MaiMai wrote:Dim Sum wrote:I don't really understand the context of the KS post. I guess that's for someone else but if it's for me, I don't know the particular sentence that gave that reaction. Plus as someone previously stated, KS has a different culture and point of reception in Japan than in the English community.
I also don't really get what KS is supposed to do. It would be like saying all novels have done nothing new to the medium of the book. Well...that's not the point. There's technical factor like game engine updates, programmer manipulated interface, artist oriented unique style and well...just text. KS strongly belongs to that text part much like actual novels. It's not supposed to do anything innovative from the technical side though improvements can be done.
I don't think it was even about the game engine or technical sides to be honest. What Auro was talking about was the
story content of KS and what it does in terms of contributing to this OELVN peak (story content wise, not much which was the point of her post).
That would have little to do with any OELVN peak though. It would be dealing with KS total contribution to the genre.
+IMO this isn't story content but prose criticism:
Yep, that is what I meant. They were almost formulaic in a lot of instances to Japanese visual novel style, right down to overdone monologue and single quirky male friend. That is what they admired and that is what they wanted to create and it shows in a lot of places. It doesn't technically make it bad or anything from that stand-point but it is very easy to see where their influences come from.
It still came from left field. Why even limit it to KS story content? Non KS VNs are ripe with text on dialogue boxes, people staring at the player for no reason, quirky transitions and a buxom girl that may or may not have sex with you but still come off like they are a hentai character more than just an anime character even in those better depicted ones. That has little to do with peak though.
No, medium in the context you're using it isn't a means to communication. That would be something like a telephone, PC, audio, RenPy, monitor.
Meaning "intermediate agency, channel of communication"
See means mean immediate agency or source of communication.
Imagine it is a vortex that leads to another dimension opened by a remote control device. The vortex is not the medium. The remote is not the device. The experience between the worm hole is the medium.
If it feels like a slide, you're a Slider. If it feels like a ride, you're probably in Back to the Future. If it feels like an explosion, you could be part of the "boom" effect of a "boom tube".
Same mechanic, different medium.
For VN: the most general basic "medium" is the difference between portable controller + mini-screen to keyboard + normal sized monitor to console controller + TV. It is this way because optimally it can produce a different general experience and expectations even on the same game.
In fact, you'd be more partially correct if you just saw it as a middle.
I'm not saying my version is better or more correct than yours but if we took your version:
A visual novel is not only a means of comunication, it is a distinct and unique form of communication compared to other similar mediums (relatively static imagery, heavy use of words, music and sound, branching paths). I have no idea how you can argue otherwise.
It'd be too elitist ...and unhelpful. Truthfully if VNs were such a distinct and unique form of communication, then adding sex scenes would change the whole thing but many VNs do those for marketing purposes without most of the content suffering.
...so there goes distinct and unique
Now if you're comparing it to similar mediums, Adventure Games utilizes relatively static imagery too. It's just a more complicated environmental version where a click may lead to more dynamic effect than a mere transition.
Compared to actual novels or even better written videogames, most VNs don't even utilize heavy use of words predominantly. In fact, the more popular a VN is, it often times become the most guilty of this. The illusion of words is only provided for by gimmicks such as post-ending branches, introductions, UI tweaks.
Music and sound is also not exclusive to VNs under your interpretation since all it is involves adding it to menus as ambience. Maybe voice but that's not even a staple requirement for VNs yet and if it is, then VNs loses and leaves behind something.
Branching paths (along with dialogues with half body sprites) are the only unique aspect here under your interpretation and yet...branching paths are more associated with rpgs than visual novels. After all novels don't usually have choices, role playing usually is all about that.
It doesn't mean VNs are not special but under your interpretation of mediums, VNs accumulate aspects of different actual mediums rather than become a medium to itself when in truth, I agree with what you're getting at. They just aren't enough qualities for a medium.
A medium isn't just a category that is placed. It has to stand apart on itself as a tag that no other tags can fit.
It's not just a "viewer" or a "reader" or an "entity". It's a totally different attack on the senses that can only be brought about on itself. Like if you put a videogame on a TV, even though it's coming from the TV, the input gives it a different feel from a remote. It can't just be a different remote nor can it just be limited to one game or one tweak of a genre.
Yes, the origin is not that important but a bit of a depth has to remain. If you omit that, it leads to a bad out of place criteria that seems to fit only when the notability isn't addressed at all. In this case, even a light analysis of why a VN is a medium becomes problematic because it assumes an assumption of deliverance when the facts it is delivering simply doesn't hold strong enough. (I didn't say it's wrong or fell apart).
I'm just really confused about where you are coming from. I have seen some fantastic VNs come out and I have seen people doing some really interesting things. I see a hell of a lot of potential especially as people come to realise just what this medium can do. Even from the stand point of graphics, which I do, I can do plenty of different things. I CAN be a better artist. I CAN figure out better ways to design things. I CAN understand visual storytelling better. So if I can be so much better, how can that mean I can't, through work, do better in this young medium?
It doesn't. First of all, it might not have peaked or it might have...but assuming a what if of it having peaked, your work can still do better because audiences change, technology improves, acceptance improves, communities grow, people will continue to use the product, etc. etc.
Stagnation doesn't mean stop. Stagnation means a downward but downward doesn't always mean quantity. It can demotivate quantity but it doesn't mean it in itself will decrease the quantity.
Downward does not also mean free fall. It can be a slow decline that takes years before the bad stuff manifests. It can be a static flat line wall that at times has something jutting out only to flat line again.
Potential is also prediction. For something to have peaked means some people can perceive it has arrived and they can explain it. That's not my position so I can't explain what I wasn't explaining. I'm just raising the question and pointing out what I've seen. It's the people who know better to answer yes or no and here's why.
The feeling I'm getting is that you are missing Bishojo stories that revolve around romance? Is there other indicators that you see which means we can't do better or that there has been something created that can not be improved upon? If VNs have somehow peaked in the tiny amount of time the have been the west, what do you say to TV, film, music, comics, books?
Um...nope??? Why romance?
Also why "cant do better"?
See those are things unrelated when something has peaked.
IMO, and this is just a general view,
TV has peaked. That's why certain shows that are rehashed became quite popular. Certain good shows are not given a chance and gets cancelled too often. Certain other shows that have decline are consumed by addicts. It's no longer a medium for entertainment but a medium for addiction. What few qualities it continues to have are a product of people who are already part of the industry and gaining the street sense to pull some new talent in but as a general medium that gathers producers, there's not much space for actual works. It has been this way for a long time and what is currently happening is that in a bid to survive, there's an increase on the surface layer of experimentation as a post-TV bid to continue to get viewers interested but it's based on a model where if you slightly suck, we'll sabotage or cancel your show and only un-cancel it with strong demand.
Films ironically have unpeaked but this is mostly because of the monopoly of Hollywood where now they have suddenly figured out that they can legally plagiarize other films. Not just old films. Quarantine being the most blatant I know of. What results is that as soon as something is made popular, there's bound to be more copycats and this is fueling new interest in attention whoring of "actor fame" as far as who gets not the "Best" but the "Memetic Indy Films", the "Memetic Award Films", the "Memetic Fun Films".
The result is that there's less classics but there are more buzz worthy films and those buzz give more room for lesser quality/lesser lucky actors to try their quality in quirky/experimental/lesser known films if only so that they'd become the new Arnie or the new Tom Cruise without needing to reach that status of best or most memorable or great actor + memorable face. It's kinda like a reverse effect. You won't really ever reach the status of those guys for their generation in your generation and you're still living in a peaked reality where piracy could reduce interest for lesser films but at the same time, you hit it big and you get job offers even though you're not really as good or as famous and only hardcore fans will remember you...but hey, more jobs = more opportunities.
It's also a weird symbiotic relationship with TV. Kinda like how mobile gaming has attracted most of the praise and games like 999 are most mentioned because they're unique experience VNs appearing in other gadgets than just your keyboard.
Like nowadays, the old tournament of quality found in movies now go to the TV series that can be unanimously the best of the season...because that means that can extend a show to 1-2 seasons even if it becomes crappy. The problem is that there aren't enough new shows of this quality to "unpeak" it so what happens right now is a sort of the best are often the serials and the rest of the best are often comedy shows especially random based ones.
Comics and books, I don't really follow as much but comics have kind of peaked a long time ago in that there's little room for the guy who don't want Superman and Spider-man but don't know any better unless they spend money on lots of comics or do a Google for the popular graphic novels but there's no room anymore to just leave the Spider-men and Supermen alone. You're pretty much bound to know and go to them first. It can no longer acquire the unique quality of manga where you can leave behind a popular title and still be for another title.
Books are the opposite. The idea of books as bestseller are pretty much dead. It's become more on what is often placed in Amazon or what is often placed in bookstores. It's still possible to be popular with great content but the idea of books as just books has peaked. It's become more of an intellectual property game. Which e-book is notable enough to be widely shouted and spammed? Which book is the top of it's class? Which book is most talked about on the cult level.
It's a unique peak because technically books don't really have a peak especially as publishing gets cheaper. The problem is that there are entities linked to books in general that are causing the gridlock so it kind of is in the same place as the VN community despite being of a bigger fanbase and cult following especially with regards to how a book is legitimately seen. If there's one plus, is that books are not trapped in one location and readers tend to be hardcore reviewers so it has left most of the problems with peaking and replaced it with more of a question on whether things should go commercial, whether it should be an e-book, whether it should be a blog first, just things that in the end would still guarantee enough of an audience because it's a much bigger niche than VNs.
The problems remain the same though: problems with discovery, problems with educating the masses, problems with controversial entries, problems with too much spamming of one type...still it can't be said that it hasn't gone from novels to pseudo-novella more and more often. Most of the recent top sellers even come off like graphic novels without the graphics and pop culture entries and the idea of best most wanted tends to be judged by a good sensationalist book and not in its content anymore. Its pretty much been salvaged by the length of existence making up for the size which lends to certain informative Amazon reviews or certain demands as to keep your advertising screams purely towards those interested in the genre and not towards an entire book reading community. It has also gone past most of it's critics as a medium.
Edit:
Sorry, forgot about music.
Music has become about the promo and the standards. Much like script writing if there ever was a script writing competition that didn't involve getting into the industry.
The thing that makes music impossible to really stay peaked is that music producers love to branch out and they have a much faster way of doing this than other mediums because they are naturally symbiotic. I hate music so I am most guilty of this effect and I get mostly suckered in by music I don't care for but I would love if it gets AMV'd into a particular image or scene.
As a theory though, now if you're not part of the proactive art group you can't really step away from certain things. Like if you're not into concerts but would love a pseudo-concert feel, the idea of it is kind of not allowed. If you were to try on music with people on the subways passing by, you'd piss people off and the audience would suddenly become all marketers and say wrong demographics or wrong timing. Everything about music production nowadays in many ways is dead but I don't know if it ever was unifiably alive.
It's more like Elvis made music alive then the Beatles made pop music not just classics but bubblegum chewable (enjoy it in almost any place when you hear it) then Rock made the stage play alive then fast forward to modern day and the Ipod made it into a new medium despite being the same thanks in part to digital formats that made people different audiophiles. Music is just that jumpy but as an art form, it still could not escape killing it's non-music loving critics so it remains to have elements that have peaked. Just that there's so many ways one piece of music can be tagged unto different other mediums that even in it's peak, it's so dynamic and flexible. The down side is that it has the same down side as the original OELVN community where it might feel diverse but it also feels like you can say a well beloved project like how you really feel about it if you feel it is cheap, hollow, isn't as good as you think without drawing questions on your intellectuality. That's kind of the key deal because flames are always there but there's pissing off fanboys and there's pissing off intellectual giants and no one who hates music can ever claim as an intellectual giant unless their hate for music is shielded behind loving some well beloved music of the past especially if it's close to the same genre.
(I'm glad you like it by the way!)