Emoji detours

[磯七ラスミ]

How emoji affects users concentration?

Do emoji break a serious atmosphere?

How hard is to introduce the user new emoji?

Still worth it even if it's the only game where they will appear? A one-shot knowledge, useless to anyone who will play it once and forget afterwards.

Too many questions. I'm not expecting you to answer every single one. You may reply your own general experiences with emoji in writing, one tip or two.

[Mammon]

Really depends on the game format and plot. If your story is delivered through a chat group like some games, then emoji can be added both to convey emotions or to characterise a person by having them use it where all the other characters don't/use it less. However, using emoji in the average ren'py story would be an atmosphere breaker. You cannot make a story where two people are talking face to face and add an emoji to the dialogue. That's just... Actually there are a few games that pulled it off for a certain character. However it's not something to recommend adding to a game unless you're sure it'll add to the game, and definately not something to be applied to the entire character cast. And never use an emoji in internal dialogue or exposition. Because yes, they do break tension if used inappropriately.

Some examples, the first one being my own game P&Y because I know you've played part of it already. I don't use emoji in my writing, with the exception of the scene where Vanessa is writing in her diary and the whatsapp (resembling app) conversation. My use of emoji is contained to only a few scenes where they would make sense and lend themselves to differentiate the new narrator from the common narrator; the MC.

Another example is zer0 from Tales of the Borderlands. It's the only character in the story and he has a few pretty good reasons to use emoji, the first one being that his face isn't visible, the second is that his face is covered by a tv screen allowing emoji's to be displayed, and the third is that he's a personification of the Borderlands player; a new generation kid playing as a silent protagonist whose thus limited to such simplistic expressions on an otherwise emotionless face.

[Selidor]

Unless the game was based around text messages and chat rooms, I would find emoji in a visual novel to be very distracting and annoying. Especially if it was only using default yellow smiles, winks and so on, because frankly a lot of those are really creepy and unpleasant. Text emoji or custom chibi character faces and so on would be better.

[RotGtIE]

The only people who use emojis unironically are teenagers and people who are trying to get laid via text, but I repeat myself.

[Sonomi]

Do they break a serious atmosphere? I would say yes in many cases. But I'm not quite sure how you want to use them...

If you're putting them in the actual writing, just for general purpose emoting, I could see it being distracting after a while. I would suggest changing the facial expression of your sprite instead.

Text-based features like in-game cell phones are a different story. It's fairly normal to use emoji there. In fact, they would add to the realism of texting, being that many people do make use of them.

[Zelan]

The only people who use emojis unironically are teenagers and people who are trying to get laid via text, but I repeat myself.

Looks like I've been busted.

The main reason that it wouldn't really make much sense to use them in a VN is because a good majority of the text is either people talking or narration. Since a character probably wouldn't say, "That was fun! Smiley-face!" out loud, it would be silly to write the character's dialogue as, "That was fun! c:" It would be even sillier in a visual novel where the character's emotions are probably visible on the sprite.

On the other hand, like people have said, emojis can be used where they make sense, which usually means in an electronic form. The examples given above are over text, in writing, and on a character whose face is a screen. The same would apply to anything along those lines (e.g. text posts on the internet).