What's your opinion on the "Visual Novels" on Steam?

[Thelime]

I would discuss this on the discussion forums of one of the individual "games", but the weaboos do nothing but defend their precious garbage anyway.

Let me start by saying, from what I have seen these VN's have gotten progressively worse as they go along. I don't own any as I'm not into them (and porn is free, I'd rather go watch it than buy it on Steam.) One of my friend's was talking about one over a year ago, and explained how it had loads of choices, multiple endings, etc. That didn't seem that bad. One of the newest ones to hit Steam is called "Happy Campers". This has got to be one of the the biggest money grab attempts I've ever seen on Steam. It's not even remotely Japanese as far as I can tell. It's made by one guy. It might be, who knows. But I don't believe that the people playing it are. This "story" has also got to be the worst I've ever heard of, read reviews and read the forums. It's pretty much just panty shots and big boobs galore.

I actually did post in their forums a couple times, having "heated discussions" with people, but the developer (if you can call him that) removed most of my comments, and has been banning critics left and right.

I really want to know... What is the ACTUAL point of buying this? The weaboos will say for the story, or to support the creator, but that's utter BS... An early age children's book has more story than some of these.

So what is your guys' opinion on these? The first few I've seen didn't look all that bad... But now almost every one of them has a link to an 18+ patch pinned right on their forum, proving my point further that these are not for story. I don't believe porn belongs on Steam, but hey, that's me.

[Solarstrike]

They need more interactivity. Whether VR, Audio Production, or more integrated graphics for overall functionality and immersion. I used to love reading the "Choose Your Own Adventure" line of books. Each one of them are an adventure in which you decide how the story will unfold. I still have some laying around somewhere. I really wish someone out there would turn them into digital/interactive. They can be found on Ebay, Amazon, libraries, or book stores.

If i want to read a book i usually read the real thing. I'd rather much have a physical book than a digital one. I'm sure there are some great interactive novels out there. It's a niche market, which hopefully will expand with new ideas. Telltale Games has a thing with the way it portrays ideas. Almost like a comic book/novela, whereas the viewer/reader gets to partake in the way the stories proceed.

Here's some inspiration, stories, short stories:

"Creepshow" (NSFW, violence, partial nudity) a series of short story movies by Stephen King, George Romero, and John Carpenter:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyNg9aFcg_c

The Time Machine by H.G Wells, audio version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ry96WHuR7aw

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Publicado originalmente por Solarstrike:

They need more interactivity. Whether VR, Audio Production, or more integrated graphics for overall functionality and immersion. I used to love reading the "Choose Your Own Adventure" line of books. Each one of them are an adventure in which you decide how the story will unfold. I still have some laying around somewhere. I really wish someone out there would turn them into digital/interactive. They can be found on Ebay, Amazon, libraries, or book stores.

If i want to read a book i usually read the real thing. I'd rather much have a physical book than a digital one. I'm sure there are some great interactive novels out there. It's a niche market, which hopefully will expand with new ideas. Telltale Games has a thing with the way it portrays ideas. Almost like a comic book/novela, whereas the viewer/reader gets to partake in the way the stories proceed.

> "If I want to read a book i usually read the real thing"

I've seen that line brought up a number of times, and there's a caveat to this line, which is that VNs -- even kinetic novels -- generally don't have book versions.

So, the question is more accurately stated as "Would you read a book instead of a VN, if it contained a different story?". This question is a lot less clear, unless you basically consider all stories to be the same or simply aren't very interested in the story any particular VN offers.

[DeadPoolX]

It depends on the Visual Novel.

Not all are anime (Cinders or Solstice are good examples of non-anime VNs) and some VNs even include combat, such as Loren: The Amazon Princess or Planet Stronghold.

I also have a long history of playing Text Adventure games, going back to the original Zork. That said, the TAs I've played more recently are generally from publisher/developer Choice of Games.

Traditionally-speaking, TAs have no visuals at all (and Choice of Games' titles are no exception), so at best they're digital versions of Choose Your Own Adventure[en.wikipedia.org] novels. I used to love those as a kid, and I've played some pretty good ones on Steam.

Are all of them good? No, but there are bad games in every genre and considering the number of games on Steam, there are going to be plenty of stinkers.

[Quint the Alligator Snapper]

Personally, if I like a VN's story enough to want to read it, I actually prefer "kinetic novels" (i.e. VNs without choices) because I want the story to guide me rather than having to be in the hot seat myself.

[Paratech2008]

Some VNs are just an excuse to show naked cartoon breasts and some people make them look like they're the norm and that only perverts play VNs.

[🍋 Lemonfed 🍋]

the stories are fun to read even if they're sometime silly , it's all depend on taste and each persons got their own.

[Honey Badger]

They shouldn't cost a penny, all VN's i've played i've completed within the hour

Unless it has enough content to last me for about 6 hours, and that's not replaying the game, then fair enough, slap a price on it (As long as it's not like £20, then what the ♥♥♥♥)

[Avitel]

Publicado originalmente por Quint the Glowing Bitter Oyster:

I'd like to see an "early age children's book" involve the main character shadowing a professional mediator involved in political negotations with a country on the brink of nuclear war, and being offered a difficult ethical choice concerning whether to say certain things to that country's leader.

Of course, OP could say "well, maybe not that VN".

At which point I would point out, well, then the idea of reading a VN for the story is not "utter BS".

What's the name of this NV?

[Ogami]

Publicado originalmente por Honey Badger:

They shouldn't cost a penny, all VN's i've played i've completed within the hour

Unless it has enough content to last me for about 6 hours, and that's not replaying the game, then fair enough, slap a price on it (As long as it's not like £20, then what the ♥♥♥♥)

http://store.steampowered.com/app/324160/CLANNAD/


80-100 hours easily if you read all the routes.


Those 1 hour VN is mostly the cheap copy crap a lot of western Indie devs churn out, like those godawful "Sakura Whatever" things.

[Daxank]

Publicado originalmente por Ogami:

Publicado originalmente por Honey Badger:

They shouldn't cost a penny, all VN's i've played i've completed within the hour

Unless it has enough content to last me for about 6 hours, and that's not replaying the game, then fair enough, slap a price on it (As long as it's not like £20, then what the ♥♥♥♥)

http://store.steampowered.com/app/324160/CLANNAD/


80-100 hours easily if you read all the routes.


Those 1 hour VN is mostly the cheap copy crap a lot of western Indie devs churn out, like those godawful "Sakura Whatever" things.

This game costs way too much for his ♥♥♥♥ artstyle and the fact that it came out in 2004

[Seraphita]

Publicado originalmente por Daxank:

This game costs way too much for his ♥♥♥♥ artstyle and the fact that it came out in 2004

lol... Are you freaking serious? It's fking Clannad. You sound like you never even heard of the anime. I won't defend its price but its artstyle is the way the anime was. Old doesn't mean bad and the game is overwhelmingly positive for a good reason. More VNs should be like that one.

The real problem is the cheaper ones that give a bad reputation to the really amazing ones.

[Doctor Teo]

Publicado originalmente por Zero:

Publicado originalmente por Daxank:

This game costs way too much for his ♥♥♥♥ artstyle and the fact that it came out in 2004

lol... Are you freaking serious? It's fking Clannad. You sound like you never even heard of the anime. I won't defend its price but its artstyle is the way the anime was. Old doesn't mean bad and the game is overwhelmingly positive for a good reason. More VNs should be like that one.

The real problem is the cheaper ones that give a bad reputation to the really amazing ones.

While it's true that many VN's can be several hours long (I prefer mine to be the 10-20 hour ones), the price still needs to reflect the content. For VN's, I feel that's not always the case, more so than other games.

$60 is what Witcher 3, Skyrim, Arkham City, or any of those games would cost new. All those games have the potential for dozens to hundreds of hours of quality content, so their price reflects it. Not only that, but prices fall after some time; if you're not into the Assassin's Creed series even though you might have heard that Black Flag was awesome, you can pick it up retroactively if it catches your attention again further down the road, and for a very reasonable price.

Clannad is frickin' awesome. It was everything I hate in a story (rom com, high school, teenagers), but I saw the anime on recommendation and it's probably the one show that got me into japanese anything; totally made me eat my words. However, it doesn't change that Clannad, Higurashi, Stein;s Gate, and all of those excellent VN's do not follow western pricing. To us, if you're used to buying dated games at 10-25 bucks, it's hard to justify dropping the price of a new game on something over 10 years old. I mean cripes, Dark Souls was 2011-12, and you can pick it up for as low as $10 on sale.

Anime is just as bad. I walked into a shop that sold anime, and they priced Angel Beats! at $60. Compared to something western I can get off of Netflix, it causes sticker shock.

I'm thankful for outlets like Humble Bundle which regularly bundle small-time VN's for a reasonable price, because I don't think I'd pick them up at all if they were all so expensive. I'd love to read more VN's, but the medium is still foreign to me, so I'm way more hesitant to drop money on them than I am other games, and it doesn't help that they cost more than games.

[Paratech2008]

CLANNAD HD may be a great game, but a lot of people aren't going to like it because VNs aren't that popular and maybe only hard core VNs are going to appreciate the game.

[Red Shift]

Publicado originalmente por Paratech2008:

CLANNAD HD may be a great game, but a lot of people aren't going to like it because VNs aren't that popular and maybe only hard core VNs are going to appreciate the game.

Publicado originalmente por Paratech2008:

Some VNs are just an excuse to show naked cartoon breasts and some people make them look like they're the norm and that only perverts play VNs.

"If you like boobies you're a pervert" & "People wont like it because its not popular."

Any more pearls of wisdom you got for us there?

[Paratech2008]

I didn't say that people were perverts, but I was saying that there are those who say that.

I'm not Tipper Gore or the Religious right either. I wasn't one of those screaming for ratings on videogames or music. I did watch the hearings on TV back then, and when 60 minutes talked about murder simulators.