Visual Novels; their place in the gaming world?

[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.