Starlight Drifter Kickstarter

[BookwormOtaku]

The creators of Swords of Edo have announced a new project, a sci-fi space adventure called Starlight Drifter:

 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ajtilleycom/starlight-drifter

[Okami]

I'l be honest and say that I didn't have much hope for western made VNs thill recently but with a few kickstarter projects like this one I must say that my opinion on the matter has changed.

[Decay]

Well, judge by quality and not quantity. The Dysfunctional Systems series is legit but everything else I've seen is pretty underwhelming.

[dannyboo]

It's kind of hard for visual novels made in the west to find an audience..

It's like we need to find something to make them realize what they're missing

 

 

Well, judge by quality and not quantity. The Dysfunctional Systems series is legit but everything else I've seen is pretty underwhelming.

 

I agree with that in general but I think if there are a lot of producers there will also be more to produce great VNs..

Well anyway, I'll support it as much as I can in the future

[Darklord Rooke]

Well, judge by quality and not quantity. The Dysfunctional Systems series is legit but everything else I've seen is pretty underwhelming.

 

I was underwhelmed with the writing in Dysfunctional Systems. Black Chicken Studios and a couple of others can write stronger prose, which is what I primarily look for in a Visual Novel or Sim. So look around, I think there's more quality out there than just DS.

 

Concerning Starlight Drifter, the concept looks ... uninteresting right now.  The alien design is uninspired, the bridge looks like a slightly modified version of ME's CIC room, things aren't described in detail and I get the funny feeling a lot of these choices will be superficial in nature. 

 

Worth keeping an eye on, but at the moment I'm not interested. Sorry

[InvertMouse]

It's indeed difficult for Western VN developers to make progress. Many people immediately hate a VN if it's not Japanese voiced and not made by a Japanese creator.

 

Even Japanese VNs can get hated on by gamers once they've been translated. Check out some of the comments people have made about Narcissu. Saddening because that's my favorite VN. If it involves reading, some will give it zero chance.

 

In another sense, Japanese and Western VNs require the same thing--if you dump significant amounts of money (10k+) into a trailer and pretty drawings, people will become intrigued regardless of where the game's from.

 

Some Western developers also seem to be pursuing themes that the Japanese folks have already mastered. Instead, if they went with their own specialties, that might bring about some new potential. Or perhaps, frankly, it'll make no difference.

 

I've had friends who have chosen to support Japanese VN projects rather than my very own. It'd be a lie if I said that doesn't hurt.

 

I wish this project the very best .

[Narcosis]

Why am I not impressed, as usual. I have to admit there's a bunch of cg art that looks really promising, but the overall concept and the renderings are just poor; speaking of which, this game is WAY TOO EARLY in development to be even considered worthy of kickstarting. You should only kickstart your game when it's more or less fleshed out and ready to go. All that's left should boil down to building upon the game. When I see projects like this getting kickstarted, it makes me even wonder whether people who do that are mature enough to pull off anything properly.

I agree with InvertMouse upon the rest - vn's are a niche medium. A lot of western players are actually illiterates with not a single working braincell, you can't expect them to not frown upon the very fact someone wants to give them a game where basically 100% of gameplay is compromised of reading a story and nothing else.

A lot of people also dislike eroge and h-content in general, that's usually associated with it; it's not a problem in terms of a playerbase, as it actually picks more of it's interest (if the art and story are good), but the main issue here is that it also attracts unwanted attention from mass media and certain people who'd like to see such type of art burning. Eternally.

Another issue with western developers is that they often blindly follow japanese cliches and settings and build upon them, instead trying to adapt them properly beforehand. This won't ever work and results in very awkward, unrealistic stories that look more like a poor attempt to wank at one's weeaboo'ish dreams. A lot of the stories themselves are ridiculously bad as well, since most of their writers don't even know what prose actually is. I will state it once again - school settings are a BAD foundation and they DO NOT work well for western vn's. Japan is the culture of cute; school settings only sell in Japan, not around here.

On the other hand, I can state what western readers like and would LOVE to see in western visual novels. We are generally full of angst and like deep and relatively dark stories - ones that are very few amongst japanese industry out of the same reason why people roll eyes upon school setting based vn's around here. In other words - MORE DRAMA & PSYCHOLOGICAL. We'd like to see more decent fantasy & sci-fi settings and by sci-fi I'm not talking about space opera; people often think sci-fi means STAR TREK, which is as bad as school settings (no honestly - if you want to make space operas, you'd better stick to your fucking school settings). We'd like to visit strange worlds and see incredible creatures (surreal stories or stuff that happens inside our heads, or dreams). Where's the magic? Where are the swords? We love ghost stories. We love horrors. We love thrillers and crime stories. MAKE IT HAPPEN. WHY IT DOES NOT HAPPEN?

Of all the western vn's I've seen so far, only very few of them actually managed to break the mold and become something more than another bland mecha space opera or another school setting based galge, where the main premise still revolves around fucking all the girls so you can get their hcg's and forget about it. Everything is so cliched with bad japanese setups, that it makes me cringe every single time when I hear about a new, "prominent" western vn project. All of the western designers divide into two categories - those who either blindly follow the cliched, japanese routines or those who completely separate vn's as a medium and make it so "western" - so boring and unattractive - it makes me want to read a book instead trying to give them a chance.

There's a lot of issues with proper direction. I know a lot of people for example, who won't read certain western developed vn's just because they aren't that appealing, their stories are very average and unorginal and they often lack the anime styled graphics and certain kind of approach, which attracts us otherwise. Then there's the main issue where a developer has to balance between all those things to make a really good western vn; it's a very delicate matter that more often leads to a failure when people making the game lack any sort of actual knowledge about visual novel medium. It often leads to cases where creators simply don't know or can't see, what could be done to make them more appealing to western fans and readers alike.

I don't doubt it's possible vn's will slowly gain more interest on the west, but it won't ever be some sort of a boom. Things need to change, people need to grow and mature as well. Some things might perhaps have to change in order for this medium to flourish. If anything, there's still a very long, rocky road ahead of us.

TL & DR

I think that in overall, people actually aren't that interested in reading anymore.

 

I should stop getting all worked up over this; it's not like you can force illiterates to read a story.