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They sell really really well. There was an interview with VALVE a few weeks ago in some magazine where they admitted that they did not think that Visual Novels would be so popular but they were wrong.
As for the appeal of Visual Novels in general, its basically a game version of the popular " choose your own adventure books" from the 80/90ws just with pictures and sound.
The genre may not be for everyone but there are some really great Visual Novels on Steam.
And a whole lot of cheap trash. But thats like every other genre on Steam. For every great shooter you get 10 crap ones and so on. In that regard, Visual Novels are not much different.
You also have to differentiate between "real" japanese made Visual novels which have a way higher quality and cheap western "knock off" VN who are mostly centered around cheap fanservice.
For example:
Western "knock off trash" VN:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/420980/
Really good japanese VN :
http://store.steampowered.com/app/412830/
They tell a story, have a few decision points and can have puzzles and other elements as well to add to the drama. But fundamentally you are meant to reach the end of the game and experience the story eventually.
In the case of Visual Novels they also usually have multiple endings with the "best" endings being tied to making specific choices.
It's a genre that wasn't popular in the west until recently, that's all. It was always a big thing in Japan. That, and as said before, they're reminiscent of CYOA books a lot of us read as children.
Not that different from RPGs where you just move your predetermined character with their story set for them around a scenario rather than clicking to pass text forward.
For some people, they enjoy the fact that VNs can present a huge amount of text, and thus tell really detailed stories, far more than you'd see in a typical game, and also get to do some extra things such as illustrations showing environments/atmosphere and characters' facial expressions.
For some people, they like how you can actually have tons of different possible endings. Some VNs do this, where based on the decisions you make early on you can get a variety of different endings, sort of like a choose-your-own-adventure novel. Not all VNs are multiroute though; some are single-route, called "kinetic novels".
For some people, they just like the anime-style art.
And for some people, like them or not, they only buy the ones that involve fanservice because they specifically want a (softcore?) porn experience. Sometimes porn with plot, but still porn. Not all VNs are fanservice fests though.
People have argued since forever whether VNs should be classified as games, and they're...well, okay, put this way, they're like legless lizards[en.wikipedia.org] or Marble Hill[en.wikipedia.org]. The VN presentation format is basically a dialog presentation format that's often used in many other games, and ones that are strictly VNs don't really feature "gameplay" in a traditional sense (with the possible exception of some "raising sim" or "dating sim" style games that track some number of stats), but they ARE visual entertainment software products that are basically specialized programs -- which is how games work, from a technical distribution standpoint.
It's a format that was pioneered by the Japanese, but they cerrtainly don't have to use anime style art. Also, not all western VNs are trash either; Dysfunctional Systems is an excellent one made by some Canadians. (Unfortunately there is no sequel...)
They were always there, just previously not on Steam and kinda confined to niche sites.
Steam users never were too aware on how big some niche markets are and the ability of those markets to spend huge amounts of money.
VNs were one of those markets. These people now have a central hub to easily find, play and buy the games they had to hunt and shop around.
granted, most of the VN's on Steam that are nothing but poor quality fanservice (they are easy to make so some western indie studios push them out as shovelware, compared to the surprisingly high level of resources Japanese devs put in them to make)..
there are however some that do a good job in presenting an interesting story, Steins Gate is quite interesting, Clannad quite often makes people cry, and the original Grisaia game is pretty well liked..
For example, soccer is basically popular to the point of it being a religion in every single corner of the entire world
Except America
Steam allows distribution of content easily, so that previously niche markets can more easily find critical mass. I mean maybe the kids don't remember but really getting "Anime" in the 80s was on par with trying to smuggle contra band into a jail it was so niche. I was shelling out like $7 a week just to get Weekly Jump delivered from Japan to read DragonBall. Today you can get english dubs and subbed Anime content on the internet for a subscription on demand.... Ah how times have changed!
I guess the other point being that is that just because its popular doesnt mean you have to like it. I mean I don't really like VN that much and I'm Japanese, so I think I'm technically socially obligated to like them in theory. But I respect that some subset likes it and they want to spend money on it, so that's fine for them. Its not for me, but that's ok.
There is an option in Mass Effect to choose difficulty, the lowest being "Narrative Gameplay, No combat" and ME has some different endings, would that be considered a Visual Novel as well?
To a degree, yes. Telltale games still have some more pure "gameplay" elements, you walk around ,you have "action" scenes with quicktime events and some places where you have to react in a certain amount of time. But the principle is the same. Mass Effect 3s "narration" mode is really a good example. That mode has even less gameplay then a typical visual novel since the game even selects the best answers in any dialog for you, so you basically just watching a story for 30 hours.
I always seen Visual Novels more like a illustrated book with music and voices where you can influence the story to some degree. (not even in all VNs).
They can be quite engrossing, especially the bigger VN that take 40-50 hours to complete.
Its not unlike the feeling when you watch a long tv series over multiple season just that you have some degree on influence on whats going on.
Wouldn't that be strange in the future, that movies would have a level of interactivity, say a remastered Star Wars film would allow movie-goers to don some sort of VR gear and each would chose how their movie ends, say like Darth Maul doesn't get cut in half like some sucker punch but he survives to return in the next film or something.
But, I'm sure the complaints would be similar to the game, The Walking Dead "choices", as there aren't any but really, an illusion of choice, for example, there is no way to save either Doug and Carley in the Long Road Ahead episode. I think Darth Maul would fit this bill, his movie destiny is to be cut in half, period.
I wonder if the Visual Novel aspect would eventually spill into movies, "TV" shows, interactive commercials in a way that we cant foresee at this time, like people in the 1700's, who wouldn't imagine a "horseless carriage" that runs on a fuel that's refined from petroleum crude oil.
Anyway, never mind. I'm going off into a different tangent. Thanks for VN def :-)
We also call it football. And yes, I know it's a British person that invented the term "soccer".