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.