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[Shadowlord]

> sex averse west

I remember the outcry over "hot coffee" (a mod!), nude patches (mods!), and "alien sideboob" (in mass effect), but today we are the land of Game of Thrones and the Witcher series, and Jack Thompson is permanently disbarred and has been for 8 years.

[Sirus]

Eh, the "outcry" has almost always been from an extremely vocal, often badly misinformed minority IIRC. Which the media then pounced upon and blew out of proportion.

[Hawkfrost]

And it's not like visual novels are some widely respected art form in Japan either; even mentioning you are a PC gamer in Japan is likely to get you flagged as someone who plays porn games and is a pervert.

The difference is that Japan has a core audience of single men who live either alone or with their parents and who are willing to spend a lot of money on things designed to titillate and pander to them and their demographic, while over here for a long time pornography was generally in the form of magazines or movies.

If you want to see the same example of random sex scenes thrown in for no reason, try watching movies from the 70s and 80s made in Hollywood. Often they will have an out of place erotic scene that only existed because young men would buy a ticket to see some boobs for four minutes.

Nowadays this is a lot less common because of the internet, and it's a damn blessing.


Japan is not some haven of free sexuality.

[Cruxador]

> sex averse west

I remember the outcry over "hot coffee" (a mod!), nude patches (mods!), and "alien sideboob" (in mass effect), but today we are the land of Game of Thrones and the Witcher series, and Jack Thompson is permanently disbarred and has been for 8 years.

I'm speaking comparatively here. And while there's less media boogeymen, explicitly sexual games are banned from the game merchant that deals in the vast majority of PC game transactions.

And it's not like visual novels are some widely respected art form in Japan either; even mentioning you are a PC gamer in Japan is likely to get you flagged as someone who plays porn games and is a pervert.

Well yes, I'm talking within the context of the market rather than the culture at large.

[Leafsnail]

I mean there are plenty of "explicitly sexual" games on Steam. They just can't be literal pornography.

Ah, yeah. Can't argue with that. It seems like it shouldn't be too hard to just export your VN into an Android format, since most are made in Ren'Py anyway, which supports that, but I guess it's too much hassle for projects that aren't designed to work well in both.

I don't think anyone really uses Ren'Py in Japan. The standard used to be NScripter (eg Higurashi, Umineko, Tsukihime) and is now Kirikiri (eg FSN, G-Senjou, Fata Morgana), while the professional ones can use strange in-house engines.

I don't think any of them have native support for Mac or Linux so good luck running them on Android.

[Leafsnail]

30 years since the Rokkenjima Serial Murder Incident. RIP Ushiromiyas.

[ToonyMan]

I finished The House in Fata Morgana.

It's good.

[Shakerag]

I know some companies would release all age product, only to later make 'upgraded 18+ edition' with random sex scenes thrown in  due to Consumer Outrag.... cough, Demand.

This I did not know about.  Although it might explain some of the god-awful scenes I have seen ... But still, awful or not, it's kind of a principle thing for me.

I'm probably biased since I prefer "visual novel" over "dating sim" though. Most of my favourite VN have been all age, such as Stein;Gate and Key games. Contrarily, I find VN with sex tends to veer toward formulaic moe love love nonsense...

I'm much more on the "more interactivity the better" end.  I pretty much can't stand kinetic novels.  I think my favorite VN game of all time is Kamidori Alchemist Meister (although the sex scenes were a bit much).  Although True Love 95 has a special place in my heart.

[frostshotgg]

I know some companies would release all age product, only to later make 'upgraded 18+ edition' with random sex scenes thrown in  due to Consumer Outrag.... cough, Demand.

I missed this before but Shakerag responding pointed it out to me. I've never, ever heard of this being a thing. Can you provide some example?

[Leafsnail]

Little Busters.

I finished The House in Fata Morgana.

It's good.

Yeah.

[frostshotgg]

I'll grant you that, but just about everything surrounding Key's development process is bizarre to say the least. The only reason they still have that artist that draws girls who look like aliens is because of supposed fan outcry. I'm not actually convinced anyone actually cried out in either case, but someone at Key is really paranoid about any change ever.