Sonomi wrote:A poignant quote from the OP's article mentioned a reviewer who said that "visual novels are for people who like visual novels." I want to reword this to "visual novels are for people who like reading."
Gameplay mechanics are great, but I'm personally trying to move away from those things. Sometimes you just want to read, but not a book with lines of text on a page, and that's hard to find in AAA titles.
I would further weaken it to "VNs are for people who do not actively hate reading". Some journalists love to claim that Harry Potter makes people love reading again, but from my point of view, they never hate reading in the first place, good things to read just had not been widely advertised. I think the same situation is with VNs as well.
A little bit of my background. I was a president of my college gaming club, if that means anything to you. I would consider myself an open-minded gamer. I do have my tastes, there are games I liked and games I don't, but I also play and enjoy games from all genres, big names and indie alike. I would not considered myself a VN fans at all, but I had played roughly 30 VNs (I'm not even a anime fan, so the first time I discovered VN by myself I was just confused "Wow this introductory cutscene is sure long...wait did the game just end after the cutscene?"). So, I know what genre to go for to get a particular "fix". For example if I want careful strategic analysis I can play Civ, or if I want mind game and deliberate movements I can play SF. I do not need games to dilute itself by adding elements from everything just to appeal to everyone, in fact in many cases it can be especially harmful (would YOU want to play chess "augmented" with QTE?). This is especially true for VNs, as I will explain below. I want games to specialize on the strength unique to them, to the point where they could win over doubters.
So what are the strength of the VN genre:
1. Choices and consequences.
2. Deep, complex stories.
I'm sure we all know about #2 already, since that is what make VN special among games. But that does not distinguish it from good ol' novels. #1 is what make VN legitimately a game for me, and not just a book. And since I notice that most creators here had not make good use of #1, this is what I will elaborate on.
One thing gamers like about game, is the fact that they can experiment, they can try out possibilities, and see what happen. For RTS, it would be whether this strategy is effective, for the SIM or DF it would be whether X hook up with Y or whether doing this will cause everyone to die (the answer is always yes). Movies and books can't do that. Sure, a book might claim that character S is already in too deep, and discuss about it; but a game can show that S is in too deep, by for example, giving a bad end with S being killed by the boss after quitting, or even more subtly showing no matter what choices does S make, he ends up losing his will and reluctantly agrees to the next job.
Unfortunately, while game can generally allow player to experiment with mechanical possibilities, most games are incapable of letting players experiment with narrative possibilities. Sure, you could construct some story out of SIM or DF but at the end of the day, you know that the game are merely following some simple (but not too simple) rules, and the game state evolves accordingly. And there are 3 reasons why this happen:
-Current AI technology, while can be really good at producing good enemies, are still far from being capable of producing good stories. Not that no attempts had been made, but the results are meh at best (see Facade).
-Playing a game is a huge investment of time. Fighting bosses, grinding for gears, etc. People simply put, do not want to play the game again to try a different narrative choice. This create the expectation that the game should be done in 1 playthrough.
-Producing contents also cost a lot of money. All the 3D modelling for new characters, all the new bosses and enemies you have to playtest. Producing an entire new story arc is nearly as costly as making another game, and they can't really justify spending that to the guy above.
-This creates a downward spiral: producers, if they add any branching story at all, will just make it a tack on effort with some new text and maybe a cutscene, but no new gameplay; players, see no new gameplay, don't want to play again, so they play games only once; producers, seeing players play games only once, put all story in 1 go, and don't really do anything to make branching story more interesting; players, seeing no new story, are even more discourage from trying out possiblities.
So where does this leave VN? Well, because VN requires no mechanical gameplay, it requires the least amount of effort from players to play the game again; in fact, this is probably the only genre where players are expected to play through ALL content. And since producing new storyline does not requires costly thing like producing new level, 3D modelling, rendering new cutscene and playtesting, producers are capable of producing a lot more story branches. THIS is the reason why I do NOT want gameplay in my VN, the more gameplay you have, the more you are discouraging players from trying narrative possibilities (I for sure will not play FE:A again just to see what will happen if Chrome get Olivia instead).
Yet, it sadden me that most creators here had not pushed this further. Most VNs here haves 2 types of stories and choice structures:
a) 1 choice to pick a character's route, and once you get in that route, everyone else is irrelevant.
b) 1 choice to pick which ending to get.
c) Choices with 1 right option and everything else a bad end.
d) Choices have really negligible effects.
Type a) is like picking out which book to read, except some books happened to have the same prologue. Type b) and c) are exactly like how AAA games handle choice, since it's very inexpensive. Type d) what is even the point?
I think LLTQ is a good examples of a game with choices and consequences. I would prefer the stat-raising aspect removed since it slows the game down and is not even that challenging, and deeper and more complex story. But the choices are much more intertwined and you can see how you can change things a little to get Elodie to be able to do certain things (seeing how many people can be saved by Elodie's action is a huge challenge for example). It is not a pure VN, but I am having a hard time finding games among the pure VN that have better choice structures.
Yes I understand that a complex branching story is hard and take lots of efforts to do, I can do the arithmetic you know. But most VNs are far from even reaching that limit. I think a lot more can be done. If you want a game that will convince the doubter, you must make a game that allow players to explore very well the narrative consequences (notice how SP was quite popular, and it's not even that complicated). It must tell a deep story, yet that story can only be told because you can make choice. And these must be done well enough, to the point that the doubter will say: "if I want this kind of narrative experience, I must come to VN, because no other genres can provide it". That would be the game that break the prejudice, the one that serves as an entrance to the genre.
Does that mean all VNs must be make like that? No. Just like not all movie made on colour film need to use all colour, nor all digital movies need to have CGI effects. The fact that it is possible will convince other creators to create VNs like that, and to make a VN that does not have it telling on its own (as an analogy if you see B&W movie made nowaday you know it's a deliberate choice and not because producer are incapable of producing coloured film).
TL;DR make a VN with deep story, which can be told only because the player are allow to explore many deeeply intertwined choices with significant narrative consequences; don't add gameplay elements it's bad.