Why Yuri games are so unpopular?

[Starshine]

Why must they always be in high school? Where are the adult/older women? Where are the adventures that affect their lives on a larger scale? Maybe I'm alone on wanting to see a little more action (no pun intended) in those stories rather than "falling in love with the girl-next-door and maybe we'll go on a date!" kind of thing.

Yes i too have noticed that they all seem to be in high-school in the Yuri genre. Well Yaoi gets a more or less female audience and you can also have half of the male audience playing Yaoi games too. From what i know Yaoi seems more or less pure to a various audience. Actually to be honest i don't think i have ever seen a Yuri game that has a sensitive side to it... its just sex in most of them. You'd think they would put a sensitive side in games with female protagonists, being as females express that emotion most, it's probably rare in males... which is probably why they don't add it if you get what i mean.

Well what i mean to say is Yaoi games are aimed at women and Yuri games are aimed at men. Okay really you'd probably say that the games are aimed for a gay audience... but i know loads of straight people who run for these types of games. Some females like to see male on male action and some men love that woman on woman action, it sounds all pear shaped... and to be honest i really don't think there is anything wrong in that and thats probably why Yuri games are so unpopular because everyone wants Yaoi.

[papillon]

There are far more bishoujo nukiges than yuri nukiges. *I've* never seen a 'pure' yaoi game - I'm sure they exist but all the ones I've seen much discussion of are not just all about sex, but all about fairly disturbing sex... prison rape, necrophilia, things I don't even want to describe outside of the H section!

[Rinima]

all about fairly disturbing sex... prison rape, necrophilia, things I don't even want to describe outside of the H section!

Gonna take a guess here and say your talking about Enzai?

Anyway, I'm not actually sure why yuri aren't really that popular... are vn's in general more popular with boys or girls?

[papillon]

Enzai is one of the titles I'm talking about.

Other yaoi games I see talked about:

Zettai Fukujuu Meirei
Sweet Pool
Hadaka Shitsuji
DRAMAtical Murder
Togainu no Chi

THESE ARE NOT FLUFFY GAMES. (Which doesn't make them bad games, just that some of the things I've heard about the sexual content is pretty WTF.)

I exaggerated a bit about the 'all about sex', I don't think the nitro+ games are only about sex, but the other two are, I think. I dunno, I'm not an expert on yaoi. Anyway, not trying to argue against anyone else's impression of either genre, mostly saying that outsider impressions of a genre can be weird.

It's hard to get a fair impression of what yuri games are like when there's so few of them to start with and many people are only familiar with the Sono Hanabira series.

[Bohoy]

A lot of the yuri games I see, well...are focused on saccharine school cliches, usually high schoolers in uniforms being shy and cutsey and shiny and first crushes and first kisses and cherry blossoms and white lilies and etc. In contrast, I notice many yaoi games have guys who are time-traveling, going to battle, participating in whirlwind adventures across the globe, resurrecting demons, traveling to alternate dimensions... It kind of ticks me off that there are so many tropes that are associated with such.

Is it purely a result of men writing yuri or women writing yaoi? I have no idea. But don't get me wrong- I adore cuteness and girlishness as much as the next person, but quite honestly, I'd probably be more interested in yuri games if they moved away from those things being the focus? Why can't there be girls kicking ass and falling in love while doing it? Why must they always be in high school? Where are the adult/older women? Where are the adventures that affect their lives on a larger scale? Maybe I'm alone on wanting to see a little more action (no pun intended) in those stories rather than "falling in love with the girl-next-door and maybe we'll go on a date!" kind of thing.

1000 times agreed. I like the classic innocent school girls as well. However there was even a moment where I got "sick" of it and actively searched for something else. All I found were projects that are either cancelled or unlikely to ever be finished. And so far I'm only talking about manga since in VN and games in general yuri seems nearly non-existent unless it's sexual or the stereotype above.
There are a few that break this trend, such as some of the Winter Wolves games (fantasy, futuristic, renaissance/pirates, RPGs, etc). These are nice but so rare. Liking yuri is difficult right now, especially if you can't read japanese.
So yeah. I'd love to see a great deal of variety, strong female protagonists, adult women and much more.
Am I the only one? I'd like to know.

I'm also not talking about the numerous otome with 3-7 GxB options and a single GxG. This one simply confuses me. I don't know the motivation behind this oddly popular choice by VN/dating sim makers. I can only say that they don't appeal to me as a fan of yuri since they give me this feeling that they're an afterthought or that it is probably not the creator's main intent with the game. That's just my perception, though. I may be completely wrong.

[papillon]

Liking yuri is difficult right now, especially if you can't read japanese.

This quote would have made perfect sense a year ago when this topic was active, and now seems like you're not paying enough attention, since this is the year of the yurisplosion.

Along with the game jam going on right now, there's all these announcements and games this year. (that post is incomplete and outdated, Asphyxia is already out on Steam, but it was faster than looking up every single entry again)

I'm also not talking about the numerous otome with 3-7 GxB options and a single GxG. This one simply confuses me. I don't know the motivation behind this oddly popular choice by VN/dating sim makers. I can only say that they don't appeal to me as a fan of yuri since they give me this feeling that they're an afterthought or that it is probably not the creator's main intent with the game. That's just my perception, though. I may be completely wrong.

Some of us like to date both boys and girls, you know.

[Bohoy]

I apologize if you misunderstood that. I didn't mean it as dramatically as you're making it sound.
I just meant that you can't deny the sheer inferiority of available yuri compared to... anything else, really.
I was already aware of everything in that "yurisplosion" you're talking about and it's quite underwhelming. I am definitely glad about it and I agree that it is an unusually high amount of yuri (even though so much of it consists of announcements/starting projects)

Some of us like to date both boys and girls, you know.

I do know. And it contributes to my confusion. Is this the appropriate "proportions" of preference for people who like both? This would confirm my perception that GxB is what people, both writers and readers, really like and GxG is just a nice little plus that wouldn't be missed if it wasn't there.
I don't mean to sound like I dislike these VNs for being this way. It is just something that I noticed and it got me thinking so I had to ask.

I think we can at least all agree that yuri is great and no one would mind seeing more.

[Rinima]

I do know. And it contributes to my confusion. Is this the appropriate "proportions" of preference for people who like both?

As someone who likes pan-romantic, yes, it is appropriate, as there isn't a equal amount of people in all genders that would also be interested in me, having the same amount of girls and boys being interested in the MC wouldn't be realistic.

[papillon]

I do know. And it contributes to my confusion. Is this the appropriate "proportions" of preference for people who like both? This would confirm my perception that GxB is what people, both writers and readers, really like and GxG is just a nice little plus that wouldn't be missed if it wasn't there.

Sorry if I'm coming across overly argumentative, I spend too much time in rather snarly forums.

If it wouldn't be missed if it wasn't there, people wouldn't keep adding it? A preference for male LIs over female doesn't mean no one wants female ones. (In some cases it DOES mean 'we think we have a lot more heterosexual readers than not', but that's not exactly statistically unlikely.)

Really, there's a mix. There are otome games that have only one 'friendship' route with a girl that might be seen as subtexty if you squint hard enough. There are otome games with a single female romance route. There are otome games with multiple female romance routes, but more male ones. There are games with a perfect balance of male and female love interests. And there are all-yuri games.

The one thing I haven't seen anyone do is a mostly-yuri game with a single male love interest, and there's a number of reasons why that's most likely to be so.

Love interest balance also often depends on how the protagonist is conceived and how much they're supposed to be a character rather than a self-insert.

I want there to be more all-yuri games, I want there to be more games where I have a range of girls I can date. I've made one, I'm working on another, I'd like there to be more out there.

But I also want to defend games that have both. I don't think that normalising 'you can also date girls' is a bad thing.

I think we can at least all agree that yuri is great and no one would mind seeing more.

We'd certainly like to see more.

(I have seen people elsewhere complaining about there being too much yuri this year, but they're not fans, obviously!)

[Caveat Lector]

I find it delightfully ironic that this topic is right above the "Yuri Game Jam" topic.

[Fox Lee]

My pet "theory": like yaoi, the audience for yuri is actually more female than male, but unlike yaoi there's the perception that it's the opposite, largely because Japanese audiences in general view things as "less gay" than western audiences.

This is a very informal observation, so I might be way off base. But I notice that while yuri is HUGE with the women I meet online and in creative spaces, the women I talk to identify lots of things as "yuri" that their Japanese audiences (and indeed creators) don't seem to think are particularly gay - just general fluffy shoujo stuff. You know the sort of thing - games and anime where female characters seem to have have obvious crushes on one another, maybe even openly make passes at each other, only to laugh it off or lament that it's impossible (wait, did you even try?) or just get paired off with a guy you thought they had way less chemistry with. Scenes and developments and discussions where, if the characters were opposite-gendered, they'd unquestionably be seen as romantically interested.

Fire Emblem: Awakening is a good example - I lot of people I know regard it as "gay as heck", and goodness knows there's a hell of a lot of queerish scenes, especially in the DLCs. But the game is very clear on the fact that if these characters hook up, it's darn well going to be in an opposite-gendered, child-producing, unambiguously hetero relationship - and that this is so obvious a conclusion that it's not at all required to address any other possibility.

Obviously there's a lot of grey area here, and cultural distance, and arguments to be had over authorial intent being more or less important than viewer perception - but the clear part seems to be that for some viewers, having these things occur between same-gendered characters automatically changes the context away from being romantic, while for others it's rather the opposite. And that makes me suspect that there's a fundamental disconnect between who is assumed to like yuri, and who actually does, and what is seen as being "for them".

[SBG_Eric]

Hm, I feel like that's not the case. From the enormous amount of yuri manga I've read (surprisingly made by men and women, and consumed by men and women via my understanding) it's very "purity" oriented. Lots and lots and lots of private religious, all girls schools with young, innocent cuties and tall, slender, beautiful ojou-samas/onee-samas.

My experience has been that Japanese fetishization is less... sexual in nature? (At least, in the non-hentai stories. There is a *lot* of GxG hentai, though.) It seems kind of like an extreme "first love" experience, sometimes with more sexual older girls molesting cute and innocent younger ones. (Strawberry Panic, anyone?)

Strawberry Panic! is a bit of an interesting case and a large part of that depends on which format you ingest the story through. The 26 episode anime has an over-the-top innocence to the story and the characters. While this is still there in the Light Novel there's a very distinct line drawn at points. While the author never gets overly explicit with the text, the story is very straightforward in defining what is and isn't meant sexually by the characters. The characters are also much... darker(?) in the light novel. The two formats are very different story wise overall... though it's one of the few series where the writer's creative license on the IP adaptation was well executed.

Why must they always be in high school? Where are the adult/older women? Where are the adventures that affect their lives on a larger scale? Maybe I'm alone on wanting to see a little more action (no pun intended) in those stories rather than "falling in love with the girl-next-door and maybe we'll go on a date!" kind of thing.

Yes i too have noticed that they all seem to be in high-school in the Yuri genre. Well Yaoi gets a more or less female audience and you can also have half of the male audience playing Yaoi games too. From what i know Yaoi seems more or less pure to a various audience. Actually to be honest i don't think i have ever seen a Yuri game that has a sensitive side to it... its just sex in most of them. You'd think they would put a sensitive side in games with female protagonists, being as females express that emotion most, it's probably rare in males... which is probably why they don't add it if you get what i mean.

While I'm not sure on all the games out there for the genre, but the number of anime that fall into the "high-school" category are overwhelming. That's not to say they're all bad, there are plenty of good ones such as Strawberry Panic! and Sasameki Koto, but they do make up the overwhelming majority. The only ones I can think of off-hand that aren't "high-school" and are any good are El Cazador de la Bruja and Candy Boy... but Candy Boy is still school (University) and comes with its own cans of worms story-wise.

[Sysen]

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[papillon]

I'm a simple guy, i see some mindfuck story, i press like.
I like the VN that's "super dark, deep story" and "super light and funny story" but i don't really like "normal story (with some exception)"
while most of Yuri VN falls into "normal" category

Out of curiosity, what are the 'most of yuri VN' games you've encountered?

(I'm curious whether this is entirely "I saw one Sonohana game once" or not )

[Sysen]

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