. Okay, well I do know, it is because VNs are made as cheaply and as quickly as possible, so anything that might push up the production cost is out of the question. What I really don't understand is how the fans have grown so accustomed to this standard, they think it is bizarre for others someone question it. Hell, you even said it yourself: "There's no reason to make special CGs for each scene, unless something interesting is happening it's just 2 or more people talking in a room." In a VN, two people talking in a room never looks interesting.

 

[Ragsnstitches]

VNs are VNs. They are their own thing and don't need to be tied to gaming (though I don't see the harm in it either, it's just a niche category if you do). They are "played" on systems mostly dedicated to gaming, but that's not saying much since most platforms are multimedia devices anyway.

I can see how many people see VNs as wank bank material for weirdos what with the torrents of meme worthy content pushing that idea being rampant on the internet since the late 90's or early 2000's. But as someone mentioned earlier, Sturgeons Law comes into effect here as much as any other medium.

That's about all I can say. I have no fondness towards the medium. I find them boring and often lazily made.

 

[SquallTheBlade]

]Look at how in a single page of a manga or a comic book[/url], even something as simple as a conversation between two people will involve the "camera" moving around the room from panel to panel, focusing on different things, capturing the people and the story from different angles. It does a lot to set a tone, emphasis or a dynamic without having to depend on what is being said by the characters. It's so rare to see a comic not use these techniques that it actually becomes an neat story telling trick when it does pop up. [http://4thletter.net/wp-content/uploads//thiefofthieves-01.jpg]

Good thing that VNs use music to set a tone, emphasis or a dynamic without having to depend on what is being said by the characters.

In VNs though, there is no effort to experiment with these options despite being a primarily visual medium.

But that's just wrong. The novel part is primary, not the visuals. If you were expecting good visuals you had very very wrong mindset. Though that doesn't mean that no VN tries to do stuff visually. Fate/Stay Night comes to mind as an example.

Hell, you even said it yourself: "There's no reason to make special CGs for each scene, unless something interesting is happening it's just 2 or more people talking in a room." In a VN, two people talking in a room never looks interesting.

There are many reasons why two people talking in a room can be interesting. The dialogue and the interactions between those characters for example.

 

[maninahat]

]Look at how in a single page of a manga or a comic book[/url], even something as simple as a conversation between two people will involve the "camera" moving around the room from panel to panel, focusing on different things, capturing the people and the story from different angles. It does a lot to set a tone, emphasis or a dynamic without having to depend on what is being said by the characters. It's so rare to see a comic not use these techniques that it actually becomes an neat story telling trick when it does pop up. [http://4thletter.net/wp-content/uploads//thiefofthieves-01.jpg]

Good thing that VNs use music to set a tone, emphasis or a dynamic without having to depend on what is being said by the characters.

In VNs though, there is no effort to experiment with these options despite being a primarily visual medium.

But that's just wrong. The novel part is primary, not the visuals. If you were expecting good visuals you had very very wrong mindset. Though that doesn't mean that no VN tries to do stuff visually. Fate/Stay Night comes to mind as an example.

Hell, you even said it yourself: "There's no reason to make special CGs for each scene, unless something interesting is happening it's just 2 or more people talking in a room." In a VN, two people talking in a room never looks interesting.

There are many reasons why two people talking in a room can be interesting. The dialogue and the interactions between those characters for example.

If it is the novel part that is the primary part (in spite of the name "visual novel"), then it is still a bad format. The word part of a visual novel is often reduced to one/two sentence captions that appear on the screen one at a time. You can set an automated scroller to move from one line to the next, but if you have a fast enough reading speed, the autoscrollers are too slow and you have to move to the next line with a mouse click or space bar. That is a terrible way to have to read a novel.

 

[SquallTheBlade]

If it is the novel part that is the primary part (in spite of the name "visual novel"), then it is still a bad format. The word part of a visual novel is often reduced to one/two sentence captions that appear on the screen one at a time.

Wrong again.

You can set an automated scroller to move from one line to the next, but if you have a fast enough reading speed, the autoscrollers are too slow and you have to move to the next line with a mouse click or space bar. That is a terrible way to have to read a novel.

Just as terrible as flipping a page in a book. Why is that okay but not pressing enter/space/mouse?

 

[NPC009]

In VNs though, there is no effort to experiment with these options despite being a primarily visual medium. The only thing that ever changes is the expression on the face of a static standing body. Imagine a manga series doing the same thing for thirty or forty panels at a time. It would be agonizing to read. How it still is so pervasive in VNs, I don't know. Okay, well I do know, it is because VNs are made as cheaply and as quickly as possible, so anything that might push up the production cost is out of the question. What I really don't understand is how the fans have grown so accustomed to this standard, they think it is bizarre for others someone question it. Hell, you even said it yourself: "There's no reason to make special CGs for each scene, unless something interesting is happening it's just 2 or more people talking in a room." In a VN, two people talking in a room never looks interesting.

You do know that many VNs are made with shoestring budgets by teams as small as one person? It's kinda like complaining indie developers never bother to innovate because so many of them make sidescrolling games. Doesn't mean that part of the industry is rotten. It's just that many have to pick their battles.

Besides, does deviating from the standard make all that much sense when it doesn't add anything to the game? The interface in Christina Love's games suit the setting and add something to the game, as do the fast-paced court battles in Danganronpa or even the little RPG battles in Hatoful Boyfriend. If the developer can come up with something like that, great! But if the twist is just there as a stupid gimmick, I'd prefer they didn't bother.

 

[Mutant1988]

If the developer can come up with something like that, great! But if the twist is just there as a stupid gimmick, I'd prefer they didn't bother.

Navigating the school in Corpse Party felt a bit like this. Like they put in a extremely simplistic exploration and puzzle game to make it more of a "game". I felt it detracted more than it added, especially during a certain part where

Spoiler

you have to exploit the fact that movement followed a grid system to bait a ghost to go to a specific grid square so that you could go around it's square and past it.

That sequence in particular just took me out of the experience completely. The fact that death scenes are unskippable (And that one was rather long) certainly didn't help. But overall, it's mostly just that the "game" part wasn't quite able to live up to the incredibly well written and acted story and I would assume it's because they just didn't have the budget to make it any other way or felt that it served a stylistic purpose (Which it does to a certain degree).

That said, there were also instances in the game where the "game" part of it was very well used.

Corpse Party is terrifying and incredibly disturbing. It might not look it, but it is.

 

[NPC009]

I liked the exploring in Corpse Party. It worked well, because they bothered to add these disturbing details you won't be able to see if they'd used regular background still. The ghost part(s), though? Yeah, that was bullshit. The potentially long game over or bad end (I'd have to do it all over again!) scared me more than the actual ghost.

 

[maninahat]

If it is the novel part that is the primary part (in spite of the name "visual novel"), then it is still a bad format. The word part of a visual novel is often reduced to one/two sentence captions that appear on the screen one at a time.

Wrong again.

Spoiler

You can set an automated scroller to move from one line to the next, but if you have a fast enough reading speed, the autoscrollers are too slow and you have to move to the next line with a mouse click or space bar. That is a terrible way to have to read a novel.

Just as terrible as flipping a page in a book. Why is that okay but not pressing enter/space/mouse?

No, a novel usually has more than 25 words to a page, so you don't have to turn a page every 1.5 seconds. If most books had only a sentence per page, and you had to turn a book page every 1.5 seconds, that would be similarly annoying.

Also, the two game screens you provided don't disprove my point. The exceptions to a trend do not disprove the existence of that trend, and I had already acknowledged repeatedly that there are exceptions. This is what qualifiers like "often" or "most" are for.

 

[maninahat]

snip

You do know that many VNs are made with shoestring budgets by teams as small as one person? It's kinda like complaining indie developers never bother to innovate because so many of them make sidescrolling games. Doesn't mean that part of the industry is rotten. It's just that many have to pick their battles.

Indie developers are quite well known on their innovation in spite of their financial and technical limitations. That is often their biggest selling point. I know that for micro VN studios, it takes a hell of a lot of effort on their part to get something finished, but to be perfectly ruthless about it, if all they can manage is something staid and generic, then maybe they should adjust their ambition accordingly? Perhaps they should make shorter but more visually diverse games? Perhaps they could switch to a simpler art style that frees them up to devote more time to more story paths?

Besides, does deviating from the standard make all that much sense when it doesn't add anything to the game?

If the standard format is shitty and inefficient then yes, I'd welcome any attempt to deviate from it. Any deviation would almost certainly add something to a game format that has little currently going for it.

 

[Mutant1988]

Have you played these games? Do you know what the intended audience is for each individual game?

Is it at all possible that what little you know is not everything there is to know?

Because it seems to me that you obsess over only those works that are marketed towards a hormone addled teenage audience. I mean, wow, that's a market!?

Of course there's games that pander to a specific audience. Same way as all other video games, movies, books, comics, manga etc.

You have gotten a lot of good recommendations of VNs that deviate from what you call the "norm". I suggest you go find a way to play them and get an educated opinion.

Let me cite Sturgeons Law - 90% of everything is crap.

But you know what his point was with that? That you should not use the 90% that is crap to dismiss the 10% that isn't.

 

[SquallTheBlade]

No, a novel usually has more than 25 words to a page, so you don't have to turn a page every 1.5 seconds. If most books had only a sentence per page, and you had to turn a book page every 1.5 seconds, that would be similarly annoying.

I don't know about you but pressing a button slightly more often isn't as annoying as flipping a page. But that's more of a personal opinion. There is nothing wrong with either one. They are just different methods of achieving the same thing and essentially meaningless. You wouldn't give higher value to something that has more words per page now would you?

Also, the two game screens you provided don't disprove my point. The exceptions to a trend do not disprove the existence of that trend, and I had already acknowledged repeatedly that there are exceptions. This is what qualifiers like "often" or "most" are for.

I can do this all day

 

[Lono Shrugged]

It's a totally different genre in my opinion. It's closer to reading a kindle or comic book app than a game.

Also, they are terrible. So terrible...

 

[NPC009]

Besides, does deviating from the standard make all that much sense when it doesn't add anything to the game?

If the standard format is shitty and inefficient then yes, I'd welcome any attempt to deviate from it. Any deviation would almost certainly add something to a game format that has little currently going for it.

But why do they need to be more like games?

I look at it this way: it's not wrong for visual novels to not be a game. Some people like 'em that way, others don't. It's not as if one medium is inherently superior to the other, they just have different strengths. And it totally okay to like some mediums a bit more than others. Some people like reading, some don't. Some love movies, others like games better.

Now, if you'd like the play from hybrids (like, part VN, part adventure game), I'm sure we could recommend you some titles. Nearly all hybrids that were published in English were well recieved by both press and players alike. Except for Lux-Pain, thanks to a painfully awkward translation. But stay away from that and you're probably good

 

[Kaimax]

Honestly, I want to question the ones saying it's Terrible/Bad/Trash/etc some questions.
How many have you played? What did you play?

 

[maninahat]

Besides, does deviating from the standard make all that much sense when it doesn't add anything to the game?

If the standard format is shitty and inefficient then yes, I'd welcome any attempt to deviate from it. Any deviation would almost certainly add something to a game format that has little currently going for it.

But why do they need to be more like games?

I look at it this way: it's not wrong for visual novels to not be a game. Some people like 'em that way, others don't. It's not as if one medium is inherently superior to the other, they just have different strengths. And it totally okay to like some mediums a bit more than others. Some people like reading, some don't. Some love movies, others like games better.

Now, if you'd like the play from hybrids (like, part VN, part adventure game), I'm sure we could recommend you some titles. Nearly all hybrids that were published in English were well recieved by both press and players alike. Except for Lux-Pain, thanks to a painfully awkward translation. But stay away from that and you're probably good

It doesn't necessarily have to be more gamey. Its more that the few moments of actual player interaction (the very occasional choices) feel arbitrary, yet contrived. They don't make much sense within the narrative. These game don't actually ask you if you want to go to pick up woman a) over woman b), they ask you if you want to go to place a) over place b), with the tacit understanding that by picking a seemingly random location, you will bump into one of these women. I feel that the games that do this might as well not even bother with the choice mechanic. If you are going to have it, present a meaningful choice.

That all said, I do tend to like the gamier ones. Or at least the ones that give me more regular and more meaningful influence over the story.