Of Millenia and Visual Novels

[Kygrykhon]

I had a strange dream when I was taking a nap. In the dream, my wife was complaining to me about how I wasted my time doing what I was doing, but I told her that I really wanted to do it. When she's gone, I continued and I realized that I was translating an English Visual Novel into Japanese. It was really strange, because first of all, I don't understand Japanese and secondly, I don't have a wife (yet). This made me ponder for a while, for I had heard that dreams are sometimes visions. Will there be a day in the future when an English visual novel is translated to Japanese and not the other way around? What will the future be like when visual novels are finally popular in the west?

Just something I had in mind.

[ilegend]

Wow that certainly is a weird dream...

Anyway I don't ever think that the time for English-native VNs will come so soon..

Firstly, there isn't a dedicated VN game company in US or in the west (Jast and Mangagamer are just licensed re distributors?). The current boom for the game market in the west, the genre for money making opportunities is anything but Visual Novels. Examples include FPS (Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, Battlefield 3, Borderlands 2, Far Cry 3), Fantasy RPG (Skyrim, Dragon Age), other games like Hitman Absolution, Mass Effect 3, Counter Strike Global Offensive, etc. (Sorry I'm having a really bad headache right now so I can't think of any more)

Secondly, there's a somewhat prejudice mindset on VNs (mainly the eroges side) from the West (the general public, not the VN community).. I think.. So unless somebody reinvents the entire genre to cater to the West (it probably wouldn't even feel like a VN anymore), or if the West finally opens up their eyes and accepts VNs for what they are, which isn't going to happen, the situation will keep its status quo..

Thirdly.. I forgot, I blame my headache >_<

Anyway, you get my drift.. For VNs to be popular in the West, there needs to be an audience for it, which is the sole reason of existance and primary purpose of fuwanovel.net in the first place, "Make Visual Novels popular in the West" ^^

TL;DR: Yeah, probably not gonna happen in a long while..

[Steve]

I would like to have a dream with my future wife Mare

One day when the real and animated worlds will connect xD

As for English produced VNs, I don't think there will ever be time when VNs as we know them are produced for western audience.

If you look at anime and manga, those 2 are imo much more popular in west than VNs, yet if you compare Japanese animation with western one or Japanese comics with western ones, its totally different thing.

For example animation for adults is almost non-existant in west, yes you can take few series like south park, futurama or simpsons that are watched by adults (family guy etc, might have missed few), but look at how big american movie production is and how much of animated series/movies are actually at least "watchable" by adults without facepalming.

Then compare it with size of Japan and the amount of anime there is.

And like I said, that is animation, Japanese anime is very popular in west - yet there is close to none west produced adult animation.

Then look at VNs, those are not nearly as popular as anime.

And even if you compare the japanese animation and western animation targeted for aduls, in the western one you don't find a single animation including moe.

If moe animation isn't good enough for western producers to earn money, VNs will hardly be, at least those traditional with routes and dating and girls.

However people in the west also understand to concept of VN - story being told with player able to affect it.

And then you see games like Walking Dead - It is close to VN, more like advanced one with rendered characters, quick time events and adventure movement.

That is imo the only way west can get close to what they do in Japan.

With that said, the problem isn't that people wouldn't like moe, exactly the opposite, when I show some moe to people ALONE, they admit that it isn't bad at least. But once you say it infront of multiple people who don't know about it, everybody is too shy to admit they like it. And we can thank for that the prejudging western nature - that is how people here are.

Actually I might dare to say that it isn't just western problem, its the humanity problem, Japanese might tolerate a lot of their own culture but I have seen many blunders by big Japanese companies acting stupid because they don't understand a western market or audience. I don't know much about ordinary people there and how prejudging those are but well, the big powerful companies are the ones who decide the "public opinion" most of the time, via media manipulating people into thinking what they want them to think.

And again this became an essay xD But well I was saying, the world should have ended, with all the evilness and injustice in the world, humanity would deserve it That is my thinking most of the time, luckily there are even times when my faith for humanity is restored, this community might be a good example But I am even talking in bigger deals, people helping each other, gamers standing behind each other, hell even manga lovers willing to help a person arrested for owning some loli or whatever - with their own money and time. There still is chance for humanity, too bad there are those pigs who ruin the overall image

[Oxidian]

Chineses will take over the world and they shouldn't be too bothered about VNs.

[Supah Kawaii Weeaboo]

In regards to what Ilegend said... I checked Play-Asia to learn more about international editions of today's relatively mainstream games. There are official Japanese and Chinese translations of Skyrim. Borderlands 2 is available in several languages (both voices and text translations). There is a Japanese edition of Mass Effect 3, and its "Asia" edition apparently has English dialogue but subtitles in several languages.

If you're a native of Japan and you want to import games from abroad, there is a site for you. It's Huck-Fin Games.

The people at Roseverte managed to get their indie visual novel Cafe 0 ~The Drowned Mermaid~ released in English and in Japanese on the same day, and released a German version just a couple months later. A group called Moonbot Studios released an iOS app called The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore (currently considered to be a VN) in nine different languages on the same day. Also, the people who created the short NSFW visual novel Sugar's Delight went on to make Japanese and French translations in just a few months.

Anyway, I figure that if people continue to make western VNs, and they are created with care and professionalism (no matter whether they're freeware or indie) and give them enough promotion in order to avoid being buried on obscure sites, then this small fandom has a better chance of growing. I know that a few current Japanese VN creators, such as Spike Chunsoft, are making praiseworthy products outside of the romance game genre, and hopefully they will play a major role in shaping the future of the media form. I say this because while I like cute romance stories and games, I know that most of my fellow video game fans won't even look at them...

[Steve]

@supah kawaii weeaboo

Yeah, that would be much better than English producers - Japanese producers actually releasing JP and EN version on the same day.

Actually if I remember right it was the same with Games, I think first 3 final fantasy games werent released in English and only those from 4 were.

Maybe if they see big enough market to pay for the expenses of development including English translation "on the go", not after the release, they will make it Unfortunately the Japanese prices are much higher and they need to understand, if they released FF for 120$ not much western people would buy it, but for standard price of a console game many people will take it. If they want to sell VNs in west, they need to be cheaper.

[InvertMouse]

That was an interesting read. Love the opinions everyone has shared so far.

Steve, indeed, VNs are far too expensive at the moment. It's similar to DVDs in Japan. A single disc is like 80 bucks, man ! And yes, there's definitely that fear of being into moe in the West. People go nuts expressing their fandom in conventions. That might partly be because they have to bottom it inside in their everyday lives.

Steam recently released a VN called Analogue. I've never played it, so I'm not sure whether it's actually good or not. I do know though that people on YouTube have been ripping that game to shreds. One of the reviewers said it's just a bunch of text. If he wanted to read text, he would read a book. Now, if the story was horrible, then that's fine. But to just criticize the game for having a lot of reading, well, that's the very nature of VNs. That right there concerns me.

[InvertMouse]

I'm going to post on this thread again because I think it's interesting and worthwhile to pursue B).

As Steve said, The Walking Dead has almost VN like elements. Speaking of which, how about games like 999 on the DS? That's definitely very VN heavy. The puzzle parts make it passable as being called "a game". Maybe that's why it got translated in the first place. At any rate, apparently it sold well, because the sequel, Zero Escape, has been translated as well. I'm playing this game right now, and there is even more talking than in 999.

Maybe that's the trick? Develop VNs with gaming elements, even if they're gimmicky, to gently introduce newcomers to the genre. I'm actually currently taking on an indie project that's exactly like this. I've been posting my progress on my blog if anyone's interested.