How popular are VNs in Japan?

[Crimson]

While I was browsing for some VNs I could read when I'm finished with the ones I already installed (which is still like, 10 VNs that I haven't even played yet), a thought came to my mind.

 

So in Europe, basically noone knows about the whole VN market. If I told someone "I love reading visual novels", they would probably just be like "what the hell is a visual novel?". So I wondered, how large is the market for VNs in Japan? I guess one wouldn't have to explain what a VN is to Japanese people, but still, how successful are they in Japan?

 

Are they only played by an Otaku minority even over there, or is it like, perfectly normal for young adults to read eroge and nukige? I do know about the whole Otaku culture, but do the average, mainstream guys play VNs too?

[Nagisa_Fawkes]

You ever heard of a place in Tokio called "Akihabara"? Read a bit about it, and you'll see you popular it is.

[Crimson]

Yeah I know about Akihabara (by the way, is it just me, or do they always pronounce it "Akiba" in Anime?) being the origin of Moe and stuff (yeah, I learned that one from Steins;Gate ), but still, that's just a single district in Japan's capital...

 

What I mean is, if somebody openly confessed that he loves reading VNs and Anime and stuff, would the Japanese mainstream still consider him a weirdo, or is it perfectly normal?

[Narcosis]

Contrary to what some people may think of, they are a complete niche, even in it's own country of origin. Even though vn's make rougly ~70% of the games made in Japan, they are still something most people do not know about. You can be sure, that if you ask someone on a bus or train in Japan outside Akihibara what vn's are, they won't know and with a good reason. Only certain titles, like Clannad, Kanon, Higurashi or F/SN have become more widely known, mainly due to the size of the franchise they spawned, but it still does not make the genre more known.

VN's are mainly played by young people, of which a very large portion belongs to the manga/anime fandom; It's also one of the main reasons why vn market became horribly oversaturated within last few years, having negative impact on vn's itself.

Most people try to avoid saying they play vn's/eroge out in the open, out of obvious reasons. It is still considered weird/creepy by the rest of "normal" populace and Japan is also an incredibly homophobic nation when it comes to things like these. It became better in the past few years, but hardcore vn fans are still considered to be weird, creepy "geeks", who spend most of their time in their curtain-covered rooms/basements, propably remaining NEET's without a love interest, nor life. It applies both to guys, and gals. Yes, gals.

OreImo is actually a preety decent example in that case, with the slight exception that Kirino actually leads a decent life and hides her hobby from her family and any other "official" circles (it's called being a "closet pervert" in Japan).

[garejei]

Just wanted to echo the above sentiments, yes, it's still fairly niche. Just because you have Akihabara doesn't mean it's suddenly a country-wide mainstream phenomenon. In fact I'd speculate that the otaku stigma is stronger in Japan compared to the US which nowadays is a bit more open minded about stuff like that.

[Mephisto]

You'd be called a weirdo, and it's entirely possible that the people you may be talking to may not know what you're talking about either. 

[Mr. Meogii]

From what I've picked up VN's are not popular among the general public mainly because of their h-scenes. Only a minority actually enjoy playing them.

[Aegis]

Huh, that's one of those questions I never really though to ask, and am surprised with the answer. 

[monkeysrumble]

A lot of it is kind of a numbers game, though otakus may be a small minority in Japan it's still a huge market because of Japan's population. So in Japan as a whole it's not popular but the market is still big enough for them to release an extraordinary amount of VNs every month.

[Clephas]

People know about VNs, but it is seen as for extreme otakus.  It isn't all that different from the way it is here, except that there are larger numbers of fans and they don't have to import.  They aren't as niche as we are here, but they make up a relatively small percentage of the otaku population.

[Darklord Rooke]

VN's are mainly played by young people, of which a very large portion belongs to the manga/anime fandom;

 

Which leads to its own problems. For instance, the price of VNs in Japan is about $100, and the target audience for VNs in Japan are students. This is a lot of money for students to fork over. This and oversaturation is part of the reason only top VNs in Japan sell more than 30,000 copies, which in turn means a lot of studios are struggling.

[Clephas]

Most new studios go under if they don't get a reasonably big hit right away, due to production costs.  Companies like Will, AB2 and Visual Arts can afford to take mediocre sales of one or two games, but smaller companies can't.  Most companies start with nukige, because nukige sell fairly well and are cheap to produce.  However, if a company produces too many nukige in a row, serious fans won't take them seriously, and so even if they make a serious game, it doesn't sell.  Incidentally, one of the reasons 'serious' vns tend to also be ero is because they make more money that way.  It is much harder to make money on a game with no erotic content in Japan in the VN industry.  Otome games are the exception, because female fans are just fine either way in most cases.  It's something of a vicious cycle for the male-oriented games, though.  Because most VN fans start out as nukige or borderline-nukige fans, they can't really do without sexual content in most cases.  Fans expect it in most cases (action and serious story-focused can sometimes get away with it, but moege can't, lol).

[Narcosis]

The avarage life standards in Japan are much higher than in any of the european countries, that's why even if it's relatively high for an average student over there to fork off money for a vn, prices are still considered acceptable. Unfortunately, those high life standards also mean higher financial demands, that's why prices for visual novels remain quite high as well. It is a vicous cycle indeed, but there's not much that can be done in current case. Market oversaturation is a natural process - it's quite easy to produce vn's, since they don't require high budget and a large team to develop. Most of the current big companies that are self-sufficient enough to stay afloat started as dojin circles or amateur groups back in the past.

The real issue with vn's is their jamming; because of their notorious past, vn's became something of an underground thing and that limits both their approachability and possibilities for devs to reach out to a lot more consumers with the exact same mindset. The whole market is a self-restricting organism, crammed into a very tight space that's slowly reaching it's upper limits. They remain mainly otaku-pandering products to ensure a steady flow of money and at the same time, completely neglect the outside world and with a reason; most of standard consumers weren't ever interested that much in vn's and that's justified, when most of them only heard of visual novels as eroge or nukige (since those typically make the most noise around). In the end, the whole market is dependable mostly on japanese otakus who produce and consume everything by themselves; the limit has been reached, though. That market is already unable to sustain a large number, it already produces more than it is able to consume. A lot of companies went down in the last few years and even high quality does not seem to be a helpful factor (yes, Littlewitch - I'm talking about you) in that case, preety much on the contrary - it's better to churn out cheap moege/nukige, rather than producing games with high quality value; only few are able to do that, and do it fast enough to ensure some sort of a success.

It's hard to understand, why Japanese haven't yet opened towards western market; I guess the language barier is propably one of the most notorious issues in case of a heavy text-oriented kinds of games, visual novels precisely are; They are propably afraid as well.

Eitherway, we'll be witnessing a lot of changes in the upcoming years. Japanese devs slowly seem to get aware of the issues as well; I only hope they will be able to make another move, just as the one in the past, that lead them to create vn's for the very first time.

[astro]

They're only about as popular as they are in America. Except if you live in Akihabara, of course.

[Freestyle80]

VNs are the same popularity everywhere probably,even if there's a lot of people playing them none will openly admit it.

[Narcosis]

They aren't. Visual novels are still a lot more popular in Japan due to the sheer ammount of consumers contentrated in one tight space. Contrary to the east, vn's on the west are simply a curiosity and the ammount of illiterate people around only makes things worse.

People do not read nowadays. They don't want to, and quite often don't have (or can't find) the time to read them. VN's will never become popular on the west. Even with the current rise of the story-driven games, like the TTG's productions, games fully relying on storyline remain a tiny percentage of what we have out on the market.

Don't hope for the better. It requires a change in the people's hearts and their willingness to be more open to culture; it's something we can't currently expect from modern playerbase, since so far everything is going in the exact opposite direction.

[starlessn1ght]

What about otomeges? Do most japanese girls play it? If a girls says she likes otomeges, will it be considered normal or will she be called a weirdo?

[Zenophilious]

People do not read nowadays. They don't want to, and quite often don't have (or can't find) the time to read them. VN's will never become popular on the west. Even with the current rise of the story-driven games, like the TTG's productions, games fully relying on storyline remain a tiny percentage of what we have out on the market.

Don't hope for the better. It requires a change in the people's hearts and their willingness to be more open to culture; it's something we can't currently expect from modern playerbase, since so far everything is going in the exact opposite direction.

Sadly, I have to agree with this.  Among my group of friends, I'm one of the few that consistently reads for pleasure, not just for school, and it's always been that way.  In just about every English class I've ever been in, people would whine that they had to read to pass the class, without grasping the idiotic nature of their complaints.  It's getting better in college, but not much.  Like IceD said, unless there's a shift in pop culture that promotes reading (we all know how likely that it), I really doubt that VNs will become mainstream, and even if that did happen, there would still be the stigma of reading VNs, since a lot of people that know about VNs without actually having read them think "VNs = porn", as well as the whole anti-anime/manga fad that's fairly prevalent nowadays among people that don't already like Japanese art styles.

[ExtraMana]

Considering how Japan is even more repressed than the UK and USA being an Otaku is something that would make you a social outcast.