Naming the Protagonist

[CruelN1N1]

In love plus(ds) you can name your character and her will speak it(sounds like a vocaloid sometimes) this is the only game i played with rename protagonist but seems stupid to rename protagonist in the vn, it just ruins everything, especially back history

[Zalor]

Don't hate on him and just enjoy.

 

Considering my attachment/obsession with Kanon it would be impossible for me not to hate him. However it was admittedly really funny.

[Monmon]

Hm..... I like to name my protag to Ooba Yamato. However this is mostly for Console games or pc games(Especially persona series), not a vn.

Some time a default name in vn (Such as canvas2) already cool nuff.

[castor212]

The character do indeed need a name.

 

And face.

 

And real characters.

[Christfall]

Nameable protagonist is certainly a really, really bad idea, as it gives me the impression that the protagonist will end up like another faceless avatar with no distinct personality (and I HATE that) and have little significance to the plot. After all, everyone would like to see a protagonist that is likable and proactive.

In some games (such as Kitto sumiwataru Asairo and Irosekai), I like how the protagonist's name themselves are crucial plot points that establishes their character, not just some nobody that represents you. The plot will fail if their names were to be changed.

 

There are exceptions however, such as Clannad ended being great (if you don't mind playing through the game voiceless) despite having the protagonist nameable.

[hydro]

I don't like it either, I've always gone with the default option when it happens. Though that's for VNs, in other video games like Pokemon I usually pick a name.

[DawnWolf]

They were different then, though. Yu's manga-name was Souji, and Makoto's was Minato. Neither of those names ever were canon: they were used for convenience amongst the fans.

Atlus has confirmed that Persona 2: Eternal Punishment, Persona 4: Arena, and Persona Q are all canon. Each of these games affirms a name for the games protagonist. For the record, those are: Tatsuya Suou for P2, Minato Aristato for P3 (confirmed in Persona Q), and Yu Narukami for P4 (Arena/Q). To be fair, the P1 protagonist's name, Naoya, hasn't been confirmed so I'll give you that.

[Dizzyworld2]

I dislike them as well. Most of the hate came from reading Starry Sky ~In Spring~ - the heroine could be renamed and the voices were done so that the guys call her 'omae' and such when there's obviously the heroine's name in the text. It didn't help that she was like those male protagonists without eyes lol.

[kratoscar2008]

Dont know if its okay to post on a dead(?) thread but well its a topic i love to discuss 

In my opinion allowing naming the MC its a great thing and i love devs who do that, i love the lenghts they go to in order to allow the player to immerse itself (If he/she particularly feels like) and be part of the story instead of an spectator (Wich is where videogames strenght lies compared to other mediums).

 

And the way i see it VNs would benefit a lot of it, i mean most MCs in VNs have generic personalities, no voice acting, no face (Even those who get one lose it in Hscenes)  as to make them player inserts so adding a nameable feature just feels right. Otherwise they should get the whole character instead of doing halfs.

 

I dont see how renaming them is stupid or goes agaisnt the creators intent given they allowed the choice to begin with (Even at the cost of VA).

 

I guess the best solution is giving VA for the default name and everyone would be happy.

 

btw I love ATLUS a lot because of that 

 

Care to share what VN were you playing TC? Im really interested.

[Clephas]

As I said before, there is a good reason this convention died.

[zoom909]

Once again, as with a lot of discussions on here, it depends on what you play your visual novels for, whether you will enjoy the naming feature or not.

 

Honestly, I don't see the big problem with the feature.  So apparently there is cognitive dissonance caused for some readers when they see their name on the screen and hear the voice say "you"... but I have no problem at all absorbing both pieces of information without so much as skipping a mental beat.

[kratoscar2008]

As I said before, there is a good reason this convention died.

Except it didnt? Is still alive and many studios still use it (Basically everything Marigold, Smee, Squeez, OLE, MBS Truth, F&C, Atelier Kaguya/Honky Tonk Pumpking and many others) on their VNs and many games on consoles still allow MC naming. And by your logic faceless and voiceless MCs then are great because their convention are still going strong?

 

Meh honestly i dont see your problem if you think that convention is dead, just dont play them (Wich should be easy since there arent many studios that try to actually give the reader/player the choice).

 

Im still waiting for that VN, i havent heard of any VN that asks you frequently if you want to change the MC name.

 

 

Once again, as with a lot of discussions on here, it depends on what you play your visual novels for, whether you will enjoy the naming feature or not.

 

Honestly, I don't see the big problem with the feature.  So apparently there is cognitive dissonance caused for some readers when they see their name on the screen and hear the voice say "you"... but I have no problem at all absorbing both pieces of information without so much as skipping a mental beat.

Exactly to the bolded, btw nameless MCs works for me as well wich is why i loved the Miku games. Thanks for translating that zoom 

[Clephas]

Except it didnt? Is still alive and many studios still use it (Basically everything Marigold, Smee, Squeez, OLE, MBS Truth, F&C, Atelier Kaguya/Honky Tonk Pumpking and many others) on their VNs and many games on consoles still allow MC naming. And by your logic faceless and voiceless MCs then are great because their convention are still going strong?

 

Nukige companies and ones that stopped producing before 2009 don't count.

[kratoscar2008]

Nukige companies and ones that stopped producing before 2009 don't count.

That still leaves Marigold with subsidiaries like Lune, Marine, Bishop then others like Smee, Atelier Kaguya, Crossover, Hibiki Works, Tone works and more (Now that i checked all except F&C produced games with nameable MCs this year). 

 

Why Nukige doesnt count?

 

You also seem to ignore the part about voiceless and nameless MCs. Does that means that MCs with a face and voice are bad because those conventions are not used much?

 

Why would a nameable protagonist be worse than a protagonist witouth a face and VA?

 

Im still waiting for that VN name as well.

[Clephas]

That still leaves Marigold with subsidiaries like Lune, Marine, Bishop then others like Smee, Atelier Kaguya, Crossover, Hibiki Works, Tone works and more (Now that i checked all except F&C produced games with nameable MCs this year). 

 

Why Nukige doesnt count?

 

You also seem to ignore the part about voiceless and nameless MCs. Does that means that MCs with a face and voice are bad because those conventions are not used much?

 

Why would a nameable protagonist be worse than a protagonist witouth a face and VA?

All of those are nukige companies with no non-nukige, except F&C, which produces third rate romances and moege, and Tone Works, which has produced precisely one good game. 

 

This is more a matter of the voices of other characters, the way they are addressed in general, and the way the reader identifies them.  To be blunt, nothing breaks my empathy with a character more than no one calling them by their first name or everyone calling them by a pronoun such as anata or omae.  This weakens social aspects of character interactions, and it is generally jarring to someone used to the flow of Japanese language.  When I say there is a reason this convention is dying, I mean that that reason is that it is a particularly offensive convention to people with a second-nature understanding of Japanese.  How a name is called, which name is used, and how naturally it is used all indicate aspects of relationships that are so subliminal to someone who has internalized Japanese that nameable protagonists can't help but ruin the experience. 

 

The reason it is mostly dead is because Japanese, the primary audience for VNs, don't like it.  It is restricted almost entirely to crappy rpg hybrids and nukige for this reason.  Companies making serious, non-nukige know it is too much of a risk to use, because such a large portion of their potential consumer base dislikes it.  It also increases costs immensely if they want to use a name-voice synthesis system like was used in Hoshi Ori (proper, commonly-used Japanese names only).

 

For nukige, where basically people want to pretend they are having sex or are just using it as fapping material, this is not an issue, because very few situations can be ruined by this 違和感.  There isn't anything to ruin in the first place, no content that is subtle enough to be disturbed by subtle issues like this.  It is fairly rare for you to find someone worshiping a nukige the way people worship the best of other VNS... and most of those that do receive that worship are almost not nukige in any case. 

 

 

Edit:  Incidentally, the two most costly aspects of producing the average VN are voices and CGs.  Voices are flat-out the most expensive aspect, except in some games that have large amounts of unique CGs. 

 

Edit2: No, programming is not a terribly expensive aspect, as most VN-producers simply reuse an established system like Kirikiri, Siglus, or Reallive.

 

Edit3:  I should also note that nukige cut corners in numerous ways - including major nukige companies.  Usually only heroines - and sometimes only during h-scenes - have voices.  Other noises and music are straight-out reused from their other games or are public domain.  CGs are repaints or slight alterations of ones from previous games or are done by no-name artists who want to get into more serious game art.  Tachie are usually cosmetic alterations of low-cost productions by those same no-name artists.  Game systems are almost always Kirikiri, which is available for free.  Writers are generally in-house or are beginners.  I could go on, but the point is that nukige are extremely low-cost affairs for the most part (there are exceptions, and I'm sure Steve or some of our most experienced nukigamers could point them out, but I'm not interested) and even with minimal sales, they still turn a moderate profit.  This is versus even the crappiest moege, which will often require five or six times the sales of a nukige to take the company out of the red.  For a chuuni game or a nakige on the level of Key's games (which ate up a million dollars or more each) sales generally need to be even higher than that. 

[melo4496]

Yeah. It doesn't feel right since the Voice doesn't match with the changed name (on the ones I played).

[Clephas]

Oh and Hibiki Works, except for Shiden, has only produced mindless games with nothing of interest to someone looking for a story.

 

Edit:  I probably shouldn't be such a jerk about this, but there are limits to my patience.  I liked Hoshi Ori (after I went back and finished it slowly, one route at a time, spaced out over several months, rather than all at once, as I usually would), but that was despite naming the protagonist.  Naming the protagonist did, in fact, damage the quality of the game experience for me.  Hatsukoi 1/1, on the other hand, is a huge steaming pile of third-rate moege crap, so my statement on that convention and companies that use it stands.  The sheer amount of money they had to pour into Hoshi Ori (as is evident just by playing a few hours) is frightening, as even major companies generally don't pump that much money into a single game.

[Clephas]

It was the introduction of voice-acting to games that basically began the slow death of the nameable protagonist in jrpgs.

[Parallel Pain]

That still leaves Marigold with subsidiaries like Lune, Marine, Bishop then others like Smee, Atelier Kaguya, Crossover, Hibiki Works, Tone works and more (Now that i checked all except F&C produced games with nameable MCs this year).

Interestingly, the A-Kaguya titles I have don't have this option.

 

Edit3:  I should also note that nukige cut corners in numerous ways - including major nukige companies.  Usually only heroines - and sometimes only during h-scenes - have voices.  Other noises and music are straight-out reused from their other games or are public domain.  CGs are repaints or slight alterations of ones from previous games or are done by no-name artists who want to get into more serious game art.  Tachie are usually cosmetic alterations of low-cost productions by those same no-name artists.  Game systems are almost always Kirikiri, which is available for free.  Writers are generally in-house or are beginners.  I could go on, but the point is that nukige are extremely low-cost affairs for the most part (there are exceptions, and I'm sure Steve or some of our most experienced nukigamers could point them out, but I'm not interested) and even with minimal sales, they still turn a moderate profit.  This is versus even the crappiest moege, which will often require five or six times the sales of a nukige to take the company out of the red.  For a chuuni game or a nakige on the level of Key's games (which ate up a million dollars or more each) sales generally need to be even higher than that. 

That sounds both really disrespectful towards those companies and most likely untrue except for doujin.

 

On the Otome Game side, Hakuouki and Glass Heart Princess both have this option. And are all ages. And voiced. And sold like hotcakes.

 

In general I agree though. The deciding factor is voice acting. With the introduction of voice acting, this is falling out of favor because it just makes it...weird.

Non-voiced stuff are still fine with this.

Though personally, as another person who has very much internalized the Japanese language, I dislike this feature a lot less than I dislike protagonists without eyes. I don't see how that's supposed to make it more relatable. It just makes my character looks like a ghost.

[Clephas]

It isn't really rude... and it happens to be true.  KiriKiri is the most used VN engine even today, despite having first appeared over a decade ago.  Companies tend to put their own stamp on it, but because it is so flexible, it gets reused all the time.  When you play games with ITH or agth, check out what your hooks say.  With most games, the name of the game engine is on at least some of the hooks.

 

Using public domain for sounds isn't a bad thing, it is just evidence of cutting corners.  Also, without the chance given by nukige, new good artists wouldn't get a chance to move up to bigger projects.  Companies like Will, Akabei, Light, Nitroplus, and Key all cherry-pick the best artists from that group, though it is frequently for commissions for one particular CG to lower the burden on permanent-hire artists.  Also, in the eyes of a nukige company, there is no point in voicing characters other than the heroines, since most readers aren't interested in anything but the heroines' voices (and some just use a save file and read the h-scenes from the scene-replay function). 

 

Like I said, there are exceptions, like Astronauts.  Astronauts produces really high-quality borderline nukige (nukige that are almost moege but have too much sex to be considered them) for instance.  Erect, for all its being a game about succubi, happens to be on my top one hundred list (since I'm edging closer to five hundred played, this is actually an incredible accomplishment) for its surprisingly excellent story and interesting characters.  However, as I said before, nukige rarely bother with going all-out in writing or voices. 

 

Atelier Kaguya and its subsidiaries basically produce bread-and-butter nukige from each sub-genre (straight-up, NTR, JK, etc.), and while they don't skimp on art, they do do so on all other aspects.  This is because the average nukige reader in Japan basically is basically interested in visuals and situation.  Give them the situation they want, in combination with decent visuals, and they'll willingly shell out the equivalent of thirty to fifty dollars a game (mid to high-quality nukige tend to hover in this range, as opposed to moege, which generally hover in the eighty to hundred region). 

 

I'll agree that doujin works cut the most corners... but that is because they either have no budget at all or have only a minimal budget, usually funded by earlier, lower-quality work or work from other genres (doujinshi sales and the like).  However, many commercial producers like Norn and Softhouse-seal cut every conceivable corner.

 

Anyway *spits* enough about nukige.  I agree that faceless protagonists... can be irritating, if only because it makes it so obvious they've decided to make the protagonist a total non-entity.  This is becoming less common even in moege, because of player complaints and trending.  However, it is still the mainstay of moege-variants.  It is nonexistent in chuuni, though...lol 

 

 

Edit:  As a further side-note, you don't see half-assed efforts from the greats of the dark-nukige business, because they get off on fetishism and extreme situations, which means detail is everything.  They also cherry-pick from the 'lesser' nukige companies, just like the major names of the non-nukige companies do.  I hate rapegames, but I'm impressed with how much money and effort those companies are willing to put into it, lol.

[Parallel Pain]

It isn't really rude... and it happens to be true.  KiriKiri is the most used VN engine even today, despite having first appeared over a decade ago.  Companies tend to put their own stamp on it, but because it is so flexible, it gets reused all the time.  When you play games with ITH or agth, check out what your hooks say.  With most games, the name of the game engine is on at least some of the hooks.

 

Using public domain for sounds isn't a bad thing, it is just evidence of cutting corners.

Game engine and sound effect sure (and I doubt many people care about these. I certainly don't, was on ねこねこソフト and Nscripter for a long time). But BGM too?

Atelier Kaguya and its subsidiaries basically produce bread-and-butter nukige from each sub-genre (straight-up, NTR, JK, etc.), and while they don't skimp on art, they do do so on all other aspects.  This is because the average nukige reader in Japan basically is basically interested in visuals and situation.  Give them the situation they want, in combination with decent visuals, and they'll willingly shell out the equivalent of thirty to fifty dollars a game (mid to high-quality nukige tend to hover in this range, as opposed to moege, which generally hover in the eighty to hundred region). 

Haven't heard a single public-domain BGM. Then again I only touched the sweet romance games that ゆいこ sang for.

 

However, many commercial producers like Norn and Softhouse-seal cut every conceivable corner.

This I can attest to. Norn didn't even bother re-recording lines the VA messed up on.

 

Edit:  As a further side-note, you don't see half-assed efforts from the greats of the dark-nukige business, because they get off on fetishism and extreme situations, which means detail is everything.  They also cherry-pick from the 'lesser' nukige companies, just like the major names of the non-nukige companies do.  I hate rapegames, but I'm impressed with how much money and effort those companies are willing to put into it, lol.

Isn't dark a huge part of the nukige genre?

[kratoscar2008]

I honestly think you are thinking too deeply into it, but you explained the true reason its not done wich is because it would require effort. Not because they damage anything, i mean you still hasnt addressed the other points. If that is jarring isnt MORE jarring having a protagonist without a voice in a world were everyone else is voiced? Or that the protagonist doesnt have a face and isnt allowed to express his emotions throught expressions? I think you are more proyecting your dislike for such features (You are trying to speak for the WHOLE japanese consumers/audience) because i dont think the audience really cares as much as you point out considering how huge self insert obsesed japanese are wich is another thing i pointed out with how even protagonists that get a face lose it in Hscenes (Wich is because they can self insert).

 

You are trying to make me believe that there are any reasons besides costs that such feature is not added. Wich is why i bring faceless and voiceless protagonists a lot that just proves that most VNs just take the conventions that allows them to spend less money/effort. If they truly cared about their medium as a way to tell an story rather than just escapism then they would give their protagonists all the features the rest of the cast has instead of half assing the character that drives their stories.

 

Naming is not dead and its not used because of the reasons you stated, its not used simply because it woul take effort and resources just like making a fully voiced and fully featured protagonist. They do more damage to the genre than a nameable protagonist would ever do.

 

Then again this is why preferences exist, there are people that like this feature because they want to BE the protagonist instead of following someones story. Immersion is not something you can easily define by any measurable metric so please dont try to make it like your opinion is the above everyone else or that speaks for the rest of the market.

 

@Parallel Pain.

Oh sorry i meant that specifically for Honky Tonk Pumpking, some of their VNs have that as well (Like B&B last game this year) but not all of them.