What about non-ero games?

Visual Novel Community Archive, 2000-2009
#21

Lux Pain had atrocious localization issues, but there was still something there…not everyone bashed Time Hollow, and I was more trying to focus on the way IGN presented their ‘concerns’. Even the best VN plays in a very non-interactive way.

Persona 3/4 is a tale of two different games, the relationship side of which is very VNish. You pick which people you will interact with, when and in what way. Certain events are not unlocked unless you have specific stats or relations with another individual. Then you got the whole situation of where things can end up with the female ‘partners’. Most of the dungeons in p4 are built around the psyches of your teammates, and clearing them involves helping to solve whatever ghosts are within.

#22

I’d try to use themes, ideas or contexts seemingly unrelated games have in common to encourage experimenting. Got a puzzle gamer? Point them towards Professor Layton, Trace Memory, Henry Hatsworth or The Chase where solving the puzzles moves forward a story and character interaction. Hotel Dusk remains a great gateway to someone who might dabble in a more interactive literary something. Take your general anime fan and point them toward Ever17 or a mangagamer title or two. If they won’t get too angry at digital panties, letting them know artists such as Kotoko and VAs like Yuka Imai and Norio Wakamoto are in KK might stir some interest. While none of these will make a complete greenhorn to such interests jump to purchase, they should more than suffice to grab those who would be interested in a VN but who just “don’t know it.”

#23

While that definitely works on a case by case basis, I was referring more to marketing them in general to a broader audience. My response was kind of aimed at the disagreement about where you would place a game in a brick and mortar type of store. As it stands right now, what you mention is probably the main way that we get new fans of the genre. What is needed is some way to market to a broader audience in a better way than placing them in a game or anime section, which both have serious drawbacks.

#24

Will NITRO+ROYALE have ero content? I’m guessing it might not, but I’m not sure…

#25

In terms of paid placements, both Atlus and NIS have made use of the endcaps that change monthly in Gamestop stores. Some of these (AR Tonelico 2 for example) looked really nice. Good quality preorder/at purchase bonuses (even Lux Pain came with an artbook) can also encourage chance taking from new customers. At Amazon, use could be made of buying links based from customer profiles – where people who have ordered film noir titles are presented a recommendation for a Hotel Dusk. They’ve kind of slipped by the wayside, but cross pollination ads like in the back of books might be another outlet.

A lot is still going to be dependent on the employees of a given store. If they know such titles and make recommendations, their customers are more likely to take a chance on something.

#26

I’d rather not have the genre get more popular. It’ll probably just draw more attention to the eroge, and the more people that know about it, the more likely that someone will be very offended by it and try to do something about it, America being the uptight country that it is :roll: . I doubt the genre (especially the adult version) will ever become widely accepted, so more exposure will just lead to a higher chance of something going wrong.

Not to mention as more people play the games, there will probably be a higher proportion of idiots/scum/trolls in the community. Popularity and the quality of the community seem to be inversely related. Look at how bad the anime community has become. :lol:

#27

You can always find a place like this where only the hardcore gather. If eroge were to explode in popularity, yes this particular BBS would probably get inundated with casual players (because it’s an official developer BBS). In which case, we’d probably just take our conversation somewhere else, another corner of the Internet where no one but us would care to go.

Too much attention to eroge is certainly a danger, but more attention means better and faster releases–at its ideal, we’d see every major game released in Japan. Certainly everyone here has games they’d like to play, but which currently have next to no chance of being released due to the current state of the market.

#28

Actually, are those still around? Maybe we should just shove these VNs next to those books at Borders or something. XD

That is correct; NITRO+ROYALE is listed on the Nitro+ JP site as all ages. Then again, it’s also a fighting game and not a visual novel…

#29

Utawarerumono would be a good title to ease visual novels into the market, since the reading is interspersed with occasional gameplay. There was a PSP version released in Japan a couple months ago.

#30

I have to agree there. Hotel Dusk held my interest – and even got me to lend it to a friend of mine – solely because the story was interesting, and captivated me in a way that rarely happens. But not because it was any good as a game. It was pretty run of the mill, in fact. (The only time I really got stumped was because I figured the DS did not allow games to hook the “shell has been closed” detector, to avoid buggy suspend/restore.) The only reason Hotel Dusk was good was that it was well written and localized.

Games that try to do visual novel gameplay, but that are not well written … have nothing at all. This is why garbage like Brookfield High is universally reviled: it doesn’t do its one thing well, so it as a result is terrible. A Ninja Gaiden game with lousy combat would be trash for essentially the same reason.

#31

It is a little off topic, but yes, they are still around. In fact, some of the stories have been updated to better relate to a modern audience. They are nowhere near as popular as they once were, but they still hold a special place in my heart since I read lots of them when I was a child in the 80s. In a weird connection to this thread, a DVD movie version was made based on one of the books (with plans to make more as I understand it). From the sounds of it, it is similar to the Hirameki AnimePlay DVDs. (Of course, having not played either, this is an assumption.) Who knows, maybe in a little less than ten years time, we’ll have people in the Western audience saying that their first exposure to the format was that DVD.

#32

Firetop Mountain supposedly is coming as a DS game. That one’s also had life as a board game and simple PnP, not surprising considering it originated from the mind of Steve Jackson. I’d also heard rumors of a Lone Wolf ominbus which would be nice considering we missed out on like two complete arcs stateside.

Nice to see there others familiar of that chapter in the gaming world. I’ll still break out Sorcery! or GrailQuest sometimes when I gotz a few hours time to reflect.

#33