Visual Novels; their place in the gaming world?

[FC Groningen]

Well technically not in real life.

I don't know about you but every friend I've had and every girl that I've dated has had some problems in their lives. First when you get to know people you don't see them. No one wants to share their problems with just anybody. But after you get to know them better you start to see that their lives aren't perfect either. Maybe they have problems with their family, other friends, relatives, school or work. And it's perfectly normal.

Assuming you're a guy, how many girls did you date? How many of those required you to deal with similar problems from the past? I'm well aware that a lot of games and series introduce some sort of problem, but the reason I mentioned it here is because most of the times it feels sort of "forced".

Issues with families are something that I see quite often.

--> Common route. Bright sun, clear sky. Decent girl with some typical Japanese character traits in your average daily life setting (high school or something).

--> "x" route. Dark past, angst, drama etc introduced. Standard development of a lot of VN's.

I don't know, this is something that I quite like. It's the contrast between more serious stuff and lighthearted stuff. First you see that everything seems pretty normal. All is good. But after a while you realize that not everything is well. Then stuff happens and ultimately issue gets resolved in a good way or a bad way.

Teenagers in high school; completely different story. Especially if it's all out of self pity and indeed can be solved by a firm emotional speech of the protagonist.

What VNs have you read where the character was in self pity? Those that I have read had nothing of sorts in them. Maybe I'm just lucky with what I pick up. High school setting is just one of many. It would be dumb to say that all VNs focus on that. And even then, teenagers have problems too and depending on what kind of setting the VN actually has, the problems might be pretty serious.

And hey, this has barely nothing to do with the VNs as a medium anymore. That's more like complaining about the story itself. VNs are a medium which can have many different kinds of stories in them.

First of all, sorry; not too familiar with messing around with the lay out here yet.

- OF course. Everyone has his/her problems and perhaps things they rather not talk about, but usually the characters in VN's take it to a whole new level. My best examples here are Rin and Hanako in Katawa. Especially Rin eventually just needed some words of encouragement, a hug and to "get her some". Before that it's all "I'm not normal, no one understands me".

As I said, it's also my preferences; In real life I consider such people huge pains as well (I've known 1 or 2 examples). I consider myself tolerant and patient, but eventually that wears off if you just won't help yourself or let others help you.

My problem isn't mainly with the contrast. My main problem is that I see it way too often in VN's. Of course, I can't help but think that teenagers that live in decent welfare and good health are one of the most priviliged groups out there.

True. As I said, I have no problems with VN's as a medium. In fact, I love story driven games like the Walking Dead, The Stick of Truth, Conker's Bad Fur Day and even Heavy Rain despite it's flaws. My problem is that they're just too "Japanese" for my taste. (Again, I loved Grisaia, for it's humor mostly)

edit: I deleted quite a few of them already and I can't remember a lot of titles, but these ones I've read for sure:
- Katawa
- Grisaia
- Clannad
- G-Senjou
- Little Busters

 

[Kaimax]

Almost all of those covers are of (teenage?) girls in skimpy school uniforms. They also all have "ero" ratings placed right along with writing and visuals. I'm not against VNs in concept, I actually think new types of story telling are very interesting, but this list doesn't make me want to rush out and jump into the medium.

Forgive me for the several days late post but it took me a while to find the folder with these titles in them. So since girls aren't your thing, here's a list of English translated VNs that might be more to your liking.

-Absolute Obedience
-Silver Chaos
-Starry ☆ Sky ~in Spring~
-Togainu no Chi
-Tokimeki Memorial Girl?s Side
-Yo-Jin-Bo The Bodyguards

A big misconception that seems to be popping up in this thread is that VNs are for hikkikomori/NEET men. There's plenty out there for everybody.

I Lol'd XD.
OOT: My sister really likes Starry Sky and Tokimeki Memorial GS, heck she even played Amnesia (Not the horror game for those who don't know) and Da Capo Girl's Symphony.
------------------------------
OT: Yeah, people who never delved deep enough to be familiar with VNs mostly don't know what they're talking about. I don't really like talking about "gender equality", but VNs IMHO is the only entertainment medium that has good amount of it or at least waaaay ahead of the modern mainstream gaming industry. Even when there are plenty of VNs catering to the male demographic, there are also a good amount of VNs that caters exclusively to the female demographic, this is why you don't see the same kind of debacle in Japan's VN industry. I never read any news about female VN players rejecting a release of male catered VN or even decrying it as "sexist" as they too have the same kind of VNs made to cater to the females.
Heck...the Fujoshi Power IMHO is starting to be stronger than the average male otaku goers.

 

[VanQ]

Almost all of those covers are of (teenage?) girls in skimpy school uniforms. They also all have "ero" ratings placed right along with writing and visuals. I'm not against VNs in concept, I actually think new types of story telling are very interesting, but this list doesn't make me want to rush out and jump into the medium.

Forgive me for the several days late post but it took me a while to find the folder with these titles in them. So since girls aren't your thing, here's a list of English translated VNs that might be more to your liking.

-Absolute Obedience
-Silver Chaos
-Starry ☆ Sky ~in Spring~
-Togainu no Chi
-Tokimeki Memorial Girl?s Side
-Yo-Jin-Bo The Bodyguards

A big misconception that seems to be popping up in this thread is that VNs are for hikkikomori/NEET men. There's plenty out there for everybody.

I Lol'd XD.
OOT: My sister really likes Starry Sky and Tokimeki Memorial GS, heck she even played Amnesia (Not the horror game for those who don't know) and Da Capo Girl's Symphony.
------------------------------
OT: Yeah, people who never delved deep enough to be familiar with VNs mostly don't know what they're talking about. I don't really like talking about "gender equality", but VNs IMHO is the only entertainment medium that has good amount of it or at least waaaay ahead of the modern mainstream gaming industry. Even when there are plenty of VNs catering to the male demographic, there are also a good amount of VNs that caters exclusively to the female demographic, this is why you don't see the same kind of debacle in Japan's VN industry. I never read any news about female VN players rejecting a release of male catered VN or even decrying it as "sexist" as they too have the same kind of VNs made to cater to the females.
Heck...the Fujoshi Power IMHO is starting to be stronger than the average male otaku goers.

The especially interesting thing to note is that there are several VN and game companies run by women for women in Japan. Who knows what women want in their games/smut more than women? No one. They didn't pressure pre-existing companies that were already catering to an audience to cater to them too. And the result? Japan otaku and fujoshi both get to have their cake and eat it too. Who'da'thunk'it? Hell, one such company, Gust, that makes the Atelier games even has a surprisingly large male portion to their fanbase because their Atelier games are just that interesting.

 

[maninahat]

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.

It's not that unusual, that fans of a medium or genre get used to a technical limitation, and identify it as a self-defining quirk.

For example turn based games exist because they were the first adaptations of tabletop games, that needed pen and paper to manually calculate all combat results. Objectively speaking, real time simulations are more efficient at the immersion that was the goal all along. But by the time we had enough computing capacity, gamers started to self-identify as people who care about levelling and inventories and numerical skills, even where they make no realistic sense.

For that matter, you might say that manga are more efficient than VNs, but manga itself isn't as efficient as anime, if you want to reduce everything to amounts of information broadcasted, and novels are not as efficient as movies.

You raise a good point, but individual genres and mediums usually have a reason to stick at a threshold of "efficiency". Turn based games still endure in spite of the existence of real time strategies because some (myself included) like having the luxury of taking the time to decide on your move, without there being a pressure to act fast. A book may not tell a story as quickly as a film, but it can do it in a heck of a lot more detail. A VN though? Apart from the fact that there isn't a "comic book style VN" genre to go with the traditional one (like turn based vs real time strategy), I'm struggling to see the technical or story telling advantage of the "flat angle, blurry background, static sprite" look. Well, no advantage besides...

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

Yes, that's part of the reason too. Telling VN devs that they should experiment with making every scene a CG, is a bit like telling mangaka that they should draw enough to make every scene animated. And this point we are talking about orders of magnitudes of different production values, if you still want to tell the same amounts of narrative.

If VNs would be limited to shorter, more comics-like scenes, with quicker and more intense storytelling, to stay affordable, then stories like Ever17, Fate/Stay Night, or Higurashi couldn't have been told.

It is very easy for me to sit here and say that VNs would be better if only they spent more money on them, but that said, I don't believe that every VN developer is working on a shoestring budget. They are a massive market in Japan, and established, successful studios probably could afford to be a bit more extravagant, or at least experiment more.[/quote]

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

Atelier is 100% aimed at male gamers in Japan, actually. The same crowd which would watch K-On would play Atelier.

 

[Entitled]

You raise a good point, but individual genres and mediums usually have a reason to stick at a threshold of "efficiency". Turn based games still endure in spite of the existence of real time strategies because some (myself included) like having the luxury of taking the time to decide on your move, without there being a pressure to act fast.

There might have been some demand for slow paced games in general, but if history has gone a bit differently, with real time games ivented first, then turn based mechanics wouldn't have made intuitive sense, destined to be invented. Other non-action-based forms would have been invented instead and filled the demand.

The very fact that a VN fandom exists, proves that the same is happening here.

There might not have been a deep inherent demand for the sprite+bacground+text format, but there was some general deamnd for stories with the narrative detail of novels (that comics can't provide, when a chapter with barely any sentences in it takes a month to produce), but with some visuals and music.

That this particular format got stuck, is just legacy, but not a more unnatural one than the support for turn based systems in particular instead of just slow paces in general.

It is very easy for me to sit here and say that VNs would be better if only they spent more money on them, but that said, I don't believe that every VN developer is working on a shoestring budget. They are a massive market in Japan, and established, successful studios probably could afford to be a bit more extravagant, or at least experiment more.

The law of supply and demand suggests that publishers in general are not pocketing excessive amounts of profits. If they would be, there would be a gold rush from more creators trying to make a profit.

A medium that is cheap to produce and highly demanded, leads to a wide scene with many artists. The book publishing industry has about as much revenues as movie publsihing: That manifests itself in the form of there being more books than movies, not by writers being that much richer.

As far as fans are concerned, a low production costs medium means more niches filled with a bigger diversity of artists. A Hollywood movie has to appeal to pretty much everyone on the northern hemisphere. An anime series only has to have tens of thousands of viewers, so it can be about some obscure hobby, pet issue, fetish, art experiment, or sense of humor that very few people share.


Likewise, even if the biggest VN publishers could afford to escalate with CGs, they would just separate themselves from the mainstream, and form a hard-to-enter "AAA VN" industry, where every new work despearely needs to sell hundreds of thousands of units, and there is no chance of some guy with an idea just entering the industry with his work.

 

[VanQ]

Atelier is 100% aimed at male gamers in Japan, actually. The same crowd which would watch K-On would play Atelier.

Nope. I need to try and dig up the old Famitsu article where they spoke to the lead designer who said the game was aimed at women, and the demographic chart that had women aged 18-25 as the largest portion of players of the game. Not to mention that almost all the "routes" in the game are of the female leads ending up with some of the hunky, man-meat tier men that co-star along the female characters who run the show. It just so happens that about 30% of the playerbase is male.

Of course, this is in Japan. I don't think many female gamers outside of Japan even know that Atelier exists. Oh and as a side note, K-On! is exceptionally popular with women in Japan, about as popular as it is with men. I doubt you'll find a single girl between the ages of 18-30 that doesn't know what K-On! is.

The more you know.

 

[Dansen]

I only bothered "playing" one, Katawa-Shojo. Judging by how people raved about it on this site you would think it was the greatest thing ever that would change how you see things. As a fan project organized over the internet its impressive, as a piece of entertainment its meh. I sat through 2 and a half arcs before getting bored. The routes felt rather formulaic. I was honestly hoping the MC could die from having sex, alas It didnt happen. I dunno, it kinda felt like it trivialized disabilities unintentionally. Im sure there are good ones out there but I also feel like there s a lot of pandering going around in the medium as well as anime.

No, VNs are not games, its really just a story telling format. Its up to the developer if they want to incorporate it into a game.

 

[VanQ]

one such company, Gust, that makes the Atelier games even has a surprisingly large male portion to their fanbase because their Atelier games are just that interesting.

That, and the games are friggin adorable, also, look at their next game:

It's pretty, has colours, it looks better than the last big budget games I played for the ps3.

I threw money hard enough at the preorder to cause damage.

Speaking of Shallie, do we know if the English release will have the Japanese audio tracks? Or am I gonna have to import it like I did with Ayesha?

 

[NPC009]

Of course, this is in Japan. I don't think many female gamers outside of Japan even know that Atelier exists. Oh and as a side note, K-On! is exceptionally popular with women in Japan, about as popular as it is with men. I doubt you'll find a single girl between the ages of 18-30 that doesn't know what K-On! is.

The more you know.

It's more like many gamers don't even know Atelier exists

About half of the Atelier players I know is female and we're all like 'OMG, look at Ayesha's adorable dress!' No seriously, we are, most of the heroines wear super cute clothes. And after we're done squeeing we develop super powerful bombs to throw at dragons, ancient sea monsters or whatever is trying to fuck up the world.

Good stuff.

BTW, wasn't K-On! on the Japanese Disney channel for a while?

 

[SquallTheBlade]

I'm struggling to see the technical or story telling advantage of the "flat angle, blurry background, static sprite" look.

For me it's the music. VN combines the best way to tell a story(written text) and the best way to set up a mood/atmosphere(music).

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

Atelier is 100% aimed at male gamers in Japan, actually. The same crowd which would watch K-On would play Atelier.

Nope. I need to try and dig up the old Famitsu article where they spoke to the lead designer who said the game was aimed at women, and the demographic chart that had women aged 18-25 as the largest portion of players of the game. Not to mention that almost all the "routes" in the game are of the female leads ending up with some of the hunky, man-meat tier men that co-star along the female characters who run the show. It just so happens that about 30% of the playerbase is male.

Of course, this is in Japan. I don't think many female gamers outside of Japan even know that Atelier exists. Oh and as a side note, K-On! is exceptionally popular with women in Japan, about as popular as it is with men. I doubt you'll find a single girl between the ages of 18-30 that doesn't know what K-On! is.

The more you know.

This is not an otomege. Those are ones like Hakuoki, they don't focus nearly as much on the cuteness of the female PCs as the Atelier games do.


Now, I didn't say women didn't play them. The games are awesome and have enough varied themes that can appeal to everyone. I'm just saying that the games are still primarily a moe-centric experience aimed at making the female chars look cute in a way that is found appealing more so by the male than the female audiences. The existence of the male chars doesn't change this since the male chars are all cool chars that male players find awesome to use in battle. That the male char is not the protagonist often doesn't matter, similarly to how it doesn't matter in anime such as K-on that there's no male main char for the male audience to identify with. That kind of stupid main char is not really needed anyways.

Now of course K-on has a big fanbase too. It was a huge thing and it made people go buy guitars like Yui's and whatnot. Of course everyone would know of it. I'm just saying that in the end it's the male audience who seems to be targeted the most by a significant margin here.


It's not like I'm saying this as a negative thing of the game. It's just what it is. It's pretty democratic in that "everyone gets fanservice" but the ratio is still skewed .

 

[NPC009]

It's not as if the original demographic the producers/developers had in mind always lines up exactly with the audience that ends up watching/playing it. Friendship is Magic being a really obvious western example, but you see it in Japan, as well. Shonen Jump started out as a anthology for boys but its female readership has been growing since the days of Prince of Tennis and Saint Seiya. It's about 50/50 right now. It's still considered a boys magazine, but everyone acknowledge the female readers exist and editors seem to have a fairly good idea of how to keep them interested.

I think we're seeing something similar happen with many JRPGs. For instance, in the old days games were likely to have to bathing scenes. One depicted the men and was often considered more of a joke, while the women's bath scene was something the player had to work for. (Good example would be Lunar: The Silver Star Story.) Now you often get the bathing scenes at the same time. Some developers go even further. The men's side in that special Tales of Xillia 2 ending was pretty, eh, steamy. Meanwhile, the most you saw of the female characters was some bare shoulders. I swear Milla wore more fabric in that ending than she did during the actual game.

So yeah, Atelier, too, is being played by a wider audience and Gust knows this. The series was never super moe or fanservicy to begin with, anyway.

 

[Truth Cake]

Seems this thread got a little off-topic, but I'll humor this irrelevant discussion, if only because it's about a game series that I really like. =3

The existence of the male chars doesn't change this since the male chars are all cool chars that male players find awesome to use in battle.

So... because there's male characters in the cast that can be used in battle... and because there's cute female characters in that same game... means the game is made for males?

Seems legit to me. =P

Can't pretty much that same argument be used on Hakuoki as well? Males fight and do all the heroic things and be cool even though there's a female main character who has been described by several of aforementioned males to be 'cute', so it must be aimed at males, right? Don't mistake my rhetoric for dislike of Hakuoki though, I'm a male and I loved Hakuoki both anime and VN (well alright, I liked the VN more).

Just because something focuses on how cute a female character in it is doesn't mean it's male-focused, though unlike NPC009, I'd argue that the Atelier games (at least the recent ones that I've played) are made with a relatively even audience in mind. In the ones I've played at least, there's usually an equal cast of female and male characters who are all equally capable (except Atelier Meruru, if I recall correctly females dominated the playable cast in that one by far but it's been a long time since I played it) and generally all receive a "What a cute/cool boy/girl, don't you agree audience?" (either adjective going with either gender depending on the character in question) moment at some point.