MegaTech, Otaku, Himeya, and now G-Collections

Visual Novel Community Archive, 2000-2009
#41

breaks lurk mode

Something worth pointing out when talking about how to make bishoujo games expand their market is that despite what some people seem to think, violent video games are NOT fully acceptted at the moment. Every time a popular but violent video game comes out, Joe Liebermann comes out of his cave and starts ranting about it (this is definately NOT just a religious right thing as Senator Liebermann demonstrates). And of course within 3 days of any form of school violence that makes it onto the news, video games get blamed for making a parent’s little sociopath into the fleshreaper. There’s also that incident where the Haitian community called GTA: Vice City racist against Haitians due to a mission against a Haitian street gang and led to Rockstar Games censoring sequential production runs of the game.

While games are becoming more mainstream, there’s still a large part of the population that thinks it’s just a kid’s thing. There’s been more than one occasion where I’ve seen a mother that apparently can’t be bothered to read the rating on a game almost buy her kid a copy of a Mortal Kombat game until an Electronics Botique clerk mentioned that the game is quite violent and bloody (can’t say if the clerks at a non-game specialty store would do the same thing) and some of my relatives (especially my grandmother) don’t seem to get why I play so many games despite repeatedly mentioning that the reason I’m working on a Comp Sci degree is to work in the games industry.

While an analysis of cultural acceptances of sex and violence is a fascinating topic (comparing what gets censored in different nations is always fun), there are more immediate hurdles related to gaming in general that need to be overcome by bishoujo games. Video games come under a lot of media scrutiny right now, just like music, comic books, movies, and every other form of popular entertainment has and we’re still trying to shake off the stereotype that games are only for kids (a stereotype that even adult gamers sometimes fall into. A few years ago, if you frequented PC-gaming centric BBS’s it wouldn’t be uncommon to encounter many adult to elderly PC gamers who thought console games were the domain of gamers below 18). The question isn’t just how to grow the market, but how to grow the market without having these two factors come around and bite us in the ass.

Now, with all this said, it’s worth noting that there have been at least two dating sims released in the U.S. on the Nintendo DS, even if they aren’t bishoujo games. One wasn’t impressive by all accounts (lack of logic in choices you have to make, Dawson’s Creek style cheesiness, etc.), but the other by Sega (Feel The Magic) was decently received though this is also probably due to gameplay being a combination of amusing mini-games. Furthermore, the DS isn’t exactly the most popular platform, but hey, it’s SOME progress in terms of making dating sims more acceptted.

#42

When speaking of acceptance for video games, it’s a fact that most people who play computer/video games have no problem with the violent content found in most of them. However, even these “enlightened” players do not usually have acceptance towards games with sexual content. This proves pretty much that it doesn’t really matter if state authorities don’t like violent video games, players buy them anyway and therefore shops sell them. Players aren’t requesting games containing sex because many look down on them and the people who play them, so why would shops even consider selling them and risk losing customer in addition to attracting unwanted attention from authorities and the media?

It doesn’t really matter what people on the “outside” think, so long as enough people paying can accept the contents, or at the very least buy it out of ignorance/indifference (parents). Until ero-games are accepted by players, there’s not really much anyone can do.

As for methods of getting that acceptance, that’s a whole different matter…

[This message has been edited by AG3 (edited 05-15-2005).]

#43
quote:
Originally posted by AG3:
[B]When speaking of acceptance for video games, it's a fact that most people who play computer/video games have no problem with the violent content found in most of them. However, even these "enlightened" players do not usually have acceptance towards games with sexual content. This proves pretty much that it doesn't really matter if state authorities don't like violent video games, players buy them anyway and therefore shops sell them. Players aren't requesting games containing sex because many look down on them and the people who play them, so why would shops even consider selling them and risk losing customer in addition to attracting unwanted attention from authorities and the media?

It's not sexual content so much as explicit sexual content. How often have you heard about someone mentioning that you can sleep with hookers and then kill them in GTA after all? Or the recent God of War on the PS2 having a mini-game involving a threesome? And of course there's The Sims, which features plenty of relationships, potentially a lot of 'woohoo,' and little violence by default (allowing for sadism via starvation and fire is another matter entirely . . .). But obviously there are still differences in degrees of detail in violent and sexual content. The aforementioned titles don't double as female anatomy lessons and likewise most violent video games just show lots of blood splashing around and polygons seperating from each other and don't model the dangling organs that can appear when someone is cut in two (or more) by slashes or gunfire, Soldier of Fortune being the noted exception.

On a related note, I feel like pointing out that ever since Baldur's Gate 2 came out, romance subplots/subquests that the user chooses to embark on have become somewhat popular in North American RPGs. They don't go anywhere near the depth a dating sim does, but it does further demonstrate that romantic content is acceptted and welcome now.

Given these two factors, I expect that clean bishoujo games will someday be able to succeed here, I just don't know when. The PC-style RPGs that have helped push forward active romance in games aren't exactly the most prolific titles and the genre is almost entirely supported by two developers at the moment . . .

A further barrier to bishoujo games right now would be the fact that most of them bear a resemblence to PC graphical adventure games, but that genre has been dead for years now. Only occasional offerings by various European developers breathe some life into it every few years. Given the cyclical nature of gaming, I fully expect this to change some day, but it's definately a barrier when a similar 'mainstream' genre is in such poor shape.

#44