What about non-ero games?

Visual Novel Community Archive, 2000-2009
#1

I hope nobody will feel ofended if I tell you that visual novels without ero content exist… :lol:

The point is that there are a lot good VN out there (I mean in japan only unfortunately…) so i’m wondering if PP has ever tought about translating a non-ero game.
Hirameki did it in the past (aren’t Ever 17 and Phantom of inferno two of the best “translated” VN you have ever seen ?) so we could expect a company to go on in this direction. Afterall “safe” VN would reach a larger public and therefore be more profitable (probably).

Of course the secret meaning of this post is that I want the other KID games (never7, remember11 and 12riven). If Ever17 has been translated, why not those 3 ?
Of course we could mention other good VN but you get the idea. Most of them are more “story oriented” than ero games (yes… for real) that’s why I would also be interested in those games.

#2

Unfortunately, non-adult visual novels would probably do worse. Pornographic scenes are an easy way to get interest in a product. It’s just that it’s also self-limiting. The number of people who are willing to buy porn is quite large, but still not more than a small fraction of the general population.

However, you only gain anything by losing ero if your product has an appeal so large that the ero turns away people who would otherwise be interested. For that to happen, you have to have a big hit on your hands, and you have to know that you have one. Not even in Japan do all eroge get a non-ero version for increased sales. And I don’t think visual novels are popular enough to be able to lay down the crutch of eroscenes. The numbers just aren’t there, that’s why nobody makes point-and-click adventure games anymore.

#3

Expanding on this, there’s a clear difference between the way JAST currently operates and the way Hirameki operated. Hirameki used the all-ages rating to market the games in more conventional avenues. To be successful selling non-eroge titles, JAST would have to do the same–non-eroge will always sell less than eroge to eroge fans (all else the same). However, I don’t think JAST is really interested in going the same route as Hirameki at this point, particularly right after Hirameki just flopped. But if they did, they’d likely have to market the games under a different brand name, because conventional retailers wouldn’t want their products being associated with porn. The best position a localization company selling non-eroge visual novels could hope for would probably be shelf space in Walmart–right next to the anime DVDs (or perhaps the manga section in Borders).

If Higurashi succeeds, it’ll be a notable exception to the rule (because Mangagamer seems ready to market it alongside its eroge). Mangagamer is gambling that Higurashi will bring in more general anime fans, who proceed to order other eroge titles, than they’ll lose as potential customers who see the porn games everywhere and are put off from ordering Higurashi as well. Personally, I still think Mangagamer doesn’t really understand the English market demographic. In Japan eroge and a violence-centric game like Higurashi are probably viewed pretty similarly in terms of taboo-ness. In the US at least, a violence-centric game is very much less taboo, and there’s plenty of people that would find Higurashi socially/morally acceptable while being completely put off by eroge. These are the people that Mangagamer is not going to reach, simply because they market a nonporn game alongside porn games.

#4

No no no no no. This would NOT be a good idea for anyone trying to release non-ero VNs right now. Currently, the R1 anime/manga industry is in a slump, and not as many people are buying as many anime titles. This means anime DVD sections in stores don’t see as many visitors.

Not only do anime DVD sections not attract as much customers, but from a casual glance, the cover/packaging of most VNs look quite similar to a typical anime DVD. Of course, you could say that it’ll have the ESRB rating tag, but you also have to take into consideration that many retailers sell their anime DVDs with their spines facing forward instead of their covers, so many people won’t notice the rating tags and assume it’s actually a game. Because of the packaging similarities with anime DVDs and the way DVD sections have their products oriented, a VN placed alongside other anime DVDs won’t stand out. If you can’t get your product in a place where lots of people will notice or get it to stand out amongst the crowd, how can you expect anyone to notice it, much less buy it? People will mistake the VN as if it were just another anime DVD and write it off as if it were just another anime DVD. By trying to get VNs alongside the anime DVDs, they would not only put them in a section that doesn’t attract as many customers, but they would end up camoflaguing their game along with the other anime DVDs because of their similarities–This attempt to treat visual novels as an “anime equivalent” was one of the marketing blunders that caused Hirameki to go down (hell, even most anime fans failed to know that the company even existed since their games weren’t easy to find/notice). Even ultra-niche titles can get sales if you market them properly.

If a company decides to release a non-ero VN, it needs to market it as if it were a game, not some anime/manga equivalent. The best postion they could hope to put their games would be in the video game sections of places like WalMart or Best Buy, as well as the shelves of specialty game retailers like GameStop, and even in download locations like Steam or Xbox Live Arcade. The video game industry is known to be rather resilient even in tough economic times, so places that offer games will often see considerable amount of customers (not to mention they always sell new games with the cover facing forwards). Furthermore, if they put VNs alongside other PC games, they would stand out considerably from the other titles and their probability of getting noticed would be huge–Can you imagine how much a cutesy anime-based dating sim would stand out if it was put on a shelf and surrounded by bloody first-person shooters and generic action games? If a game stands out from the rest, you increase the chances that someone may get curious enough to buy it.

There’s no need to worry about the anime fans, their core audience, potentially not noticing their titles if they were to be in the game section, because most anime fans also happen to play video games themselves. So naturally, anime fans will look in the game sections of retailers along with the non-anime fans. By putting VNs alongside other games, they would be placed in an area where lots of customers (not just anime fans) spend their time shopping, and their titles will be in a place where they would stand out from the rest. This sort of location increases the chances of having a customer (either anime or non-anime fan) blind buy a title out of sheer curiosity. That’s where English visual novels need to be.

#5

This has already proven to work, doesn’t the Phoenix Wright/Gyakuten Saiban series count as a non-ero VN?

#6

For all basic intents and purposes, it counts as one… and the overwhelming success of Phoneix Wright is the single largest reason why games such as these (for example Lux-Pain and Sakura Taisen V), are now semi-trickling into the West – that is to say, console game companies and investors are talking more seriously and not just offhandedly rejecting them for being too VN’ish. However the pursuit is still a highly experimental one, and a critical failure at this juncture would setback all the gains made in “trusting” this niche has a shot at success.

I’ve got it on good sources, that Namco’s American branch is intently and quietly watching how Sakura Taisen V fairs, which could have some influence on an intellectual properties of their own, that has a large underground community in the West. coughiDOLM@STERcough

#7

While not without merit, your argument is comparable to an argument that these titles would sell best in the candy aisle at the registers. While probably true, they wouldn’t sell well enough to warrant their position there–there’d be many other items that would sell better in that position. It’s not a sustainable position for something this niche. You run into another problem marketing non-ero visual novels alongside other video games–customer expectations. Video game players expect games to have gameplay. If it doesn’t, they’re going to feel ripped off, and will probably end up returning the game. Again, the store won’t appreciate this. That’s why it seems best to market the game to customers most likely to appreciate it. I do agree that selling the games on Steam, or perhaps near DS games (many of which have similar “gameplay”) might not be a bad idea though.

#8

And things aren’t help much when US mags and other review sites (where at least they should know better) have often included the lack of “gameplay” in VERY negative reviews. Thus, you pretty well limit the people who will by a VN-style game to those who already know how a VN plays.

Phoenix Wright certainly stands as the 800-pound exception but there have been a few others. Hotel Dusk had success targeting the digtal BOOK crowd and the few titles Hirameki was able to get into Best Buy sold well COMPARATIVELY, just not as well as retailer expectations. Professor Layton saw a huge spike in sales after the “chick” focused Lisa Kudrow campaign and I’d suspect here this week or next we should see ads for the new title, too. One also can’t forget the sales the latest Persona titles showed when presenting an argument that the non-ero VN audience IS here in the states if you are somehow able to reach them.

#9

Aye… the current tapping of the potential VN market, reminds me of the RPG market back in the NES and SNES days. Remember when Squaresoft and Enix were “niche” groups who barely broke even with their releases? Hell… they couldn’t even release a title, unless the “big dogs” like Nintendo would pay half the bills for them. It was time when everything was Tecmo Bowl this or Super Mario that.

Successful title here… successful marketing plan there… positive game article from time to time… Now the RPG genre constitutes a good percentage of mainstream title sales.

VN’s are now in that phase of prying their way into the dance floor. If the corporate bigwigs can access those quality titles ¬ñ even if only two or three a year ¬ñ it might be enough to spring a gusher. In fact it’s probably better to have only two or three great titles find their way to the West, and have people begging for more; than have a dozen shitty ones hit the market, and have everyone thinking they’re all garbage.

#10

Asked before, but have we ever got confirmation (or rumors) on what came along when Peter grabbed up Hirameki remains? Is it just reprint/digital rights to existing product or things like their unreleased stuff or titles Hirameki may have been give right of refusal on?

The Infinity series and Memories Off have both gotten PSP bundle sets in Japan. Perhaps an Atlus or Ignition could be tempted/persuaded? I know such titles have been often mentioned by posters in the ‘wish list’ side of Atlus’ boards.

#11

I fail to see why this is somehow a valid reason for an English VN company to not even try to negotiate with retailers into putting their games in such places. As of right now, nobody, not even Hirameki, has even attempted to market pure VNs in a fashion that exposes them to the mainstream. There’s a possibility it might fail if they do, but if they don’t do so, then there’s a guarantee of failure. Hirameki has attempted to market these games in a manner where only hardcore fans would be able find them, and look at what happened to them–Pure non-H VNs need more exposure. You can’t rely on limiting exposure to hardcore VN fans alone because we know that the overseas fanbase itself is already very very small.

Visual novels in the US are still an uncharted territory, and they don’t even have a history of being exposed in the mainstream. Right now, nobody’s even tried releasing/marketing VNs in a fashion where they can garner a lot of attention, so you can’t just immediately assume that the outcome of releasing such games in such a manner would be guaranteed to result in a negative outcome. If nobody has tried something like this before, how can you immediately assume that it wouldn’t be sustainable or that it’ll make people feel ripped off? For all we know, customers may be caught off-guard but pleasantly suprised, and sales might be better than if it were hauled away in some obscure location where only the most hardcore of fans can find them. There’s no concrete sales data behind your thinking because they’ve never been sold in such a way before–You’re just assuming it’ll immediately result in a bad outcome based on factors that don’t even have a real guarantee of prevalence.

Seriously, no one has even attempted to do anything to maximize exposure, not even something relatively simple like holding interview with game review sites like Gamespot/IGN/Gameinformer to inform people about VNs in the market. How can you possibly assume that it’ll fail if nobody even tries?

#12

I’d also like to know that.

And i still think non-ero VN woulf have a larger audience.
Because the first to byu those VN would be… us (the ero players 8) ) + all the people who would discover this kind of game in anime or video game magazines (do you remember the time when peter asked us what magazines we read ?). Even the ero VN would benefit from that.
I don’t say it would be a great hit at first, but it would still open a door just like a few years ago with the RPG.

#13

Sadly, IGN especially has been a rather negative voice on VNs (and JRPGs in general) railing against lack of “gameplay” or “evolution”. I know that just about all the very Japanese-focused folks long since left, but that does not explain all of the statements that have been made there.

Sadly also, people in the marketplace will look at Hirameki failing to “succeed” when in BB or Suncoast as an attempt to reach mainstream. And I can remember that when such places buried those titles on their anime walls, people complained that there was nothing to define the two and people complained when the ‘video’ they were buying turned out to be a ‘game’.

The success or failure of Sakura Wars this Xmas is going to so key, as previously noted. You aren’t going to get more mainstream availability than amazon and gamestop. If it succeeds (and I plan to do what I can to see that it does) I truly hope that business-types are indeed watching and listening.

#14

And your point is? That makes holding interviews with them and informing people all the more important. An opportunity to give an interview means you not only have a chance to increase exposure with customers, but you also have a chance to convince the employees of review sites to change their minds about any negative views or misperceptions they might have with regards to VNs. They might hold an antipathy to the low-tech-ness and the lack of interactivity of VNs, but I’ll bet anything that they haven’t the slightest of clue to the fact that a lot VNs feature really deep story and character development–Who’s trying to inform them of that?

Dude, Hirameki’s act of “burying” it in the anime section is anything but mainstream, especially considering the fact that most people here never play video games using their DVD players (when they still had their AnimePlay format).

#15

I don’t think anyone’s arguing that Hirameki’s AnimePlay DVDs were a great idea. It was an interesting marketing concept–which had signficiant pitfalls.

In many regards, Hirameki did succeed in achieving market exposure. Until Hirameki, I’d never heard much mention of visual novels outside of niche boards like this. Now RPGFan covers them regularly, and apparently IGN is aware of them enough to criticize them. It seems reasonable to say that Japanese visual novels ARE a niche market. Most Americans won’t appreciate them. Most American gamers won’t appreciate them. I would think any developer or publisher’s goal is to create as many satisfied customers as possible, while minimizing unsatisfied customers (reason being that this leads to sustainable sales). You do that by targeted advertising and presentation–appealing as precisely to your targeted audience as possible.

Are my arguments speculation? Of course; the nature of the topic itself is speculative. On the other hand, just because something hasn’t been tried doesn’t justify that it should be tried. On the contrary–it’s quite easy to dismiss a novel idea; justifying why resources should be spent to pilot a novel idea is the burden of the idea’s proponent.

#16

The video game market in general’s not doing so well right now… recession’s rough on everybody.

#17

Most of the DS games released here deserved the trashing. They were utter tripe, and the translations were often lame. Phoenix Wright, Trace Memory, and Hotel Dusk proved that reviewers forgive low interactivity if they love the story. However, when the story sucks, what else can save the game? That’s when they complain about the non-interactive nature.

Solution = releasing better products

Persona has almost nothing in common with a visual novel, so I’m not sure how you’d draw that conclusion. Persona proves that people can enjoy adventure elements (presented through normal RPG style exploration and event scenes) with their dungeon-crawling, combat-intensive RPGs. However, I doubt you could convince many of its fans to sit through something consisting of only walls of text.

#18

To be fair, you could probably say that about ANY genre that’s on DS (and Wii). Third party bloat has been Nintendo’s biggest problem with their systems this generation… not that it makes piss-poor VN’s any better of course.

#19

I am somewhat conflicted as to what would be the best way to market such a product. On one hand, you have the fact that these really aren’t games, anymore than the old Choose Your Own Adventure novels were games. They have more in common with the definition of a puzzle than they do a game. (See game developer Chris Crawford’s definition of a game to see what I mean.) However, trying to market them as puzzles wouldn’t work very well either I imagine. On the other hand, because you need a computer (or console) to use the product, and it has features such as saving and loading, they don’t really fall in to the conventional idea of a novel either.

#20

Hirameki may have had some market exposure, but that obviously wasn’t enough to save them, was it? Being selective about your marketing may seem like a reasonable idea, but the thing is, the hardcore VN fanbase (mainly people like us, who keep up with everything VN-related and appreciate them for more than just the sexual content) itself is probably far too small for “selective” advertising to be effective–They need to be marketed so everyone can access it easily. This way, it’s accessible to “casual” fans and potential newcomers that might be interested in something different in addition to the hardcore fans. Selective advertising with this sort of ultra-niche product would mean burying it in the anime DVD sections/sites where hardly anyone would pay attention to.

Do you realize how much prior knowledge and effort you need to find a visual novel localized outside of Japan as of right now? If I got a localized visual novel from some place, it probably took me a lot more than just going to a store that sells video games, looking at the shelves and spotting one in the shelves from a casual glance–I have to actively search for VNs every single time. If I wanted to get a visual novel, I first have to already be fully aware of what a visual novel is to be able to find one: I can’t just ask any random person about what a VN is or where to find one and expect to get an answer. Second, I need seek out information and learn that a particular visual novel has to be localized here: This requires me to already be active in keeping up with various obscure sites that report on anime-related news and learn that a title like Ever17 has gone on sale. Third, I have to know exactly how/where to get it: I can’t just go to my local Gamestop and pick up a copy of Ever17 that I came across on the shelves, I have to throughly search the depths of the anime sections in stores (assuming I don’t accidentally look over it) or scout out various obscure websites that sell anime–Even then, I can’t simply spot a copy of Ever17 in stock in somewhere like RightStuf, I have to dig the depths of the “miscellaneous” sections that relatively fewer anime fans go to. The fact that I have a zero chance of finding a VN anywhere without any prior knowledge or active searching tells me that there are some serious exposure problems going on here. Even I can stumble upon an Atlus game I’ve never heard of at my local Walmart from time to time–I can’t possibly say the same for localized pure VNs.

If you plan on getting good exposure for your product, you can’t rely on fans knowing where exactly to look, nor can you rely on the fact that a particular location is known to attract fans, and even if you could rely on them, you can’t rely on them being enough to make your business sustainable. You have to put it someplace where lots of people will notice and buy them. And no, you can’t put it near the Walmart registers beside the candy due to the enormous differences in prices and degrees of decision-making associated with people buying games and candy.

If a developer’s target market is mainly the anime/VN fans, why would they need to be so concerned about complaints about a VN’s lack of interactivity/gameplay to the point where they need to limit the overall exposure of their games? It’s obvious that those sort of complaints wouldn’t come from their target audience to begin with. Their biggest concern would be to keep the sales numbers high and cater to the comments/complaints made by their target audience–The hardcore VN and anime fans. Most American gamers may not appreciate them, but the same can be said for any niche game. If localization companies like Atlus or NISA can at least attempt to have their niche games be sold alongside other “mainstream” titles (even with smaller print runs), I can’t see any reason why an English VN localization company can’t at least try the same. You’re not going to get satisfied customers at all unless you’re willing to bring them out for anyone to see and actually get some sales. Any game may be niche, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t put it in places where everyone can easily access it, especially considering the fact that sales from the hardcore fanbase alone might not be sufficient enough.