Why are NVG not as well recieved as RPG in USA?

[Sakura02]

Yeah text adventure games originated in the US and Britain. The first text adventure game [with graphics] was made in the US, it's kinda ironic how Japan and other countries are keeping that kind of game-play alive. I think it's just the culture. The typical American gamer want something more active with a lot of feedback, another reason why even most RPGs aren't marketed a lot in the US. VNs are essentially reading a story, and I agree with Jack on that most Americans just don't like to read, much less think that a game that involves mostly reading is even a game at all. ^_^;

[Aleema]

Japan has a "lazy" cost-efficient way of doing things as it is. Look at anime: it saves as much frames as it possibly can at all times. It's like the laconic pot head of animation. Which is good, because unlike Disney animation, which takes YEARS to complete, they need that new anime episode out now plzkthx. Same with visual novels -- how can we get away with telling a story/cutscene as simple as possible? Background, image of the character, dialogue box. Boom bang done. Blinking, mouth movement, and pose/clothes/emotion changes completely optional.

Now, whenever my teacher took me to the Japanese garden in the botanical garden when I was a kid, she told me that the Japanese leave things vague and imperfect because they like to use their imagination. Of course, she was talking about rocks in the garden, but I see some truth to their culture preferring the "lazy" approach to story telling so what's in their head isn't overpowered by what they're seeing. And we all know what's in our head is the best thing in the world to us. Any book->movie transition will show us this.

It's true that when I asked my friends why they didn't play RPGs, they said because it was too much talking. That was back in the age where it was ONLY text bubbles, not voice acting. I'm not sure what they'd say, probably the same thing, since just talking means wanting to do something other than arcade action, and that's not for everyone. Sports are popular for a reason. The jocks aren't like "why don't you play football?" to me, we just know that there's different tastes/abilities in us all.

With the new Wii and Kinect physics of gaming, we could possibly either see a great rise in role-playing (since becoming a role will be way more submersive) or a great decline (the new generation was brought up on exercising to play).

[Shinkurou]

Well....
Just off the top of my head.

"Gameplay."
With the exception of a few visual novels (Piece of Wonder had a Tile and Unit battle system, Sengoku Rance also had a combat system), it's basically a text based game with images and sound to go with it. It's like watching a movie but longer, with fewer frames and you have to use your imagination a lot.

"Graphics"
Some visual novels have AWESOME images to go with the game. But the background, CG, short movie montages, and even the character animations are short and limited.
And quite frankly, a lot of gamers I've met will always base a game as good or bad with: "How real it looks"
Which makes me want to repeatedly smash my face into a wall...
I've seen people turn down perfectly good games because: "I don't like cartoons."
=__=

"Multiplayer"
I'm not entirely sure when being able to go online with a game made it good or bad but hey...I call's em as I see's em....
......
Wow that sentence made me lose more faith in humanity...I thought I lost all of that when I saw the comments people made when Japan won the world series...

"Reading"
Present company excluded, but lets say we give a visual novel (G-Senjou no Maou for example) to someone who's only seen a few animes in their lifetime (being Shonen anime such as Naruto, DBZ, One Piece mostly).
It's likely they'll play the game for a bit and get bored of it when they realize there's no awesome fighting scenes and that it's all text, they'll just ignore an AWESOME visual novel.

"Cartoons"
Lets face it...the rest of America views anime as: "Chinese Cartoons" (I'm not kidding about that...I've met people who've actually called them: "Chinese cartoons"). Granted, these people probably aren't playing video games but some of them probably are...
Not to mention the people who think of anime as "Cartoon porn". Which never ceased to annoy me when they saw me sketching in the middle of class back in high school...

"Personal Taste"
When all else fails, it all comes down to personal taste. Other people might not share my sentiments of G-Senjou no Maou being one of the greatest visual novels of all time. Other people do.
^-^a

And...that's all I got for now.
There's probably other reasons but...those were just off the top of my head and I didn't want to spend more time writing up this response than I already have.