Have you ever heard of the Visual Novel game genre? Chances are not very likely, but you’ve probably seen a couple of the games that fit this category. Visuals Novels have been around since the earlier parts of gaming history helping craft some major parts of the games you love including inspiring Kojima to get into development and make Metal Gear Solid. The genre has been around since about 1982 and even has games on archaic machines that most gamers have never heard of such as Pc-6001 and MSx.
How To Play
Visual Novels are played like a point and click or choose your own adventure type of game. Visuals novels are mostly made of text with anime styled background drops; there are several different variations, but the most common type is like reading an interactive story book. They lay out a story out about a boy on his way to school and you have to choose whether he takes the train or walking. If you take the train you lose your bag that you then have to go chasing after, ending in meeting the love of your life. If you choose to walk your character comments on what opportunities he may have missed, but ends up running into a missing cat. Most visual novels have several different stories contained within them branching out into all types of different paths that the players pick for themselves.
The other variations of visual novels can be much more linear though. These stories may have 1-2 different endings and follow a set path. They do give the player variety in relationship building and who they give the most character development too. These novels vary in theme and genre, but the romance and harem genres are generally the diverging path visual novels mentioned previously.
A popular variant are the horror or detective genres where the player’s interactions are focused on learning about items or suspects instead of finding the perfect partner. These stories often become quite popular outside western culture becoming books or anime that sell well. The authors from some visual novels even go on to making shows that gain mass followings like Madoka Magica.
Visual Novels That Have Made it Big
As mentioned above a portion of visuals novels have erupted into full blown media franchises. “Clannad” for example is a classic visual novel for the PS2 that is considered one of the most classic animes ever produced. On top of that, the harem genre got the hit anime “Shuffle!?”That originally came from a PC visual novel. Some of the most recent famous examples are “Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni” and “Umineko” that came from a poor writer that still lived with his parents. Higurashi attained enough popularity a few years of release to spawn an anime as well as an art redesign for the visual novels.
On top of that, we also can look to the fact that “Psycho-Pass”, “Madoka Magicka”, and “ Gargantia” were created by someone who started with visuals novels. Gen Urobuchi is a hit anime writer has made several modern classics in the anime world that are big hitters in the West. His work revolves around dystopian worlds that pull people in thanks to their unique horror elements. Before all that, though, he produced a visual novel, “Saya No Uta”, along with several other titles that are considered some of the most horrific books you can read. In Saya No Uta there is no such thing as going too far with getting the point across. The visual novel goes where most don’t by showing graphic scenes and nudity to confirm how twisted the world is. Thanks to this novel, however, he became a rather loved horror artist. Even now it has grown in popularity and“Saya No Uta” can be purchased, with Prime shipping, to your house from Amazon.
Western Acceptance
While Visuals Novels still aren’t a craze, a few have broken through in western culture and became rather popular. The most well known of these are Phoenix Wright which is a point and click detective adventure on the DS and 3DS. Alongside this is the Vita’s Danganronpa series which is a horror/murder mystery game. Both games stick to their audience extremely well with Phoenix Wright being pre-teen friendly and Danganronpa being completely towards mature audiences.
Thanks to these two the doors to the western audience are somewhat open, but the majority of visual novels are still shrugged off due to being put in the category of creepy dating games. This is a huge problem which comes from the lack of advertisement or the anime community itself. Most advertisement if any are for H- games or adult erotica which causes most visual novels to be portrayed in a bad light. Even when bringing over harems a lot of companies show the girls in bikinis or commission sexualized art that shows none of the story or aspects of game play within. Thanks to this the genre has a very awkward feel to outsiders.
Many anime fans themselves even avoid visual novels thanks to the jokes made within the community about having 2D girlfriends. The miscommunication even goes as far as people not knowing they are playing a game from the genre even when Dangaronpa is clearly classified as a visual novel. Most people assume it’s a JRPG instead though thanks to the lack of elements like sexual conduct or dating in the games.
Promoting the Visual Novel Games
The key to fixing the affiliation with the genre and dating virtual women starts with the marketing campaigns. The sites that import visual novels mix advertising an adult eroge game next to a visual novel causing the mental note of “Oh, these both must be explicit” in the viewer’s mind. To correct this, visual novels need to get a strong marketing campaign of their own and separate from sites that sell explicit material. This is somewhat being accomplished in magazines like “Anime USA” where viewers see nice artwork and a clip of story description instead of mostly naked girls.
Another great idea is giving away chapters for free like “Higurashi”, where the first part is available for free on steam. By doing this it will allow players to download the games when they’re browsing or want something to do giving them a better introduction to the genre. Most people will spread games to their friends and with the try for free model, it’s much easier to convince a friend to pick it up. Demos can convince people to buy more games than large advertisements can because if you can make someone want more of something they will find a way to make room for it in their budget generally by switching out something else they were buying to try out.