Chronopolis

Congrats, you did the whole dang history of VN's!

Congrats, you did the whole dang history of VN's!

I appreciate the lengthy post, as well the the other one you linked to. They were interesting reads, and more than anything it's always nice to see people that take an active interest in the future of visual novels. That said, I don't see social games as offering any kind of salvation to the limbo VNs have found themselves in. And it has little to do with the people making them, but rather what they are at their essence. They exist for only one reason, to suck away as much money from players as possible and to get you addicted. It's very much money first, art second. And while this is the general rule for all artistic mediums, the individual works of art that stand out as great, often are lead by those insane people who are motivated by the opposite, art first and money second.  
Now this is where my point of view radically deviates from most, so I don't expect many to agree with me. What interests me about VNs, is the artistic medium itself. What can be done with it, and how it can express themes, stories, and philosophies uniquely from other mediums. In that sense, even if VNs became massively popular. If the only things we are getting are commercial titles that appeal to the lowest common denominator (like typical Hollywood movies), I really don't care for the medium to succeed. Often when an industry is relatively new and going through it's boom period, people are more willing to fund experimental works; which is where the creative and imo interesting stuff comes from. And perhaps it's my own biases of what I've seen social games as up to this point, but I have a really hard time picturing anything deep and interesting coming out of a genre that is just glorified gambling.
One of your key arguments is that these upcoming social games will have massive scripts. That's great for people who are addicted, but that is no guarantee of quality for people with critical eyes. "Bigger is not always better", and "quality over quantity" exist as phrases for a reason. 
Regardless, this is just my two cents. And I'm what is known as a bit of a curmudgeon. And despite my cynicism, I really meant what I said in the beginning. Above all else, it's nice to see that there are people who still care about the future of VNs. So long as there are people who still care, the medium still has life in it.   

I liked it a little more than you did, but i have to agree that the people that made this VN had no idea who to market it for. It kinda fails as a action spy story because the yurige scenes fuck up the pacing and it kinda fails as a yurige because most of the H-scenes are between men and women. Fortunately for me, the way the relationship between the two main girls developed and the ramifications of a certain death in the story were enough for me to consider it a pretty good VN.

I consider it a classic among classics, but believe it or not i ended up slightly disappointed. So many people called it the best thing since sliced bread that i thought for sure this would make my top 5 and it didn't because i found stuff to complain about (mainly the pure adventure game portions and how over the top the final battle was), similar thing happened with SubaHibi. I'll still praise Ichijou's route until the end of time as the greatest antagonist buildup i've ever seen on the genre, though.

This reminds me, I myself was kind of into writing when I was in high-school. I was really bad at first, got a bit better after a few novels. Though I recently found one of the novels I wrote back then, and it was still pretty awful. But then the uni started, and I started having a lot less free time, so I eventually just stopped. Ever since then I never really got motivation to sit down and actually write something. Probably never will. I still liked making up stories in my head without actually writing them on paper, but a few years ago I stopped doing even that. Though, who knows, just a couple of days ago a had an idea of a story (which, incidentally, is a lot more openly weebish than anything I imagined before), so who knows, maybe I'll get anywhere with it.

Elipsis shows a pregnant pause, it can show long hesitation, skeptism, disbelief, a flatlined joke. If used with an third party in a conversation, "..." in combination with a character sprite emphasizes the fact that they are silently observing. Often this means they saw an important but unpleasant detail.  "...!" shows surprise, positive or negative.
I really liked the use of non-dialogue in the work Mahou Shoujo. The text is almost completely dialogue, and so elipsis do a lot of heavy lifting. Also particular to that work is that the conversation beats are very pronounced.
Anyways, elipsis are concise, expressive, and can open new avenues to express dialogue beats. They do work a lot better with a character sprite though.
 
 

And this point you made really shows the distinction between directing and writing. A way that was done that really stuck for me was that when i was playing Da Capo 2, the love interest got embarassed and instead of telling this through text, the VN only showed her changing sprites in quick sucession.

Haruuru's translation of the Main routes is long-since done.  I was mostly working with @ittaku in an advisory capacity (details, colloquialisms, other stuff that requires a ridiculously long background).  It is true, and we both agree, that the Main route is much, much better than the Branch route.  Not only are Tonoko, Shino, and Miyabi much better heroines, but everything from the protagonist's personality to how the heroines' emotions and characterizations are handled are so dramatically different in quality that there is no possible comparison.  The only real exception is that Yuuna's route has some good drama/story, probably more as a coincidence than anything else (Misaki and Sumika's routes were... basically somewhat above average charage fare at best).  
I don't quite agree with the reviewer in this case, as I always reviewed based on the Main path and ignored the Branch entirely, simply because my first experience of it was enough to put me off permanently.  The Main routes have some truly epic feels, great character interactions, and are the truest to the 'nature' of the school's purpose, which is confinement and segregation from the larger sister school's population and the general population in general.  This is ironic, since the Branch school girls are supposedly more of an 'embarrassment' to their powerful families, whereas the Main School heroines are supposedly only problem children after the fact.  
Perhaps the way the Branch school's writer screwed up the most was that he quite simply didn't manage to match two of the three heroines to the school's purpose.  Neither Misaki nor Sumika had any business being in the Branch school at all, considering that they were both capable and had personalities that were not necessarily 'embarrassing' to their families (in both cases, they are loved deeply and don't have any traumas or major issues that should have resulted in them ending up there).  
Yuuna's route stands out from the other two Branch routes... to a degree that you have to wonder if the same writer had anything to do with it.  It is also the most overtly morally distasteful of the paths (not in the teacher-student relations sense though), which is probably why it has such impact.  Yuuna's presence there also makes a great deal of sense once you've done her path, which is different from the two redheads.
Miyabi's path tends to get deified by fanboys, which I can understand.  Tsukasa's actions, the characters' reactions, and the feels are all so well coordinated that it is impossible not to cry numerous times throughout the path.  However, it needs to be said that both Tonoko and Shino's paths are of the same level of quality, if having someone different tracks (the last part of Shino's path had me rofling, though).

I still don't know if it's a step up or step down from talking about My Little Pony fan porn. ;] 

Yeah, like a living world where certain parts of the setting seem to be moving their own way. I can only think of one story I've read which fits that bill.
Even in a story with much smaller world-building I think a setting and it's characters needs to be something the protagonist wanders through and bumps into, not something they finish like an RPG dungeon. I enjoy stories focused on a cast of characters because they tend to naturally fulfill this criteria.
Perhaps having primarily consumed VN's and JP media, I'm not that picky about behind-the-scenes logic and minor plot inconsistencies, but when a story breaks its own rules... that just weakens it.
 

That's a fascinating way to think about it, I think you're right.
I'm hardly well versed in Chuuni but I was also curious as to its meaning at heart.
I think it's about greater purpose/meaning, ascending beyond the bounds of everyday thought and society, power to resist shackles and to be able to carve one's emotions upon the world.
It differs from power fantasy in that the focus in about escaping society and having purpose, as opposed to masterfully puppeteering the real world.

That's a fascinating way to think about it, I think you're right.
I'm hardly well versed in Chuuni but I was also curious as to its meaning at heart.
I think it's about greater purpose/meaning, ascending beyond the bounds of everyday thought and society, power to resist shackles and to be able to carve one's emotions upon the world.
It differs from power fantasy in that the focus in about escaping society and having purpose, as opposed to masterfully puppeteering the real world.

That's a fascinating way to think about it, I think you're right.
I'm hardly well versed in Chuuni but I was also curious as to its meaning at heart.
I think it's about greater purpose/meaning, ascending beyond the bounds of everyday thought and society, power to resist shackles and to be able to carve one's emotions upon the world.
It differs from power fantasy in that the focus in about escaping society and having purpose, as opposed to masterfully puppeteering the real world.

That's a fascinating way to think about it, I think you're right.
I'm hardly well versed in Chuuni but I was also curious as to its meaning at heart.
I think it's about greater purpose/meaning, ascending beyond the bounds of everyday thought and society, power to resist shackles and to be able to carve one's emotions upon the world.
It differs from power fantasy in that the focus in about escaping society and having purpose, as opposed to masterfully puppeteering the real world.

Brilliant seems similar in tier to Outstanding, except one is a meta focused work and the other isn't.
Works in the outstanding category have not only a great story to tell, but several good design choices exist made by the author in order to strengthen the experience or theme. This could be choice of moods, point of view, guiding expectations, or skillful incorporation of visuals/gameplay.
I agree with the pyramid, it makes sense after reading Narcosis's comments.

I'm not sure why you claim that this problem is especially important in VNs, numerical scores are always deeply flawed - they're, however, quite convenient and can be still useful if you make clear how you use them and keep some levels of consistency. They may reflect something very specific (your level of enjoyment with the game) or many things at once (many people on the Forums described their elaborate systems of rating VNs, with various amount of points attached to different aspects of them) - the real problem is that people both treat them way too seriously and compare them in ways that are grossly misleading. I think you could easily replace those basic ratings you've laid out with numbers without losing much of their meaning, the argumentation you add to your reviews and the additional tags that explain what kind of enjoyment these games might offer and who they're targeted towards are much more important.
EDIT: Also, I wonder, would that second category be closer to "Deeply flawed"? I know it doesn't sound as good, but I think "imperfect" is too mild of a term to communicate a game being one tier above pure trash.

Well, the Visibility Day is made to actually humanize (and particularly for lesbians, de-fetishize) lesbians. It's both for lesbian people to express pride and acceptance of their identity (something especially young LGBT people need to see), as well as to show that LGBT people are not alien but belong amongst us.

I had this experience where I was playing f2p for a long time, and then finally gave in and bought premium. At that moment I felt like everything in the game should become trivial. Like when you activate cheat mode in a single-player game. But it didn't and I felt disappointed, lost motivation and quit.
A lot of my friends play these games with everyday routines, which kind of makes me want to stay away from those micro-transaction games. Usually it isn't the routine gameplay that appeals to me, but the combination with voice acting and art. Because of that and the fact that I don't play games on my mobile phone, I seldom play those kinds of games. I did manage to spend about $200 on a game called Shadowverse. About half of that was on a 33% off sale. Though I must say, the transaction system is honestly pretty decent for that game - it's clean and elegant, and f2p is a real legitimate option.
I also found it's easy to get lured into buying shitty stuff on dlsite (quickly learned my lesson though). For big-name steam games I watch a lot of gameplay videos before buying them to make sure that I'll actually play and enjoy the game. Overall I feel that it was good I got exposure to these elements in a moderate way and didn't get hooked on those seriously exploitative games.
 
I agree. In terms of games, micro-transaction ones are the bottom of the barrel. I don't consider them as games anymore, when they are not about gameplay and are just a system with stimuli designed to psychologically trap their users.

My advice is not to try to match my output... to be blunt, I'm seriously pushing the edges of my own limits just to keep going.  Cherry pick your favorite genres and ignore everything else. 

I honestly wondered about this part of the story when observing your knowledge and the output of your blog, especially after I've started preparing my own and realized how much it will take from me to keep a weekly schedule.
I guess it all have costs, but I've just wanted to say that I find this kind of dedication extremely impressive and have a huge respect for what you've achieved around here. I always had a lot problems with giving my all to anything in my life and honestly VNs are a bit of a therapy to me, something I want to stick with and build upon in creative ways (while in the past I've spend literal years mindlessly playing strategy games and RPGs, really barely getting anything out of it - just wasting time). I hope I can one day get anywhere close to your level of expertise and authority on the topic.
Also, with bad/mediocre VNs... That's the everyday reality of every genre, isn't it? Classics are classics, but following new stuff always has this effect. So far, I find lesser stuff entertaining in it's own way and don't really feel regrets about postponing my obligatory kamige experiences. I wonder how I will look at it in a few years...

Random corrections (why did I think this was a good idea)
 

I agree with this... it is fine to avoid hurting someone's feelings within sane limits, but forced over-sensitivity causes resentment - and at times - conscious prejudice (as opposed to subconscious prejudice) in people who are otherwise easygoing and open-hearted.  While I'm fine with avoiding subjects that are likely to offend a single group while speaking, I honestly don't think I should have to avoid that kind of thing while writing fiction or making a point in an essay. 
I've seen more than one relationship sour when one side insisted on the other being over-conscious of certain verbal limits.  In addition, there is a big difference between actual prejudice and using language one side considers prejudicial.  I'm fat and balding, and that in itself has lost me clients in the past, despite my proven skill level.  That is prejudice that is built into society.  However, I'm not about to take offense when someone says 'man that is one big fat airplane' or some kind of casual statement like that.
I have psychological problems, but it doesn't bother me when someone describes the plot of a movie as 'crazy' or 'insane'. 
In other words, being bothered by words not directed at you intentionally that are built into language and into literary styles is a waste of time and energy better spent elsewhere.  It's like complaining about the needle pricking your finger when someone is stabbing you repeatedly in the gut.  You are missing the point entirely.

Are you familiar with what marriage is about? Marriage is a possessive system invented so men to keep track of their possessions, like wives and any offspring they may bear. It’s part of what makes the concept of ‘marriage’ obsolete. In the olden days polygamy was completely natural, as was monogamy, but it was a possessive system.
We're not flooded with the concept of ‘love’ being possible between only 2 people, but rather that marriage is only possible between 2 people. Which is why you see all those stories involving love triangles, cheating, revenge and whatever. If you aren’t counting your partners as possessions, then does it matter if your partner is seeing other people? Adultery is only a thing because of the concept of one partner belonging to another.
But monogamy - why did it come about? Many people think it’s because of Christianity, but monogamy was running rampant before this. In Ancient Greece for example. That doesn’t mean Christianity didn’t help this, but it’s suggested the truth lies elsewhere.
Think about it a little. If women and their children were treated as possessions who weren’t allowed to take multiple husbands, but men could take multiple wives as possessions, then there’s a pretty obvious limitation isn't there? Some men will be left out in the cold. These men will often leave, meaning a smaller army, meaning less tax revenue. Which results in monogamous cultures, in a world where women were viewed as possessions, being superior militarily and growth wise, or would inevitably prove themselves to be better superior militarily and growth wise. That is, monogamous culture would eventually prove to be the stronger culture. Over time people then came to view this as the norm, and because stronger cultures conquer weaker cultures, would spread over much of the globe.
Which meant that monogamy, under a male possessive marriage structure, was a superior scheme idealised by society. Polygamy under current marriage norms doesn’t work. So before we talk about ‘monogamy privilege’ you first need to provide an environment for polygamy to thrive, and that’s still a ways away from happening.
That eroge is poly friendly doesn’t define progress, although it does challenge some of today’s norms. What would make eroge progressive would be if they demonstrated poly relationships where the women weren’t treated like the possessions of the male. And I can’t say that it is. So I don’t really see a need for praise, yet.

Certain things are glamourized in this world. Saying we should include fat characters in our generally idealized stories is basically saying we as a society should shift the set of things we glamorize so that it makes a minority feel better.
Atm, what we as a society glamorize is mostly depends on what the masses like, and what companies try to propagate to forward their brands and ventures.
IMO, ideally, you should train people to recognize these societal glorifications for what they are, which is just things to be enjoyed, not reflections of the truth. You shouldn't advocate for a different set of glorifications in order to lull fat people to thinking the reality is some how kinder for it. The reality is what it is.
I think there was a line of criticism against LN's for glorifying being living an otaku lifestyle. If there was a parallel universe where such otaku-glorifiying LN's didn't exist (that was like 15 years ago), that would be fine, too. I'm sure there were and are a lot of otaku who felt pressure (both external, from people's opinions, and internal, from lack of validation) from the type of lifestyle they chose/fell into.
The main issue with fat people is not the difference of preference (that should very much be allowed), but existing prejudice. Fat people shouldn't be bullied in school, or insulted anywhere. But those are difficult challenges that revolve around human nature. If your fat and some asshole insults you based on that, that's because they are an asshole, and not particularly because you are fat. Or they have a prejudice. The prejudice, and more importantly, how people act on that prejudice, is the more productive and realistic issue to tackle.