The state of VNs and their future

[Nebi]

Instead of asking why visual novel writers aren't tackling other subjects, ask why authors in general aren't tackling visual novels.

Profit, I guess. The market for visual novels (outside of urban Japanese society anway) is, as we all know, rather small. The author knows what they do best, which is to put words together in the hope that it will attract a readership. An author simply wants to write because they enjoy the medium with its rich history and enormous potential. Why should they go to the extra trouble to hire a director, a programmer, and an artist to sell their story? (in general authors aren't rich to begin with!) Visual novels are a hobby enjoyed by a specific demographic with access to that technology. You may find a novel in developing countries, but I doubt the majority are even aware that visual novels exist. (Choose Your Own Adventure Books, maybe) As a hobby, its biggest pool of creative talent inevitably comes from the hobbyists themselves - who have the time and interest to contribute to and expand the visual novel community.

In a way, I guess the visual novel community in its current state is a sub-culture of a sub-culture? I think someone brought that up before. It could be...counterculture? :| We're rebels, all of us. :P

[Samu-kun]

I-it's...

PROTOCULTURE!!!!!

[monele]

Ore no uta wo kike?

I'm not sure we need paid authors or people coming from a commercial background. We're all hobbyist, and writers should also be hobbyists. So... why aren't (more) hobbyist writers tackling visual novels?

[ficedula]

Random speculation, but ... I'd guess most authors probably aren't great artists. And while visual novels offer the opportunity to create a more meaningful reader experience, bad graphics break immersion and are worse than no graphics. Yeah, you could go and find an artist to help you (if you're even aware/considering the possibility of a VN), but then again, you could always just concentrate on the writing instead. Also, are you sure you'll find an artist who shares your vision for the characters?

I've read one or two articles written by professional authors who have complained about the covers their publishers have put on the books - "That's not at all how Character X looks! The appearance is wrong, the attitude they have is wrong...!". I'd imagine when you're coming from the mindset of "I'm the author, I define the story totally" it might be hard to imagine a third party providing illustrations that actually enhance the experience.

(On the other hand, when working on NaNo projects with Jake, I don't worry about that at all, but we always planned those projects together from the start, so it's not like I already had a project idea with character designs and plot already arranged then I called in an artist. In fact, Jake had more of that planning done than I did, even though I ended up doing a bit more writing than he did...)

[N0UGHTS]

If you haven't noticed, ADVs, VNs, KN, and Sims aren't that popular outside of East Asia. Books are definitely a more familiar and widespread medium... I dare you to go on a fanfic subforum of any non-VN fan-community (Fate/Stay Night fan sites excluded :p) and make a poll asking "Would you write a Visual Novel?" You'll probably find people asking what a visual novel is and whether you mean "picture book." "WTF Star Trek picture book?!" Though maybe you might get a reply like "I've been thinking of a Kirk/Spock thing for a while, but I'm not sure what would make the bulk of the story..." XD

The hobbyist writers who are aware of those games and don't write those games either:

• want their works in a medium that's popular and more accessible, like plain text
• are intimdated by programming
• can't draw and can't find willing artists/are too lazy to find willing artists
• would rather write cruddy amateur fanfics than cruddy fanfics with branching storylines (too much work for a lazy twat)

[tigerrenko]

GASP!

As a writer I have to protest. Trouble with writing is that everyone who is able to read and write thinks that is ready to be a writer! And it's harder to detect bad writing than a bad drawing. To audience that wants to be entertained by a good idea coupled with nice artwork, naive writing is less problem than naive drawing.

But if we are not talking from a professional level, but stay on a hobby level, every artist already has a venue for his/her hobby. VN is a coder's pastime.

Writers can garner more audience and impact writing blogs, while visual artists are in so high demand that they can place their stuff anywhere, leaving coders and hobby coders to dabble with VNs.

However I think every talk that segregates writers from artists from coders is not beneficial to the VN community. VN's benefit from being an underground activity because "if you don't like mine, make one of your own" philosophy. It worked for hard core music... In HC bad music was not a sin, playing music without an idea was!

@noughts> for every 'lazy' hobbist writer, I can name you a lazy artist or a lazy coder.

In some regard, VN is like making a home-made movie. Sure you can make one on your own, you just need a half-decent vidcam. But to make a good movie you'll need a vision, a team, idea, budget etc. Cooperation I think is the key. If you manage to 'infect' others with your idea, you can make VN equivalent to "Revelations" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_Revelations)

Cheers
TR

[N0UGHTS]

@noughts> for every 'lazy' hobbist writer, I can name you a lazy artist or a lazy coder.

I hate that, really. I can't code for beans... There's such a shortage of good, free, not-lazy Python coders who are willing to work on a Ren'Py game...

...Wait. Did you get the idea that I think most hobbyist writers are lazy twats, or something like that? That's not what I meant... :bangs head on desk: I can't properly communicate with people other than myself, can I? Even with Zoloft...

Yet another reason why some writers don't go for games (or anything at all):
Confidence issues. :cough: If the only person they can talk to is themselves, then they shouldn't bother writing! ...Right? Their writing would suck, anyway... :laughs manically:

Note to self:
—Practice communication skills
—Did I take enough meds?
—Take self-confidence classes to supplement meds
—Learn to cope with inadequacy with something else other than laughing

[not me]

Profit, I guess. The market for visual novels (outside of urban Japanese society anway) is, as we all know, rather small.

Careful about what 'everyone' knows... sometimes, it's completely wrong, but as long as everyone agrees on the conventional wisdom, nobody tries anything else...

As long as you make games targeting only a tiny niche of fandom, probably only a tiny niche of fandom will play them!

[N0UGHTS]

@notme

You know, there's a reason why Hirameki International's "bowed out."

I personally have to agree with Nebi that the current market for VNs and the like is small outside Japan, at least compared to other game markets. In fact, I don't think it's an opinion... Resident Evil 4 is definitely out-selling Kana: Little Sister in the West! And I wonder how many other game titles you can replace "Resident Evil 4" with and still come out as true...

[not me]

They were translating Japanese games and marketing them directly to a small handful of super-niche fans, lurking in dark corners of anime sections, completely unknown to the general public.

Whereas some (admittedly hybrid) VN-style games on the DS have done quite well. But they weren't sold as "super otaku anime experience", they were just sold as games.

What would happen if someone made a children's educational adventure VN? Choose Your Own Adventure for the modern age?

[PyTom]

I suspect that successful VNs will be sold as indie games, not to the otaku market. (Think Summer Session here.)

[N0UGHTS]

They were translating Japanese games and marketing them directly to a small handful of super-niche fans, lurking in dark corners of anime sections, completely unknown to the general public.

That is true... I hang out in clandestine communities so often (or, well... I used to) that I forgot how niche they were.

All right, I'm convinced (or converted, depending on how you look at it :p). The perceived market is small, but the potential market —people who would buy games as long as they were appealing— is quite larger. Parents (they buy, kids play), women (think VN, soap-opera style XD), kids that have money (maybe more would read books if they were pictures behind the words?), ordinary bookworms (Dune, VN-style!), maybe schools with experimental programs (a textbook that weight less than a pound XD)...

Educational VNs... :sighs dreamily: If they're cheaper than textbooks, aww man... California doesn't have much of a budget for education, so I'm all for it!

If enough schools utilize VNs, then eventually they'll be acknowledged by mainstream entrepeneurs as a good medium that has the potential to entertain, too. That's how the computer craze started out in Britain (or so I've heard), right? Marketed as an educational tool, eventually a few British kids started coming out as a homebrew programmers and made their own games...

...Are these ideas too far out there?

[Jake]

I personally have to agree with Nebi that the current market for VNs and the like is small outside Japan, at least compared to other game markets. In fact, I don't think it's an opinion... Resident Evil 4 is definitely out-selling Kana: Little Sister in the West!

Picking a flagship multi-platform console title to compare to a PC-only porn game is probably not an entirely fair comparison, you know...

Being pornographic seriously limits a title's sales, even if it makes a game more appealing to a certain demographic than it would otherwise have been. So one wonders whether the relatively small market for VNs is something to do with the relatively high percentage of translated VNs which are pornographic. Someone should ask Capcom how many Phoenix Wright games they've sold, or Cing how many copies of Hotel Dusk or Another Code. None of those are absolutely 'pure' VNs, but they undeniably have strong VN roots, and I get the impression they all sold at least healthily.

[DaFool]

Tigerrenko summed my experience totally.

Writers can garner more audience and impact writing blogs, while visual artists are in so high demand that they can place their stuff anywhere, leaving coders and hobby coders to dabble with VNs.

+100000. The confirmation of this realization happened when famous people in the blogging or comic circles recently decided to work a bit in a new medium... their fans go "VN? What dat? Oh well, I'm trying it because X made it, and s/he da man! This is actually the first VN-whatshamacallit I'm gonna play!"

Not to mention, blogs and art dumpages get way more comments than some full VN games ever will, so it's better fitting outlet for the attention whore (no, I'm not implying that anyone who runs a blog or an art gallery craves attention, it's just that those mediums are guaranteed to give more feedback)

VN's benefit from being an underground activity because "if you don't like mine, make one of your own" philosophy.

Also, no one really cares, so I'm just going to release this work even if the only true audience for it is myself.

In some regard, VN is like making a home-made movie.

I got into the fandom because I wanted to animate some of my ideas, except that I didn't have 10 million yen lying around to allocate for a half-hour episode.

I also came from a background of next-to-nothing artistic skills (no formal training), no writing experience besides research papers, and an outdated programming background. So making a full-on interactive game was out of the question, as well as a full-on graphic novel. And I wanted something more substantial than a story told through plain text.

It's been said many many times, but it bears repeating:

The visual novel medium is the cheapest 'cinematic' experience you can produce. It's what happens when the framecounts of animated shows approach the limit of zero frames per second. The most budget-oriented visual novels simulate the experience of watching a silent movie since the voice actresses all quit, and you are forced to narrate everything on screen. Thankfully, you can still have music and sound effects. And you distribute the result in the cheapest way possible... through the internet.

[monele]

Picking a flagship multi-platform console title to compare to a PC-only porn game is probably not an entirely fair comparison, you know...

My thought, really. How many people actually *know* about Kana? Whereas you will find tons of people who know the Resident Evil name without ever playing the games. And that's the whole problem, you can't think of selling something that people never heard about. And you can't say people don't like something they've never heard about either.

Sure, the VN format doesn't appeal to everyone. It's a niche format. But then, it's almost always linked to the anime genre, which is another niche. And then again, commercially, it's linked to hentai which makes it a niche by the power of 3 ^^;...

Now, VNs for children, educative VNs, Choose your own adventure VNs... these are ideas that look good to me. It doesn't have to give up the anime root altogether, but it's really what I've been trying to say all along : there are other domains to explore, that might attract different crowds. Now, I'm not saying we should all force ourselves out of our comfort zone. If we're good at doing anime stuff, it's probably better we stick to it. But if *anyone* ever thought of doing something different but gave up because they thought "the community only wants anime games", then it's a problem :/. I mean, the "different crowds"? Chances are they're actually the same as the anime lovers. Don't you all read books, watch TV series, go to the movies for a lot of non-japanese things? Assuming you like super heroes, for example, wouldn't you enjoy a typically comic book like super hero VN? Right now, super hero lovers only have action games to quench their thirst. This tackles one part of the super hero genre, the action... what about the character and story side?