That's exactly what I had in mind, I'm sorry if you didn't understand me, and thanks for the help Jake I think we should fight with those stereotypes. We propably can't do much but as a whole community we have at least far more bigger chance trying to change that. I don't what can be done in overall - it's hard to stand up against certain, touchy subjects like porn in nowadays media; as some say - porn will always be porn, no matter what. The only thing we could do was to show, that there is a difference beetwen porn and erotica, and they're not the same (because they aren't, really). As for romance I already said, that setting up a good story where the plot is most important part and romance is purely optional would be a good try. I think it would be even more interesting if people could find a "hidden" route, where there would be some kind of sweet, romantic relationship beetwen the characters, while the rest of the story would involve only small glimpses of romance here or there.Jake wrote:He's not saying "stop making romance VNs at all", he's saying "stop assuming the default mode of a VN is romance and it's not complete without a set of romantic-interests to chase after". This is something that puts a lot of people off VNs. In fact, I'd say it's the second biggest negative stereotype I've encountered; right after "oh, they're all Japanese porn, right?" comes "oh, aren't they all just romance simulators for people too sad to get a real [girl/boy]friend?".
People who are on this forum right now are never going to be in the set of people he's talking about, because we're here. We've either learned to put up with it or actually like it. But if we want to expand the community significantly, I think he's right that shaking off the stereotype that all VNs are porn or romance would help.
While those two mentioned above are the most important problems to solve, There's also one other - the genre. Maybe not that much important, but still quite irritable. I think it's the right time to try something purely different than average modern day school romance stories and classic fantasy tales about teams of accidental heroes fighting with ancient evil powers (dragons, undead, demons, evil humans, whatever), or at least make write them from a new point of view, something that hasn't been already shown or talked about. Or furthermore - try to mix various genres, play with the opposites. We all know that many things have been used over and over again, but hidden gems still can be found. It's a pity I haven't seen many well-made horror stories, or steampunk tales or good science fiction, not to mention post apocalyptic stories (but not concerning religions or world-sized catastrophes such as asteroid impact, please). I know - they're a lot harder to make, but someone has to finally try and brake that mold. Furthermore, I'd love to see (and not only I) a story where characters are involved in some kind of a big problem, but instead of trying to find the "perfect solution" (to put it bluntly: a good or at least the best available ending), are shown in what manner they're able to cope with that and somehow manage to live their lives. Bad or sad endings are better, because they leave a bigger impact; Happy stories are nice and also needed, but honestly - they don't leave anything by to think about later on. There are many good examples for us to follow; both in other visual novels, anime and manga, movies, comics, books and games but we shouldn't be trying to copy that stuff, but try to learn from it.
It's a good idea, but I think that there's also an obstacle in that, and in overall - we're still too hermetic and small as an community for this to happen. I'd say - If we want to do something about this whole disscusion is all about, is we have to go outside our base and start trying to encourage more people to try some good visual novels and see if they like it. I'd still to early for that to take a particular effect, because we as indie devs still lack something good we could show and say "Look - This is a visual novel [enter your description here], it's free and looks as professional as original japanese ones; the story is really involving and original. Care to try?", but we can alrerady try because there are titles that are already worth to look at and at least take a peek. We have to break those damn stereotypes floating everywhere and show that vn's are something really good - good as most of books people read at home or on the way to work. That's it's something that is worth spending time on. I can already say, that KS won't be able to become such an example, with the way it is. And do mind - we will need something that will appeal to wide audience, not only hardcore fans but normal, average people that would simply like to read a good, involving story and have some entertainment. I'm not talking about adults in overall, because VN's will never be something they will be interested with, but young people,aged 20-30 at best. To shorten, it's just all about generations and comprehension. As for fact and example, it's interesting that in my country an average age of people interested in anime/manga is somewhere around 22-23, which is quite amusing when we take all the youngsters into account who make up of large ammounts of fans. So it's not that bad, and I think everywhere else is preety the same - we just have to tryDeji wrote:You know, it would be nice that, instead of the typical "writer looking for artist" and "artist for hire!" threads, we could see "Artist looking for writer" and "Writer for hire!" instead.
I'm under the impression that it'd lure some artists into making more VNs, even if just to know the media and get involved and participate in bigger/better projects. Artists usually have lots of ideas and/or concepts just floating in their heads or on the pages of their sketchbooks, but they just don't know how to make them work or are afraid they don't have enough skills to make a complete work out of them themselves and they either never see the light of day or take forever for the artist to gather either the skills or the self-confidence to do something with them.
As for me, I started getting involved more in our polish anime/manga scene nowadays, and there's a cultural grouping in my hometown involved into that too (a preety name: "Citadel of Sirius", concerning widely-oriented fantasy creative-activity and anime and manga section works there too from not long ago). I met a new friend and together, we're going to put auditions about anime/manga and mostly important, visual novels I'll see what can be done, at least around me to change the attitude because I already talked with many people and most of them said they already seen/heard about VN's and even wanted to try b ut were put off seeing most of them are mostly about porn I'd say, we have to change that attitude!