IPhone Otome Woes

[PiyoPiyo]

I've been lurking for awhile but this is my first post. Please be gentle

So I'm pretty new to the whole otome world. I discovered the genre after moving overseas and that app suggestion module on Facebook localized and kept showing me ads for Voltage games with lines like "Is this bad boy really love material?!". Hilarious. I design apps for a living (commercial stuff) and ended up downloading that Fake Wedding game as research and was instantly hooked on the idea of romance games for girl.

I don't have a PS currently (it's sitting in my storage unit in NY) so I've been mainly playing the iPhone otome offerings and oh man. Why are they all so bad? I find it personally offensive as a woman that 99% of the titles involve earning wife points and cooking for some whiney dude. I'm in-between projects right now and am thinking of producing one myself. A story where the heroine isn't a vapid idiot who gets coerced into fake marriages and falls in love with a dude who can't even cook rice. I feel like English speaking iPhone users deserve better!

[Kate]

I agree with you somewhat. I mean, some of the Voltage stories and the like are amusing to read... but only amusing. Few evoke the feels we really want to feel, and even fewer have a smart, goal-setting, "real" mc. While some of the premises of the games are fun (I admit, I'm a sucker for Be My Princess), the dialogue is way too corny; the problems are either blown way out of proportion or something totally ridiculous. So I'm not a fan of some of the plot twists. If I can figure out how to develop for mobile devices, I certainly would, too.

Other than a few obligatory "sensual" scenes (and that's a stretch) after the main story in those games- in epilogues and sequels, I feel that those games are really aimed towards teenage girls, not so much those of us who are college age or older. However, some of the pc offerings seem much more interesting- I personally was interested in The Royal Trap- it has a worthy protagonist and some of the feels expected of otome games. I think writing, not any other asset in the games that fall short, is the pitfall.

Also, they charge so much per route for like, 5 CG's. Really? But I do drool over Voltage's art sometimes...

[PiyoPiyo]

Yeah Voltage's latest title Love Again appears to be aimed at an older audience. But they kind of took it to the extreme. The heroine is 34 and hasn't had a boyfriend in 10 years. Even if they are aimed at teenagers I feel the stories still could have some more substance.

I talked to my developer partner and he's surprisingly into doing one (he's a burly dude who likes muscle cars). Our last project was for a news outlet though so I think he just wants something light and fun to work on haha.

I started making a list of things I'd like to see in an iPhone title.
- A strong, independant heroine who has a good job and isn't super sad about being single
- Unique love interests that aren't just the 5 standard personality types.
- No princes or demons
- A bit more "naughty stuff". Nothing hardcore, but in some of those games hand holding is as far as you get.
- A pay structure that doesn't charge 3+ times for chapters. I'm thinking of doing the pay per character route thing, but you only pay once and it'll just be .99 cents.
- More CG scenes. How many do you think is a good number? Would there be interest in being able to download them?

[Arowana]

Apologies for the shameless plug, but my group recently released a2 ~a due~ on iTunes. The protagonist is pretty unconventional for an otome heroine (she has a mohawk, for one!). It’s a short game and completely free, so we’d love for more people to try it out.

\blatantselfpromotion

We now return you to your regular program!

Concerning Voltage, Arithmetic, and the other big otome mobile developers, my impression is that they have a formula that is successful with a certain demographic, and they keep following that formula to churn out as many games as possible and saturate the market. This makes it harder to notice the smaller groups who are doing something different.

To be fair, I haven’t played that many Voltage games past the free prologues, and I’ve heard that some are better than others. But yeah, my general feeling is that they’re more about quantity than quality.

Also of note – there currently isn’t an easy way to port Ren’Py games to iOS (I believe PyTom is working on it, though). My team, and others, had to build a new visual novel engine from scratch in order to get our game on iOS. The barrier to entry is much lower for Android ports, which Ren’Py does support; unsurprisingly, there are a lot more EVNs (English visual novels) on Google Play than iTunes.

You sound like an experienced programmer, so if you are able/want to develop your own VN engine for iOS, then go for it!

[Hazel-Bun]

I think you'd be more interested in Otoge aimed at older woman. The amount of CGs doesn't matter to me as much as the price.

I prefer per route purchasing as I don't always like all of the men offered. I'm more of a NTT Solmare, and now, D3Publisher fan myself, so can't speak for Voltage. You might like the revenge/doctor geared one? I heard it was very good and the protagonist is older. That or Sweet Fuse though the men are much older and the heroine wasn't my taste

The discussion has been done to death but basically, Otome heroines and to an extent Otoge ones are often considered "useless", "vapid", "anti-feminist" due to the conflicting culture expectations of the East and the West. I'd just say create who you want to see and always read the reviews first

[Fenrir34]

I totally agree with you. I've played a lot of otome games on my phone because it's hard for mac users to get games. For a while I really liked Voltage and thought they had decent story lines. But the more I played them, the more I began to realize how much the games made me a bit angry. The guys might've been hot, but they didn't have much depth to them. It seems like they were just there for a pretty face. And for the their protagonists, don't even get me started. In their games they always made the protagonist either passive or bland(Bell bland XD). I don't really expect to relate to them at all, but I did was a mc who wasn't a weak girl who needed the love of some guy.

Solamare made better games, but they to fall in the same formula. I think their best game for me was either Prince Love or Actor love. Prince love the mc seemed to have a bit of a personality, and in Actor Love I admired her determination to be a good actor. Worst had to be Ninja Love and Konkatsu Love. In Ninja Love she was 'nice' and all, but was weak and didn't do anything. I mean she was with ninjas. You'd expect her to be somewhat useful. And Konkatsu Love....she was just horrible....I hated playing with her. I will say Solamare games have some better love interests. They have simple problems, but at least they are better then Voltage's.

The list you cave is exactly what I want to see in otome games. Sadly, it's no only in Iphone that this kind of mc is like. In many Japanese otome games as well. Some do have great protagonists, but I've noticed that many are submissive, and boring.

[KittyKatStar]

I haven't tried them myself, but I heard that the newer American-based Voltage games are good?

http://voltage-ent.com/

Games like Speakeasy Tonight (you're a flapper girl! oh yea!), and upcoming Queen's Gambit (the first same-sex romance route in a voltage game!)

[Katta]

It seems it's more convenient for some people because of the price, but for me the worst thing about Voltage and co is the route system and I think most problems (except MC personality that comes from Japanese culture) come exactly from it: 1) each route revolves around some guy, so it makes general/MC-related plot weak or non-existent, 2) you need to make your choice early on = the choice can be based only on the guy's appearance and personality stereotype, so he never gets anything besides that.
I agree with Hazel-Bun that cg number isn't very important, they need to represent important or beautiful moments, not just some random scene to increase the cgs number. Even 3 cgs will be fine imo. The story is much more important.

[papillon]

Yeah, the need to sell stories separately for the phone market (and break it up into little sections and side stories and bonus stories and so on) to keep the price of each individual purchase low definitely affects the storytelling. There are a lot of things you simply can't do in a game where people are buying one boy at a time.

While it sounds nice to sell all a character's content for just 0.99 total, this may not be very sustainable when you consider all the costs involved in writing, drawing, and selling a game on the istore. You can't just sell whatever you want like you can on PC, you have to pay developer fees to apple and jump through their constantly-updating hoops...

Anyway. There are business reasons for a lot of what they do, but the result is that as a reader I'd much rather be reading a game on teh computer, not the phone!

[gekiganwing]

I read your earlier comments, PiyoPiyo, and thought about the times I've dealt with fandom fatigue. There have been quite a few moments when I've been bored with everything currently on the market, and when I've not been hopeful about the future of my various fandoms. It's happened to me regarding prose fantasy novels as well as story-driven games for consoles. It will happen to me again.

Sometimes the thing that helps me deal with fandom fatigue is a product made by an influential company with a substantial budget. Sometimes it will be free products that don't look amazing, but have real substance. (One potentially interesting girl x boy visual novel example: the thus-far-untranslated Watashi no Real wa Jujitsu Shisugiteiru. Reviewer Hinano said that this story was better than most games she had paid for during 2013.)

I started making a list of things I'd like to see in an iPhone title.

Consider writing down two lists. One list will be "things to include in my VN" -- possibly including art direction, length of story, number of choices, and more. The other list will "things to exclude." I got this concept from the book No Plot? No Problem!, which is about National Novel Writing Month.

Overall, remember that the story that you tell is *your* story. Create what you want. If you're going to sell it, then it has to appeal to someone. At the same time, keep in mind that it's impossible to appeal to everyone.

If you have experiencing publishing iOS and/or Android software, then you can certainly focus on creating content there. Keep in mind that methods for selling a mobile game might not be applicable to computer games, and vice versa.

[Pyonkotchi]

a lot of mobile games have the problem of "Plain Jane Romances Cardboard Tropes"

For the MCs, its partly a culture thing I think... but mostly i think in a lot of the mobile games the MC is supposed to be you, they never show her face, you can name her whatever you want, and her personality is always really basic and kinda generic, shes always kind and polite but other than that is totally average and nothing about her stands out, so it can be easy to fill her shoes, unfortunately many people are too different from what little personality the MC does have, so its hard to pretend you're her when she does things you would never do in a million years, or a lot of people simply just dont like blank slate MCs, or whatever other reason there is, so I can see why many people don't like the protagonists in those games. it's not even just an "otome game" thing, the same thing is with many bishoujo games, the guy is supposed to be you so he's a total average joe. tbh i think those kinds of protagonists work better in dating sims than visual novels but whatever.

Unfortunately while i can forgive the MC for being bland, The entire purpose of these games are to romance pretty boys, if the boys are all bland, whats the point? ... I don't really like a lot of mobile games just because in too many games all the guys are predictable tropes. and the stories themselves arent interesting enough for me either. some of the games are better than others. i like NTT Solmares games better than Voltage,

iirc solmares games are more expensive than voltage, and they also tend to have better art, and at least in my opinion have more interesting stories and guys, so its a probably a money thing, its always a money thing

[PiyoPiyo]

Great comments going on here!

I hadn't seen the American aimed Voltage titles yet, so will check those out. I find the illustrations that are based on Hollywood actors slightly creepy though. Also there's no Ryan Gosling so they clearly have no idea what white women want haha. I'll also check out Watashi no Real wa Jujitsu Shisugiteiru. English is my first language, but I think I could get through a Japanese title if I go slow and have a dictionary on hand. (would have to be a phenomenal story for me to take the time)

I'm not sure I buy into the whole cultural thing as an explanation for the poor writing of female characters. I'm a white girl from the West, but I live in Asia and would definitely not describe my sisters here in any way that could be compared to the chicks in these games. I suspect it might just be that the companies who happen to have the largest market shares of English games found a formula that worked and ran with it. There's little incentive for innovation at that point you know?

Anyway I'm going to write an otome game with a badass heroine with a good job and independent spirit and there will be time travel and probably a shirtless fight with Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison.

[papillon]

Sounds cool!

[Kate]

I'm looking forward to that.

[Caveat Lector]

Anyway I'm going to write an otome game with a badass heroine with a good job and independent spirit and there will be time travel and probably a shirtless fight with Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison.

Yes to everything. And as for the part I bolded...do it. Do it!