Maybe you can also view it as a kind of balance. VNs are not popular enough to be mainstream (for reasons X, Y, Z...), but if they were, it would probably mean that their popularity would have to come at the expense of the popularity of something else.monele wrote: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.
I remember there were always a few dominant genres in gaming, and this handful is also existent today - with somewhat different genres at the top at the moment. So what I am saying is that there is only so much place for the top few, and whenever something new comes to the top, it usually means something else is being pushed down - simply because there is room for let's say five great summer blockbusters.
If you were to make a hundred equally great movies and run them the same summer, no matter how good they would be, somehow I believe a top five would still come out of them. On one side it's overload, so there has to be a selection, no matter how unjust it may be - and on the other hand, people need some sort of a yardstick, to see where things fit in and to build a kind of perspective and orientation.
Usually I am reminded of this whenever I want to try something new - such as plunging into the world of websites about plants. I quickly look for the few that stand out because of their rating or popularity - not really beacause I would think they are the best for me, but I need to establish a basis from which I can then see what I really need. And I think this is a very important role for mainstream.
Even in VNs, you have the top bunch, and to be honest it would be a big coincidence if they were exactly the top games for you, as everyone has their special mix of favorites that sometimes includes some of the the big titles, but also has a few of the amateur works maybe, or something rare, or maybe a game that many people don't like. Also, you will have your favorites ordered in a special way, and the one you like the most doesn't have to be the big title. But it can be.
So there is space for everyone. To come back to the original thought, it's I think more a question of understanding the purpose of popularity and ranking and how it helps, rather than trying to find out why the popularity is on a certain (low) level only and by default making it a goal to increase the popularity. IMO it will develop naturally, if people act naturally. What I especially wanted to say is that it cannot be a bad thing to be less popular, and it's not a bad thing if you don't primarily aim at getting popular.
Of course, you will get the automatic response that this is a virtue out of a necessity, that you are not good enough to make it to the top, so you just invent reasons why not being popular is okay. But striving to achieve popularity or being the best is a goal for a different time and area for different people. A person in his role as a commercial VN developer will often want to strive for perfection in his work, but in his role as a hobby runner it will be enough for him to have participated in the marathon and finished it without setting any greater goals for the future.
A professional runner on the other hand, will want to be the quickest - but in his side job as a consultant for a simple running computer game, he will be happy to see that a certain audience likes his work once it's done - you cannot laugh at him saying it's no good when his game didn't beat Halo 3 in sales figures, because that's missing the point - of the game, as well as how the person perceives his work on the game.
). 
. Actually, it *shouldn't* become too popular. More popular = more crappy games usually ^^;.