Created Works in Progress - Otome

[PyTom]

For what it's worth, on it's first full day of existence, the Otome forum was our second most popular forum, when you count the number of people who clicked through to it. Completed Games is the most popular, which suggests that if you want to bump up the number of viewers, it's best to get it to qualify for Completed Games.

[maselphie]

And I will have made a game in a vacuum.

[Wintermoon]

Two of my games that were moved to the otome forum are exactly your definition. They were INCIDENTAL ROMANCE. But because of the attitude against GxB, no one cared to look past that tag and moved it. THAT IS A PROBLEM.

A lot of games are classified wrong, no question about that. [gxb] and otome are not synonyms. I'm thinking specifically of The Dreaming: gxb on a technicality, but absolutely not an otome game.

Without a clear, unambiguous definition of "otome game" that takes care of all the border cases, games will continue to be classified wrong. Which is one more reason to tear down this wall.

[carosene]

A lot of games are classified wrong, no question about that. [gxb] and otome are not synonyms. I'm thinking specifically of The Dreaming: gxb on a technicality, but absolutely not an otome game.

Very good point.
My problem is the exact opposite of yours. I have a game in development that is not really a GxB, (since it's not really a romance by genre, and it's a kinetic novel) but it has a lot of otome appeal. I kind of feel like some people who might be interested in my game would not see it because it's not GxB, or frankly, otome. It just has otome appeal.

However, after thinking about it, PyTom's decision to seperate them was a good one, because we all know there were a crapton of GxB games floating around. o.o If the creators are aware of who their target audience is, (and not just male or female, but whether they're looking for girls looking for GxB games or if their game is more broad in genre) and are sensitive about which board they post their thread in, I think it could be a useful "marketing" tool.

And frankly, I think the "GxB" "BxG" "GxG" "BxB" classifying is over-used. o.o I mean, it's useful for some romance games, but for games like "The Dreaming" it makes no sense. Who cares whether I'm playing in the perspective of a man or a woman? (Of course people will disagree with me, but I'd also like to add "And who cares what gender they're into?")

And though I do have some complaints, I am happy to let my "That Cheap and Sacred Thing" live in the general WIP board.

[kinougames]

... Wait, what exactly is the exact type of game you try to avoid? I admit that I have not read every single WIP thread because I find it a waste of time to get excited about games that may never be finished.

Upon first coming to this forum, I clicked heavily through the games on the WIP, of all kinds. I'm first and foremost a story and art buff, and if I don't like the art, or the story, I 'x' out. And the majority of those happened to have GxB attached to them. So, I was already avoiding the tag in general.

But comparing some games which are all technically GxB - the first Fantasia game, Aleema's Rock Band game, and my Date Warp - how are these one single exact type of game? What's even vaguely similar about them, other than that they feature a female protagonist and the possibility of romance with male characters? I don't know how the rockband game has been going because I haven't looked at it since the first demo, but it certainly wasn't sugary piles of hearts and sparkles.

It's one thing to imply that there are a lot of GxB games out there that you don't care for; perfectly reasonable, everyone has their own tastes. But when people start suggesting that they're all the same and being glad that they're swept away where one doesn't have to look at them, that does start sounding like the kind of anti-girl prejudice some people are worrying about.

I didn't like Fantasia, Date Warp (which is more typical of the type of otome I avoid), and Rock Band for different reasons, none of were specifically "IT'S GxB EW". I just find that GxBs tend to have more sweeter stories in general, even if there aren't giant-eyed bunny rabbits running everywhere. My dislike of all three of these games, for separate reasons, was what lead me to basically start avoiding the GxB tagged games on THIS forum. Not that every GxB is bad, but that the ones I've seen posted here, to this forum (which I made sure to specify), have been the kind of games I avoid.

It's hard enough dealing with mainstream prejudices against visual novels (No, I'm not making a porn game!); it's pretty frustrating to think that people within the community are now hearing otome/GxB and immediately pulling up some equally bizarre list of stereotypes to apply to the game. Should I have to lie about what's in my games in order to get people to play them?

I have several reasons for why I don't want to play various games. It just so happens that the majority of the otome games that people put on here are the games I wouldn't play normally anyway. I don't avoid them because there are girls and there are also guys, and GASP they get together. The stories are just way beyond my tastes. It's not exactly a large forum, and as the forum proved, Otome games were looked at second most. I'm sure that my avoiding of otome games here is not going to hurt the otome fad any.

Also, otome seems to have a strikingly different meaning on this forum than the original Japanese reference...

@Wintermoon

Before Lemma, hearing otome would immediately give me an idea of Sailormoon-ish type stories. Otome by itself means something like "virgin maiden", and it's meant to appeal to those girls who like the bright eyed, 15 year old girl who is a crime-fighter or NEEEEEEEDS a boyfriend or wants to get married.

Before Lemma, GxB and BxG meant the same thing to me; games with heterosexual romance. After looking through the WIP forums, I started avoiding almost the entire forum, and the definitions changed based on this forum.

[lepapillonrouge]

Hey kinou. What is the meaning of 'otome' in Japanese? I know it means 'maiden', but is there some connotations with the word that are different from how we use the word in reference to otome games? Just curious.

Not sure if my opinion really matters, even though I am one of the people who are more affected in this change than others. But personally I don't really have a problem with the whole labeling thing. Most of the time, I'm not interested in games that aren't otome (with one exception off the top of my head). But I can see why Aleema would worry about not having feedback from different kinds of people. If only the rest of the otome WIP board section were like that...
Even though I like playing otome games, the one thing that's been nagging at me is that a lot of them are mostly about romance and not enough about plot/characterization/non-romantic etc. Or, too shallow. I think it'd be nice to have some feedback from others who aren't a bunch of pre-teens, because more or less those are going to be a good number of people checking that particular board. But again. I guess it's fine. If it's not interesting to you guys...it's not like the game that I'm making is really to any interest to guys, anyway.


However, isn't it funny how many people commenting in this topic don't really check the WIP board section that much due to the fact that many of the projects end up failing anyway/are not interesting enough/don't take it seriously? XD;

[PyTom]

I have to admit, I've been treating Otome and GxB as synonyms. If people want to propose a way of tweaking that definition a bit, I'm open to it. Or perhaps the forum should be changed to WiP - GxB, rather than straight up Otome - since that might imply less. I'm open to good-faith suggestions as to what the new forum should be called.

I do think the fundamental idea of a subforum is still valid, because:

1) There are a lot of GxB posts.
2) The authors of those posts felt that it was important to tag them GxB.

I still have a lot of posts to move (thanks to Ren and Aleema for reporting them), and it's a multi-step process to move them, so I'll take my time. I do use a little bit of judgement as to where a game falls - RockRobin was flagged as a GxB game until a couple of days ago, so I think it should be filed there.

The Otome section isn't "punishment", and I don't think that it will lead to any less commentary on the games. I actually suspect that Otome will receive more commentary - right now, the average thread in Otome has 100 posts, versus 20 for non-Otome.

[Blue Lemma]

I read through this whole thread, and I never thought it would be this controversial. I think part of the issue stems from the de-facto link between visual novels and ren'ai. Given that a lot of visual novels revolve around romantic relationships, people will tend to prefer games with one group of potential "targets" over another. Making specific forums for each major type saves a lot of visitors time and energy.

If someone dislikes commenting on or reading about GxB works-in-progress enough to avoid the GxB/Otome forum, that person would have almost certainly hit the "back" button if he/she were to click on a post for a GxB/Otome work in the old WiP forum, anyway. That's why I doubt there will be much difference in the gender-input with two forums.

Also, a good game will be visibly popular in the Completed Games section, regardless of what type it is. Games like Re: Alistair receiving plenty of enthusiastic praise in that forum will pique people's interest and introduce those games' types to a broader audience which, in turn, may decide to investigate the WiPs.

We'll be keeping an eye on things to see if people are getting the comments they need in the two forums or not. If it's not working for people, we'll probably merge them back with a lesson learned. If it works, then so much the better ^_^

It is not the intention to have the Otome/GxB forum be a sub/second-class forum. It's purely for classification to save people time since the single WiP forum was getting huge and people were marking "GxB" anyway.

[Counter Arts]

I believe "targeted" audience may be better. The issues and topics you find in otome games are kind of different I feel... probably in terms of what they are and approach. I don't think it should be strict on gender-pair. I haven't played otome games but I have a feeling that it might be theoretically possible for a BxG otome game to exist.

To sum it up... it should be Otome games with no strict gender pairing applied. It should be up to the creators to decide if it is an otome game or not.

[Wintermoon]

I have to admit, I've been treating Otome and GxB as synonyms. If people want to propose a way of tweaking that definition a bit, I'm open to it. Or perhaps the forum should be changed to WiP - GxB, rather than straight up Otome - since that might imply less.

Otome is a fairly useful classification within the realm of romance-related, X-chases-Y games. People have different gender preferences, so people will prefer playing as X chasing Y (or X chasing X), for various values of X and Y.

GxB in general is a completely meaningless classification. Nobody's gender preference is so strong that they can't enjoy a non-romance-oriented game they would otherwise love just because of the gender of the main characters. Again, I bring up The Dreaming - a GxB game with nothing in common with otome games aside from the gender of two of the characters.

Segregating otome is merely a bad idea - I've already voiced my objections, but I can see the argument of not wanting a single genre to completely dominate the WIP forum. Segregating GxB games in general is a mind-blowingly horrible idea - I'm talking apartheid-level horrible.

[Mirage]

Before Lemma, hearing otome would immediately give me an idea of Sailormoon-ish type stories. Otome by itself means something like "virgin maiden", and it's meant to appeal to those girls who like the bright eyed, 15 year old girl who is a crime-fighter or NEEEEEEEDS a boyfriend or wants to get married.

Before Lemma, GxB and BxG meant the same thing to me; games with heterosexual romance. After looking through the WIP forums, I started avoiding almost the entire forum, and the definitions changed based on this forum.

As far as I know, Otome does mean Maiden in Japanese. However, Otome does not equals to Otome Games in Japan. It think they used it to tag games that are opposite of Galge/Harem. Otome Games should be what you call Gyaku-Harem, where 1 girl is loved by many guys with many emphasize towards hot guys rather than heroine.

The phenomena you see in Lemmasoft in a very common in Japan. In fact current Japanese PS2 games are filled with Otome Games. During 2007 where there's hardly otome games in Lemmasoft, in Japan, you got dozen of them. Stuff like Hakuoki already have its anime counterpart. I think this phenomena is not going to change anytime soon.

[PyTom]

I've gone ahead and changed the name of the forum, for two reasons:

(1) GxB was the tag that everyone was using.

(2) Wintermoon was right - and if my goal was to "segregate" games, this would be horrible. The division is not "games I care about" versus "games I don't", it's something that's more to deal with the level of traffic on WiP. Some games in GxB will be quite enjoyable to everyone - and that's why you should read it once in a while.

[kinougames]

As far as I know, Otome does mean Maiden in Japanese. However, Otome does not equals to Otome Games in Japan. It think they used it to tag games that are opposite of Galge/Harem. Otome Games should be what you call Gyaku-Harem, where 1 girl is loved by many guys with many emphasize towards hot guys rather than heroine.

The phenomena you see in Lemmasoft in a very common in Japan. In fact current Japanese PS2 games are filled with Otome Games. During 2007 where there's hardly otome games in Lemmasoft, in Japan, you got dozen of them. Stuff like Hakuoki already have its anime counterpart. I think this phenomena is not going to change anytime soon.

Otome definitely means maiden, but there's a heavy, heavy implication of "virgin" with the word, so while "maiden" doesn't necessarily have that connotation in English, it does in Japanese, and is often used to hint at virgin without using the more obvious "baajin" (virgin in katakana).

When I hear "otome game" on this forum, the anti-harem was the exact game I thought of, and in the Japanese versions of those games, the girl has a certain personality and wants to do certain things. Yes, the focus was on the boyfriends you could get, but the heroine is usually a schoolgirlish, I-wanna-be-a-wife type. You wouldn't see a strong female lawyer as the main character in an otome game.

I don't know if you've seen Vampire Knight or Fushigi Yuugi, but those would be easy to make into a typical otome JVN. Tons of hot guys, very few girls, and the few girls are schoolgirls who do things like cut school, eat a lot without getting fat, and other "cute" stereotypes.

This is why I tend to have a huge problem with Americans borrowing words that have a use and active meaning in Japan and making them into whatever they want for fandom purposes. When you know the Japanese terms for things, it gets so confusing to have to dig up the new fannish definition for a word.

[Mirage]

Otome definitely means maiden, but there's a heavy, heavy implication of "virgin" with the word, so while "maiden" doesn't necessarily have that connotation in English, it does in Japanese, and is often used to hint at virgin without using the more obvious "baajin" (virgin in katakana).

Er, so you know. I do understand Japanese ^^' I am not arguing the meaning of Otome in Japanese, whether it's virgin maiden or not. I am saying that Otome Games generally associated with Gyaku-Harem rather than game with virgin girls. Some stuff will sound stupid if you translated it literally.

I don't know if you've seen Vampire Knight or Fushigi Yuugi, but those would be easy to make into a typical otome JVN. Tons of hot guys, very few girls, and the few girls are schoolgirls who do things like cut school, eat a lot without getting fat, and other "cute" stereotypes.

I consider Fushigi Yuugi one of the earliest thing that cause otome game to bloom in Japan aside from Angelique and Harukanaru Toki no naka de.

This is why I tend to have a huge problem with Americans borrowing words that have a use and active meaning in Japan and making them into whatever they want for fandom purposes. When you know the Japanese terms for things, it gets so confusing to have to dig up the new fannish definition for a word.

While I agree with this (like the usage of the word Hentai), "Otome Games" is the correct term used in Japan for many GxB games in Lemmasoft. It is a term coined by Japanese used in Japan, not something magically created by Western people.

[Wintermoon]

(2) Wintermoon was right - and if my goal was to "segregate" games, this would be horrible. The division is not "games I care about" versus "games I don't", it's something that's more to deal with the level of traffic on WiP. Some games in GxB will be quite enjoyable to everyone - and that's why you should read it once in a while.

Moving games into separate fora is, by definition, segregation.

Segregation can be useful and inoffensive when it is along the lines of natural interest groups, such as genres. It makes sense to have e.g. murder mysteries in one forum and romance games in another, precisely because it allows people to discriminate against games that don't interest them.

Segregation is useless when it is along lines that people generally don't care about. It is offensive when it is along lines that see real unfair discrimination and even hate crimes in the real world. It is downright destructive when it implies a connection between things that aren't actually similar. Segregation by "GxB" versus everything else is all of these.

Also, if you really want people to read all fora equally, you should merge all of them into one. Separate fora are useful only because they allow people to discriminate. Without that advantage, separate fora are just a bunch of wasted mouse clicks. I will continue to discriminate against all three WIP fora because I don't like reading about WIPs.

And on a complete different note:

Otome definitely means maiden, but there's a heavy, heavy implication of "virgin" with the word, so while "maiden" doesn't necessarily have that connotation in English, it does in Japanese, and is often used to hint at virgin without using the more obvious "baajin" (virgin in katakana).

Actually maiden does have that connotation in English, to the point where it's less of a connotation and more of a direct meaning. See: maidenhead, maiden voyage.