Visual novel is one of the types of video games that is extremely famous in the East. Why is it famous there you ask? It is because most of visual novels have great character and plot developments like KEY's games which include Clannad, Kanon, Air, and Little Busters which luckily got translated for Western gamers to enjoy and cry. There are more that are critically acclaimed in Japan and the problem is that there are Western gamers who would love to play them. The problem is...the publishers are not localizing the games since they are afraid of the controversy and if it won't sell well there, and this is what I am going to talk about in this blog post.
Two of the famous reasons why most of the high quality visual novels beside KEY's games are because of cultural differences and...erotic visuals. You have heard me, erotic visuals. Eastern gamers are not offended by those scenes but Western gamers will have a problem since many people criticized the use of sexuality in games. The most recent example is Quiet's appearance in the upcoming Kojima's game, Metal Gear Solid V. Most of the games are rated 18+ or for adults only as they warn that there would be sexual activities in the game. From some scenes of the heroine having her pantie shown until an erotic sex scene. If Quiet managed to get all of this controversy then I cannot imagine how would the developers and certain number of gamers would react to this. Katawa Shoujo, a Four Leaf Studios game, has made an option to disable adult's content if you would be offended so why not just add this small feature in the localized games to avoid the criticisms? Just don't censor everything that can be essential to romance forcibly which I will talk about soon.
If you don't mind both of the reasons, then sadly you are still out of luck. The Eastern publishers feel that it isn't worth the risk to localize some of the masterpieces for the Western gamers to experience which frustrates the potential customers who would buy them as soon as they get officially translated and arrive to their stores. Some fans would try to make a patch to translate a game but it wouldn't be official since there could be translation error and some bugs and glitches in the game itself, and it won't get any money for the developers since it would result in piracy if the patch released for PC visual novels, and that wouldn't be good for the original developers and publishers. Even if this won't be a problem, there is a possibility that the fan project would halt and nobody who doesn't understand Japanese would have the ability to try this particular game which would disappoint people.
If you think this is frustrating, no it isn't. If you have heard about If My Heart Had Wings and its...problematic launch in the West, then you know what I am going to talk about now. Publishers would censor all of the "romantic" scenes in the respective game and give it to the West uncompleted. If you think I am talking about censoring the erotic scenes only then you are wrong again. If My Heart Had Wings's publisher, MoeNovel, censored every single kiss, sexual joke...you heard me, sexual joke, and more that can be related to sexual activities which doesn't leave the satisfaction of completing a route in a romantic visual novel.
Enough of me talking about Eastern developers, now onto the Western developers. One risk that turned out to be worthwhile was Four Leaf Studios (4chan) game that is called Katawa Shoujo, and indeed it was a surprise in 2012 along with The Walking Dead. This game is what visual novel lovers in the West were asking for and they got it as they didn't get disappointed. The thing is not many developers are doing the same. If you checked some indie visual novels in Xbox Live, they aren't exactly "high quality" but at least some developers had the guts to make them. Some of the games were worth it but others were just frustrating and disappointing that you would think why did you buy that visual novel.
Now into the good stuff for next-gen visual novels. The consoles will have self-publishing feature for developers to take advantage of. Is it a start for making high quality visual novels in the West? Will the Eastern publishers localize their games thanks to this feature? Will PC visual novels like Katawa Shoujo finally come to the consoles? Those questions don't have answers yet but hopefully all of the answers will be yes. The problem is from the self-publishing feature is that there would be more bad quality games in the consoles' digital stores but some day, there would be some visual novels that would change how people think about this type of video games which would be a good thing for visual novel lovers.
Thank for reading since I felt that I wanted to address about this issue I have about visual novels not being a prominent type of a video game in the West, and the lack of interest from the Eastern publishers to release their games there which resulted for loyal fans to try patch the game into their respective languages which would have a possibility for their project to abandoned mid-way in the development of the patch, and we would never have a chance to try those games here. Hopefully the future of visual novels in Western regions would be bright and would happen in the era of the next generation.
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I enjoyed your blog.
And I agree, we need more visual novel games in the west.
I am planning a trip Japan next year for Christmas and I must say their way of speaking and storytelling is a nice change of pace for me,very beautiful and poetic. Still got a year to go but would love to see more of these types of games make their way to the western shores. If not hopefully I can still play them in their original context.
良い状態を維持する
Western media are hypocrites. Video games get tons of flack for a skimpy outfit, giant tits, etc..., but nobody talks about how TV shows does all that and no one speaks a word. Shows like Game of Thrones are almost considered porn. So is it okay for TV shows to do it and not Video games??
And i also forgot how the rest of western video games does killing, murder, anything illegal and thats considered OKAY. But if a japanese game shows a chick in a bikini, they flip their shit.
Nice blog, thanks, the best thing you could wake up on.
And i sometimes wanna learn japanese just to play some of those games that never get localized *cough* Yakuza 5 *cough* and the rest of Sega games.
The critical success of Zero Escape: VLR and JAST releasing a english version of Steins;Gate, these are definitely steps in the right direction but I don't think they'll be the big push. I'm waiting, or rather hoping for, a big name VN to come out in the West on consoles and become a big deal. Outside of the novel part, The Walking Dead reminded me of a visual novel. How the gameplay was a very small factor, and how it was there mainly to help the story.
Also I think VN's will suffer as most of them are love stories. Even something like Fate/STay Night, Fate/UBW/Heavens Feel you could argue is just Saber/Rin/Sakura routes and most other VN's are just straight up Tomoyo route or Sachi route. I think the VN that takes off on the US will be one that avoids routes based on romance and favors routes based on different morals or means of resolution. I never read them, but I'm assuming something like Umineko or Higurashi would be what becomes big over here.
Also, 85%
Aksys are pushing for this. They recently released Sweet Fuse.
http://www.cinemablend.com/...