Yeah, I think that was pointed out a page or two ago. This thread is now about tearing B173 M3 to shreds =P
I’d love to know what caused them to change their minds.
Was it realization that it was stupid? Someone sent them a message that convinced them to not block foreigners? The number of people using proxy servers revealed it wasn’t going to work? Pressure from eroge sellers who don’t ban Western IP’s?
Maybe it really was in response to a DoS, and now the DoS is gone? Hard to say …
I’d heard the reason for the blocking was because of hacking or something like that. Maybe they just wanted to modify the site without potential hacker interference
Hongfire right? It’s like one of ten different kinds I’ve heard, all of which appear to originate from either them or 4chan. They’re just guessing like the rest of us (and HF was arguing among themselves, if the ban was really happening).
The DoS against Getchu was a 2chan effort - they were bragging about it - for no reason other than to just screw up some polls or something like that. It’s from 2chan’s version of /b/, so it’s not supposed to make sense.
You’re not doing a very good job, then.
Not really because e-comic serializations are not popular either which is my point also. You’d think that as the print medium moves online and people start reading items online that such a nartual transition would occur due to technology. However it hasn’t. Instead, neither ecomics becoming popular nor trades (overall) have increased.
The movies you talk about aren’t the same as comics - they are superhero stories. That’s a difference. While most modern comics in the west revolve around superheros today, that has historically not been the case. Up until the Bronze Age, superhero comics were only a portion of the market.
Furthermore, if you look at what superhero movies are popular, you’ll note they cannot survive more than 3 movies before dying off, if that. Many don’t even survive one and not many of them were designed to be one-shot stories like Watchman.
However, even if I agree with what you’ve said there, then you have only proven my point because the medium in Japan has not advanced since its inception in the early 1980s beyond the standard fair of better graphics/music/sfx/more complex stories/characters that every medium has had to deal with, including comics (save for the vocal limitations). The only real revolutionary change in the industry (excluding individual titles) has been the addition of voice overs. I can tell you if people tried to put the Superman and Batman movies from the 1970s and 1980s today, they would flop because the industry has advanced and film is far more limited in what it can do that a game.
See there is. The format largely being used today, the visual novel format with a few choices at key moments, is not very innovative and this is my reason why it doesn’t compete well in the US; its gameplay is limited and its still set in a 1980s gameplay when you really needed games to be that simple. Compare that to say, Persona or Phinonex Wright which have those elements, but more and you can see they sell (Sakura Wars had some other issues when it was released so its a bad counter-example).
Things like better graphics and sound are improvements, but that is not enough. Look at comics from the 1930s, 1960s and today. You’ll see they have those hallmarks of improvements you talk about as “progress”, yet here they are failing, even e-comics. No, what long-term is needed is something revolutionary, not evolutionary and the eroge industry, and its related mainstream eechi titles, is stuck in a rut and I’m not the first to point as this has been pointed out by others on both sides of the ocean.
Finally, there is a bubble. If so many industries can grow and crash, that is the sign of a bubble.
Probably, but not nessesiarly. Look at the US anime bubble when it burst. It hit major companies, Geneon and ADV. Those were not 2nd-tier companies. There is no guarantee a bubble bursting will not destroy similar quality companies in the same percentages for eroge.
Well there are generational issues, and I’m not here to say there will be an end to eroge, but eroge as we know it, both it the amount and the dominate non-hybrid VN format, cannot survive indefinably.
Yes, everyone is just guessing. If you look at how slow things were when they got back up and how they went about only blocking foreign ips you can take some educated guesses though. It was almost certainly some kind of server-related issue and my guess based on how through they were at blocking every foreign ip entrance over several days before reallowing it almost immediatly means either they were changing the site to prioritize Japanese ips, adding a way to track and defend from said ips because of an attack, or both. It doesn’t make much sense to block a bunch of IPs systematically for several days and then reverse it once you’ve blocked all the backdoors you can unless you modifying code that specifically targets those ports of entry.
I don’t know what you’re saying with “… and the dominate non-hybrid VN format, cannot survive indefinably.” (assuming you mean indefinitely) - but if you’re saying that pure eroge are going to die and that eroges with gameplay are going to become more popular, well, no.
Cast your mind back to when gameplay eroges were the majority. What happened? Why?
Nothing is going to change.
The amount might settle down, but I don’t personally think so. Certainly not by much - if this was going to happen, it would have happened five years ago. Eroge is still going damn strong.
This honestly has nothing to do with the movie’s origin, but the content of the movies and the mentality of movie goers. It’s the general trend that movies shouldn’t be longer than a trilogy, because quality greatly degrades after that point. Using the same directors, screenplay writers, and actors in a film means they collectively burnout after the second film. It’s very rare for a third movie to be as good as the first.
Interest dies because the movies usually suck by the time it hits #3 and #4. We’ve got Rocky, Rambo, Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, Planet of the Apes, Batman, Superman, etc to prove that. What Hollywood does is reboot the series. That’s why we’ve got two different Batman movies with two different Jokers and a Star Trek in an alternate canon timeline. I read somewhere that Spiderman is rebooting for the next film. The interest never went away: Hollywood just screws it up so bad they have to start from a clean slate. But the reboots tend to be even bigger than the previous incarnation: because people expect what made the old timeline suck, to be fixed… well… at least for another three movies.
Exactly the point! Re’nai gamers in Japan don’t want major changes: they want it exactly the same. Again, this is no different from Dragon Quest. DQ9 ¬ñ after all these decades ¬ñ still plays like DQ3. They don’t want changes. Attempts to make changes, has resulted in disastrous sales. The industry hasn’t embraced all the new bells and whistle of modern gaming, because they tried it before and monumentally failed.
One of the best examples was Tokimeki Memorial 3. High budget, awesome voice acting, massive marketing campaign… and glaringly 3D. That’s what killed TM3: the whole 3D part. Not because the 3D was poorly done - for it’s time it was awesome - but because it was 3D. Do Not Want. TokiMemo Online was another failure, because it completely ignored the whole point of what made a ren’ai what it was. So when Tokimeki Memorial 4 was made, it was entirely 2D and abandoned any silly notions of “innovative” gaming. It was just Tokimeki Memorial 2 with less emphasis on bombs, updated graphics (very much so), and the latest models of moe (kuudere, tsundere, yandere). Success!!
Those who want eroge, are the same as those who want Castlevania, TokiMeki, Dragon Quest, and even Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter: the old school charm. Upgrading too much alienates those who support it - which in turn results in negative press that keeps new blood from trying it out.
That’s because their presentation is obsolete. For example the Adam West Batman was for a hippie generation. We aren’t hippies anymore. However the first and second Tim Burton Batman movies are not obsolete. These new Christopher Nolan Batman are the Tim Burton version, updated with new visuals and political messages. Those others are just raw sewage.
Eroge does not suffer from obsolete presentation, in the same manner that films do, because their stories are typically well written and the traditional presentation medium is what’s expected. That’s why we get so many “renewals” that get new blood interested, and increase the fanbase with each one (if the renewal is good of course).
The US anime bubble is a problem entirely of its own design, and not comparable: they did what the housing market did. They oversaturated the market, Internet piracy had reached an apex, translation quality had plummeted to abysmal levels, and the major companies were morons with their money. ADV and Geneon did not diversify their portfolios (it was purely anime; all eggs in one basket) and did not have any reserve capital for when sales dropped. Every dollar they earned, they spent and borrowed another two dollars from the bank – they had zero savings. The executives also flaunted their wealth, buying supercars and mansions, and charging it on the company. They spent millions on licenses that never got a single cent of return (live action Eva anyone).
They died because they were idiots. Darwin also applies to economics. The console market also suffered a burst in the same time frame, and the only one we lost was SEGA: and that was because SEGA was full of morons at the time. They killed the Saturn off too early, did what the SCEA is doing to third party developers (being dictator dicks), and didn’t give the Dreamcast enough dev time. Nonetheless, SEGA is still here… and have even joked once or twice, they might wanna give console manufacturing another shot in the future.
Eroge is more comparable with the tabletop RPG market, if you have to pick something that’s established in the West. That too has suffered a major crash ¬ñ largely because of the d20 oversaturation and devaluation of the US dollar ¬ñ but is still going on strong. The surviving companies are stronger than ever: WotC is reporting profit with D&D and MtG, White Wolf is a major $$$ maker for embracing the PDF movement (they own DriveThruRPG), AEG became independent, DreamPod 9 was reborn, Games Workshop is an 800 pound gorilla (they went digital), BattleTech and Shadowrun has resurrected, Palladium Books is active despite theft and lawsuits, and then you’ve got new comers like Privateer Press making awesome waves. Sure 70% of the market died (no more BESM or Mekton Z)… but the remaining 30% is the only part that deserved to live, or saved enough money to drill new wells when the old ones dried.
It’s still possible for a market crash to essentially destroy a market. The video game crash of the 80’s actually bears a lot of similarity to the current deluge of h-games being released. Lots and lots of product being put out, much of it of marginal quality.
I’m talking about the dominate format eroge uses, the visual novel without any other gameplay elements. Entry level into the market, even for the volitile market of eroge, increases every year and fans continually demand better quality. Stories can only get you so far in a computer medium where gameplay also matters.
Considering the record sales of DQ9 and the amount of changes it made, I think you’ve just proven my point. That the industry has become stale and needs change. It doesn’t need radical change such as making eroge into all FPS games, but it does need some different change. The reason fans are fine is not because they like the current format, but because companies are unwilling to advance that format. It’s the classic situation of overusing a tried and true method and being stuck in a rut because the alternative has some risk to it and has higher cost, even if it is wanted.
There are lots of examples in other industries, especially the energy industry, I can point to where people say they want one thing, but only have options for another and so continue to buy the latter making it look like they prefer the latter.
Again I point to about radical shifts. The move from 2D to 3D is a radical shift in the visual element, if not other elements. The move to online is also a radical shift.
The move from 2D to 3D for Dragon Quest was blasted when it did it first largely because of the way DW7 appeared to not “embrace” what 3D could offer. However when DQ8 came out, with far more 3D it was not only heralded in the west, but also in Japan. When DQ9 removed random battles and added a multiplayer option, there was some sceptically, but it only allowed them to set record sales in Japan and is on that way overseas. Both of these are elements had they not come along people would have said they didn’t want, but because they appeared, have embraced them.
They want the old-school charm, but they don’t want to feel like they are playing a game meant for the 1980s. They want all the enhancements and sophistication of a 20xx game with the charm and appeal of an old-school game and eroge is slowly beginning to show its incapabilitiy, in its present form, of doing that.
That’s because their presentation is obsolete. For example the Adam West Batman was for a hippie generation. We aren’t hippies anymore. However the first and second Tim Burton Batman movies are not obsolete. These new Christopher Nolan Batman are the Tim Burton version, updated with new visuals and political messages. Those others are just raw sewage.
Eroge does not suffer from obsolete presentation, in the same manner that films do, because their stories are typically well written and the traditional presentation medium is what’s expected. That’s why we get so many “renewals” that get new blood interested, and increase the fanbase with each one (if the renewal is good of course).
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No te presentation is obsolete in the dominate form. The pure visual novel is an archaic relic. We still use many outdated items IRL, such as an electricity grid built for the 1960s. Just because something is in use today doesn’t make it any less archaic. Now the VN as the backbone to a game with other gameplay elements is another story.
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Actually everything you said that applies to the anime market applies to eroge. Just being an eroge company doesn’t make you immune from the idiocy that caused the downfalls in the US anime industry. Most of those companies don’t have a diverse portfolio and many of them borrow more than they can afford. As for flaunting their wealth, well I cannot say because of the numerous companies out there, but I expect given human nature that its likely that it happens. They can also spend lots on games that never get released.
As for the comparison to the tabletop market, if you want to use that one then you’ve just gone full circle and proven my point. The table top market is slowly dying. They people who play and buy the games are getting older demographically. They’ve tried reinventing the wheel numerous times, but nothing has caught fire like TSR and White Wolf when they were first appearing were able to do.
Jinnai, your post has a couple mismatched quote tags in it …
Out of curiosity, where does the earlier claim that eroge is suffering a demographic issue coming from? I went looking, and asking a few contacts I had, but couldn’t find. Japan as a country is suffering a demographic aging problem, but that’s common knowledge. So is half of Europe, parts of the Middle East, and mainland China. That’s a social issue for not making enough babies; not eroge interest.
Wait. What? DQ9 made no radical changes: it’s DQ3 with new skin. The only new mechanical feature is being able to have a multiplayer party via wireless, and an endgame random dungeon generator. That’s honestly it. DQ9’s world engine, dungeon exploration methodology, party management system, weapon/armor/item implementation, etc are all the same as DQ3, except being prettier about it. The multiplayer and no random battles are not new either: those are features tested in the success of DQ Monsters. DQ9 is not new or innovative. It’s all the old DQ formula’s that worked, mixed into one cart.
Next off - putting aside the DQ insanity there - record breaking DQ9 sales in Japan is largely attributed to being on the DS, which has one of the largest install user bases in gaming history. That’s why Pokemon is one of the greatest selling games of all time, if it’s a DS release, but vastly more pathetic performing on the Wii. No one expects these sale numbers to be matched by DQ10 because it’s on the Wii. DQ11 on the other hand, is expected to be a potential record breaker, because it’s planned for 3DS compatibility.
That’s called being a monopoly: you don’t get much choice in picking power companies… or business operating systems… or space launch platforms… or aircraft carrier construction… etc. Which does not apply to DQ. Square-Enix isn’t the only RPG company, nor is DQ the only RPG. Furthermore, Square-Enix offers are multitude of other RPG titles, for that kind of thing. Final Fantasy in particular, keeps reinventing itself, and is their main product line for that stuff (says so on the investor documents). DQ has always been about traditional Japanese console RPG’ing… and it’s pretty obvious.
Source please. I do not recall DQ8 being blasted for being 3D, nor it being a marketing hurdle. In fact, Enix offered a poll about going 3D after DQ7, and the response was positive. That’s why DQ8 went 3D. They also tested that water with going 3D in the PlayStation remake for DQ5, as a “just in case” measure.
Source please. This is new to me: never saw an investor analysis that was worried on this matter. Once again, the 3D hurdle was removed after the DQ5 remake.
First off: DQ always sells insane in Japan. It’s Dragon Quest. Secondly, the increased Western interest for DQ9 is because of Nintendo’s mass marketing. Nothing more, nothing less. Third: the US sales are still under scrutiny. It has to exceed 500,000 first, before it’s considered “break even”, because of all the money spent on the marketing. It won’t be an investment success unless it hits at least 750,000 copies (they wanted a million, like everything else).
Yes. And that’s why Megaman 9 and Megaman 10 bombed. Or why there’s zero demand for 2D sprite shooters, beat’em ups, shooters, or side scrollers. Or that everyone who buys the retro games on WiiWare are over 30 years old. And why erogers in Japan are demanding that game engines be updated with new bling-bling! Or that there’s a demographic problem with younger aged buyers for eroge in Japan (taking the 18+ minimum into account).
Oh wait… none of that is true!!
The aging of an electrical power grid has as much in common with eroge, as the space shuttle does with the flavor of a banana. Besides: the shape of the wheel is prehistory, the application of projectile weaponry hasn’t changed since the late 1800’s introduction of rifling, Sun Tzu theories on warfare still apply, sheet music hasn’t seen a change in centuries, and the shark is still badass even after the dinosaurs are gone. So yea. It happens.
Wrong. The eroge market is sustainable because it has a cheap overhead. I can create and distribute a profession looking eroge for less than $50,000 ¬ñ I am actually doing it myself. It may even have full voice acting, if I can negotiate a certain sound engineer aboard. I cannot license and distribute a professional looking anime at $50,000 ¬ñ even if I hired an adobe flash technician to sequence the drawings in his garage (the software and hardware would cost $10,000 alone; and that’s at wholesale). This is why the eroge market is so oversaturated, has been for years, and can regenerate so fast. Making an eroge is cheap, compared to anime or console game production. It costs more than $50,000 to secure permission to make a game on the DS from Nintendo. :roll:
Let me stress that I’m not saying that all the eroge out there only cost $50,000 to make and distribute: obviously it does not. However I am stressing that it doesn’t have to cost one million dollars to make one… it doesn’t take $500,000 to make one. They can be made on the cheap, and are made on the cheap. That is a reality. I cannot make a professional DS game for only $50,000 - end of story. I simply cannot. The entry fee is more than that already.
Please. If I go to seven different cities in the next six months, and take pictures of the weekend RPG attendants at an average RPG store in each one (which I can, since my job traveling allows it), do you think those photos will show a lack of teens? Because it won’t, and you know it. Every city I’ve been to ¬ñ East Coast or West Coast - has a large demographic of youngsters playing RPG’s. There times when they are - gasp - all under 35 (not counting the store owner). I know because I go to them all the time, play in and run campaigns, on both sides of the ocean. I’ve been on waiting lists to join an RPG campaign. That’s how many players want to get in.
The tabletop market is not dying. There are certain investors complaining about a lack of profitability, but that is not the same as dying because of player suffocation. It’s the big companies unable to exploit for massive cash. Their profit margins are not like they used to be. If the tabletop market was dying, then Paizo would have never gotten off the ground, because d20 is obsolete. If the tabletop market was dying, BattleTech and Shadowrun wouldn’t be around, because they’re ancient (nor would the IP’s have been battled over for millions of dollars ¬ñ that’s right millions; Topps did not sell them like they did HeroClix and other useless media). There is no TSR, because they’re WotC now, and D&D4 ¬ñ much as I dislike it ¬ñ is profitable for them. Also Vampire and Werewolf for White Wolf are selling like hotcakes, because of the Eclipse and Twilight hoopla. I saw half a dozen teenage girls, playing Vampire the Masquerade at my neighbor’s house two weeks ago, with my own eyes. He does not play RPG’s, and wanted to ask me some questions about it, because he knew I did. That’s called a new market.
That, however, is purely a Western or perhaps even a purely American perspective, according to which a game is defined by its gameplay and 3D-rendering. There are other ways to make a computer game more in touch with its time. For instance, MOONSTONE added a Twitter functionality to their latest game, ANGEL RING. You can read here how it works if you can’t read Japanese.
Well I can attest that graphical quality isn’t what all new gamers are demanding for. Case in point: Rockman 9 was originally marketed for the “hardcore old school” gamers, which is why it was so challenging - and obviously used 8 bit graphics. Then CAPCOM got blasted by millions of new gamers, who lamented that Rockman 9 was too hard because they never played the original Rockman 2 that Rockman 9 was based upon. The same thing happened when Megaman 9 was released in the West. That’s why Rockman 10 has an easy mode. That of course made all the “hardcore” gamers upset for letting noobs in, but CAPCOM didn’t give a damn, because there were more NEW CASUAL gamers than hardcore gamers buying it. They didn’t care for new graphics: they liked the outdated old school gaming.
Konami also experienced the same deal with Castlevania ReBirth and Contra ReBirth on the WiiWare: more new gamers complained about the difficulty, than old gamers saying they wanted more of it. That’s why Konami’s next ReBirths will have easy modes.
Consider all this, when all of them would have sold better on the DS. Casual fags are destroying the hardcore? More like the hardcore aren’t talking with their wallets, and just talking.
The other thing, is that I don’t see a massive 2chan campaign for eroge to “bling bling” their graphics. I’ve seen a drive for more lolicon, and there was this massive hate group against yandere, but I’ve never seen a campaign for “Mass Effect” level graphics in eroge. Never. There isn’t even that big a desire for eroge to copy the “looks alive” style paper dolls that were in TokiMemo4, which would be the next logical step – though that’s not surprising because when Sakura Taisen was popular all those years ago, the LIPS system (blinking eyes, moving mouths when speaking) never made it big on eroge.
Of course as soon as I go to an English speaking board, suddenly the lack of graphical awesome on eroge is a big issue. :roll:
Another example I can cite about Western versus Japanese tastes in eroge is Gun-Katana. Oh boy… there was a lot of hoopa with Westerners, me included, about the Wolfenstein shooter engine. That was what got the most attention. Here’s the interesting antithesis, which anyone can prove by reading the relevant Japanese and English complaints about the game.
Western gamers complained that there wasn’t enough FPS’ing in Gun-Katana: that it could have had better graphics, more shooting stages, or variety of enemies. They didn’t like Anes being a trap.
Japanese gamers complained that there was too much FPS’ing in Gun-Katana: that it there could have been more story, more winnable girls (Kana is a favorite), more plot branches. They loved Anes being a trap.
Japanese and Western gamers [u]DO NOT[/u] always think alike. Another good example is combat flight simulators: Japanese demand for grittier pattern memorization style game play, where as Americans demand for realism and multiplayer features - but more importantly an AI that isn’t pattern memorization based. That’s why American fighter games bomb royally in Japan, no matter how good they are. The mentality of “want and do not what” is vastly different: IL-2 Sturmovik vs Ace Combat. Same dissimilarity is why Mortal Kombat never got so big in Japan as well, but was all the rage - and still is - in America. Then there’s MMO’s. Americans? End level content, grinding sucks, and PvP. Japanese? Starting content, grinding is expected, and chat with kawaii emotes.
The reason Japanese don’t want Mass Effect level graphics in eroge is because Mass Effect level graphics are shit, it would mean the eroge would look like shit. Japanese know that the way to get good graphics is to hire KusuKusu or Carnelian to art your game; that’s what it’s all about.
Love Death might have been a good attempt to change the eroge world, but they still have a long way to go before they can make an acceptable 3D environment and RPG style game play/interaction. (read that as: the girls modules were excellent, everything else sucked, including the main character movement).
P.S. I do find the Active Animation Adventure (NISA term not mine) of the PS3’s White Album Tsuzurareru Fuyu no Omoide to be a nice and refreshing addition to the eroge
Aye. TokiMemo4 also used the same presentation method. I personally believe this will be the natural evolution for the industry - that or a more refined model of the cel 3D technique used in titles such as iDOLM@STER - but the development time and costs are incredibly prohibitive. It’s vastly more cost effective and profitable, to release static paper dolls, than push these kinds of things. Pretty as it looks, White Album Tsuzurareru Fuyu no Omoide did not do any better or worst than it’s non-moving rivals, judging from the studio’s side comments and how fast it flies off the shelf in shops. Had it broke sale records, we’d be reading endless financial praise in galge magazines, but we’re not… though on the bright side we’re not reading how it was an abysmal failure.
In counter argument though, blinking eyes and moving voice sync’ed mouths never became a standard: so things could just remain the same, with features like these being “gimmick curiosities” at best.
The customer demand in Japan is still for better story and characterization, judging from the constant whining about the needs of more on 2chan. Or as one poster said, “shit sprayed with perfume smells good, but is still shit.” 
EDIT: the comment wasn’t about White Album; just the general galge releases looking prettier and prettier, but having suckier and suckier concepts. Even the skills of KusuKusu and Carnelian can’t save a dead story…