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Other then fan-based Japanese translated games, I can't seem to find many VNG (visual novel games) in USA. As much as many of us hate to admit it VNG are not well received in USA when compared to other video game genres like RPG (role playing games). After all both game genres originated from Japan about the same time in my opinion and look how well the Final Fantasy series did in USA. In fact, the only visual novel game series I can find in my local game store is Ace Attorney, which is one of the games that inspired me to find this forum by the way.

So from a game-maker's perspective, could you guys enlighten me as why VNG are not as popular as RPG games in the US gaming market? I think it's pretty important to understand this when I plan on designing a VNG in USA.

~thanks in advance~

Just one word : gameplay.

Ace Attorney has some detective system messing with item and some logic to find the culprit, but in a plain basic VN the only "gameplay" would be finding all the path to unlock CG, which is not quite really gameplay.

Thanks for joining the forum, James.

Not many people have created worksafe visual novels in English. And there aren't many about topics other than relationships. While I believe that in the last few years there have been a modest number of good, relatively mainstream VNs in English, they've been released as freeware, or only available through a few niche sites.

As Adorya said, gameplay is rather important in the mainstream gaming scene. In many of the games in my collection from the NES era through today, the player is constantly expected to perform actions, solve puzzles, etc. Interactive stories have existed for years in the form of gamebooks, which were somewhat popular years ago, but which are uncommon now.

There is a small market for porn games in English. But this is not the sort of thing most people admit liking in public... unless you're with a small group of friends with similar interests, or at a fan convention. (There's a story sequence in the translated Doujin Work comics about how people think you're strange if you're open about your interest in NSFW material.) I'm still waiting for the day when visual novels and porn games do not have a huge amount of overlap.

So yeah, if you want to create a VN for your friends, family, etc., then you may wish to consider making a plot-driven story which just happens to have relationship elements.

A lot of people find reading on a computer/console to be awkward.

(Great as 999 was, I swore at my DS so much playing through that, because OW my fingers. The DS is NOT the world's most comfortable VN reading environment.)

So you'll hear an awful lot of people say "If I wanted a book, I'd buy a book." This may change slightly as e-readers surge in popularity, but then, I don't think you can actually play these games on most of those either.

This is a question I've given much thought to in the past, but I think that it makes an assumption about how popular visual novels actually are in Japan. I would be willing to wager, though I do not have the sales numbers, that typical RPG releases are likely to have significantly higher sales figures than typical visual novel releases.

Even so, it is fair to state that visual novels are still far more popular in Japan than in the United States and other Western countries. Setting the NSFW content/perceptions aside, I think there are primarily two reasons why this is.

Gameplay

As others have mentioned, the Western gamer is more accustomed to active game play. Ace Attorney is much more involving than a pure Visual Novel, in that the player must think about how to contradict witness testimony based on the evidence they've collected. So even though the game is primarily text based, it is presented in such a way that the player perceives that they are interacting, rather than just reading a story. (Incidentally, many people don't even consider Ace Attorney a real visual novel).

Likewise, a player is frequently interacting with an JRPG. However, even on this front the traditional turn-based games are becoming less popular now that there are many RPGs with more active combat.

Most common VN tropes do not mesh well with the US gamer.

The most common VN setting seems to be a generic Japanese high school, which is something that the average American will not relate to very well. The character archetypes that are often presented in such works (and more than likely expected by Japanese VN fans) are also seen as boring to US gamers or at the very least unfamiliar... gamers who are used to playing as an elite space marine or an otherwise powerful hero will find the role of generic high school student a bit underwhelming.

Ace Attorney games are about a lawyer and court cases, which in a country as litigious as the US, is a fairly familiar theme. It also probably helps that the localization team has done a reasonably well job "Westernizing" the game so that the dialogue and characters are more palatable.

In contrast, RPGs usually take place in fantasy settings that are often quite similar (at first glance, at least) to those presented in Western fiction. A JRPG will usually have at least some elements that are familiar to someone who has read a fantasy novel or fairy tale. It should be of note that within the last decade or so, the popularity of JRPGs has fallen compared to Western RPGs.

Ultimately, I think OELVNs would be a bit more popular if creators continue to imitate Japanese settings and character archetypes, even if it means that the game will be unfamiliar to the traditional VN fan.

Is it worth mentioning that RPG's probably originated from America?

BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger and BlazBlue: Continuum Shift are recent works by Arc Systems in Japan, and have gotten pretty heavy acclaim in the States. It is, predominantly, a fighting game, but the storyline, which is much much deeper than typical games in the fighter-genre, is done entirely in visual novel style. This was well-received by its American player-base.

There's a market for it here, and people who like it, definitely. Not everyone would enjoy it, but I'm sure that applies to Japan as well. The problem, I'd venture to say, is just a matter of exposure. Many BlazBlue players never heard of, or knew about visual-novels, but when exposed to it, they liked it.

Being that it's not real mainstream, there aren't as many professional developers pushing the industry forward here, so it's not making a big impact. I imagine it'll grow more ubiquitous once a lot more high quality western-made VN's surface.

Because most VNs are eroge, and there's little to no market in the US for hentai. Japan has tons of censorship laws for regular porn - there's a reason any ero/h-images you see have censored private parts and live action porn is just as mosaiced. In the US and the west, well, we have channels on cable dedicated to getting you any porn you want.
Also, since a majority of hentai is so weird, it creates a stigma where many people avoid eroge as a whole. What makes it worse is that the very few good eroge that aren't about straight-up sex are still associated with ones that are non-step sexfests (Rance is one of the only examples of a sexfest VN that's still good without it).
Also, piracy is RAMPANT on PC. The focus on video games is definitely on consoles, and single-player only PC games rarely sell. If they do, it's because they have a mod community to back them up. Translating a game that has a 90% chance of just being about sex on a system where there's already a small base AND it's easy-as-hell to get the game for free is a bit stupid. It's not good from a market standpoint.
Japan already has a nicely established VN/Eroge market, which is why they're still produced. If you look at games that have VN/Dating sim elements, however, they are just as popular as any other jRPG or niche title in America - because they're for consoles and have no porn.
That being said, I wouldn't see many console VNs being translated, anyway. We'll never see Umineko PS3 or any PS2/PSP VN port (Fate, Kanon, Higurashi, etc, the list is pretty long).
So, tl;dr:
People don't want to pay for porn of drawn girls.

Thing is, RPGs were *niche* in the US for awhile too. Yeah, they are very poplar now, but back in the late 80s, it was still more or less niche. It took time for RPGs to become mainstream. Dependant on who you talk to, it was either Final Fantasy 7 that really pushed it to mainstram, or the latter RPGs for the SNES/Sega Genesis that did it. Hard to believe that now, eh? RPGs most likely started in Japan too, heck, pretty much everything that comes to the US has been successful in Japan.

I think the main reason NVGs are less received comes down to gameplay.

RPGs most likely started in Japan too, heck, pretty much everything that comes to the US has been successful in Japan.

*confused beeping*

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of ... ideo_games

"JRPGs" were not the first video game RPGs. JRPGs mostly came out of DragonQuest, but that was based on Wizardry and Ultima, which were American and British. For some reason Wizardry really caught on in Japan and the series lives on there even though it's long-dead in English.

Sorry, I should have addressed this earlier, I just didn't notice it in the original post.

Whoa...! I didn't expect this many response in one day. This is a great forum community, once again thanks for everyone's feedback.

So to reiterate the general idea of what I read, it seems to make a VNG a hit in USA you need to...

1. Cross-breed the VNG genre with another form of addicting game-play genre like adventure/fighting/stat building to keep the player interested while you deliver the storyline of a VNG.

2. Avoid any stereotype of a VNG eroge as the general western player are not comfortable with sexually exploited drawn 2-D figures. Not to mention it won't go so well with the ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board).

3. Create a story setting that westerns can relate to, or better yet a neutral theme that does not clash with any culture.

The ironic thing is that even if you were to take the best video games and strip them down into VN-style cutscenes (e.g. Homeworld and Mass Effect), the result would still be more immersive and accessible than a renai game built from the ground-up to be a VN.

I'll state it clearly: the problem is the renai tradition (heck, look at the domain of this site). Dating cute girls / cute guys will cease to be interesting as the audience gets older, even for an ageing hardcore otaku. While the East (Japan) likes characters, the West likes plot: lots of plot. That's why most western anime fans like Type A anime, but the only anime being produced are Type B anime.;

We need stories that are more than just about hooking up in a school setting. Mysteries, science fiction, fantasy. They should be the focus, not the cute charactes. You can pair a mystery with a hidden-object or puzzle mechanic. You can pair a science fiction / fantasy game with combat and world building (RPG mechanic).

papillon wrote:

RPGs most likely started in Japan too, heck, pretty much everything that comes to the US has been successful in Japan.

*confused beeping*

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of ... ideo_games

"JRPGs" were not the first video game RPGs. JRPGs mostly came out of DragonQuest, but that was based on Wizardry and Ultima, which were American and British. For some reason Wizardry really caught on in Japan and the series lives on there even though it's long-dead in English.

Sorry, I should have addressed this earlier, I just didn't notice it in the original post.

If I remember well there was a pretty productive era in Japan where fantasy and real roleplaying tabletop game where featured, resulting in products such as dragon quest, lodoss war and later influenced Fate/Stay Night (no wonder Nasu wasted a lot of time in playing Demon's Soul instead of working on Mahou Tsukai no Yoru, he seemed hooked on medieval fantasy settings)

There is also a portion of the western audience who will always shun the cute visual style of Japanese VNs, just as there is a portion of westerners who shun the cute visual style of anime. It's kind of like American Kirby is Hardcore.

Meanwhile, I think I detect a resistance among the Japanese to 3D, which I can't seem to understand.

edit: Oh, and I think that of all the obstacles VNs face to becoming more popular in the west, the sex taboo will be the easiest to overcome. There are already western games with sex in them. It's not the sex so much as the visual style that's the real turnoff to a lot of people imo.

The main reason is often "because people don't like to read." However in many RPG, for example Bioware's, there's LOT of texts (even if all voiced). I think because people like the fights, level up, stats, inventory, etc. To be honest I like RPGs more than VN too