The Otome Market VS Romance Visual Novels for Guys

[DaFool]

Since your username is projectotome its best if you stick with the market that you know, which is otome.

Bishoujo games for guys is ridiculously cutthroat... the few successes we see on Steam were basically "John's First Eroge" or "Mark's First Dating Sim" because the creators were wise enough to know the loopholes in the system to get their foot in the door (Japanese companies are waaaaaay behind in terms of knowing the digital market... as is always the case, it was the English-speaking creators who had to bust the doors down before the JP companies followed suit.).

While some of the players introduced will go on to play longer bishoujo games, admittedly the market for "Moe moe moe for 30 hours" is limited compared to straight up porn games, despite some kickstarter success stories.

I'd also say even if the creator tries to copy the Japanese market, the fact that the creator grew up someplace else will reflect in the product so the result will never be the perfect copy of a Japanese product. This can be a good thing.

[Rosstin]

Visual Novel is a medium. It's such a struggle with people always thinking visual novel = anime = Japan. Yes, we know that Japan makes a lot of visual novels. Doesn't mean it's impossible to do one in another style.

The genre thing is annoying too. Sometimes I feel like the Japanese categories for manga cheapen storytelling by forcing authors to write a certain story based purely on whether they are writing Shounen or Yuri or Yaoi or Bara or Shojo or Jusei or Seinen... on the one hand, it's amazing that Japan produces so many cartoons that they have the luxury to have a fully-adult category. On the other hand it's frustrating to know that a series is a Shounen and that means that it's really restricted in what is going to actually happen in the story.

Anyway... I understand where the OP is coming from. You want to go where the money is, right? I mean, I often end up producing visual novels where I personally couldn't do all the writing myself because I don't have the right perspective to author a lot of the content. I've made a Yaoi game with a gay writer. I would have a really hard time writing that story. I'm not saying I could never do it but it would take me a lot of time. Queen At Arms is also about hot guys. Man, I think those guys are really great characters and some of them are pretty cute. Ask me to pick between them, though? I'm probably just going to pick the one that looks the most like a girl...

Anyway, if you are the main writer for a romance game, don't put yourself in a situation where you are writing for an audience that you're not a part of, or writing a type of romance that you've never experienced or will never experience or have no interest in. You have to be interested in what you're writing. Yes, you want to stretch yourself, you don't want to be confined to writing what you know, but write something you really enjoy and want to write.

One of the earlier posters said: "Do something well and it doesn't matter who your audience is." Man that is so true. Look, Kickstarter the way it is, you can always raise at least a few K for your game, if you do your research and have some experience. If you enjoy creating it people will enjoy playing it (usually)

TL;DR If you like Otome games make those. If you like VNs for Guys write those.